While the article is true and makes sense in this context, it is neglecting the results of that survey the Brigadier General did. See, when you tell the military that 4/5 of their soldiers are not contributing to fights, the response of the military isn't "Oh, that's too bad. Let's start being more sensitive to their issues." The military's response was more like "Oh, HELL no!" They immediately set to work figuring out how to train that tendency right the f@#$ out of their soldiers. By the time of the Korean War, the US military had that 15-20% up to 50%. By Vietnam, it was 70% and by the 1990s, it was over 90%. That is the reason why we were so brutally effective in both Iraq Wars, why the British kicked Argentine ass so hard in the Falklands thing and why with everything else going wrong for them the US Army Rangers still racked up a body count on a 15:1 ratio in the Battle of Mogadishu. Translation: If the US military, the most humane, moral-sensibility-conscious and yet still successful armed service in history can teach its soldiers to dehumanize the enemy sufficiently to overcome that innate aversion to killing people, you would think that an empire run by Sith Lords would have no problem doing the same with their Stormtroopers.

What is more, presumably the stormtrooper helmets have all sorts of nifty HUDs and targeting reticles and whatnot inside their helmets, with electronics displays and everything. All that electronics stuff, in addition to making it easier to aim and see and so on, would serve an additional purpose of adding another level of distance between the 'trooper and what he is supposed to be killing (and regarding Luke's or Han's complaint about not seeing anything: obviously they are not trained in the use of the helmet properly, and thus cannot activate its optical functions). In other words, it's a lot easier to kill something on a screen, instead of looking at him with your own eyes. That's why navy crewmen, fighter pilots and bomber crews, tankers and artillerymen rarely suffered "shell-shock" (1940s-speak for PTSD).

This theory also fails to explain why Chewbacca isn't toast, since there is no humanizing process at work there, in addition to his being the biggest and least protected target.

As far as plot holes explained in Star Wars goes, my prefered theory is that the exhaust port on the Death Star was put there on purpose, and was not all that big of a weakness (you needed the Force to it, and they wiped out all the enemy Force-using people who could fly well before they built it).