{"id":26591,"date":"2021-09-02T01:41:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T01:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=26591"},"modified":"2021-09-03T07:20:12","modified_gmt":"2021-09-03T07:20:12","slug":"20-years-of-forever-wars-have-left-a-toll-on-us-veterans-returning-to-the-question-did-you-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/20-years-of-forever-wars-have-left-a-toll-on-us-veterans-returning-to-the-question-did-you-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"20 years of \u2018forever\u2019 wars have left a toll on US veterans returning to the question: \u2018Did you kill?\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marian Eide<\/a>, Texas A&M University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Military service members returning from America\u2019s \u201cforever<\/a>\u201d wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have often faced deeply personal questions about their experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As one veteran explained to me: \u201cI\u2019ve been asked, \u2018Have you ever killed anyone in war? Are you messed up at all?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t take offense to any of that because I realize, we went somewhere, we were gone for a couple years, and now we\u2019re back, and now no one knows how to talk to a person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sense of estrangement<\/a> from the rest of the population is, in my experience, common among veterans. I interviewed 30 former military personnel between 2012 and 2018 for \u201cAfter Combat: True War Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan<\/a>\u201d \u2013 a book I coauthored with retired Army Col. Michael Gibler, who served as an infantry officer for 28 years, including deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the U.S. marks the 20th anniversary of the 9\/11 attacks and the ensuing global war on terrorism<\/a>, I believe that civilians would benefit from hearing veterans\u2019 stories. It can help provide an understanding of the experience of mortality among the men and women who served in America\u2019s name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking the enemy in the eye<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Neither I nor my co-author asked veterans directly if they had killed, and every person we spoke with had a unique experience of combat. All 30 interviewees, aged between 20 and 55 and from a variety of different backgrounds, were guaranteed anonymity to allow them to talk freely with us about their experiences of killing in combat. Their names have been changed for this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Killing in contemporary war rarely has the clarity of combat portrayed in war movies or video games, where the opponent is visible and threatening. In the fictional scenario, it is clear when a life is threatened and how to fight for the survival of oneself or one\u2019s unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople think it\u2019s like \u2018Call of Duty,\u2019\u201d one veteran said, referring to the popular video game, or that \u201cit\u2019d be cool to do that.\u201d However, even in a direct engagement, like an ambush, it may not be clear who you are shooting at \u2013 it could be a response to a muzzle flash in the distance or laying down covering fire, he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Describing an incident in which three men attacked his unit, one veteran, Beau, recalled the moral clarity he felt while shooting at a visible combatant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know that they\u2019re bad because they\u2019re shooting at me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in other firefights, the situation was less clear, and as Beau explained, \u201cFor every innocent person that dies, that\u2019s five more terrorists. I need to get this right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beau said he preferred to look an enemy combatant in the eye, even when his own life was in danger. He indicated that it confirmed his view that these were \u201cbad\u201d people intent on killing him first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many recruits like Beau go into combat believing that killing is necessary in conditions of war and believing also that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were militarily and politically justified<\/a>. But they are still changed by having killed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One soldier shot back from his guard post when under fire from a nearby house. His unit entered the house to find a dead man with a warm rifle. But the guard was discomfited when congratulated on this kill by fellow soldiers. To his comrades, he had acted in self-defense and protected others from the shooter. But even in this situation of militarily justified killing, he felt he had crossed a line by taking a life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others expressed guilt for exposing civilians to danger. One veteran spoke of feeling responsible when a young informant was executed after providing crucial information to Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe found out that the family that was living there told the Taliban that that little boy ratted them out,\u201d Robin recalled. \u201cI found this out two days later, that they executed the little boy that I chose to bring into that compound.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018No monster\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While some veterans return from having killed in combat without suffering moral injury<\/a> or post-traumatic stress<\/a>, others suffer enduring impacts of killing<\/a>. Studies have shown that the act of killing in combat can cause \u201csignificant psychological distress<\/a>\u201d and is associated with elevated risks of PTSD, alcohol abuse<\/a> and suicide<\/a> in veterans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As former U.S. Army Lt. Col. David Grossman<\/a> wrote in his book examining the psychological impact of killing, a \u201cdead soldier takes his misery with him, the man who killed him must forever live and die with him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reuben can attest to that. He fired on a vehicle accelerating into an Iraqi checkpoint. As the vehicle approached the checkpoint, he shot into and stopped the advancing automobile. Approaching it to investigate, the unit saw he had killed the driver. But he had also \u201csplattered his head all over the driver\u2019s child. Six years old. He was sitting in the passenger seat. The fifty caliber does a number on the human body. The man\u2019s head was just gone. It was everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reuben has ruminated over that moment for many years, trying to reconcile how he had followed the standard protocol but with horrific results \u2013 and trying to convince himself, as he told us, that he is not a monster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most civilians will never carry the burden of mortality that Reuben bears<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9\/11<\/a> and the inception of America\u2019s global war on terror approached, the Biden administration withdrew the last remaining troops from Afghanistan. The military members returning from this conflict, and that in Iraq, will not all be traumatized by combat experience, and not all soldiers who deploy have killed. But those who have enter a moral space very few of us share or even particularly understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.<\/em> Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marian Eide<\/a>, Professor of English and Women’s & Gender Studies, Texas A&M University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marian Eide, Texas A&M University Military service members returning from America\u2019s \u201cforever\u201d wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have often faced deeply personal questions about their experience. As one veteran explained to me: \u201cI\u2019ve been asked, \u2018Have you ever killed anyone in war? Are you messed up at all?\u2019\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t take offense to any of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":26592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,2450],"tags":[2443,485,196,1061,1555,2132,1871,1985,1989,10424,7678,2336,9785,7579],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26593,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26591\/revisions\/26593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}