Collateral Damage

The Real War Being Waged on American Soldiers

One of the saddest things we have read for some time came across our desk the other day.  It documented the suicide rate amongst serving and de-mobbed US soldiers.  Over the past year, more active duty soldiers killed themselves in the US military than were killed in actual combat. 

As The Guardian put it:

To put that another way, more of America's serving soldiers died at their own hands than in pursuit of the enemy.

But the picture is actually worse: the suicide plague amongst veterans, those recently retired from serving is much, much higher.

. . . an astonishing 6,500 former military personnel who killed themselves in 2012, roughly equivalent to one every 80 minutes.

What on earth is going on?  As always, the reasons are no doubt complex.  Two things occur to us.


The first is a phenomenon described long ago by Erich Maria Remarque in his fine novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.  In one chapter, Remarque describes what happened when the German unit whose story he describes goes on leave they return to their small home town.  They immediately felt isolated from family, former friends, and acquaintances because they could not describe, nor convey the horrors they had been through.  They could no longer share themselves and their experiences in ordinary social conversation.  They did not belong at home any more.  

Fast forward to The Guardian's article, which profiles the suicide of one young veteran.  His mother says:

The mental costs were high too. Each time he came back from Afghanistan. between tours or on R&R, he struck his mother as a little more on edge, a little more withdrawn. He would rarely go out of the house and seemed ill at ease among civilians. "I reckon he felt he no longer belonged here," she said.

That's precisely what Remarque was describing in All Quiet . . .  

A second issue is the horror of war itself.  Here is The Guardian's account:

After one especially fraught night, Libby [the mother of the suicide] awoke to find that he had slashed his face with a knife.

Occasionally, he would allude to the distressing events that led to such extreme behaviour: there was the time that another soldier, aged 18, had been killed right beside him; and the times that he himself had killed.  William told his mother: "You would hate me if you knew what I've done out there."  "I will never hate you. You are the same person you always were," she said.  "No, Mom," he countered. "The son you loved died over there."

War is hell, as they say.  There are procedures and techniques to help soldiers cope with the horrors of the battlefield.  We understand the Israeli Defence Force has worked out effective ways to do this.

But we also think there is something more deeply at issue here.  Wars are easier to fight and endure when it is absolutely clear that they are being fought for just and righteous ends.  Self-defence, or the immediate defence of one's country is one such just cause.  It justifies the horrors--rightly so.  When the would-be-murderer comes into the house to kill, one would despatch him as effectively and powerfully as possible--without a second thought.  The defence of one's wife, one's children, one's aged parents is a compelling reason to kill another human being. 

The psychological impact is unlikely to be "the son you loved died that day when I despatched the murderous home invader".  But when the cause becomes "nation building" halfway around the globe, or "bringing freedom and the American way" to Afghani tribesmen, or  fighting to establish democratic government amongst a foreign people the case is entirely different.  The drawn bow is too long.  No longer is defence of one's family, neighbours, state, and nation the issue.   The imposition of a philosophy or ideology upon another people carries a great price: it slices through the consciences of soldiers, causing them feel the horror, and convicting them of the guilt, of their actions. 

In Les Miserables, when Inspector Javert comes to doubt the morality of his actions and the course of his life, he casts himself into the abyss--committing suicide. 

One response to the plight of the American veterans and serving soldiers from the conservative right has been to laud, celebrate, and honour the serving and those who have served.  But such things cannot quiet consciences, which speak like cutting seppeku knives in the lonely and dark hours of the night.  If a soldier cannot say, "I am proud of what I did" he will suffer.  But he can only be proud of what he did, of bringing death to others, if the drawn bow between his actions on the battlefield and the defence of his loved ones is very, very short. 

Abstract, humanitarian, global ideals do not blunt the knives of conscience.  They never will.   The United States must stop regarding itself as God's Messiah, sent to save the world.  That glory and that responsibility belongs to Jesus Christ alone.