Public service announcement

Mike from Rational Reasons, who argued vociferously against the NDP's position of taking combat troops out of Afghanistan only six months ago, has now changed his mind. But if this is a so-called "flip-flop," then it's an exceedingly well-argued one.

(I'm still on the fence, for the record.)

Is there such a thing as too much perspective?

I have a confession to make. While my ideals are quite thoroughly lefty in every way, there's one way I don't fit in with my ideological soulmates: I'm not really wired for outrage. There are a few exceptions--a few sore points that will always make me screaming mad--but for the most part, my gut reaction to something worthy of outrage (and believe me, there's plenty!) is to think: all right, so how can we rearrange things so that we can best live with this very suboptimal situation? If I actually want to spur myself into taking action, I have to forcibly short-circuit that gut response and cut straight to dispassionately evaluating what can realistically be done and what can't. It makes me a pretty lousy activist, though it has the advantage of keeping my blood pressure down.

This tendency is, of course, compounded by my background. This is because nine times out of ten, when something worthy of outrage happens in Canada, it's still worse in the U.S., and despite the fact that my life is quite firmly anchored here now, my brain can't help but make the comparisons. Take my Stephen Harper and Hillary Clinton post. I really do think Harper and his party have been terrible for Canada, and if they ever were to get a majority government, things would be even worse. But in the U.S., the party proposing policies along those same lines is the leftmost party, and in Canada, there are three national parties to the left of Stephen Harper's Conservatives. And even after more than a year of gagging their crazies and controlling their messaging in order to show people that they're really just misunderstood moderates, the Conservatives still only have 33% of Canadians excited about what they want to do for the country. That makes it exceedingly difficult for me to take on a "oh, woe is us, Canadians have it so bad right now" mentality, you know?

So when L-girl from We Move to Canada pointed her readers at this Toronto Star article talking about how the Conservatives had done focus groups across the country trying to figure out what they were doing wrong on the messaging for the war in Afghanistan, she was outraged. And she's right--it is pretty outrageous that the Conservatives would look at the war as something to sell to Canadians. But when I read that article, what I notice most is this part:

The report lists "vocabulary/terms/phrases/concepts to reinforce" the message that the government is right about its commitment to the war in Afghanistan. They include "rebuilding," "restoring," "reconstruction," "hope," "opportunity" and "enhancing the lives of women and children."

Words and phrases to avoid include: "freedom, democracy, liberty – in combination this phrase comes across as sounding too American."

Strategic Counsel also advised that the government "avoid developing a line of argumentation too strongly based on values. While the value of human rights is strongly supported, there is a risk of appearing to be imposing Canadian values. Again, this is not seen to be the 'Canadian way.'"

Basically, if you want Canadians to believe that a war is worth fighting, you have to convince them that Canada is helping the people of that country on their own terms. When you start making it sound like Canada is imposing its own values on those people, Canadians find it distasteful. This forces Harper and his crew to adopt language--and sometimes even stances--that don't reflect their values in order to win over even thirty-three measly percent of the Canadian people.

I can't help it, I just find that delightful. In fact, it kind of makes me want to hug my whole damn adopted country. Forgive me?

There's something missing here

Every week I listen to U.S. National Public Radio's Diane Rehm Show Friday News Roundup on podcast. It's a panel of journalists who get together to talk about the week's stories, after which callers from across the country have a chance to call in and comment. While it presents voices from across the political spectrum, this is hardly Fox News's version of "fair and balanced"; Rehm is the epitome of a fair host, the journalists usually come up with quite a layered analysis, and the listeners who call in generally skew left. National Public Radio is also the closest you get to real public broadcasting in the U.S.

Throughout the time I've been listening to the podcast--about eight months now--the panel has often discussed the war in Afghanistan. Casualties, skirmishes, insurgents, and the possibility of a pullout or a relocation of troops to Iraq. But in the midst of this, there's a word that hasn't been mentioned once: Canada. Not when Canada's troops were moved to southern Afghanistan, not when Harper extended the mission, not when Canadian soldiers have died, not when Canada was asked to take over the mission entirely. Not once. For all the Diane Rehm Show's listeners are aware--and we're talking about a pretty elite slice of the U.S., all things told--the U.S. is all alone out there.

It's just...it gives me pause.

Afghanistan questions

Work is eating my life right now, including all my blogging time. But that's okay, 'cause Mike of Rational Reasons is asking the questions that need to be asked about Afghanistan, and so you should all be over there instead anyway. The first two are taken word-for-word from Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor back when he was the Conservatives' defence critic, and the rest are Mike's:

What are the goals and objectives of the mission and how do they meet our foreign-policy objectives?

What is the mandate, what is the defined concept of operations, what is the effective command and control structure, what are the rules of engagement?

To what extent have we been able to meet our non-military, PRT objectives in the South?

Are we still fighting the 'Taliban' or have other groups - heroin traffickers, disaffected warlords, honestly disgruntled peasants - entered the fray, complicating this matter?

How succesful have we been in bringing the Afghan police and army up to speed to help with security?

How have the recent actions of Pakistan - either in 'makng peace' with its tribal regions or in actively supporting the Taliban - changed the scope and complexity of the mission? Under these new circumstances, does our current plan and tactics make sense?

What kinds of non-combat operations are we doing that indeed help women protect their rights or help farmers get off of growing poppies?

Come to think of it, I'm turning comments off on this one so that the discussion can all gather over at his pad. I look forward to reading it.

The NDP's real position on Afghanistan

At the end of my enormous post-convention post, I wrote about how odd it was for me to come out of the convention bubble and see how the NDP's official position on Afghanistan had been portrayed in the media. In particular, I was surprised by how the situation was being portrayed as the party's leftmost wing forcing the NDP to adopt a hard-left stance. There certainly are hard-left elements within the party, and they certainly do exert plenty of pressure on the party leadership--but the problem with that line of reasoning was that the official position as worded hardly amounted to a hard-left one. So I chalked this discrepancy up to media sensationalism and thought nothing more of it.

Then came the bloggers, who were worse. They've called Layton "Taliban Jack" ad nauseum and accused defence critic Dawn Black of wanting "to return to the days where Afghan women were brought to the centre of sports stadiums built by the UN, and stoned to death" and thinking "kids shouldn't be able to go to school." On the September 17th Bloggers' Hotstove podcast, Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor presented a caricature of the NDP's position that had only the fleetingest flirtation with reality, and he sounded so much like one of those spinning Tory talking heads on CPAC that I almost turned it off in disgust. But I chalked all this up to typical blogger polemicism and dirty-tricks partisanship and thought nothing more of it.

Imagine my surprise last night, then, to find that Conservative bloggers had started claiming that Layton was "reversing his party's Afghanistan position" to...what it's been all along. (My first thought upon reading this was that you really can't win as a politician: when the inevitable simplistic portrayals of your position start appearing, you get painted as a radical, but when they realize that you're actually saying something rather pedestrian, you get painted as a flip-flopper.) But all right, I'm going to be charitable and assume that the kind of distortion of the NDP's position that I've been seeing for the past month hasn't, in fact, been deliberate, but attributable to an ordinary human misunderstanding. And I'm going to try to clear it up.

To do that, we have to be able to address two issues: what, exactly, the NDP is calling for, and why they are calling for it. And for that, we have to go straight to the original source--to the party's actual official statements on the matter. First, what they're calling for, from the August 31st statement:

That's why I'm announcing that as a first step, New Democrats are calling for the withdrawal of Canadian troops from the combat mission in southern Afghanistan. Withdrawal should begin as soon as possible - working with our international partners to ensure a safe and smooth transition - but with a view to having it complete by February 2007. Canada can then focus on building a made-in-Canada foreign policy that moves us toward reclaiming Canada's place in the world. One that is clear, comprehensive, and balanced.

In point form, then (and rephrased from politician-speak into plain language), the NDP is calling for Canada to:

• take troops out of their combat role in southern Afghanistan
• work with other countries to make sure this withdrawal can proceed safely
• complete this withdrawal by February 2007, and
• come up with a new foreign policy that's a little more independent from the United States.

In light of the misunderstandings that have occurred, it's also important to look at what this statement doesn't say, namely:

• we should pull every Canadian soldier out of Afghanistan, including the ones working on humanitarian aid projects
• Canada's military can serve the country better sitting on their duffs and twiddling their thumbs, and
• Afghanistan would be better off with the Taliban in charge.

So that's the what; now let's look at the why. Again, from the same August 31st statement:

By participating in this aggressive counterinsurgency war, Liberals and Conservatives claim to be making Canada safer. But Canadians are asking themselves whether Canada’s role in this war is actually making our country less secure. These are valid questions. Our efforts in the region are overwhelmingly focussed on military force--spending defence dollars on counter-insurgency. Prime Minister Harper need only look at the experience in Iraq to conclude that ill-conceived and unbalanced missions do not create the conditions for long-term peace. Why are we blindly following the defence policy prescriptions of the Bush administration? This is not the right mission for Canada. There is no balance--in particular it lacks a comprehensive rebuilding plan and commensurate development assistance. [...]

Naturally, we must continue to work multilaterally to get tough on terrorism. But, we also understand that making the world a safer place requires us to go much further. Issues like international development assistance to combat global poverty, reforming international institutions, peace building and securing human rights are all part of the solution. So is the strategic use of our highly-skilled and well-respected Canadian armed forces. Canada has a long history of stepping into the breach when called upon by our international allies.

Unfortunately, the number of conflicts around the world today, including deepening tensions in the Middle East, mean that we must carefully choose where we can make the greatest difference. New Democrats understand the need to send troops into combat and the risks involved. We support and have supported appropriate missions. Our duty is to ensure that Canada participates in missions where the objectives and mandate are clear and where there are clear criteria for success.

And then later, and somewhat more pithily, in Jack Layton's September 10th keynote address at the convention:

That mission is the wrong mission for Canada. There is no plan for victory. There is no exit strategy. There is no sign that it is making the Taliban weaker or the world safer. And there is no hope of changing the realities on the ground in Afghanistan--with the forces we have or can commit.

So again, in point form and rephrased into plain language, the reasons for the NDP's official stance on Afghanistan are as follows:

• like the war in Iraq, the Afghanistan war is poorly planned
• also like the war in Iraq, too much money and effort is being poured into combat while the humanitarian side is being neglected
• we're following the U.S.'s lead in a mission that's supposed to be Canada's
• it's impossible to win a war when we don't have a clear statement of what winning would entail, and
  
• as things now stand, we're not doing any long-term good over there.

And again, what the official position doesn't name as reasons for withdrawal:

• Afghanis have the right to govern themselves without any interference from us
• War Iz Baddd, and
• Canadian troops are no better than imperialist invaders, and the Liberals and Conservatives are complicit in that invasion for sending them there in the first place.

Now, no matter how you feel about the NDP's hard-left element, you have to admit that this simply isn't a hard-left position. What this actually is, is a pessimistic position. Yes, that's right: where the Conservatives are adopting the positively Pollyanna-ish stance of what amounts to "if we just stick around for another two to five years, we can defeat Afghani society's rogue elements and then go back to building hospitals and schools for children," the NDP is saying what can be boiled down to "we're just spinning our wheels in combat in Afghanistan, and since what we're doing isn't going to work anyway, we should pull our troops out of a futile combat role and put them into a role where they can do some good." The irony is delicious, isn't it?

Now, there's certainly plenty to criticize about that stance. As a militant agnostic on Afghanistan ("I don't know, and you don't either"), I don't agree with it myself. But if you're going to criticize it, criticize it for what it actually is. Call it too short-sighted, too ad-hoc, or, yes, too defeatist. Point out what this commenter at bound by gravity says: that ceding Kandahar to the people we've been fighting could move the warfronts to parts of the country that are currently relatively peaceful. Point out the fact that calling for withdrawal from the combat mission without a serious, thorough debate in Parliament is no better than extending the mission without the same. Say what my friend Jo Cook said at the convention: "We need more information, more consultation, more thought. I believe we need a coherent foreign policy framework for military and international affairs which this party has never developed." But--and this goes for both the traditional media and the bloggers--argue with the NDP's real official position, not with what the stereotyped mental image of the NDP in your head has come up with.

To do that, of course, people have to listen, watch, and analyze, instead of knee-jerking and name-calling. But you can call me a Pollyanna if you want, but I actually don't think that's too much to ask.

This post contains no opinions

Bloggers tend to be opinionated people, and I'm certainly no exception. But one of the advantages of having an "occasional lengthy opinion piece" blog instead of a "daily news" blog is that I don't feel forced to come up with an opinion on something I'm just not sure about. Sometimes I simply don't know enough about a subject to really grapple with all the information--and other people's opinions--that I'm subjected to. Sometimes I feel conflicted about an issue and can't reach a pat conclusion. And sometimes the issue in question falls into one of the areas where I know I have a tendency to knee-jerk into opinions that have more to do with me and my background than they do with the issue at hand. In all of those cases, I simply shut up. My blog's readership doesn't need to be subjected to my half-baked ideas when there are plenty of people around who actually have smart things to say.

Canada's mission in Afghanistan--i.e. whether or not our military should be there at all, and if not, whether we should withdraw troops soon or at some later point--falls into all three of those categories for me.

In an effort to dig through all the baggage and figure out what I really think, I've listened to opinion after opinion on the subject. By doing that, I've learned two things. One is that no matter how much the ideologues want to make this a clear-cut situation, it's pretty clear that there are smart people on both sides of the debate. The Liberals don't agree on the issue, and even in the NDP--the party that its detractors would like to paint as being more about knee-jerk outrage than about well-thought-through positions--there's plenty of room for disagreement. The other thing I've learned is that most people--from bloggers to politicians, and regardless of which side of the issue they come down on--tend to simply state their opinion without voicing a concrete argument or explaining how they reached those conclusions. Oh, sure, there are plenty of empty statements: everything from "help spread democracy" to "support the troops" on the one hand, and "wrong mission for Canada" and "blindly following the U.S." on the other. But there's appallingly little substance, and few concrete facts that might help people figure out what they think when they're not quite sure. The incredibly disappointing "debate" on this issue in Parliament epitomized this.

One of the few exceptions has been Kuri from Thought, Interrupted. She agrees with Layton's statement, but her words actually speak to me far more than his did:

This was a lesson we all should have learned in Somalia. You don’t use military tactics to get non-military results (e.g. “spreading democracy”) and you don’t go in without a goal that’s realistically achievable by military means, at least not without some kind of a strategy to “cut and run,” as they now say in propaganda-speak. That used to be called an “exit strategy” and it used to considered reasonable.

That...makes an incredible amount of sense to me. It's short, but it's not pat: it contains a clear statement of what exactly she believes is wrong with the Afghanistan mission, and why. I can sink my teeth into that. But is it my own knee-jerk discomfort with military operations that's behind wanting to agree with her? I'm honestly not sure.

I know there are a lot of people who read this blog who disagree with Kuri about this. So tell me why she's wrong.

[Update: Kuri expands upon her position in this post. Whether you agree with her, disagree with her, or remain unsure, it's pretty clear that she's damn good at this blogging thing we do.]

Trauma is "easy"?

This post is a collaboration between Idealistic Pragmatist and Respectful of Otters.

Think of the most terrified you've ever been. Heart pounding, mouth dry, sweat beading on your forehead, muscles locked rigid, violent or frightening images flooding your mind, screaming so loudly on the inside that you're barely aware of your surroundings. Now imagine being dropped randomly into that state a few times a day, every day, triggered by some innocuous thing or nothing at all.

This is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder in which a person who has experienced or come into close contact with serious trauma later experiences crippling levels of anxiety, combined with vivid re-experiencing of the traumatic event and an intense desire to avoid anything that might bring the trauma to mind or trigger anxiety symptoms. PTSD is known to have a strong biological component; severe stress causes lasting alterations in brain neurochemistry. Trauma appears to damage specific receptors responsible for regulating catecholamines, which are hormones essential to the stress response. In people with PTSD, these stress hormones are elevated, leaving them constantly on the verge of a neurochemically-induced panic. "It's not fashionable," according to Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, to be derisive of people going through that experience. But she courageously does her best all the same.

Wente's column (accessible through the google cheat) has been attracting favourable commentary even from bloggers who are ordinarily thoughtful and intelligent. In it, she suggests that PTSD in soldiers and veterans (and especially in the Canadian forces) is exaggerated and overdiagnosed, and insinuates that servicemembers diagnosed with PTSD are either whiners ("War is hell. But life can be pretty rough, too. You don't need battle trauma to cope badly with it.") or goldbrickers out for an easy life on disability benefits ("some people will abuse the system if it is financially attractive"). Her claims demonstrate little acquaintance with the scientific literature on PTSD; instead, they are heavily based on arguments by an American psychiatrist named Sally Satel, who is affiliated with and funded by the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Satel's--and, by extension, Wente's--claims about PTSD are baseless. Let's look at them one at a time.

Claim 1: PTSD rates among recent servicemembers are too high.

It's hard to know exactly what Wente means by this. We doubt she means that it's a terrible thing that so many servicemembers are suffering, although if she did, we would certainly agree. At times, she seems to mean that soldiers didn't used to suffer from PTSD, back in the high-moral-fibre days of World War II. She treats an elevation in rates over time as prima facie evidence that current diagnoses are overinflated. In fact, although PTSD has always been with us--previously it was called battle fatigue or shellshock--military strategists argue that aspects of the military and social context of modern wars increase the likelihood of PTSD. The increase in PTSD diagnoses is also due to changes in diagnostic criteria. Prior to the Vietnam era, psychiatric diagnosis was vague and tended to be based on Freudian theories rather than observable symptoms. Modern diagnostic systems, based in empirical research, have led to wider agreement about who has specific psychiatric illnesses, including PTSD.

Claim 1a: Therapists encourage veterans to blame everything that goes wrong in their lives on combat stress.

Wente implies that veterans who have moral or behavioural problems, such as a violent temper or an inability to hold a job, are encouraged by therapists to attribute their problems to PTSD rather than trying to fix them--thus, also, inflating PTSD diagnosis rates. But PTSD simply cannot be diagnosed without the presence of the three core symptoms listed in the second paragraph: intense anxiety, vivid and intrusive memories of trauma, and avoidance symptoms. You don't get to just go to a doctor and say "My life problems are caused by PTSD, now fork over a cheque."

Claim 1b: Servicemembers and veterans are just faking PTSD to get disability benefits.

Wente cites no evidence for this, which is probably because there is none. The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma demolishes this claim completely:

Matthew J. Friedman, M.D., is the executive director of the National Center for PTSD, a division of the Department of Veteran's Affairs. In an e-mail to the Dart Center, Friedman said that Satel's argument was based on a "misreading or inability to appreciate the meticulous process by which personal reports of combat exposure were verified by military records" in the 1990 National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study. Friedman noted that the vast majority of veterans surveyed had not applied for medical disability because of their PTSD.

The notion of veterans falsely claiming to have PTSD is also contradicted by statistics published by the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs. In 2002, 65,154 Vietnam veterans claimed 100 percent disability for "Psychiatric and Neurological Diseases" (about 2.1 percent of the 3.14 million soldiers who served in Vietnam). A total of 202,183 Vietnam veterans claimed a partial level mental-health disability (about 6.4 percent of all Vietnam veterans).

The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study found that 31% of Vietnam vets met full diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Given the low percentages of vets actually receiving benefits for psychiatric disability, there can hardly be an epidemic of false claims. And if Wente is going to claim that things are different in Canada, it is incumbent on her to provide proof. She hasn't. She can't.

Claim 2: Therapists are brainwashing PTSD patients into believing that they'll be disabled for life.

The vast majority of cases of PTSD either resolve on their own or are responsive to treatment. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--the very manual used by the mental health establishment that Wente denigrates--half of all cases of PTSD resolve within a few months. Another 20% of cases resolve within the first year after the trauma. Even among chronic cases that last for years or decades, treatment is often effective in reducing the severity of symptoms and allowing people to return to normal social functioning even if symptoms of anxiety continue. (A good overview of treatment options can be found here.)

But early identification and intervention are critical. According to the U.S. Veterans Administration:

Extensive research indicates that early distress and symptoms of PTSD are not very good predictors of a long-term prognosis. Thus, while Hoge et al. (2004) reported that 18% of soldiers newly redeployed from Iraq have PTSD--a rate that is alarmingly high--it is likely that this rate will decrease over time. Studies suggest that in the face of severe military service demands, including combat, most men and women do remarkably well across the lifespan. [...]

For those soldiers who don't recover, the most troubling aspect of military-related PTSD is its chronic course. There is evidence that once veterans develop military-related PTSD their symptoms remain chronic across the lifespan and are resistant to treatments that have been shown to work with other forms of chronic PTSD. Thus, it is vitally important to provide early intervention to reduce the risk of chronic impairment in veterans.

Unfortunately, the prejudice and derisive attitudes of Wente and her American counterparts stand in the way of these servicemembers getting the early intervention they need.

Claim 3: PTSD is just like normal worries and stresses, and sufficiently "resilient" people get over their worries and stresses without help.

Conservatives never seem to get tired of belittling severe traumas by pointing out their superficial similarities to minor traumas. (Remember the "fraternity hazing" analogies about Abu Ghraib?) There is no excuse for this kind of unconscionable dishonesty. It's as if Wente were to dismiss and minimize the consequences of blindness based on the argument that sometimes everyone has to strain their eyes to see in dim light. Even if you're heartless enough to doubt the testimony of people with PTSD, the altered neurochemistry is undeniable.

None of this information is hard to find, even without the resources of one of Canada's largest newspapers. The entire first page of Google hits for "Satel PTSD" are either articles by Satel (Wente's only "scientific" source), or articles debunking her claims about overinflated PTSD diagnoses. Wente really had to work hard to avoid evidence that Satel is not credible. Either she's so incompetent that she can't manage a Google search, or she has an agenda. We vote for the latter.

Interestingly, this column isn't the first time Wente has written about PTSD in the Canadian military. Back in May of 2005, the Globe and Mail published a different column of hers that could have been the current column's more inflammatory cousin. The arguments were identical, although the tone was even more openly derisive: there are so many cases of PTSD these days that they must all be faking it, many of those cases sound absurd on paper (especially when the paper is the Globe and Mail and the columnist describing the cases is Margaret Wente), isn't it obvious that they're all just in it for the cold hard cash. Her closing line was even "But resilence is out of fashion. Besides, it won't get you a cheque." One underresearched, ideology-laden column might be a passing fancy, but two certainly smacks of an agenda, or even an obsession. We can't help but wonder what might drive Wente to write what amounts to the same column twice--could it be that she didn't manage to convince anyone a year ago, so she decided to tone down the rhetoric and recycle her original words once the casualties in Afghanistan had started mounting and the polls had started indicating a dip in support for the mission?

Although Wente is quick to declare that doubting the validity of PTSD is "unfashionable," in fact, with her commentary, she joins a whole framework of American conservatives with close ties to the Bush Administration who are currently engaged in an effort to discredit the entire concept of PTSD--particularly the notions that it is common and frequently disabling. Why do so many conservatives in both countries want to deny the reality of PTSD? On the American side, many are motivated by a reflexive disapproval of federal spending, and a corresponding desire to decrease spending on psychiatric treatment and disability benefits for servicemembers and veterans. Others fear that honesty about the prevalence of PTSD will hurt the war effort:

Dr. Susan Mather, a former top [U.S. Veterans Administration] official who retired in January as its chief public health officer [says that] "They already have a recruitment problem...the parents of these youth, if they think their children will come back from the military experience changed forever--which they undoubtedly will be; not only changed but disabled by the experience, mentally as well as physically--they are going to be a lot less anxious to have these kids join up. And there's a feeling that if this gets too much publicity and appears to be too widespread, it will hurt recruitment."

But neither of those pragmatic reasons explains the fervor of their attacks on PTSD-disabled vets, or the contempt that drips from Wente's words as she writes about young soldiers in trouble. It seems that there are deeper ideological factors at work. Generally speaking, any argument that individuals may be helpless to escape their life circumstances is threatening to the conservative ideology of personal responsibility. Social psychology research demonstrates that conservatives are more likely to hold the implicit worldview that bad things don't happen to good people, or, conversely, that the troubles people suffer are generally deserved. Finally, conservative discomfort with PTSD is also motivated by the perceived need for aggressive support of the war effort. It's as if they believe that negative effects of war must never be acknowledged, or the case for military action will collapse. In Canada, this is currently being expressed as denial that Canadians are even engaged in war in Afghanistan--the preferred conservative terminology is "peacemaking." (Hello, Orwell!) Clearly, that case collapses if large numbers of Canadian troops engaged in such a mild, inoffensive activity are found to be suffering from major psychiatric trauma as a result.

But the hysterical denial of war's negative effects is most common among conservatives who are far removed from the actual work of combat. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman--a retired U.S. Army Ranger and a professor at West Point, the eminent U.S. Army military university--paints a very different picture:

It is essential to acknowledge that good ends have been and will continue to be accomplished through combat. Many democracies owe their very existence to successful combat. Few individuals will deny the need for combat against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II. And around the world the price of civilization is paid every day by military units on peacekeeping operations and domestic police forces who are forced to engage in close combat. There have been and will continue to be times and places where combat is unavoidable, but when a society requires its police and armed forces to participate in combat it is essential to fully comprehend the magnitude of the inevitable psychological toll.

Exactly so. If you believe that war is sometimes necessary, then it is your special obligation to be aware of the human cost of what you are asking your soldiers to do, and to mitigate the damage--with early treatment, when possible, and a supportive safety net for those who don't respond to treatment--to the greatest possible extent. More and more, the military recognizes that. Why don't the conservative hawks?