Combat Veterans Disabled by War...

MacLean, A. (2010). The Things They Carry: Combat, Disability, and Unemployment among U.S. Men American Sociological Review, 75 (4), 563-585 DOI: 10.1177/0003122410374085

The persistent lie of war is that it an honourable pursuit, carried out by gallant men in defence of liberation, humanity and peace. Over the years, who could not have caught sight of soldiers, sailors, and aviators bravely heading off into some foreign incursion, some little known or understood justification for our presence, their participation shrouding our country in unrestrained patriotic glory? Later we hear the sombre news of death, another young life lost while fighting an unwinnable war, far away from home. The hard question, the tough analysis, is to speak the unspeakable treason by daring to ask ‘why?’ Why is that we can feel this heaving pride in our chests as we condemn so many young men and their families to a death come too quickly by so many years and for so many others, a living hell that lasts an eternity?

Alair MacLean (2010) argues here that the more young men are exposed to the horrors of war the more ‘direct cumulative disadvantage’ (p.563 & p.565) they will experience across the lifespan (p.564). Call it PTSD or ‘irritable heart’ or ‘shell shock’ (2010, p.564) or any other definition besides, combat veterans ‘suffer worse physical and mental health than do people who did not see combat [and they are] more likely to die and to commit suicide’ (2010, p.565). This is to be unexpected, as MacLean (2010, p.564) points out, because on the battlefield soldiers are continually exposed to death or the risk of death and the egregious bending of the moral compass to accommodate the most grotesque human rights abuses. We paint myth over reality not only to enshrine the necessity of war but also to protect ourselves from its profound and enduring pathos.

Many returning combat veterans cannot share that luxury…

By analysing extensive data drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) in the United States, MacLean (2010, p.567 & p.572) found that combat veterans were more likely to be disabled, when compared to non-combat veterans. Their disability tended to worsen over time, which often had the knock-on effect of adversely affecting their labour market participation (2010, p.573). Severely scarred by their battlefield experiences, many young men return home from war to be chronically disabled, out of work and destined to remain that way for the rest of their lives (2010, pp.579-580). These men become the shameful reminder that war is anything but a boy’s own adventure, played out in gleaming armour atop a pristine white stallion. It is, conversely, the misery of young lives wasted, lost to utter despair and constant torment.

When MacLean (2010) concludes that ‘traumatic events can leave those who suffer them at an initial disadvantage that continues throughout their work lives’, she seriously understates the significance of what combat veterans are actually forced to endure on the battlefield. Facing the prospect of imminent death should only ever be a transient state from which we are supposed to escape immediately. After all, self-survival is human instinct. Freezing young men into a life-threatening moment and repeatedly reinforcing their terror inflicts an enormous traumatic injury from which recovery is seldom realised. We know from research conducted into the health and well-being of combat veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan (2010, p.580) that for many of these hapless young men, the damage is irreparable.

Therefore, providing ‘better health care’ (MacLean, 2010, p.582) for combat veterans can never effectively stymie the horrors of war…