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Veterans? Who are they? And how in the world did they get a day? After all, here's a curious fact: since World War II ended in victory, the United States, often seen as the greatest power on planet Earth, has indeed fought a seemingly endless series of wars from Korea and Vietnam in the last century to Afghanistan and Iraq in this one (and all sorts of more minor conflicts as well) without ever yes, ever! winning any of them. In May, it was clear enough that, at some deep level, Donald Trump had grasped that reality because he seemed eager to take November 11th away from Americas veterans and rename it Victory Day for World War I (with May 8th to be declared Victory Day for World War II). Admittedly, he backed down on that fast, but it still tells you something about this world of ours that, 80 years after World War II ended, when it comes to the country now heading for a trillion-dollar defense budget, there hasn't been a victory in sight for decades.
And that hasn't stopped Donald Trump and crew, whether in Somalia (yes, Somalia!), where his administration has launched a record 89 airstrikes so far this year, or in the Caribbean Sea, where its been ramping up American forces (including sending in an aircraft carrier task force) and making a habit out of blowing the boats of supposed drug smugglers out of the water there and in the Pacific Ocean, too, at least 18 of them as I was writing this (killing at least 70 people), and possibly preparing for an invasion not just of Venezuela, but also conceivably of various cities in this country.
And yes, you know that youre in a new world when, with the government shutdown still ongoing, the president pays part of the salaries of the U.S. military with a $130 million donation from one of his billionaire supporters.
Welcome to his version of Veterans Day 2025. Now, let TomDispatch regular Kelly Denton-Borhaug give you some sense of how endless disastrous conflicts have affected Americas own troops. Tom
Military Moral Injury, Violence, and the Parable of the Guinea Worm
An Unexpected Encounter with Compassion
Its been a while since Ive written for TomDispatch and there's a reason for that.About 16 months ago, I experienced a catastrophic car crash. An SUV veered across the double yellow line of the highway I was traveling on and hit my little Chevy Spark head-on on the drivers side. Ive been told that Im lucky to be alive. I was left with multiple injuries and have been on the slow road to recovery.
Ive always seen myself as a person who pushes forward to overcome obstacles. Since the collision, however, doing so has become more complicated, because I'm learning that recovery is a long road, filled with detours I couldn't have predicted. Time and again, my expectations have been turned upside down. Ive had to take deep breaths, sit back, and pay close attention.
A few months into recovery, I was invited to attend a day-retreat organized by a local veterans moral leadership group. Those vets live with whats known as military moral injury (in some cases going back decades). For years now, Ive been researching and writing about the devastating consequences of the militarization of this country and the armed violence we loosed on the world in the twenty-first century. Ive been listening carefully and trying to more deeply understand the stories of veterans from Americas disastrous wars in my own lifetime.
Now, given my own condition, a new window has opened for me. I cant help but see more clearly the visceral experience of recovery, including moral recovery. So, I found myself sitting in that circle of a dozen vets, the only woman among them. And I soon had to catch my breath, because, as I briefly described what I was experiencing, they responded in a way I hadn't expected, expressing their own profound vulnerability, understanding of, and empathy for my plight. I probably shouldn't have been surprised at how they got it in a way that even my loved ones struggled to grasp when it came to my own journey through the challenging nature of recovery.
Intolerable Suffering
Most civilians know little or nothing about the experiences of vets who live with whats become known as military moral injury. Its been described as intolerable suffering that arises from a deep assault on ones moral core. Think about facing horrific suffering caused by violence you not only had to witness, but could do nothing to stop. You probably were even trained and mandated to perpetrate it. Sooner or later, such a dystopian world invariably slices through whatever bedrock values you've been taught and begins dissolving your sense of self. That's military moral injury and its been linked to the epidemic of self-harm and suicide among former members of the U.S. military that continues to this day.
Over the years, Ive come to understand that military moral injury is rooted in being exposed to unsparing violence. It erupts as a consequence of witnessing violence, perpetrating it, and/or being on the receiving end of its death-dealing forms of betrayal. Moral injury bursts forth as people find themselves powerless to stop the suffering violence begets. War is a deep assault on life itself (both figuratively and literally) and violence isn't a tool that a person picks up or sets down without consequences.
Admittedly, in this century, we in this country became woefully adept at denying the impact of our own violence on ourselves and the rest of the world. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton called that phenomenon psychic numbing. We tend to minimize the violence we've committed globally and avoid facing what its done to our own soldiers, burying any awareness of it deep in our subconscious minds. Its too painful, too scary, too horrible to live with (if you don't have to) and, when we've been so deeply mixed up in it, too shameful to stay with for any length of time.
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