PTSD denials

The March issue of Playboy has an article worth reading about how the Dept. of Defense and Pentagon are severely under representing (and, by many accounts, under diagnosing), as well as failing to provide treatment for, the estimated 15-20% of soldiers serving in Iraq (and returning home) with post traumatic stress (PTSD).

As much as this administration harps on supporting the troops, and continues to characterize those who disagree with the war as "anti-troop", I find it disappointing (but not surprising) that they're actively undermining the health and welfare of those same troops- even beyond the obvious dangers of sending them into war- by limiting their access to mental health resources for political reasons.

The article's author (Mark Boals) makes a good point about the political ramifications for those who supported (and continue to support) the war if it were made apparent just how many soldiers are coming home profoundly damaged psychologically. He says, "Healthy, happy soldiers bespeak a just war... A ruined soldier bespeaks a ruinous war," and he uses the examples of WWII and Vietnam to good effect.

Despite attempts to conjure some connection with Nazis and fascists, in this war there is no clearly defined enemy and, really, no shared principle for soldiers (or the population at large) to rally around. The war on terror is a war on an idea, a concept- and it's not even a concept everyone can agree on. The word "terror" (and all of its manifestations) are starting to become nonsense- semantically satiated and sufficiently indistinct in definition that the words have begun to sound like gibberish. They might as well be telling us we're on a snipe hunt.

This war is a messy, complicated political chess game, but the pawns are real people with lives and families. That the administration would be ostensibly looking out for these people (and criticizing those who disagree with sending them to fight in the first place) while simultaneously undermining their access to the mental health diagnoses and resources many of them need (as a direct result of this war) is one hypocrisy too many. The administration doesn't appear to know what they're doing, and their reasons for continuing the war seem increasingly spurious. The American people are, by and large, fed up. The majority of soldiers serving in Iraq are being exposed daily to direct combat and, unlike in past wars, are unable to escape the anxiety even in guarded bases, or to spend enough time at home to decompress between deployments. Under those conditions it's surprising that the numbers for PTSD aren't higher. And absurd and embarrassing that those soldiers who are suffering are not being given accurate diagnoses and care.