The “Moral Injury” Carried By Our Returning Soldiers

This extract from a 2015, 3-Part Columbia University Dart Center – award-winning journalism article, “A War of Moral Injury” by a Pulitzer Prize winning author and his editor has resonated among those of us who have been in combat from Vietnam to the Middle East.

As citizens we can attempt to deny this subject, but the reminders are  millions of damaged souls all around us who have come home. Their trauma must be understood and addressed by us all.

This piece joins a growing library of red flags about the very different nature of armed conflict in the current era and how repeated multiple deployment over the longest period of war in our history have permanently scarred many of our youth.

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“DART CENTER.ORG”

‘A War Of Moral Injury’ By David Wood and John Montorio (Biographies Conclude this article)

“This provocative three-part series examines the concept of moral injury, a phenomenon where combat or operational experiences transgress deeply held moral and ethical beliefs that undergird a service member’s humanity; often seen as damage to the soul.

Judges praised the series for “gracefully and confidently marrying the humanity and understanding of its survivors with a gritty, powerful investigation that breaks new ground.”

What is the culpability of those who engineered the wars?  Of those who approved the funding that enabled the fighting to go on, year after year? What of those who demanded the end of the draft in 1973 and its replacement with a professional fighting force?

This “all- volunteer” military excused almost all Americans from service, while its relatively small numbers mean those who do serve must deploy again and again, and again.

Almost 2 million men and women who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are flooding homeward, profoundly affected by war. Their experiences have been vivid. Dazzling in the ups, terrifying and depressing in the downs. The burning devotion of the small-unit brotherhood, the adrenaline rush of danger, the nagging fear and loneliness, the pride of service.

The thrill of raw power, the brutal ecstasy of life on the edge. “It was,” said Nick, “the worst, best experience of my life.” Moral injury raises uncomfortable questions about what happens in war, the dark experiences that many veterans have always been reluctant to talk about. Are the young Americans who volunteer for military service prepared for the ethical ambiguity that lies ahead? Can they be hardened against moral injury? Should they be? With widespread public impatience to move beyond the long war years, it’s easy to overlook the pain that endures among service members and their families.

Experiences like those of Nick Rudolph and tens of thousands of others are theirs to bear. Many have found peace and acceptance: I did what I had to do, and I did it well and honorably. Others struggle to reconcile the people they have become with those innocent selves who jubilantly enlisted just a few years before. Either way, they manage mostly out of sight and on their own.

Yet a glimpse into their world also raises troubling questions for those of us outside the military – about wartime morality, about the accountability of those who encouraged or tolerated the decisions to go to war.

As the wars dragged on, it became clear that the campaigns to win hearts and minds were not working, and often not appreciated. For some who fought, the memories of their sacrifices have since become tempered by the recent deterioration of security in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We did it all for nothing,” said Darren Doss, 25, a former Marine who fought in Marjah, Afghanistan, and lost friends in battle.

In both wars, context made it tricky to deal with moral challenges. What is moral in combat can at once be immoral in peacetime society. Shooting a child-warrior, for instance. In combat, eliminating an armed threat carries a high moral value of protecting your men. Back home, killing a child is grotesquely wrong. Guys like Nick Rudolph ended up torn and confused, feeling unhappy and out of place, perhaps guilty and ashamed, or disturbed by their own numbness.

Many newly returned veterans simply shrink from civilian society, unable to craft an answer to a jaunty “Thanks for your service!” or “So how was Afghanistan?” Or the worst: “Did you kill anyone?”

“I can’t go to a bar and start talking about combat experience with somebody – people look at you like you’re crazy,” said a Navy combat corpsman who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and asked not to be identified by name. He returned burdened with guilt over the lives he couldn’t save. “People say, ‘Thanks for your service.’ Do you know what I did over there? It just seems like you’re being patronized. Don’t do that to me.”

Afraid or unwilling to be judged by civilians, many new veterans isolate themselves, never speaking of their wartime experiences. Unable to explain, even to a wife or girlfriend, the joy and horror of combat. That yes, I killed a child, or yes, soldiers I was responsible for got killed and it was my fault. Or yes, I saw a person I loved get blown apart.

From there it can be an easy slide into self-medication with drugs or alcohol, or overwork. Thoughts of suicide can beckon.

“Definitely a majority” of returning veterans bear some kind of moral injury, said William P. Nash, a retired Navy psychiatrist and a pioneer in stress control and moral injury. He deployed as a battlefield therapist with Marines during the battle of Fallujah in 2004. “People avoid talking about or thinking about it and every time they do, it’s a flashback or nightmare that just damages them even more. It’s going to take a long time to sort that out.”

Moral Injury

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

David Wood is a senior military correspondent for The Huffington Post. His series on severely wounded veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-wood-a9734a37/

John Montorio is a veteran journalist and media executive with more than 35 years of experience reporting, writing, editing and managing news staffs. At the time of this writing, he was Executive Features Editor of The Huffington Post. https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmontorio/