(Nov. 22, 2004)

You have statistics in your book. … Talk to me about the 2 percent statistic and what that means.

Naturally speaking, there’s 2 percent who after 60 days of continuous day-and-night combat are not driven insane. And this 2 percent keeps bubbling up. Two percent of all fighter pilots in World War II killed more than the rest put together, something along those lines. This 2 percent keeps bubbling up.

And it’s really not a percent. It’s not a yes or no. It’s a continuum. It’s the old bell-shaped curve. [At] one end of the bell-shaped curve there’s people, at the tail of it, with great capacity for violence. [At] the other end there’s people over here with no capacity for violence. And there’s most of the people right in between. But you can choose to go one way or another. Israel is a nation that has shifted their bell-shaped curve. Israel is a nation who’s chosen a warrior path.

So what’s happening in the psychology of those 2 percent?

Well, those 2 percent are people with a capacity for aggression. And then they divide into two parts. Those who have the capacity for aggression and an absence of empathy, we call those psychopaths, sociopaths, aggressive sociopaths. Those who have a capacity for aggression and empathy for their fellow citizens, we call those warriors, heroes, cops, soldiers, Marines, spec ops.