Distractions are easy to come by in today’s tumultuous journalism environment.
Lurking beneath the superficial surface of American headline news is the sobering story of our nation’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their lingering effects on our military personnel here at home.
With casualty updates and battlefield reports often relegated to the back pages of newspapers or the streaming footnotes of cable news networks, it’s easy for Americans to feel increasingly isolated from our nation’s oversea efforts.
For soldiers returning home from the Middle East, war remains part of their daily lives. Learning to cope with life on the home front after combat is a constant struggle.
Earlier this month, Iraq war veteran Charles Whittington was barred from the Community College of Baltimore County campus after writing an essay detailing his psychological troubles and “addiction to killing.”
Whittington initially wrote the paper for his English class under the title “War is a Drug.” He received an A for his efforts and was encouraged by his professor to seek publication. The essay was published in the school’s newspaper on Oct. 26, according to the Baltimore Sun.
“Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive,” Whittington writes. “I had a really hard time … when I returned to the United States, because turning this addiction off was impossible.”
He goes on to say, “War does things to me that are so hard to explain to someone that [has not gone] through everything that I went through. That’s part of the reason why I want to go back to war.”
Whittington’s article drew immediate backlash from concerned faculty and students. Community college officials responded by barring Whittington from campus until he had received an updated psychological evaluation, according to ABC News. Administrators cited the 2007 Virginia Tech
shootings as the primary reason for their ruling.
Whittington, who faced heavy combat in Army infantry in Iraq, has already received treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury and has assured administrators he presents no threat to others. Nevertheless, the controversy continued to spiral as media outlets caught wind of the story.
Whittington’s severe emotional struggles are by no means common to all veterans of the War on Terror. But they are emblematic of many other worrying trends amongst many young officers who return home from grueling overseas duty — only to face a largely ambivalent citizenry and depleted job environment.
Perhaps the most chilling trend comes from the increasing number of military suicides reported during the last few years.
Through October of this year, there were 252 confirmed or suspected suicides among active and non-active Army members, compared to 242 suicides in all of 2009. The largest spike came from non-active duty soldiers, who are committing suicide at nearly twice the 2009 rate, according to USA Today.
Time Magazine writer Mark Thompson reports that from the invasion of Afghanistan until the summer of 2009, the U.S. military has lost 761 soldiers in combat. But a higher number in the service — 817 — took their own lives over the same period.
Not all soldiers who return home from overseas duty suffer from such extreme cases of stress and anxiety. But to truly understand just how profound of an impact America’s two “invisible” wars are having on our society, we must not neglect the hidden psychological costs of war and the toll it continues to take on veterans of all ages.
Many soldiers who have been deployed into combat are our fellow college students. Some might even be our classmates.
No matter what side of the war debate you stand on, these veterans deserve sympathy and understanding for all the sacrifices they’ve made and the emotional struggles they continue to endure.
Perhaps once we understand the hidden costs of war, we’ll be more cautious to avoid them in the future.
Scott Burns is a 21-year-old economics and history senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter
@TDR_sburns.
 
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Contact Scott Burns at [email protected]