THE GRUNTS
for which you felt responsible.
Watching as your dead friends are
loaded onto helos in body bags.
Being wounded and medevaced
yourself, then feeling burdened
with guilt for leaving behind those
you had sworn to protect. Seeing
evil done and being unable, or unwilling, to intervene.
“An individual on a mission may
at the end have questions about
the morality of what went on, and
most guys reconcile that fairly
rapidly,” said Thomas S. Jones, a
retired combat-decorated Marine
major general. He is fiercely fond
of young Marines and runs a retreat for the wounded, Semper Fi
Odyssey, where he sees many cases
of moral injury. He speaks with a
parade-ground staccato, occasionally punctuating his thoughts with
a concussive “Hell-fire!”
The majority of moral injury
cases go much deeper, he said.
“They’re more about survivor’s
guilt, death of children, death of
civilians, that are just part and
parcel of combat action. We continue to see guys four, five years
on, still struggling.
“This is experience talking!
Hell-fire!”
Dr. James Bender, a former
Army psychologist who spent
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
a year in combat in Iraq with a
cavalry brigade, saw many cases
of moral injury among soldiers.
Some, he said, “felt they didn’t
perform the way they should. Bullets start flying and they duck and
hide rather than returning fire —
that happens a lot more than anyone cares to admit.” Bender found
himself treating anxiety and depression among soldiers “doubting the mission, doubting the fundamental nature of who they are
— pretty deep stuff.”
‘WE DID IT ALL FOR NOTHING’
Moral injury is as old as war itself. Betrayal, grief, shame and
rage are the themes that propel
Greek epics like Homer’s Iliad,
and all have afflicted warriors
down through the centuries.
But during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it proved especially hard to maintain a sense of
moral balance. These wars lacked
the moral clarity of World War
II, with its goal of unconditional
surrender. Some troops chafed
at being sent not to achieve military victory, but for nation-building (“As Iraqis stand up, we will
stand down”). The enemy, meanwhile, fought to kill, mostly with
the wars’ most feared and deadly
weapon, the improvised explosive
device. American troops trying to
help Iraqis and Afghans were be-