PTSD, Conscience and Slaughter

The recent “Fresh Air” program about PTSD and suicide (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131096642, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131096344) was gripping and made for very worthwhile and informative listening. Even in this program, though, we see signs of avoidance and denial; a mostly fulfilled wish to avoid discussion of the deeper questions behind what is under discussion.

I read (elsewhere) that nearly 1 in 5 dollars of the Federal Budget presently goes to the various branches and offices of national defense–for warfighting and the preparation for warfighting. Surely, we need to begin questioning that, right now, in the course of discussing the tragic consequences for soldiers (like PTSD and suicide) of our perpetual wars. Our national economy has depended upon keeping the nation on a war footing for decades, and it shows. Everywhere, it shows. In both civilian life and in military life it shows and shows and shows. We’ve re-made the US in the image of war.

At some point, it has to again become possible for us to confront that, question that, and insist that confronting and questioning that is NOT an act of shallow, “feelgood” (disloyal) so-called Liberalism, but honest, trustworthy and patriotic citizenship.

Speaking in India, President Obama declared “…we insist that nothing ever justifies the slaughter of innocent men, women and children.” This would have been in the same week and the same month (and the same year and the same decade) that US forces–actively and with full acceptance by nearly everyone in positions of power and influence–participate in operations the “collateral” consequences of which are specifically known to slaughter innocent men, women and children.

Particularly troublesome are the unmanned drone attacks from the air upon likely groups of assembled people who look like they might be “insurgents.” Far, far too many instances of deadly attacks from the air have proved to rain death and misery down upon innocent people assembled for innocent reasons (such as for a wedding). Two important conclusions might be drawn from the observation, one pertaining directly to the matter of the Fresh Air PTSD program, and one pertaining to what it is we are doing, generally, and what we need to talk about:

1) As long as we are going to be allowing ourselves to conduct the kinds of airborne and on-the-ground operations that the record shows we clearly do, some part (some better part) of the young people we are sending to do this work will come back rightly and properly traumatized and full of guilt. Now, none of this suggests it is good for them to kill themselves, or to feel guilt for their actions lifelong, without healing, but let us at grant them the legitimacy of their grief, guilt and shame. PTSD is a medical affliction, true enough, but when dealing with matters of the human soul and human conscience, we have to admit into consideration that reactions by some of the most sensitive (and PTSD vulnerable) of the soldiers we send into battle might be a signal sent to us by our shared experience that is trying to show us as we truly are–willing to slaughter in the name of expediency, and to send members of an increasingly permanent underclass to do it.

2) If it is truly a principle of our government and our people, as President Obama has publicly and unequivocally declared before the Indian Parliament, “…that nothing ever justifies the slaughter of innocent[s]…” then it directly follows, as President, it is Mr. Obama’s duty to act in the highest interest of American national security to order the halt of all airborne drone bombing attacks. On each and every occasion innocents are killed, the world sees, and compares what we are doing with what we say. Note what he said: “…nothing ever justifies…” That would take in, also, the many violent foreign adventures that we justify to ourselves, for ourselves, as right and proper which inevitably cause innocent men, women and children to pay concretely and ferociously with their lives and dreams of better world.

If nothing else, those watching us will find less reason to be repelled. Nothing quite so repels a skeptical observer as a consistent pattern of hypocrisy. Nothing quite so effectively moves an angry observer in the direction of violent acts of reprisal as a consistent pattern of violent and self-righteous hypocrisy.

Incidentally, it is that sort of thing: President Obama’s unwillingness insist on his watch that the nation live in accord with our declared principles–his demonstrated lack of moral and political courage (which, from the election results didn’t help him, anyway)–has been why so many of us who were inspired by his candidacy have been dismayed and repelled by his presidency. But I digress.

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