Barbarism, civilization and modern politics: PTSD as a Political Football in a Hobbesian Age

By John Grant

If our wars were to make killers of all combat soldiers, rather than men who have killed, civilian life would be endangered for generations or, in fact, made impossible.

- J. Glenn Gray, from The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (1959)

I lost myself when we busted down that door.

I lost myself. Please don’t make me tell any more.

- Tom Mullian, from "Private Charlie Mac"

Why can’t we all just get along?

- Rodney King

According to a New York Times report on Memorial Day [2], psychologists are re-thinking Post Traumatic Stress and other combat-related issues applied to multi-tour combat soldiers. According to Times writer Benedict Carey, the challenge these days is less emotional healing than how to unlearn the hyper-vigilance and shoot-first, ask-questions-later violence necessary for survival in a combat zone. That is, using the current vogue term, can experienced warriors be adjusted from a wild, adrenaline-fueled state of barbarism to one emphasizing community and civilization?

This is a politically tricky matter, since this sort of question inevitably leads to areas critical of US war policy. It’s notable that the research cited by the May 30 Times story is being done in civilian universities (Harvard, the University of Texas, the University of New Haven, the University of North Carolina) and other civilian research sites -- not by the military or the Veterans Administration, federal government agencies naturally reluctant to wade into anything that might be critical of US war policy. The veteran at the center of the Times story is an ex-Ranger whose unit specialized in what the Times reported is sometimes known as “vampire work,” quick raids, often late at night, on high-profile insurgent targets for capture or killing. Just the term “vampire work” suggests the experience being considered is morally ambivalent.

A New York Times Magazine article on June 12th titled “Aftershock” [3] took a different tack. Writer Robert F. Worth reported on new studies by military-connected researchers that suggested to him what we think of as PTSD might be less “emotional” and more “organic.” The story’s promo line asks: “Could PTSD turn out to be more physical than psychological?” The story treats new research on traumatic brain injury as some kind of watershed discovery questioning the psychological focus of PTSD on issues like bad memories that don’t sit right in a veteran’s mind and what is known as the “moral wound.” On one hand, the article says the matter is complex, while the writing and headlines heavily emphasize the focus on physical damage as a major cause of PTSD.

Worth is an experienced Middle East correspondent with a new book on that region called A Rage For Order that has received glowing reviews. Two of these reviewers said the book described a “Hobbesian” world descended into ethnic and religious factionalism, a world that the US military has been inserted into for decades…

For the rest of this article by JOHN GRANT in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to:  www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/3197