"Breaking a Taboo, Army Confronts Guilt After Combat"

[Pete K]

paracowboy:

Thanks for contributing the great piece by Grossman.  Driving my car this morning, alone with my thoughts, I realized that I didn't do Grossman justice with my earlier comment.  He goes talk about right and wrong, moral and immoral, but he does so (as far as I've read) as he does in this story/fable--which is to say, at a rather abstract level.  Even when he discusses killing at a personal level (e.g., the story in On Killing about a Panama vet having the recurring nightmare of this victim asking h im,  why did you kill me?) he doesn't examine the issue from the perspective of morality.

Make no mistake about it, Grossman is the pioneer of killology, and I just try to complement the approach by arguing for and providing a moral justification for the killing that Grossman (and all of us, I suspect) says is necessary lest evil men prevail.

To add my $.02 to the more recent comments today, I think it's important that we recognize the distinction between combat stress/fatigue and PTSD.  Combat stress. shell shock, etc refers to a condition among soldiers who cannot fight anymore, if only temporarily.  They just can't face more combat.  PTSD, on the other hand, refers to soldiers who cannot re-integrate into civil society.  Combat stress strikes close after the trauma and can usually be addressed at the tactical level; PTSD shows up months or years after the trauma, usually after there's been time for reflection.

I know some people who have been absolute heroes in the fight yet suffer from PTSD after redeployment.

 

[the 48th regulator]

Took me over ten years before I finally stepped to the plate and realized I was suffering,

Again, as I have stated previously OSISS have been phenomenal in their support.  Any troubles I had with red tape,  OSISS was there to solve it immediately.

I can not say enough about them.

dileas

tess

 

[paracowboy]

Pete, you're losing me, man. Maybe if you can explain (in short words, I'm not all that bright, mind) exactly what you mean by

he doesn't examine the issue from the perspective of morality

and how you do, and how that previous quote jibes with this one:

He goes talk about right and wrong, moral and immoral

. I just fail to see the difference between what you're saying/providing and what he is. Am I just missing the subtlety?
And I'm not acting out of any attempt to 'defend' Grossman, or to 'attack' you. I'm just not pickin' up what you're layin' down. Kinda goin' over my head, maybe.

 

[Pete K]

Good question. It's the difference between saying "that" something is, on the one hand, and examining and explaining "why" something is, on the other.

Grossman focuses his analysis on the physical, biological, psychological processes of killing, and how they impact us and how we can control/mitigate them.  His level of analysis on "moral" concerns is whether we're the good guys or the bad guys, probably because it impacts motivation.  He states THAT something is moral, but the intricacies of what makes right right and wrong wrong aren't addressed in his writing and presentations.

That's where I try to add to the conversation. I focus on the details of whether and why an act of killing is morally justified. I do know THAT there are physical, psychological, etc impacts that are somewhat interesting, but I'm content to leave that analysis to Grossman and others,  who does it well.  I focus on the WHY, the moral justification, in detail.

Does this help to clear the fog I created with incomplete posts?

 

[paracowboy]

yeah, I got it now.

 

[Infanteer]

Major Kilner, welcome aboard sir.

Just a question (not having scanned much of your writing).  Have you read Achilles in Vietnam by Dr Jonathan Shay (and the follow up, Odysseus in America)?  I am drawing a link between your ethical approach to the internal conflict of killing and his premise of the undoing of character (battle rage) as a prime cause of PTSD in the Vietnam Veterans he treats.

Cheers,
Infanteer

 

[NavComm]

... I think it's important that we recognize the distinction between combat stress/fatigue and PTSD.   Combat stress. shell shock, etc refers to a condition among soldiers who cannot fight anymore, if only temporarily.   They just can't face more combat.   PTSD, on the other hand, refers to soldiers who cannot re-integrate into civil society.   Combat stress strikes close after the trauma and can usually be addressed at the tactical level; PTSD shows up months or years after the trauma, usually after there's been time for reflection.

I know some people who have been absolute heroes in the fight yet suffer from PTSD after redeployment.

I see the distinction. Yes, the film we saw was on combat stress and not PTSD. Thank you for that clarification.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Major Kilner - good to see your information here - keep up the interesting and VITAL work!

Mark C, you mention a soldier who was repatriated from theatre.  I'm curious - if you can say without identifying the individual in question, any word on what happened to the individual after the troops returned?  Got better and kept working?  Left the army?

 

[Pete K]

Infanteer:

Shay's Achilles in Vietnam and Grossman's On Killing were the two books that, looking back, set the conditions for my work.  Shay actually came and guest taught a few of my classes during his visits to West Point.

Shay's description of how  the violation of soldiers' sense of "what's right" by higher HQ/their gov't  perhaps planted the seed in my mind of how soldiers are psychologically troubled when their sense of right and wrong is violated, which my work simply takes to a finer-grain, more personal level.

This forum has a lot of well read folks.  I'm part of the team that started forums for the US Army--companycommand and platoonleader.  I'm very impressed with the quality of participation on this forum.

 

[Zarathustra]

I have no military experience but I did a philosophy degree when I was young, mostly studying ethics. I thought my ideas over ethics were pretty clear but it took me quite a while to phrase this post in a way I liked. It's a complex subject.

I'm always a bit concerned when I hear of moral justification of war. I think moral tends to escalate conflict. First both sides usually view themselves as the good guys. Then once you're convinced you're the good guy, there's a lot of bad things you can do to the other side. If your cause is holy, how can you sin ? Also, it's very hard to de-escalate when fighting against evil. You're not supposed to negotiate or compromise with the bad guys. If you think the West is corrupted, you can only rest once the corruption is gone. You have to fight it to the end, I don't see how you can stop and negotiate.

So I'm wondering if the guilty soldier is always wrong. He could very well be right and it could be a sign it's time to de-escalate this conflict a bit. When the front-line man is felling guilt, the politicians and the citizens at home would probably feel the exact same things if they weren't so far from combat. Maybe at some point the soldier with guilt should be allowed to raise a red flag and say we might have gone too far. Assuming he's listened to, that could reduce the helplessness often linked to PTSD. I'm not saying to stop at the first guilty soldier, but when it's getting widespread maybe we should reconsider our course of action.

There was recently in Quebec a TV show with uncensored images of World War II. They were shown here for the first time I think. Why is it that we have to wait 60 years before looking at what we did ? And there are still many things in current wars that we don't show. Why is it that we need to hide war so much ? No wonder then we have problems talking about it with Aunt Charlene.


The full quote about how can you sin if your cause is holy. Moral justification can go quite far.
"We who strike the enemy where his heart beats have been slandered as 'baby-killers' and murders of women.' ... What we do is repugnant to us too, but necessary. Very necessary. Nowadays there is no such animal as a non-combatant; modern warfare is total warfare. A soldier cannot function at the front without the factory worker, the farmer, and all the other providers behind him. You and I, Mother, have discussed the subject, and I know you understand what I say. My men are brave and honourable. Their cause is holy, so how can they sin while doing their duty? If what we do is frightful, then may frightfulness be Germany's salvation."
Captain Peter Strasser, head of Germany' World War I airship division, in a letter quoted Gwynne Dyer, War

 

[MdB]

How about the culture around killing in the CF and the support?

Not directly about the killing itself but the post-deployment support, anyone here would know anything about Tom Hoppe's initiave (in 1994 probably) in briefing officers returning from operation to help them help their subordinates readapting to life in Canada and dealing with combat stress?

Reference: Tom Hoppe's chapter in The Chance of War, edited by John Wood (The Dundurn Group). Here's an exerpt (p. 155):

There are programs that are available out there. We set up one up in a place that I was posted to. We set up a debriefing program for the people coming back from an operation. We had permission to use an outside person for that. This program was a mixture of the South African and Israeli models and it worked quite well. We briefed the leaders on what combat stress is, what to look for, some of the feelings an individual might have, where the support groups are, where the help is, how to deal with your family again.