"Elite" Cry-Babies?

I CANNOT IMAGINE how an operative of the Special Counter-Insurgency Operations Unit (SCOU), when caught by insurgents and subjective to the worse torture imaginable, can ever survive with their mental faculties intact.

But that's exactly what's going to happen if the recent products of SCOU Training cry foul, or more specifically 'hazing,' when they are subjected to the hard realities of law enforcent that handles counterinsurgency operations. Operatives must be physically hard and mentally sturdy to survive the prospect of getting captured without squelling reserved information to the enemy.

I am disappointed to hear that the recent batch of SCOUT trainees considered their physical ordeals during training as 'hazing.' Have they entertained the thought that they were in Camp Ceferino Genovia in Barangay Bahay for an exotic 45-day vacation? If they cannot endure physical pain during training, they must ship out because real life counterinsurgency work will not get better. That is if they plan to be the competent operatives they should be.

From the reports coming out, even the three assistant trainers complained on appeared to be unsure that what they did was valid for the purpose of preparing police officers for the role. They apparently shied away from admitting that they did inflict physical pain during the training. If they did, so what? Their superiors know better than to fault them for doing their jobs.

Of course these trainers may have failed somehow in certain aspects, particularly that of creativity. They should have let these trainees watch special forces movies show rugged and intense physical demands of training in America's elite soldiers. Perhaps this way the trainees will realize that they are babies compared to these American soldiers.

There is a place for shouting 'hazing' when receiving physical punishments. The place is university education in the context of fraternity initiation rites. Not the SCOUT regimen that are intented to make them tough enforcers of law.

At the end of the day, these trainees chose voluntarily to join this batch of SCOUT trainees. Instead of shouting foul, they should be mature enough to assess their personal resources to withstand the demand of elite training. Otherwise, they should seek other avenues of their unspent free time.