Most of the Iraqi veterans of the 1991 Gulf War didn’t have Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, or PTSD, a condition which has afflicted thousands of American veterans from many wars.
That’s not, however, because the Iraqis weren’t under as much stress. It is because their stress never ended. Years after the war ended, they still had ongoing traumatic stress syndrome.
They had gone from being bombed, strafed and defeated back to a life marked by quote, “subsequent hardships such as oppression, unemployment, and lack of food.”
Dr. Bengt Arnetz and his Wayne State team of researchers had a goal with this study: To contribute to the understanding of the long-term mental effects of war trauma.
Clearly, they have done so. But if this study is widely read, it may have another very valuable effect, one which may never have occurred to the authors. What this study does is remind us that the soldiers on the other side are human beings.
That is, I think, important – especially in our present conflict in Iraq. In wartime, each side always demonizes the enemy. But in our wars in the Middle East, we haven’t demonized the other side, we’ve made them invisible. They are merely flickering shadows.
That happened partly by accident. American journalists, even those stationed abroad, are woefully inadequate when it comes to our understanding of Arabic customs and history, not to mention the languages. We generally are unable to interview Iraqis and present them as people, rather than statistics.
Even if we could find, say, an insurgent, or his or her wife or mother, most of us have no easy way to communicate.
But I think the Pentagon also likes this situation. They do not release casualty estimates for the other side, as they did in Vietnam. Nobody ever hears how many Iraqi soldiers have suffered or died. America has lost, we know, more than 4,100 soldiers since the war started more than five years ago.
Add the lives of hundreds of civilian contractors. Plus at least thirty thousand seriously wounded. That’s a fairly large roll of suffering.
Yet it must be tiny compared to the lists of Iraqi injured and dead. No two sources agree on how many Iraqis have died, but the Iraqi health ministry estimates at least a hundred and fifty thousand violent deaths. Most other sources say far more.
What is certain is that people are still dying, in a nation where safety and security are largely an abstraction.
You don’t need to be a statistician to know that the number of mental health disorders as a result must be far higher than the Wayne State team found after the far briefer war in 1991.
That may not mean the war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do. But you have to wonder if those who start these wars factor costs like these into account. I am afraid in this case I know the answer.
No ground braking material here..Jack is singing to the choir and I will admit doing a decent job as a soloist for a change..
Excellent topic and commentary...
Posted by: Thrasher | November 18, 2008 at 04:37 PM