Veterans for Common Sense

(CNN) — The risk of suicide among male U.S. veterans is double that of the general population, according to a study published Monday.

“We need to be more alert to the problem of suicide as a major public health issue and we need to do better screening among individuals who have served in the military, probe for their mental health risk as well as gun availability,” said Dr. Mark S. Kaplan, professor of community health at Portland State University in Oregon, lead author of the study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

For 12 years, Kaplan and his team of researchers followed more than 104,000 veterans who had served in the armed forces at some time between 1917 and 1994 and compared them with more than 216,000 non-veterans.

In all, between 1986 and 1997, 508 of them committed suicide — 197 veterans and 311 non-veterans.

After adjusting for a host of potentially compounding factors, including age, time of service and health status, the study showed that those who had been in the military were 2.13 times more likely to die of suicide over time.

At biggest risk were veterans who were white, those who had gone to college and those with activity limitations, according to the study, which was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

‘Life is too complex’

Still, Kaplan would not say that the study proves that military service itself results in an increased risk of suicide. “I never feel comfortable claiming a causal relationship,” he said. “Life is too complex.”

No surprise was the finding that veterans were more likely to use guns to end their lives than were their non-veteran counterparts.

One unanticipated finding was that being overweight appeared to confer protection from suicide by more than 50 percent, the study found.

Kaplan cited a paucity of data on the subject, but said it might have to do with the fact that people who are underweight are more likely to smoke, and smokers are more likely to be depressed.

Though the study did not include veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, “We can say quite confidently that, regardless of the era when they served, that veterans’ status alone seems to be a risk factor for suicide,” he told CNN.

“With the projected rise in functional impairments and psychiatric morbidity among veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, clinical and community interventions directed towards patients in both VA and non-VA health care facilities are needed,” the authors concluded.

Kaplan said officials in the Veterans Administration were surprised by the findings, but welcomed them, “because it does point to a problem that they need to be addressing.”

The VA has recently begun expanding its mental health screening facilities, but that may not solve the problem, said Kaplan, because three-fourths of veterans do not receive their care from VA hospitals. “Our concern is that that only touches a fraction of all veterans; that most of the veterans are not being perhaps properly screened outside the VA facilities.”

About 1.3 percent of deaths in the country are estimated to be suicides, Kaplan said. But the true rate may be off by 25 percent, given that suicide has long been shrouded in stigma.

“Health care facilities don’t like to talk about suicide,” he said. “It’s often viewed as a failure of the system. … Many physicians feel, if you even mention suicide, that might prompt the behavior.”

June 11, 2007 – At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic.

The Fort Leavenworth chaplains have posted these lesson plans on the Internet under a web address that is maintained by the federal government, giving off the appearance that the religious materials in question are endorsed by the Pentagon. Moreover, disseminating the ideology via a government funded web site may violate the law mandating the separation between church and state.

The nonprofit watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state in the US military, discovered the documents late last week. The anti-Semitic materials are posted as PDF files at the web site, Command Chaplain Bible Studies, which is maintained by the US Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth.

The Officers Christian Fellowship Neighborhood Study Guides quote portions of the New Testament and were written by Major George Kuykendall, the leader of Fort Leavenworth’s Officer’s Christian Fellowship (OCF) who died in 1998, according to Chris Rodda, a senior researcher at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Rodda said, “The study guides also encourage soldiers to engage in an unconstitutional level of proselytizing to fellow military personnel in the Fort Leavenworth Community.”

In one of the study guides, Galatians, posted on the Fort Leavenworth chaplain web site, the materials refer to Jews as “Judaizers” – persons who without being Jews follow in whole or in part the Jewish religion or claim to be Jews – and claim that “the Judaizers were zealous people much like the zealous Moslems have become today.”

The 34-page Galatians study guide deals primarily with “Paul,” who the Jews “persecuted,” according to the study guide.

“Why did the Jews persecute Paul? Because of his teachings,” the study guide says. “The cross was an offense to the Jews. Jesus had victory over the cross (death).”

The study guide then says that anyone who turns from Christianity to Judaism “should be condemned to spiritual death and hell.”

“The Judaizers attempted to destroy the two foundations of the Christian religion: a. The Grace of God, and b. The Death of Christ,” the Galtatian study guide says, adding that Judaism is a religion of “bondage” and Christianity a religion of “freedom.”

In discussing modern day Jerusalem, chaplains ask soldiers to provide an answer to the following question: “How does the present Jerusalem represent slavery?”

A person who answered the telephone at the Fort Leavenworth chaplains’ office refused to disclose his name when contacted for comment. The individual, a male, said there have not been prior complaints to the Bible study guides and that “I would not characterize the material as anti-Semitic.”

“I guess if you’re Jewish you may see it that way, but we’re discussing the gospels as it appears in the New Testament,” this person said, who added that there was no plan to remove the study guides from the web site. Messages left at the public affairs office at Fort Leavenworth were not returned. Calls to a Pentagon spokesperson were also not returned.

But for Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the religious teachings are not only blatantly anti-Semitic, but he believes disseminating it over the Internet tramples upon the Constitution.

“It’s illegal for an arm of the federal government to push this ideology,” Weinstein, who is Jewish, said in an interview. “This is the official web site of the US Army, and this is here for everyone to see. Anyone would easily come away with the belief that the US Army endorses these teachings. The last time someone talked about a Jewish problem the way these chaplains are talking about it was in Europe in the 1930s. What these Bible teachings say to me or to anyone participating in these classes is that the US government loves the military but Jews are bad.”

Weinstein said he intends to file a lawsuit against the US Army alleging Constitutional violations.

“I’m sick of writing letters,” Weinstein said. “This type of fundamentalism needs to stop. This particular violation propagates every vile and wretched stereotype of the Jewish faith.”

Weinstein, a former White House counsel who defended the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra probe, has been waging a one-man war against the Department of Defense for what he says is a blatant disregard of the Constitution. He recently published a book on the issue: “With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military.” Weinstein is also an Air Force veteran and a graduate of the Air Force Academy. Three generations of his family have attended US military academies.

Since he launched his watchdog organization 18 months ago, Weinstein said he has been contacted by more than 4,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity.

Weinstein said a right-wing fundamentalist Christian agenda under President Bush has hijacked the military.

“The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House,” Weinstein said in an interview. “This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into a faith-based initiative.”

Over Memorial Day weekend, Weinstein lashed out at the Air Force for co-sponsoring, along with evangelical Christian organizations, a three-day event celebrating the Air Force’s 60th anniversary.

The event, sponsored by Task Force Patriot USA, an evangelical organization, and LifeWay Christian Resources, the publishing house of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), was described by the official publication of the Robins Air Force Base as “an official US Air Force 60th Anniversary event.” The paper stated that the religious groups and the United States Air Force “have joined together to create a three-day celebration….”

Plans for the event prompted a forceful response from watchdog groups. In a letter to Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Acting Secretary of the Army Peter Geren, the Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), called the event “a stunning display of the federal government using vast resources to trumpet a religious celebration.”

Lynn added: “Military personnel and veterans come from many religious traditions and no religion at all. So it is wholly disingenuous for the organizers of this evangelical Christian gathering to promote it as a salute to all our troops. It is anything but.”

Weinstein is quick to point out that the issues his organization is tackling are not about “Christianity versus Judaism.” Rather, they’re about keeping rampant fundamentalism out of the military.

But the Biblical teachings at Fort Leavenworth certainly appear to lean heavily on an anti-Semitic and pro-Christian agenda.

In the 14-page study guide Nehemiah, chaplains discuss a portion of the Sanballat, the first high priest of the temple at Samaria, who, according to the Bible study, had to deal with a “Jewish problem.” He mocked the Jews’ efforts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in the hopes that they would give up.

The study guide then poses the following questions for soldiers: “How do you interpret Sanballat’s reaction to the Jews progress? Anxiety and fear? In light of what we know about the Jews performance today, were his fears reasonable?”

Another question in the same study guide asks soldiers to offer suggestions on a title for the portion of the scripture discussing Nehemiah.

“How would you short-title this portion of scripture?” the study guide asks. “Jews take advantage of Jews?”

When a local service member dies in Iraq newspapers cover the family and community reaction. But what happens — or should happen — when the victim is horribly injured but survives? A former embed, editor, and father of an Iraq war veteran, reflects.

(June 10, 2007) — A week ago a Lancaster mother — one of the soldier-mothers in my hometown in Southern California — left to tend to her wounded son at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. How much the world has changed for Stacie Tscherny in the span of that one week.

Days earlier, she learned that her son, Army Spc. Jerral Steele Hancock, was seriously wounded in the fighting around Baghdad.

It was Memorial Day. It was his 21st birthday. This birthday, this crossing of the bridge into formal adulthood with the privilege to drink a legal beer would herald the last time Spc. Hancock would have two arms. And it would be the last time he would take a normal step or experience physical comfort or ease.

Serving as a tanker with the 1st Squadron, 8th Cavalry, Spc. Hancock was catastrophically wounded in an explosion that hit his armored vehicle. The vast majority of traumatic injuries inflicted in the Iraq war are not from gunfire, but from explosives.

In January the military marked the 500th American surviving with wounds that involved amputation.

In the past six months to a year, increasingly, a powerful new kind of explosive is inflicting more damage and more grievous injury. The evolution has been an evolution from the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to increasing use of the Explosively Formed Penetrators (EPFs).

“They can take out a Stryker, a Bradley, even an Abrams tank,” said Sgt. Travis Strong of Palmdale in a recent interview with me at his home at Balboa Naval Medical Center in San Diego. Strong was wounded severely enough both legs were amputated above the knee from the EPF explosion that destroyed his Stryker armored infantry carrier last year.

Sgt. Strong is another hometown soldier from the coverage area of the paper I edit, the Antelope Valley Press, a resident of Palmdale, a community of 130,000 on the edge of the Mojave Desert an hours drive from Ft. Irwin, the Army National Training Center.

In the past year or so when soldiers from our communities sustain traumatic injuries, as the newspaper’s editor — and as a “Blue Star Father” of a serving Marine — I usually get the informal notification call from Blue Star Mothers, a support group for parents of serving military.

Sgt. John E. Allen of Palmdale was killed on St. Patrick’s Day. It has been axiomatic that death and traumatic injury take no holidays.

Customarily, in coverage of the traumatic injury of local troops, it’s been my practice as a journalist with contacts in the military extended family network community to also be ready to move forward, or, if the family needs their zone of privacy borne from anguish, to back off.

People who have been badly hurt may want to tell their story. They usually do not want to tell it when every nerve ending in their battered body is in agony. But for the most part, they have been willing to share accounts of their extraordinary ordeal. It may take weeks or months to get ready to share that story, but the story is always compelling, always worth telling.

These wounded soldiers and Marines, these troops hurt in this continuing war that is fought by ambush with devastating explosives are the heralds that tell us what the cost of this war ultimately will be.

They also are the “canaries in the coal mine,” in that their care and their needs require all the scrutiny that an activist press can provide. God knows most of our profession was not diligent enough, probing enough, or demanding truth from power enough in the run-up to war. See Thomas Ricks in “Fiasco.”

Absent a devastating attack on the American homeland, it is to be hoped national media will engage in greater diligence before another foreign war gets a push from the White House and a pass from Congress, and the American people.

The lessons of military and congressional blind-spotting on Walter Reed Army Medical Center are all too fresh at the moment.

Accounts of care at the urgent-immediate post combat injury stage are that the care is first-rate. But the strains and burdens that families of the wounded will undergo are urgent also. And those needs need to be reported, by national media, by local media — by anyone with the means to see and the megaphone of communication to use.

In one case recently our newspaper covered the story of a National Guard soldier whose military insurance was canceled before final surgery to remove steel rods emplaced to repair his mangled legs, which were fractured in an IED blast that destroyed his Humvee.

It only was after news of the incident surfaced that the military and its insurance overseer effected a quick about-face and remedied the situation. This has got to be the first war waged by Americans where after-care for troops is handled through health maintenance organizations and insurance.

“You cannot believe what these young guys have gone through,” Stacie Tscherny, the mother of trooper Hancock, said. “Arms, legs, burns. They’ve lost eyes, they have burns to their faces.”

And she related that our country’s wounded are unbelievably strong-willed and strong-minded, the young men in the beds at Brooke, the catastrophically wounded from this war.

On departure for Texas last week, Tscherny was relieved that her employers extended her two weeks on short notice to go be with her son. Now she has been there a week. He has lost much. An arm to amputation. Skin to burn injuries. Other injuries that may impact mobility. Too
soon to tell. For trooper Hancock, life will never take a more serious or devastating course short of mortality.

“We communicate by blinking,” his mother told me. “His first sergeant was home on leave, and he came in to see him, and he was happy about that.”

The military is putting up Hancock’s mother in apartment-style housing on the medical campus. Suddenly, two weeks does not seem like enough time to tend to the needs of her son.

“We asked — I asked — does he want his mother to stay there with him, and he blinked ‘Yes.’”

Spc. Jerral Steele Hancock — 21 years old — is heavily medicated for pain. But severe pain is unavoidable with the fragility of his wounded body because too much pain medication impacts blood pressure, circulation and the heart.

“I think he understands what happened now with his arm,” the amputation, she said. “He cried tears, and I said ‘Don’t worry, honey. There’s lots of these young men who are coming back.”

Lots of these young men are coming back. And how we, as a nation, treat them, and how we as a nation honor them, and how we — as a nation — see to their effective care and rehabilitation will define the kind of nation that we are, in war or peace.

Spc. Hancock’s mother recounted in a telephone interview from Brooke, “I think how is it that he survived moves through two hospitals in Iraq, then on to Germany, then here to Texas, and I wonder with these young men how they maintain the spirit to not just die.”

She does not want to leave her son’s bedside. She does not want to leave the side of the son who communicates with her by blinking “yes” or “no” for understanding his needs, his feelings, his responses to questions.

While in support of her son at the trauma center, the U.S. military provides a “per diem” stipend for immediate family, a stipend that amounts to $1,600 a month — or, about $400 a week.

On leaving Lancaster where she resided for about a year, Tscherny had a new job that she commuted to in the San Fernando Valley. Her expenses are about average, which is to say that the $1,600 covers a little less than half the ordinary living expenses.

There is her home and its payments. Her son, and his young wife (who also is a mother) also has a house.

How to do it? What to do?

“I am going to try and do anything I can to be with my son while he needs me,” his mother said.

She said she has had conversations with great young soldiers, remarkable people. She said she has formed a friendship with a young G.I. who lost his eye, and part of his face, and who knows the ground of recovery.

Is there any way you can imagine that Spc. Hancock will not need his mother, and anyone close to him, for all time to come?

Is there any way you can imagine that handling of the treatment, and support for immediate family in such circumstance should fall short of actual need?

If we can approve $100 billion to run this war in its fifth year, it is hard to conceive that we do not have the money it takes to tend to the needs of immediate family of our military’s most injured and vulnerable souls.

—
Dennis Anderson (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of the Antelope Valley Press in Palmdale, Ca. He twice acted as an embed in Iraq, and his son has served there. He has written often about the war for E&P.

June 4, 2007 – According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, during the Iraq war, 56 percent of soldiers and Marines (henceforth I will use the term “soldiers” to include members of all branches, both male and female) have killed another human being, 20 percent admit being responsible for noncombatant deaths, and 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains.[i] According to Colonel Charles Engel, MD, MPH, director of the deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, between 15 and 29 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Because soldiers still on active duty are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq, experts say that the PTSD rate among Iraq veterans could well eclipse the 30{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} lifetime rate found in a 1990 national study of Vietnam veterans. While these numbers are staggering and should give any rational human being pause, the readjustment difficulties suffered by active duty military and veterans because of their experiences in Iraq are not exhausted by references to trauma and PTSD. Tragically, as soldiers experience the horror and cruelty of war, especially urban counterinsurgency war, the moral gravity of their actions – displacing, torturing, injuring, and killing other human being (henceforth “combat behavior”) – becomes apparent, soldiers suffer not only the effects of trauma, but what I will term “moral injuries,” i.e., debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community.

The observation that some human beings become moral casualties because of their experiences in war is not new. Historically, many societies have recognized war’s deleterious moral effects and required returning warriors to undergo elaborate atonement and purification rituals, i.e., quarantine, penances, etc.[ii] These “therapies” provided the means and the opportunity to cope with the moral enormity of their actions in war. Tragically, the moral injuries of modern warriors, however, have been virtually ignored,[iii] overlooked, or disregarded by the conventional therapeutic community operating as it does within a Nietzschean-Freudian-Scientific legacy that views ethical concerns as clinically irrelevant – “autonomous man” ought [to] feel no guilt “nor bite of conscience” for his actions.[iv] Focusing, instead, upon stress and trauma, most moral symptoms presented by returning soldiers are either not taken seriously or assimilated under the diagnostic umbrella of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Consequently, the veterans receive the signal that an inability to forget, to put the war behind them, is either weakness or, perhaps worse, illness. Accordingly, veterans are advised to ignore what has occurred, to “de-responsibilitize,” i.e., to neutralize their feelings by accepting the “naturalness” of their behavior on the battlefield,[v] and/or to undergo a myriad of conventional therapies (psychoanalytic, behavioral, pharmacological, etc.) intended to enable them to deal with the stress and trauma of their experiences. In either approach, moral considerations are, for the most part, irrelevant.

Unfortunately, in most cases, moral injury neither responds well to medication nor can it be rationalized away. In fact, such methods, according to Robert Jay Lifton, tend to alienate them still further. Speaking about returning Vietnam Veterans, Lifton writes,

“The veterans were trying to say that the only thing worse than being ordered by military authorities to participate in absurd evil is to have that evil rationalized and justified by the guardians of the spirit . . . The men sought out chaplains and shrinks because of a spiritual-psychological crisis growing out of what they perceived to be irreconcilable demands in their situation. They sought either escape from absurd evil, or, at the very least, a measure of inner separation from it. Instead, spiritual-psychological authority was employed to seal off any such inner alternative.”[vi]

Such “therapeutic” advice as “forget it,” “live with it,” “act as though it never happened, or “don’t worry about it, human beings act that way in survival situations,” does little to alleviate the veteran’s moral pain and suffering.

As may be expected, the prevalence of moral injuries suffered by those who fought in a really ambiguous war, or in a counter insurgency/guerilla war, such as in Vietnam and Iraq, where, for example, the distinction between combatant and noncombatant is obscure at best, will be significantly greater and the symptoms more severe. However, all wars yield moral casualties. J. Glenn Gray, a philosopher, writes of his experiences as an Intelligence Officer during World War Two

“My conscience seems to become little by little sooted . . . .. (only) if I can soon get out of this war and back on the soil where the clean earth will wash away these stains! I have also other things on my conscience . . . A man named H., accused of being the local Gestapo agent in one small town was an old man of seventy . . . . I was quite harsh to him and remember threatening him with an investigation when I put him under house arrest . . . Day before yesterday word came that he and his wife had committed suicide by taking poison . . . The incident affected me strongly and still does. I was directly or indirectly the cause of their deaths. . . . I hope it will not rest too hard on my conscience, and yet if it does not I shall be disturbed also.”[vii]

Gray’s insights are especially valuable as they illustrate that even the actions and experiences of those involved in a “good” war and not directly confronting the enemy on the battlefield, can precipitate moral injury. Consequently, those military theorists who have argued that debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, etc., – what I have termed “moral injuries” – may be avoided by “educating” soldiers, probably convincing is better, about the justness and necessity of war and the “appropriateness” of their combat behavior,[viii] could benefit from Gray’s observations.

Psychologist and former Army Ranger, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman[ix] and others have written extensively and insightfully regarding the profound debilitating effects of killing in war – combat behavior. However, for whatever the reason – probably the aforementioned scientific bias against acknowledging moral injuries or at least the propensity of not taking the possibility seriously – Grossman has alleged the etiology of such symptoms to be traumatic stress. Rachel MacNair agrees, postulating the existence of a variant of PTSD she terms “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Syndrome (PITS).”[x] Both Grossman and MacNair argue that individuals who kill become traumatized as a consequence, not of being the victim of trauma as is the common interpretation of PTSD, but by being an active participant in causing trauma in others.

I find Grossman’s and MacNair’s conclusions problematic for the following reasons. After having been programmed by psychologically sophisticated military training and indoctrination techniques,[xi] and experiencing the grotesque life threatening conditions of service in Iraq, especially with repeated tours of duty, many, perhaps most, may view combat behavior as quite “normal” under the circumstances. Others may believe it betters their chances for survival and for returning home alive and intact. Still others may find having control over life and death empowering, exciting, exhilarating and as reinforcing the military stereotype of the elite warrior, “the toughest mother in the valley.” With appropriate “education,” many members of the military may be convinced, at least temporarily, that combat behavior in Iraq is justified, satisfying, and fulfilling as it brings freedom and democracy to a repressed people, and rids the world of evil-doers and terrorists. Consequently, convinced of its appropriateness, justness, and necessity, such combat behavior – causing trauma in others – may not be experienced traumatically by the warrior. That is not to say, however, that displacing, torturing, injuring or killing another human being, whether combatant or noncombatant, in a just or unjust war, does not have grave repercussions. While I applaud Grossman and MacNair for bringing attention to the likelihood of becoming symptomatic as a consequence of behavior in war (by virtue of what soldiers have done, not of what they have suffered), I regret their inability or unwillingness to recognize such distress as morally based. More important, however, their attempt to manipulate PTSD to accommodate moral injuries is more than just unfortunate, it does veterans a disservice by either allowing their injuries to be, at best, misdiagnosed and mistreated, at worst, ignored because they lack the crucial diagnostic criteria for PTSD (the traumatic event).

To correctly identify and adequately treat the injuries suffered by our servicemen and women in Iraq, we must appreciate the relevancy of moral values and norms to defining ourselves as persons, structuring our world, and rendering our relationship to it, and to other human beings, comprehensible. We must understand that these values and norms provide the parameters of our being – – what I term our “moral identity.” Most importantly, we must recognize that combat behavior often violates our moral identity and negatively impacts our self-esteem, self-image, and integrity causing debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community – moral injury.

The monster and I are one.
I have feasted upon the flesh
of decaying corpses,
and with their blood
have quenched my thirst.
The transformation is complete
And I can never return.
Mea culpa, mea culpa,
Mea maxima culpa.[xii]

Acknowledging the existence of moral casualties in war by no means diminishes the importance or prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Rather, it enhances our understanding of the war experience and its devastating effects, expands our area of concern beyond trauma and PTSD, and allows us to more adequately meet the needs of our returning servicemen and women.

Endnotes

[i] These numbers were accurate as of July 1, 2004. I suspect, with the escalation of hostilities, that the percentages are even higher today.

[ii] For an interesting and detailed discussion of this subject, see Verkamp, Bernard J., The Moral Treatment of Returning Warriors in Early Medieval and Modern Times, (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1993).

[iii] A few notable exceptions include Robert Jay Lifton, Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims nor Executioners, (New York, Basic Books), 1973; and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Psychiatrist and author Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1994; and Odysseus in America, (New York: Scribner), 2002.

[iv] Kaufman, Walter, Without Guilt and Justice, (New York: Dell, 1973), pp. 114, 117, 125, 132-133.

[v] Deresponsibilization attempts a “cure” by convincing the patient of the “naturalness” of his behavior under the conditions of war. Stephen Howard explains.

Under the overwhelming threat of annihilation, our priorities regress to the survival state; all higher priorities, all ethical and moral considerations lose relevance, and only the survival of the individual and the immediate group retain significance.

Once the veteran realizes our primitive natures, he can “at last place into context some of his actions which he cannot comprehend or accept in any other way.” Consequently, Howard concludes, the veteran will come to accept that, as his actions were quite natural, his guilt, shame, etc., is irrational and totally unwarranted.

[vi] Lifton, Robert J., Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims nor Executioners, pps. 166-167.

[vii] J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, pp. 175-6.

[viii] Kilner, Peter G., “Military Leaders Obligation to Justify Killing in War,” Military Review, vol. 72, no. 2, Mar-Apr 2004.

[ix] Dave Grossman, On Killing, (New York: Little, Brown, and Co.) 1995.

[x] MacNair, Rachel, Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing, (Westport, CT: Praeger), 2002.

[xi] Nor should we underestimate the influence of a young lifetime of playing extremely violent interactive “point and shoot” arcade and video games[xi] – many frighteningly similar to the military conditioning of recruits to kill. See Grossman, Dave, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence, (New York, Crown), 1999.

[xii] Bica, Camillo “Mac”, war journal entry dated November 23, 1969.

Camillo “Mac” Bica, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His focus is in Ethics, particularly as it applies to war and warriors. As a veteran recovering from his experiences as a United States Marine Corps Officer during the Vietnam War, he founded, and coordinated for five years, the Veterans Self-Help Initiative, a therapeutic community of veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is a long-time activist for peace and justice, a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and a founding member of the Long Island Chapter of Veterans for Peace.

The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet.

June 10, 2007 – Raleigh, NC  – The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men’s estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court.

Following these gruesome deaths which were broadcast on worldwide television, the surviving family members looked to Blackwater for answers as to how and why their loved ones died. Blackwater not only refused to give the grieving families any information, but also callously stated that they would need to sue Blackwater to get it. Left with no alternative, in January 2005, the families filed suit against Blackwater, which is owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Erik Prince.

Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

After filing its suit against the dead men’s estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families’ existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.

Over 300 contractors have been killed in Iraq with very little inquiry into their deaths. The families claim that Blackwater is attempting to cover up its incompetence, its cutting of corners in favor of higher profits, and its over billing to the government. Due to lack of accountability and oversight, Blackwater’s private army has been able to obtain huge profits from the government, utilizing contacts established through Erik Prince’s relationships with high-ranking government officials such as Cofer Black and Joseph Schmitz.

In addition to assembling its litigation troops, Blackwater also stonewalled the families concerning any information about how the men were killed. Over the past two and a half years, Blackwater has not responded to a single question or produced a single document. When the families’ attorneys, Callahan & Blaine, obtained a Court Order to take the deposition of a former Blackwater employee with critical information about the incident, Blackwater quickly re-hired him and sent him out of the country. When the witness returned to the United States more than a year later, the families obtained another Court Order for his deposition. Blackwater again prevented them from taking his deposition by seeking the assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to block the deposition under the guise that he possibly possessed national secrets. Following an investigation, the U.S. Army reported that the witness had no secret information and that it had no objection to the deposition.

Blackwater has now lifted this atrocity to a whole new level by going on the offensive and suing the families for $10 million. The families now find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun as Blackwater, armed with a war chest and politically-connected attorneys, is aggressively litigating against them. Blackwater has also threatened to hold the administrator of the estates personally liable to scare him into abandoning his position, and has threatened the families’ attorneys as well.

The families are simply without the financial wherewithal to defend against Blackwater. By filing suit, Blackwater is trying to wipe out the families’ ability to discover the truth about Blackwater’s involvement in the deaths of these four Americans and to silence them from any public comment. In February, the families testified before Congress.

However, Blackwater’s lawsuit now seeks to gag the family members from even speaking about the incident or about Blackwater’s involvement in the deaths. This is a direct attack to their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

“I initially took this case because it was the right thing to do in helping the families find closure by discovering the events surrounding their loved ones deaths, ” said Daniel J. Callahan, attorney for the families. “I have found the evidence concerning Blackwater’s involvement in the deaths to be overwhelming and appalling. Even more disturbing though is the callous nature in which Blackwater has not only concealed the truth, but also outright sued to force the families to stop pursuing the case and to silence them.” Blackwater has spent millions of dollars and hired at least five different law firms to fight the families, rather than meeting and addressing what should be Blackwater’s top priority — the safety and well being of the mothers, wives, and children left behind. Blackwater has said that it will not pay one red cent to assist or console the surviving families, but instead has counter sued for $10 million.

Without help, Blackwater will succeed in avoiding scrutiny for its conduct, escaping accountability for its actions, and silencing the families of the four Americans killed in Fallujah. A defense fund has been established by which the public is able to donate money to assist the families with litigation costs and expenses.

Donations can be sent to the estates’ trust account, payable to “C&B ITF Blackwater Victims Defense Fund,” c/o Callahan & Blaine, 3 Hutton Centre Drive, Ninth Floor, Santa Ana, California 92707. Donations may also be made securely online through PayPal by going to blackwatervictims.com. All donations will be kept confidential and anonymous.

June 6, 2007 – The U.N. refugee agency reported this week that some 4 million Iraqis have been displaced by the war and more than half of those have left the country. The rest are looking for a safe haven in Iraq, and some of those have found it in Iraq’s Kurdish north.  VOA’s Barry Newhouse visited an office keeping track of the displaced Iraqis and has this report.

A worker in the residency office for the Kurdistan Regional Government stamps documents for newly arrived Iraqis in a crowded waiting room. Most of the people here are Sunni Arabs who have come from Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi.  Many of them refuse to talk about their plight.

One man says the situation in Baghdad has become so dire, that despite the ongoing security operation, this week he finally decided to leave.

He says he faced many problems in Baghdad from terrorist gangs and from Iraqi security forces that have sectarian agendas. He says the dangers and the economic situation became so bad that he had to flee.

This office issues permits for one of Iraq’s three Kurdish-controlled provinces. Since 2005, it has granted temporary residency permits to nearly 30,000 people – a small fraction of those in need.

U.N. refugee agency officials say fleeing Iraqis have overwhelmed local governments in some areas of the country. But U.N. officials also have criticized regions that turn away people who need assistance. 

Kurdish security forces restrict entrance to fleeing Iraqis at tightly controlled checkpoints, denying entry to people considered security risks. In general, Kurdish officials say they let in professional workers, such as doctors and engineers, or those who can have a local resident vouch for them.

Recently arrived Arabs in Kurdistan say they understand the need for controlling access.

This man says that he is not disturbed by the practice, because there are some
Iraqis who work with terrorist gangs, and the Kurdish forces must protect the region.

Those Iraqis who qualify for entry say staying in Iraqi Kurdistan is much better option than fleeing to Syria or Jordan. This businessman from Baghdad says in Syria, Iraqi refugees live in a legal limbo, in constant threat of deportation.

He says many families sell their homes and their possessions and go to Syria. But there, even if they have the permit from the U.N. refugee office, they will spend all of their savings, because there are no jobs. He says life there is expensive. In Kurdistan, he says, you can work.

But the influx of wealthy Iraqis has pushed up the cost of living for Irbil residents as well.  This Iraqi man, who has arrived recently, says he understands the locals are getting upset.

He says we know that rents are getting high, and it is bad for the poorest people here. But, he says, “We don’t have a choice.”

U.N. officials say the plight of Iraqis fleeing violence is getting worse, yet calls for international help have brought few results.

In Irbil’s residency office, several Iraqis said they were not looking for handouts, but merely a chance to start over after losing everything.

The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved its second and third fiscal 2008 spending bills that exceed President Bush’s requests, a $31.6 billion Energy and Water measure and a $64.7 billion Military Construction-Veterans Affairs spending bill.

Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman has said he will recommend a veto of any spending bill that goes over Bush’s top-line. But that could prove difficult, particularly in the case of the Military Construction-VA bill, which would provide $3.8 billion above Bush’s request for veterans’ medical care.

House Military Construction-VA Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Chet Edwards, D-Texas, called for a recorded vote after the measure appeared to pass unanimously by voice vote.

Despite GOP objections, Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., called the roll and the measure was approved 56-0. Appropriations ranking member Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., did not vote — when it was his turn he simply said, “We passed the bill.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., also dismissed the administration’s veto threats Wednesday, noting the president accepted some additional spending in the Iraq supplemental, including extra funds for VA health care. “We are hopeful that will happen again,” Hoyer said.

On Tuesday, the panel approved its first spending bill, a Homeland Security measure that goes $2 billion above Bush’s request. It will consider Thursday an Interior-Environment measure that contains a similar increase.

TAHLEQUAH, Okla.— Ray Spear would’ve become a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3707 in May, but he had to wait a month. There weren’t enough members at the May meeting to vote him in.

Like posts of the VFW all over the country, Tahlequah’s Post 3707 is seeing a decline in numbers, along with an increase in the age of members.

Tracing its history back to 1899, when soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War were not provided adequate medical care, the VFW works to ensure rights and benefits for veterans.

But as their ranks continue to decline – even as soldiers continue returning from the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq – VFW members are trying to get the word out that, more than a century later, the organization’s mission hasn’t changed.

“To keep it open, we’re going to have to have some help,” said Bill Taylor, past quartermaster of Post 3707. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

Along with past Commander and current Sergeant at Arms Gerald Summerlin, Taylor has been a steady presence at Post 3707. But neither was able to make it to the regular monthly meeting Monday because of health concerns.

“We’ve opened the doors a lot of times and we’d be the only ones there,” said Summerlin. “We’ve got two or three [members] who were in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam – all three wars. But we need anybody that’s eligible.”

VFW membership is available to all U.S. service members who have earned an overseas campaign or expeditionary medal and are on active duty, in the Reserves or who have been honorably discharged from the U.S. armed forces.

That’s most of the soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq, but few of them are joining up.

“When I first got out, I found the DAV [Disabled American Veterans] did everything I needed to do,” said Jason Jennings, a veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq. “As of right now, I’m going to school, working six days a week, I’m the president of the Veterans’ Association at NSU, and I’m an officer in my fraternity. I don’t have time for much else.”

Members of the VFW can relate. They were once young soldiers returning home to jobs, school, and families, too.

“When I came back from Vietnam, I didn’t want to have anything to do with [the VFW],” said Dan Garber, junior vice commander of Post 3707. “But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized the VFW works to get Congress to provide benefits like the GI Bill and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The government doesn’t provide benefits for veterans just because they want to. It’s organizations like the VFW that lobby to get those benefits.”

Post 3707 Commander Ken Rystedt agrees that, while the VFW benefits all veterans, it often takes a while for them to realize that fact.

“When I first got out of the service, I didn’t want to have anything to do with anything military, or any kind of veterans’ organization,” he said. “It took me 30 years to change my mind.”

Garber said he’s been told by some young potential members that they’ve just felt too much of a generation gap between themselves and current VFW members.

That, he said, won’t happen at Post 3707.

“Some people in the past have had the experience of coming to the VFW and not feeling welcome because they’re too young, but we’re not going to make people feel that way,” he said. “We need those young people. We need their ideas, we need their energy. And someday, they’re going to need this organization.”

Eddie Glenn writes for Tahlequah (Okla.) Daily Press.