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The Military Epidemics That Aren’t

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08.16.2013 at 10:54pm

The Military Epidemics That Aren't by Thomas Donnelly, Wall Street Journal.

There is a growing presumption in the West that war dehumanizes those who experience combat, or, in more extreme expressions, even those who only serve in the military. In this country, for example, journalist Robert Koehler writes of war itself as a "disease," one that produces a nearly infinite variety of violent "symptoms."

The wars of the post-9/11 era, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, might seem to reinforce the point—the Abu Ghraib scandal, for instance, or atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers like Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who murdered 16 Afghan civilians in March 2012. Then there are the supposedly high rates of suicide, post-traumatic stress and sexual aggression, all of which tempt one to regard the military itself as a dehumanizing institution in need of therapeutic intervention.

Soldiers, in this view, are no longer seen as models of self-control, courage and patriotism. Instead they are victims and should be treated as patients. Yet the links between combat, the military and mental health are more complex than the war-as-disease construct allows…

Read on.

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