The video of four U.S. Marines urinating on three dead Taliban fighters has ricocheted around the world with viral speed, rightly provoking moral outrage abroad and shame at home. The act is a violation of professional military conduct, and the fundamental moral requirement in war of showing dignity and respect to the dead.read more […]
Writing about guilt feelings can open the floodgates to readers' own painful and unresolved guilt, but also to outrage at those who should feel guilt, but don't. The probing and rich comments I received on line and in email about my essay, "The Moral Logic of Guilt," touched on both responses and set me thinking more about the appropriate […]
If there is one thing we have learned from returning war veterans - especially those of the last decade - it's that the emotional reality of the soldier at home is often at odds with that of the civilian public they left behind.read more […]
On a sticky Sunday, June morning in the Washington DC area, I drove my daughter to a triathlon at a Navy base some 2 hours south of our home. The event (3/4 mile swim, 6 mile bike ride, and 3 mile run) drew a lot of military athletes, but also civilians interested in the same exhilaration of hard, physical activity.read more […]
The following Time.com article on the Army’s battle against suicide highlights the dilemma of a smaller Army fighting long term wars. Our soldiers and their families who have served multiple deployments carry enormous emotional and moral stress. As a nation, we need to come to terms with this and figure out a way to reduce the number of back to back deployments we send our soldiers on.
The recent www.wikilinks.org publication of the gun-camera video of the tragic deaths of two Reuters camera men in July of 2007 has generated quite a bit of discussion on the New York Times blog pages. This incident captures the troubling issue of pilots’ moral insulation and humor on the battlefield. Anthony Martinez, an infantryman and an experienced aerial footage analyst, provides an interesting perspective on the wikileaks video.
Suzanne Opton captures the face of a soldier’s vulnerability,
so often shielded from the public. Her work has been shown on billboards
throughout the US and in the DC metro. Do have a look.
For more on the roll of doctors in interrogations, I recommend reading the letters to the editor in NY Times, March 4, 2010: “How to Treat Those Who Aid Torture”
I highly recommend the potent and much needed expose of doctors and psychologists involved in gov’t sponsored torture. Read Doctors without Morals by Rubenstein and Xenakis.
