THE RECRUITS
of doing something good in a war,
and limiting collateral damage,
however right or wrong” the war
itself is. The problem, he said, is
that “war will break these values.
“There is an inherent contradiction between the warrior code,
how these guys define themselves,
what they expect of themselves —
to be heroes, the selfless servants
who fight for the rest of us — and
the impossibility in war of ever
living up to those ideals. It cannot
be done. Not by anybody there,”
Nash said. “So how do they forgive themselves, forgive others,
for failing to live up to the ideals
without abandoning the ideals?”
Warriors come home “and something is damaged, broken. They feel
betrayed; they don’t trust in these
values and ideals any more.”
As Stephen Canty, the former
Marine, put it, “We spent two
deployments where you couldn’t
trust a single person except the
guys next to you.” Back in civilian
society now, Canty said, “We have
trouble trusting people.”
‘BAD THINGS STILL HAPPENED’
Even when armed with a set of
rigid values and discipline, warriors in combat can be caught in
situations where they have no op-
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
portunity to choose between right
and wrong. In the often chaotic
fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,
where there was no clear distinction between enemy insurgent and
innocent civilian, young Americans
could act in good conscience, and
in accordance with a strict moral
code, and still suffer moral injury.
During a gun battle outside Marjah, Afghanistan, in early spring of
2010, a Marine squad of Charlie
Company, 1st Battalion 6th Marines
(“Charlie One-Six”), was pinned
down in a gully, taking intense fire
from an adobe compound. Unable to move forward or to retreat,
the squad leader OK’d an attack
and Lance Cpl. Joseph Schiano, a
22-year-old on his second combat
tour, lifted a rocket launcher to his
shoulder, took aim and fired.
The blast blew apart much of the
adobe building. As the dust settled,
the Marines could hear shouting and wailing. Their interpreter
said, “They want to bring out the
wounded.” And as the torn and
bleeding bodies were dragged out,
it became clear that the Taliban
had herded women and children
into the building as human shields.
“And Schiano is leaning against
wall, just sobbing,” recalled Canty,
who was Schiano’s squadmate
at the time. “The thing is, you
couldn’t have known.”
But as Canty himself often