George Bernard Shaw wrote that “nations are like bees: they cannot kill except at the cost of their own lives.” That cost can be computed in many ways. In Iraq it’s not only our military’s 1,820 fatal casualties and the 13,500 physically injured; it’s also the psychological wounds some veterans bear -- often for the rest of their lives.

The psychological tolls of war are staggering. Scott Shane wrote in the New York Times, “an army study shows that about one in six soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, a proportion that some experts believe could eventually climb to one in three, the rate ultimately found in
Vietnam veterans.”

The New England Journal of Medicine and the National Center for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) corroborate Shane’s findings. They report up to 17% of our Iraq veterans are already suffering psychologically. Since symptoms can appear months after exposure, experts predict that the number with PTSD will only increase.

Psychological scars of war are not new; they only have new names. As Shane observed after the Civil War it was “irritable heart,” after WW I it was “shell shock,” in WW II it was “battle fatigue.” After Vietnam the army and veterans administration took some measures to address this persistent disorder that can cause a lifetime of anger, nightmares, drug and alcohol abuse, family problems and a disproportionate number of divorces and suicides.

The macho mentality of the army, however, has a difficult time admitting that these psychological wounds are not weakness or cowardice. The mostly unspoken thinking is that real men don’t cry or regret, that the good soldier is tough and untroubled by the killings and horrors of war. That type of thinking, of course, is denial.

The Veterans Administration is better than the Army, but it desperately needs to hire more psychologists for veterans who are not receiving the treatment they need -- and in justice deserve. The VA, which was really not established for National Guard members and reservists out of active duty, is a regulatory quagmire for these vets.

Unlike our veterans, most civilians have no idea of the hellish horror of war.  Television filters out the goriest footage.  Even the most realistic war movies such as Saving Private Ryan cannot replicate the smell of decaying bodies or the pictures of dismembered children. The Pentagon in its sanitized military spin-speak sometimes regrets collateral damage, but for the veteran the memory of the innocent blown to bits before his eyes is forever seared in his psyche, as is the death of his buddy bleeding to death in his arms.  Later reflecting on these traumas, he is no longer sure why the war and perhaps his own
actions in it destroyed these irreplaceable lives.

The Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC is mute testimony to the 58 thousand Americans who died in Vietnam. And for what did they die?  Even former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara admits that it was an ill-conceived intervention in a civil war.  And what came of all that senseless carnage?  Vietnam is now both a communist country and a trading partner. The Memorial, moreover, doesn’t even mention the millions of Vietnamese who died in what they call the US War.

Historian Leon Wolfe wrote of World War I “the war ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.  It had meant nothing, solved nothing and proved nothing.” Over eight and a half million soldiers died in that war. Will some historian someday write about Iraq as they do now about WW I and Vietnam?  More and more
Americans think so.

Already President Bush understands the complaint of French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau that it is easier to win a war than to win the peace.  Historians agree that the peace treaty at Versailles was the seedbed for Hitler, the Nazis, the Holocaust and yet another war. All the gassing, bayoneting and killing in that first “war to end all wars” was for naught. As were the deaths in Vietnam “to stop the spread of communism.” As for the continuing deaths in Iraq “to spread freedom and democracy,” what will tomorrow’s historians be writing?

In the meantime soldiers are still trained to kill. The military cannot bring itself to face what that ultimately does to some of its recruits. Killing does not come naturally to emotionally well-adjusted human beings. We instinctively think of killers as maladjusted and psychopaths. Looking back at their wartime experiences, some of our most sensitive veterans cringe at their memories. Many desperately need psychological help.

Senator Richard Durbin has introduced legislation in the US Senate requiring every VA medical center to establish a post-traumatic disorder clinical team. The bill would require every VA region to have such a team, which would include a family therapist and a PTSD services coordinator. In a fair and just world that legislation would fly through congress, but who said this administration is fair and just?

Listen to the words of the poet Wilfred Owen, who wrote of troubled veterans from another senseless war. It is also a compassionate insight about those Iraq veterans who though home with family and friends still suffer intensely from their wartime experience.