In December, I started writing a novel about a man who comes home from the war in Iraq and starts kidnapping and murdering young girls. It sort of grew into the piece about the after-effects of war. Timely of me to start it, then, since soldiers and PTSD and homicide were big news last week.
I’ve been compiling articles and blog posts on the issue, so here’s what I’ve collected so far:
Last week’s Times magazine story. That soldiers commit homicide is not really news. My interest in the story is about the why. What happens to these men (and women) when they are overseas that makes them unable to reintegrate into society, to make them think it’s necessary to carry an assault rifle to 7-11.
From the article:
“He came back different” is the shared refrain of the defendants’ family members, who mention irritability, detachment, volatility, sleeplessness, excessive drinking or drug use, and keeping a gun at hand.
“You are unleashing certain things in a human being we don’t allow in civic society, and getting it all back in the box can be difficult for some people,” said William C. Gentry, an Army reservist and Iraq veteran who works as a prosecutor in San Diego County.
The nature of the counterinsurgency war in Iraq, where there is no traditional front line, has amplified the stresses of combat, and multiple tours of duty — a third of the troops involved in Iraq and Afghanistan have deployed more than once — ratchet up those stresses.
In earlier eras, various labels attached to the psychological injuries of war: soldier’s heart, shell shock, Vietnam disorder. Today the focus is on PTSD, but military health care officials are seeing a spectrum of psychological issues, with an estimated half of the returning National Guard members, 38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of marines reporting mental health problems, according to a Pentagon task force.
Decades of studies on the problems of Vietnam veterans have established links between combat trauma and higher rates of unemployment, homelessness, gun ownership, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse — and criminality. On a less scientific level, such links have long been known.
The problem here is that there’s insufficient screening for mental-health problems when soldiers get home, and there’s not enough support or follow-up care.
Blogger reactions:
Amanda at Pandagon: “While the murders themselves are an important story, the larger story here is that war—and wars that are primarily about shutting down civilian resistance like the Iraq War is—leave many more casualties than the ones officially logged by the government.”
Samhita at Feministing: “If we haven’t already exhausted the reasons for why we should not be at war right now, let this be one of the issues that comes to the forefront of national attention.”
The Mahablog: On the rightie blogger reaction.
