Disorders of War

Last weekend, a U.S. Marine murdered 16 civilians in Afghanistan; elderly and children among them. U.S. President Obama called his Afghan partners to express his grief and commitment to clarify and punish those responsible for this as soon as possible.

All things considered, Obama’s promise will not be so easy to carry out, at least in regard to punishing all of those responsible. Well, in some ways, the high command of the U.S. Army and those who ordered their deployment to the conflict zone are also guilty.

In effect, there is not a single war in which atrocities are not committed, nor is there any man who remains unscathed after killing another human, much as it is his enemy. The butcheries, slaughters, tortures and secret prisons do not stay buried in the conflict zone where they occurred; rather they stay in the minds and spirits of both the victors and the vanquished. Governments know this and for that the U.S. and Great Britain, among others, are preparing to confront, in the next few years, a huge avalanche of soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. In general, this trauma takes around 17 years to manifest. However, as occurred in Afghanistan, it can present itself much earlier.