{"id":56111,"date":"2025-11-10T11:38:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T19:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=56111"},"modified":"2025-11-10T16:20:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T00:20:47","slug":"approaching-veterans-day-military-moral-injury-violence-and-the-parable-of-the-guinea-worm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/10\/approaching-veterans-day-military-moral-injury-violence-and-the-parable-of-the-guinea-worm\/","title":{"rendered":"Approaching Veterans Day: Military Moral Injury, Violence, and the Parable of the Guinea Worm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veterans? Who are they? And how in the world did they get a \u201cday\u201d? After all, here\u2019s a curious fact: since World War II ended in victory, the United States, often seen as the greatest power on planet Earth, has indeed fought a seemingly endless series of wars from Korea and Vietnam in the last century to Afghanistan and Iraq in this one (and all sorts of more minor conflicts as well) without ever \u2014 yes, ever! \u2014 winning any of them. In May, it was clear enough that, at some deep level, Donald Trump had grasped that reality because he seemed eager to take November 11th away from America\u2019s veterans and rename it \u201cVictory Day for World War I\u201d (with May 8th to be declared \u201cVictory Day for World War II\u201d). Admittedly, he backed down<\/a> on that fast, but it still tells you something about this world of ours that, 80 years after World War II ended, when it comes to the country now heading for<\/a> a trillion-dollar \u201cdefense\u201d budget, there hasn\u2019t been a victory in sight for decades.<\/p>\n

And that hasn\u2019t stopped Donald Trump and crew, whether in Somalia (yes, Somalia!), where his administration has launched a record 89 airstrikes<\/a> so far this year, or in the Caribbean Sea, where it\u2019s been ramping up American forces (including sending in an aircraft carrier task force<\/a>) and making a habit out of blowing the boats<\/a> of supposed drug smugglers out of the water there and in the Pacific Ocean, too, at least 18<\/a> of them as I was writing this (killing at least 70 people), and possibly preparing for an invasion not just of Venezuela, but also conceivably of various cities in this country.<\/p>\n

And yes, you know that you\u2019re in a new world when, with the government shutdown still ongoing, the president pays part of the salaries of the U.S. military with a $130 million donation<\/a> from one of his billionaire supporters.<\/p>\n

Welcome to his version of Veterans Day 2025. Now, let TomDispatch<\/em><\/a>\u00a0regular<\/a> Kelly Denton-Borhaug give you some sense of how endless disastrous conflicts have affected America\u2019s own troops. ~ \u00a0Tom\u00a0Engelhardt<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

An Unexpected Encounter with Compassion<\/strong><\/h3>\n

by Kelly Denton-Borhaug<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve written for TomDispatch<\/em> and there\u2019s a reason for that.\u00a0About 16 months ago, I experienced a catastrophic car crash. An SUV veered across the double yellow line of the highway I was traveling on and hit my little Chevy Spark head-on \u2014 on the driver\u2019s side. I\u2019ve been told that I\u2019m lucky to be alive. I was left with multiple injuries and have been on the slow road to recovery.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always seen myself as a person who pushes forward to overcome obstacles. Since the collision, however, doing so has become more complicated, because I\u2019m learning that recovery is a long road, filled with detours I couldn\u2019t have predicted. Time and again, my expectations have been turned upside down. I\u2019ve had to take deep breaths, sit back, and pay close attention.<\/p>\n

A few months into recovery, I was invited to attend a day-retreat organized by a local veterans\u2019 moral leadership group. Those vets live with what\u2019s known as military moral injury<\/a> (in some cases going back decades).\u00a0For years now, I\u2019ve been researching and writing about the devastating consequences<\/a> of the militarization of this country and the armed violence we loosed on the world in the twenty-first century. I\u2019ve been listening carefully and trying to more deeply understand the stories of veterans from America\u2019s disastrous wars in my own lifetime.<\/p>\n

Now, given my own condition, a new window has opened for me. I can\u2019t help but see more clearly the visceral experience of recovery, including moral recovery. So, I found myself sitting in that circle of a dozen vets, the only woman among them. And I soon had to catch my breath, because, as I briefly described what I was experiencing, they responded in a way I hadn\u2019t expected, expressing their own profound vulnerability, understanding of, and empathy for my plight. I probably shouldn\u2019t have been surprised at how they \u201cgot it\u201d in a way that even my loved ones struggled to grasp when it came to my own journey through the challenging nature of recovery.<\/p>\n

Intolerable Suffering<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most civilians know little or nothing about the experiences of vets who live with what\u2019s become known as \u201cmilitary moral injury.\u201d It\u2019s been described as \u201cintolerable suffering<\/a>\u201d that arises from a deep assault on one\u2019s moral core. Think about facing horrific suffering caused by violence you not only had to witness, but could do nothing to stop. You probably were even trained and mandated to perpetrate it. Sooner or later, such a dystopian world invariably slices through whatever bedrock values you\u2019ve been taught and begins dissolving your sense of self. That\u2019s military moral injury and it\u2019s been linked to the epidemic of self-harm and suicide<\/a> among former members of the U.S. military that continues to this day.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I\u2019ve come to understand that military moral injury is rooted in being exposed to unsparing violence. It erupts as a consequence of witnessing violence, perpetrating it, and\/or being on the receiving end of its death-dealing forms of betrayal. Moral injury bursts forth as people find themselves powerless to stop the suffering violence begets. War is a deep assault on life itself (both figuratively and literally) and violence isn\u2019t a tool that a person picks up or sets down without consequences.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, in this century, we in this country became woefully adept at denying the impact of our own violence on ourselves and the rest of the world. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton called that phenomenon \u201cpsychic numbing<\/a>.\u201d We tend to minimize the violence we\u2019ve committed globally and avoid facing what it\u2019s done to our own soldiers, burying any awareness of it deep in our subconscious minds. \u00a0It\u2019s too painful, too scary, too horrible to live with (if you don\u2019t have to) and, when we\u2019ve been so deeply mixed up in it, too shameful to stay with for any length of time.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the penetrating cultural and systematic violence of American militarism and militarization globally has shaped all our lives, even if it\u2019s only the 1% of us who have actually done the dirty work<\/a> and suffer the most. My own work has helped me see how the militarized violence of the post-9\/11 period, orchestrated by my own country, is now being turned inward with increasingly violent military incursions<\/a> into our nation\u2019s cities.<\/p>\n

In my research, I\u2019ve investigated the obscene<\/a> level of material resources this country has dedicated to militarization in this century, our unparalleled \u201cempire<\/a>\u201d of military bases (domestically and internationally), and the ways that the violence of militarism has dripped<\/a> into our own lives, culturally and institutionally. And make no mistake, subterranean forms of violence regularly burst into direct armed violence. We tell ourselves that violence is like a coat that you can put on and take off when you choose, but that\u2019s a tragically mistaken way of thinking. Violence works its way into your body, even into your soul. Then it festers there, eating away at your capacity for being human \u2014 your longing for loving, honest relationships; your care for yourself and others; and your deep connection to other living beings. Even worse, in a culture that glorifies violence and has made it into something sacred<\/a>, such dynamics are excruciatingly hard for us to see clearly.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the veterans I sat with that day were in recovery from just such an exposure to violence and they understood me. They recognized what was happening to me because of their own struggles to grasp and admit their injuries, especially their moral injuries, and get themselves on the highway of healing and repair.<\/p>\n

Moral Injury and the Guinea Worm<\/strong><\/p>\n

These last years, I\u2019ve been trying to find words that truly describe the experience of military moral injury. In that context, let me share a story with you. Some weeks ago, I was driving and listening to NPR on the radio when I heard a reporter launch into a story<\/a> about the near-eradication of a terrible plague, Guinea worm disease<\/a>, or GWD. At one point, that parasitic malady had debilitated an estimated 3.5 million people living in 20 different African and Asian nations.<\/p>\n

A \u201csearingly painful\u201d disease, Guinea worm infects people who drink water tainted with its larvae. Those eggs then grow into worms that can be up to three feet long inside the human body (including children\u2019s bodies). Think of them as long thin ropes. Eventually, the worms break through the skin in burning blisters, bursting out of the body. One sufferer said that it was \u201cmore painful than childbirth,\u201d and the process of extraction can take weeks as the worm spools out like something from a horror film.<\/p>\n

The pain is so awful that some people in natural settings will seek out water in streams or ponds for relief from the burning sensation. But as they plunge their limbs in, they release thousands more Guinea worm larvae, contaminating the water. Then, the cycle repeats itself as others drink that same water.<\/p>\n

As I listened to the story that day, I could feel my face twisting into a grimace. What a horrific and frightening affliction, I thought.<\/p>\n

The Dream That Visited Me<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reaching home, I continued with my day\u2019s work \u2014 a new book focused on a set of in-depth interviews with military veterans living with moral injury. I hope to shine a stronger light on their voices, while tracing their journeys of reparation, recovery, and the renewal of hope. But that night, a dream about the Guinea worm awakened me.<\/p>\n

It was as if my subconscious had made a connection too awful for me to make consciously. In the dark of night, I realized that violence is like the Guinea worm. In the United States, people thoughtlessly \u2014 even in a celebratory fashion \u2014 drink it in, absorbing it into their bodies and generally thinking little of being exposed to it.<\/p>\n

One common theme from the interviews I\u2019m conducting with veterans is how many of their fathers and mothers encouraged them to enlist in the military when they were teenagers, some just 17 years old. Their parents obviously didn\u2019t wish them to be hurt. They just believed that such service and the discipline that went with it would \u201cmake a man out of you,\u201d while giving them a useful trade in life or earning them money to go to college or buy a home. They generally weren\u2019t prepared to consider how encouraging their children to enlist might lead to exposure to relentless violence in their lives (if, that is, their children even lived through it). It really was akin to taking their child to a stream to drink water infected with the Guinea worm.<\/p>\n

The violence their children, now the veterans I was dealing with, would witness, or even mete out and absorb, had melted their humanity. As one veteran put it, \u201cI became cold, unfeeling.\u201d It wasn\u2019t until decades later, when his daughter accompanied him to a therapy appointment and, weeping, told him about the impact his iciness had on her, that he began to grasp the cost of war not only to his own life, but to hers as well.<\/p>\n

When I asked another veteran, \u201cWhat exactly was injured in you?\u201d he responded, \u201cI became cruel, unnecessarily.\u201d He had been acclimated into a military culture where soldiers in training were \u201cdisciplined\u201d by those of slightly higher rank through regular physical assaults, being slapped, hit in the head or groin, having things thrown at them. He became very good at such behavior himself, even reveling in it, until, many years later, his life fell apart, and he saw what he had both done and lost.<\/p>\n

Another veteran described to me the results of the violence in his life this way: \u201cMy heart was broken, and it was as though poison was injected into me.\u201d That veteran had enlisted at the age of 17 in the military\u2019s \u201cdelayed entry program\u201d and endured three deployments to war-torn Iraq. When he enlisted, he hoped to use his military benefits to become a pediatrician later in life. But after his service, being in the presence of children shamed and devastated him. And there was no one he knew who understood what he was experiencing.<\/p>\n

Military moral injury is like the Guinea worm that festers in a person\u2019s body until it begins to burst out, painfully and devastatingly. And we\u2019re now in a culture and society in which all too many of those we claim to esteem, our servicemembers and veterans, are living with just such pain. They say it\u2019s like \u201closing your soul<\/a>.\u201d Interviewing them, I now understand that perhaps the worst part of that pain is the isolation they experience. Their fellow citizens simply don\u2019t understand what they\u2019re going through and, in fact, regularly avoid dealing with it.<\/p>\n

Eradicating the Violence That Worms Its Way into Our Souls<\/strong><\/p>\n

A new documentary<\/a> tells the story of how Guinea worm disease, \u201cborn out of poverty and perpetuating poverty,\u201d has been nearly eradicated. Even more surprising, the overcoming of that devastating parasite did not happen through the development of fancy medicines or vaccines, but by distinctly \u201clow-tech\u201d means. Activists on the ground tirelessly used the power of education and discussion, so that those potentially most affected could learn how to both filter the water they used and avoid spreading the larvae through water. Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center devoted funding to and publicized support for the campaign to bring the disease under control, and that cause remained front and center for Carter until his death.<\/p>\n

One such activist is Garang Buk Buk Piol,<\/a> a former child soldier in Sudan. \u201cCarrying an AK-47 when he was 12 years old, he learned how to slay another human being.\u201d But according to the documentary\u2019s director<\/a>, \u201cThat child turned into a Guinea worm warrior, a philanthropist and an activist amongst his people.\u201d He has spent his life as a teacher in South Sudan\u2019s schools, building programs to fight Guinea worm disease, \u201cwaging peace and building hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a country that engaged in so many disastrous wars in this century (with another one in Venezuela possibly looming on the horizon), the veterans I\u2019ve been interviewing were left in the unavoidable position of having to \u201cswallow\u201d violence alone, intimately, and on a profound scale. Today, like Buk Buk, many in the moral engagement group have taken up the work of healing, reparation, and community building, even while they still struggle with the consequences of their own violence and that of others in their lives.<\/p>\n

And what about the rest of us? I experienced the violence of a serious car crash and my life won\u2019t ever be the same as before. But the crushing collision with violence that too many of our veterans are still dealing with is so much more horrible than anything I (or most of the rest of us) could possibly imagine. Meanwhile, the growing violence<\/a> of my country (and these days, in<\/em> my country) since 9\/11, continues to \u2014 yes! \u2014 worm its way into our bodies and souls, even if so many of us aren\u2019t really aware of it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve become accustomed to believing that there is no other way except through violence. But that is patently false. This Veterans Day, I\u2019ll be thinking about the sort of acts I can muster to respond to the latest assaults of violence that are penetrating our lives, city streets, workplaces, courts, universities, federal institutions, access to healthcare, food security, and all too much else. Instead of responding with fear, collusion, or apathy, I\u2019m making plans to resist violence with others through acts of healing,<\/a> humor,<\/a> love of neighbor,<\/a> and building hope<\/a>. I hope you are, too.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 Kelly Denton-Borhaug<\/p>\n

Kelly Denton-Borhaug<\/strong>, a TomDispatch<\/em><\/a> regular, has long been investigating how religion and violence collide in American war-culture. She teaches in the global religions department at Moravian University. She is the author of two books, U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation<\/a><\/em> and, more recently, And Then Your Soul is Gone: Moral Injury and U.S. War-Culture<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Follow\u00a0TomDispatch\u00a0on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and join us on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer\u2019s new dystopian\u00a0novel,\u00a0<\/em>Songlands<\/a>\u00a0(the final one in his Splinterlands series),\u00a0Beverly Gologorsky\u2019s novel\u00a0<\/em>Every Body Has a Story<\/a>,\u00a0and Tom Engelhardt\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>A Nation Unmade by War<\/a>, as well as Alfred McCoy\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power<\/a>, John Dower\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II<\/a>, and Ann Jones\u2019s<\/em> They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America\u2019s Wars: The Untold Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veterans? Who are they? And how in the world did they get a \u201cday\u201d? After all, here\u2019s a curious fact: since World War II ended in victory, the United States, often seen as the greatest power on planet Earth, has indeed fought a seemingly endless series of wars from Korea and Vietnam in the last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":683,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1373,1287],"class_list":["post-56111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56111"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56118,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56111\/revisions\/56118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56111"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=56111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}