Rising Military Suicides Reflect War's Moral Trauma

In an article released earlier this week, independent journalist Dahr Jamail documents the mounting mental toll on veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. For the first time since the Vietnam War, the Army's suicide rate exceeds that of the civilian population.

Multiple deployments to fight an illegal and unjust war are wreaking havoc on the mental health of American soldiers. According to Jamail, a RAND Corporation report found that 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or severe depression, yet only half sought treatment. Former sergeant, Chuck Luther is quoted in the article as saying that he has "heard commanders tell soldiers requesting psychological help that they are full of crap and don’t have PTSD."

18 veterans are killing themselves every day, according the a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) email cited by Jamail. He also reveals that the VA is logging 1000 suicide attempts per month among those under its care.

These reports are disturbing and tragic, but are they really surprising? While the American public blithely ignores the reality of war in general and these wars in particular, U.S. soldiers are buckling under the weight of their horrific experiences.

Compared to WWII, when less than half of U.S. soldiers actually discharged their weapons, new training techniques have resulted in over 90% of soldiers now firing at the "enemy". In addition to the fact that more soldiers now must deal with the guilt of personally ending human life, the current wars are taking place in more urban settings and among civilian populations, leading to an unprecedented level of "collateral" death. This would understandably carry a high price on one's mental stability.

Returning soldiers are not the only ones who suffer from PTSD. Military families are seeing a disturbing increase in domestic violence as well. How far must these trends escalate until the American public stirs from its insulated stupor? Since the end of the Vietnam war, 170,000 veterans of that conflict have killed themselves. How many lives and families must be destroyed before we cry, "Enough!"?

Is War Immoral Anymore?

Paul Craig Roberts' latest column at Antiwar.com makes an important and disheartening point about how antiwar arguments have morphed over the decades. Rather than the common perception that the the Vietnam war was brought to its brutal end by antipathy for the draft, Roberts argues that Americans had tired of the immorality of what was until recently our longest war.

Roberts credits a (marginally) more independent media, unafraid to cast the war in moral terms through such images as "the film of the naked little girl running in terror down the road burning with napalm", for "arousing moral opposition to the [Vietnam] war."

Today's conflicts in Iraq and Af-Pak are all too often judged only on materialist conditions, such as U.S. military deaths, what Roberts calls, "Karl Marx's explanation." Indeed, when John McCain argued during the 2008 presidential campaign that the U.SI. could remain in Iraq for 100 years, his sole justification was limiting casualties of U.S. soldiers. Never mind the morality of forcibly occupying the native land of people with the same inalienable, God-given natural rights as the rest of us.

Roberts' conclusion for why the American people have tolerated these morally indefensible wars for so long?:

The answer is that the United States is an immoral country, with an immoral people and an immoral government. Americans no longer have a moral conscience. They have gone over to the Dark Side.

Sadly, I think that Roberts' prognosis is spot on. Christianity's peaceful heritage has long ago been forsaken in America. Pacifism among American Christians was much more widespread prior to WWI than after. Especially since the Cold War, Christians have been the worst warmongers of any segment of society. I would definitely describe that as a moral decline.

This article needs to be taken very seriously by any American who values morality as the foundation of a sound society.