Beyond PTSD: the Moral Casualties of War
BY CAMILLO “MAC” BICA
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, during the Iraq war, 56 percent of soldiers and Marines (henceforth I will use the term “soldiers” to include members of all branches, both male and female) have killed another human being, 20 percent admit being responsible for noncombatant deaths, and 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains.[i] According to Colonel Charles Engel, MD, MPH, director of the deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, between 15 and 29 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Because soldiers still on active duty are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq, experts say that the PTSD rate among Iraq veterans could well eclipse the 30% lifetime rate found in a 1990 national study of Vietnam veterans. While these numbers are staggering and should give any rational human being pause, the readjustment difficulties suffered by active duty military and veterans because of their experiences in Iraq are not exhausted by references to trauma and PTSD. Tragically, as soldiers experience the horror and cruelty of war, especially urban counterinsurgency war, the moral gravity of their actions – displacing, torturing, injuring, and killing other human being (henceforth “combat behavior”) – becomes apparent, soldiers suffer not only the effects of trauma, but what I will term “moral injuries,” i.e., debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community. [Read more →]
