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Important article about how our endless wars leave people who are involved
suffering not just from PTSD, but also from "moral injury" that is just as damaging to their ability to function normally--and that probably can never be fully overcome, no matter how long they live, which is probably why 65% of the 20 per day (!!!) veteran suicides recorded by the Department of Veterans Affairs are committed by "individuals 50 years old or older with little or no exposure to the country's twenty-first-century conflicts."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/whistleblowers-moral-injury-endless-war-iraq
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"My Guilt Will Never Go Away":
Endless war, moral injury, and the debt that can never be repaid.
PETER VAN BURENMAY 29, 2017 6:00 AM
SNIP
If America accepts the idea of fighting endless wars, it will have to accept something else as well: that the costs of war are similarly endless. I'm thinking about the trillions of dollars, the million or more "enemy" dead (a striking percentage of them civilians), the tens of thousands of American combat casualties, those 20 veteran suicides each day, and the diminished lives of those who survive all of that. There's that pain, carried by an unknown number of women and men, that won't disappear, ever, and that goes by the label "moral injury."
When I started "Hooper's War," a novel about the end of World War II in the Pacific, I had in mind just that pain. I was thinking—couldn't stop thinking, in fact—about what really happens to people in war, combatants and civilians alike. The need to tell that story grew in large part out of my own experiences in Iraq, where I spent a year embedded with a combat unit as a US State Department employee, and where I witnessed, among so many other horrors, two soldier suicides.
SNIP
PTSD and moral injury often occur together. "I think having both PTSD and moral injury are the normal things for us," Ling says of those in the drone program. Moral injury, however, takes place at the intersection of psychology and spirituality, and so is, in a sense, all in someone's head. When experiencing moral injury, a person wields guilt and/or shame as a self-inflicted penalty for a choice made. PTSD is more physical, more fear-based, and often a more direct response to an event or events witnessed in war.
SNIP
The Department of Veterans Affairs counts a stunning average of 20 veteran suicides a day in America. About 65% of those are individuals 50 years old or older with little or no exposure to the country's twenty-first-century conflicts. No one tracks the suicide rate for civilians who survive war, but it's hard to imagine that it isn't high as well. The cause of all those self-inflicted deaths can't, of course, be traced to any one thing, but the pain that grows out of moral injury is patient.
SNIP
Endless war, moral injury, and the debt that can never be repaid.
PETER VAN BURENMAY 29, 2017 6:00 AM
SNIP
If America accepts the idea of fighting endless wars, it will have to accept something else as well: that the costs of war are similarly endless. I'm thinking about the trillions of dollars, the million or more "enemy" dead (a striking percentage of them civilians), the tens of thousands of American combat casualties, those 20 veteran suicides each day, and the diminished lives of those who survive all of that. There's that pain, carried by an unknown number of women and men, that won't disappear, ever, and that goes by the label "moral injury."
When I started "Hooper's War," a novel about the end of World War II in the Pacific, I had in mind just that pain. I was thinking—couldn't stop thinking, in fact—about what really happens to people in war, combatants and civilians alike. The need to tell that story grew in large part out of my own experiences in Iraq, where I spent a year embedded with a combat unit as a US State Department employee, and where I witnessed, among so many other horrors, two soldier suicides.
SNIP
PTSD and moral injury often occur together. "I think having both PTSD and moral injury are the normal things for us," Ling says of those in the drone program. Moral injury, however, takes place at the intersection of psychology and spirituality, and so is, in a sense, all in someone's head. When experiencing moral injury, a person wields guilt and/or shame as a self-inflicted penalty for a choice made. PTSD is more physical, more fear-based, and often a more direct response to an event or events witnessed in war.
SNIP
The Department of Veterans Affairs counts a stunning average of 20 veteran suicides a day in America. About 65% of those are individuals 50 years old or older with little or no exposure to the country's twenty-first-century conflicts. No one tracks the suicide rate for civilians who survive war, but it's hard to imagine that it isn't high as well. The cause of all those self-inflicted deaths can't, of course, be traced to any one thing, but the pain that grows out of moral injury is patient.
SNIP
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Much more at link; very much worth taking the time to read:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/whistleblowers-moral-injury-endless-war-iraq
