Monday, November 10, 2008

MoJo: The Pentagon's PTSD Denial

How killing scars soldiers—and their loved ones.

In the spring of 2002, an Army major named Peter Kilner submitted an unusual essay to Military Review, a journal published by the Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Kilner argued that combat leaders have an obligation to justify the killing their soldiers do. "Soldiers who kill reflexively in combat will likely one day reconsider their actions reflectively," he wrote. "If they are unable to justify to themselves that they killed another human being, they will likely, and understandably, suffer enormous guilt" that could balloon into post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). Top brass who ignored the issue, he concluded, were "treating their soldiers as commodities, not as persons."


SNIP: Read Rest Here

No comments: