monarchy

In the wake of Prince Harry’s new book Spare, leaked excerpts that he had killed 25 people in the war in Afghanistan shocked readers. He reflected on what it’s like to take a life in war: “You can't kill people if you think of them as people. You can't really harm people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board. Bads taken away before they could kill Goods. I'd been trained to ‘other-ize’ them, trained well. On some level I recognized this learned detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an unavoidable part of soldiering.”

There was deep anger over Prince Harry’s admission. One British Army colonel told The Independent, “That’s not how you behave in the army.” But we shouldn’t be angry that he told the truth about the dehumanization inherent in warfare. We should be angry that the truth isn’t told more often.