A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist discussed the mental health epidemic affecting a new generation of veterans as well as the drastic differences between past warfare and modern warfare on Thursday night at the Walter Cronkite School.
David Wood was introduced for his talk, “The Human Dimension of War,” by Daniel Rothenberg, a professor of practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies and the Lincoln Fellow for Ethics and International Human Rights at ASU. Rothenberg is also a co-director of the Future of War program, which links ASU and New America: a Washington D.C. think tank.
Wood has reported on war and conflict across the globe for more than 30 years. While accompanying U.S. military units, he reported on Desert Storm, peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Wood first talked about “moral injury” and the role it has played in war for thousands of years.
“The human part of war really hasn’t changed; Homer wrote about moral injury,” Wood said. “I haven’t really stumbled upon something new.”
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a moral injury is defined as “an act of serious transgression that leads to serious inner conflicts because the experience is at odds with core ethical and moral beliefs.”
Wood believes that the most recent generation of soldiers, those deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 15 years, were significantly more vulnerable to moral injury than past generations.
Wood quoted a study, saying, “In 2005, 20,000 soldiers deployed in the Middle East tested positive for anxiety, and in 2006, two-thirds had experienced a wounding or death of a close buddy in combat.”
One reason he cited was the difference in the way battalions are formed now compared to Vietnam.
“There were always new people coming in. They didn’t want to get to know the new kids coming in because they were probably going to die,” Wood said, referencing a Vietnam veteran’s experiences with battalion changes. “A huge difference in Iraq is all of these guys join together, train together and deploy together, and then they were in Afghanistan for eight months. You take care of your guys no matter what, you learn that from day one.”
Wood detailed soldiers’ encounters with mental health issues and how those he has spent time with are severely affected by either moral injuries or PTSD.
He said modern soldiers feel extreme commitment for each other.
“Camaraderie — I have spent my entire career trying to find a better word for it,” Wood said. “It’s a blinding-hot commitment to each other that surpasses the relationship most people have with their spouses or their mothers … I call this love.”
He also referenced how this bond is often detrimental when broken.
“It holds the seeds for immense sorrow, and sadness and loss,” Wood said. “Really the problem is that, when you are at war, there is no time to talk about what happened because things are happening so fast. … There really is no opportunity to sit down and process what you’ve just seen.”
In further detail after the event, Wood related back to his earlier point that this generation of soldiers was more vulnerable.
“When guys came back from World War II, they came back on the troop ship, so it was six weeks at sea. They could sit down and talk,” Wood said. “We don’t have that today. When people come back from a war zone, it’s a plane ride.”
He said certain groups think about horrific events without assigning culpability in order to cope with them.
“Marines have this phrase: ‘that was f—– up.’ There’s no blame attached. It acknowledges that something bad happened, but no one is really to blame for that. You don’t have to be defined as the guy who killed a child,” he said.
The reaction Wood gained from the audience was receptive and positive.
“These are immemorial problems,” said Vietnam veteran Bob McGowan, 59. “The implications of what he is saying are extremely relevant to society today as a whole and to the world, really.”
Wood said there is a forced ignorance toward mental health issues in the military. Death is the business of the military, but they conduct themselves as if it is not.
“There is a correlation between killing and mental trauma, specifically anxiety and depression,” Wood said. “We don’t tell them that this is going to be an issue.”
One audience member felt that this was a very good point and said there should be a genuine attempt to combat this problem.
“There really is nothing that can prepare you for taking someone’s life,” said Christopher Mardian, an ASU political science student. “In that situation, I feel that we do need that support for our soldiers.”
Wood’s final statement was his desire for a common term to be eliminated from the vernacular of Americans.
“We talk about boots on the ground; let’s talk about kids on the ground,” he said. “To say boots on the ground discounts that they are actual human beings that we are sending into danger.”
Contact the reporter at Case.Smith@asu.edu.
