Is War A National Addiction?
Ted Beal, MD
How does one stimulate or encourage a conversation between the military and the civilian public about the experience of war? This question has been on my mind for some time. The war in Afghanistan seems endless and aimless. The moral, physical, and psychological recovery of our soldiers stumbles forward without much civilian awareness. What harm could arise from a more public discussion of these issues?
I recently had two experiences—one rather encouraging and one not so much about this possibility. I attended a presentation about the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. I learned that anyone over the age of sixteen years can participate and get to know veterans more personally in an informal but structured manner. For those who have misgivings, are anxious about it, or just worry about what to say, the Library provides direction, even appropriate questions to ask of veterans.
Funded by Congress in 2000, the project’s mission is to collect, preserve, and make accessible the personal accounts of veterans so that future generations may directly hear and better understand the realities of war. Volunteers in 10th grade or older using guidelines provided by the Library of Congress conduct interviews. Anyone can download a Field Kit at www.loc.gov/vets and conduct an interview. Take the guidelines, find a family member who was a veteran or a neighbor, or go to a local hospital and ask a service member some questions. This is a rarely found, easily accessible opportunity for all of us to learn directly from an expert about war. The project has become the largest oral history archive in the nation with more than 100,000 collections.
The staff at the Library of Congress can easily be reached: vohp@oc.gov or 1-888-371-5848. The staff is very helpful, there are a few administrative matters, and uploading a cell phone recorded conversation can be made easily. I have done over 5,000 similar interviews with soldiers and you may find, as I have, that the experience is a gift from the soldier to you.
My other recent experience was equally interesting but not so encouraging. Working out in our local gym the other day, I noticed a physically fit man who was just squatting peacefully in a corner. His posture was much like people in Southeast Asia sit, a population that has few back problems. As a person with back problems, I decided to ask him how long it took to learn how to acquire that pose. In describing the process, he remarked that he had noticed old men in Afghanistan sitting most of the day in this manner. Intrigued he worked at learning how to do it.
“Deployed there?” I asked. “Yes” he said. “How many times?” I asked. “Twice in Afghanistan and once in Iraq,” he responded. It was not long before I learned he was a physician with over twenty years in the military and was stationed nearby at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I briefly told him of my work with soldiers and asked if he was in a trauma related field. “Yes,” he said.
With little prodding, he spoke of deployment in southern Afghanistan, a remote area where the United States was building roads. Private contractors built the roads during the day. Afghan civilians would plant mines or IEDs at night. U. S. Marines would clear the areas of IEDs in the morning, undoing the work of the Afghan civilians from
the night before. His job was taking the evacuated Marines off the helicopters, their limbs in tourniquets and genitalia destroyed after stepping on the IEDs, and preparing them for life saving surgery.
He described lunch breaks when he would ask other senior officers, “What is the military purpose of our work here?” They were silent. Now, years later in this crowded gym, I saw tears in his eyes as he described the experience.
I asked him if he thought the “endless and aimless” nature of the war was not in some way related to the lack of civilian involvement in even knowing what was happening. He agreed but then went on to describe his view of war. He said the private contractors do not want a discussion because there is so much money to be made. An exploded armored vehicle is a multimillion dollar reorder. Each soldier is outfitted with $18,000.00 of equipment. Building roads is profitable. Military soldiers and administrators are just following orders and acquiring medals and building careers. The civilian public does not pay for the war with taxes, as the government has financed these wars with debt. Everyone benefits.
He thinks war is an intractable national addiction and that the civilian population is the enabler. Having had this conversation with him makes me think the larger national question about civilians’ involvement just became more complicated than I thought.
Ted Beal Edward W. Beal, MD, Psychiatrist, Department of the Army, Department of Tele-Health, U. S. Army Medical
Department Activity, Fort Meade
December 2018
