Price of war is often paid with soldiers’ sanity

Last summer, four soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina killed
their wives within a span of six weeks.

Three of the murderers had just returned from service in
Afghanistan. Two of them committed suicide after killing their
wives. The army vowed to investigate what triggered the breakdown
of some of its most proud and highly trained soldiers.

But do such outspurts of extreme violence represent a
“breakdown” of highly disciplined individuals or the
direct consequences of being trained to kill and carrying out
murder as an occupation?

John Muhammad, age 41, is the primary suspect in the Washington
area sniper shootings. On Monday, October 28, Robert S. Flores Jr.,
also age 41, arrived at University of Arizona with five handguns
and two hundred rounds. After killing three nursing instructors
over his failing grades, Flores turned the gun on himself.

In addition to age, Muhammad and Flores have another thing in
common: both are veterans of the Persian Gulf War. Both had been
trained to kill by the U.S. military. Although I do not attempt to
suggest that military training leads directly to psychosis and
murder, we cannot ignore the connections between molding people
into killers in combat and the tendency for some to snap and kill
at home.

There are two pieces to this puzzle. Firstly, the psychological
effects of military training and the underlying mantra within a
society armed to the teeth: violence can resolve conflicts. One
need look no further than the current “debate” on Iraq
to see that the hawks within the government do not see war as a
last resort. If the UN Security Council decides not to support
military action, the U.S. will go it alone.

There is a clear link between how our government chooses to use
bombs and tanks against innocent civilians abroad and how a sniper
and a college student choose to use M-16s against innocent
civilians here.

The military calls innocent deaths “collateral
damage.” That’s what Timothy McVeigh (another Gulf War vet)
called his victims too. As columnist Alexander Cockburn argues,
“Military training is designed to desensitize recruits to the
grim reality of using one’s weapons to kill people. Millions
have been molded in this manner.”

Secondly, we must address the psychological toll that the act of
killing takes on soldiers. Between 1990 and 1996, the Defense
Department Task Force on domestic violence recorded 61,000 cases of
such abuse in military families. That’s five times the amount
in the rest of the population.

While news of the sniper’s string of murders gripped the
media for weeks, the association between such killings and the
military pasts of the killers often goes unnoticed. This silence
conveniently exonerates the military from any culpability. Charles
Sheehan-Miles is a Gulf War Veteran that breaks the silence.

Speaking out about the experiences of veterans upon returning
home, he states, “Sometimes we suffer from nightmares, lack
of sleep, flashbacks. Sometimes the nightmares are when we are
awake. Sometimes veterans inflict their nightmares on other people.
War is all about killing and destruction, and the sane reaction to
killing and destruction is to go a little bit crazy.”

At the very least, we should push for more research into the
psychological and emotional effects of war on soldiers. We need to
examine our militarized culture and ask difficult questions. If the
war on terror is marketed as a way to protect Americans, why does
the U.S. government not care about the state of its own soldiers?
Even more importantly, who declares a war and who fights one?

Veteran Sheehan Miles concludes, “The price of war is
often anger, divorce, readjustment problems, drug addiction,
homelessness, and sometimes murder.”

Abroad, the price involves the unnecessary and unjustified
murder of millions of innocent civilians. As the U.S. prepares for
another Persian Gulf War, all Americans must ask themselves, is it
worth it?