REFLECTIVE ANALYSIS The Decision: I'm in the Army and the decisions I make affect someone or something, directly or indirectly. My status in the military allows me to make all kinds of decisions, from what pens and furniture to buy to who to send to war, where and when. This particular decision I want to talk about is a decision that affected people's lives. This decision changed my outlook on life and the Army as I knew it. I was in charge of this element that was preparing to deploy and we had just done a urinalysis where a couple of soldiers had tested positive for marijuana, cocaine and other barbiturates. When a soldier tests positive for an illegal substance, it was a moment where we had to detain the individual, send them to the necessary facility to get help, and then send them out of the military because we can no longer use that individual. When these soldiers tested positive, we tried to exclude them from the army but, since we are at war, the military objective now is to keep everyone. The Army does not let anyone go for mental, drug, medical or family reasons. The Army doesn't have enough soldiers to support our amazing army, so they are holding back as many soldiers as possible. Anyway, due to this new MILPER message spreading among the military, I couldn't report these drug addicts or get them help before our deployment, so they had to deploy with us. Once we reached our secret location, we set up our communications and began engaging the enemy. To make a long story short, 2 of the people who tested positive on the urinalysis lost their lives in one of the clashes that took place, the other threw a grenade into the sleeping tent and killed several of his comrades. Even though it seemed like nothing was wrong, apparently something was wrong and not only did I overlook it, but I shouldn't have deployed them with us, despite what the military dictated. Expected utility theory This is the normative theory (Plous, S). The decision I made in the first place was the normal decision anyone would make. The military tells you you're going to do something and you do it, without questioning or refuting it.