The right thing to do may not only be unpopular, but dangerous as well. Situations of that sort reveal who's a leader of character and who's not. The My Lai Massacre also spurred military leaders to improve training in the rights and wrongs of battlefield behavior. One of the first correctives to come after My Lai, said Maj. Enlisted soldiers receive instruction in their Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training phases.
Officers receive the instruction at both the basic and advanced levels of their training courses.
And officers attending the Army's Command and General Staff College are further instructed in the ethics of war, Altenburg said. The Army's training centers created in the early 1980s, have typically included mock-villages that the soldiers have to pass through. Other soldiers playing the roles of hostile civilians appear. They may throw objects at the troops and shout anti-American slogans. So we are able to introduce potential conflict with the law of war, to test them and reinforce their knowledge of what their responsibilities are under the law of war.