Small Wars Journal

The US Military Doesn’t Know Who is Fit to Fight

Mon, 03/26/2012 - 12:05pm

Stephen N. Xenakis, a retired Army brigadier general and a psychiatrist and founder of the Center for Translational Medicine asks and opines on “Who is fit to fight?” in a Washington Post opinion piece.

Ten years into the war in Afghanistan, and after nearly nine years of war in Iraq, we know that the defining injuries of these conflicts for our service members include traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. We also understand that the all-volunteer force is stretched thin and that multiple deployments to combat zones are routine.

What military physicians don’t have a good sense of, however, is how to tell whether a combat veteran is still qualified for the battlefield…