This morning, I read an article from the Boston Globe, about the impossible position that military commanders have been put into is illustrated poignantly by Tyler Boudreau, a former Marine captain.
In Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus must pass through the narrow strait that is guarded by two monsters.
As Homer sang:
Next came Charybdis, who swallows the sea in a whirlpool, then spits it up again. Avoiding this we skirted the cliff where Scylla exacts her toll. Each of her six slavering maws grabbed a sailor and wolfed him down.
Odysseus was faced with a choice: which monster to bring his men too close to? He chose Scylla, anticipating that he would lose sailors, but fewer than if he were to risk the Charybdis. Still, the six sailors were a knowing sacrifice made by Odysseus.
(Johann Gussli)
Captain Boudreau describes a similar dilemma. Do you show sympathy toward your returning Marines who ask for psychiatric help to deal with PTSD? Or, do you deny their requests and tell them to suck it up?
My immediate response, of course, is that you tend to the Marines' psychic wounds. We know that PTSD destroys lives: we have an entire literature of "shell shock," "battle fatigue," and, now, PTSD.
But now, consider Boudreau's problem. New orders had come down from on high to take requests to seek psychiatric help seriously; perhaps more important, the command had made an attempt to destigmatize asking for help.
I was in Iraq in 2004. From the day we had arrived home to the day we were scheduled to return to Iraq was exactly nine months. The pressure to prepare ourselves quickly was intense. When the first Marine came to my office and asked to see the psychiatrist about some troubling issues from our time in Iraq, I was sympathetic. I said, "No problem." When another half dozen or so Marines approached me with the same request, I was only somewhat concerned.
But when all of them and several more returned from their appointments with recommendations for discharge, I'll admit I was alarmed. Suddenly I was not as concerned about their mental health as I was about my company's troop strength. Manpower is not an endless spigot. …
Faced with losing so many members of his unit, Boudreau finds himself becoming less and less sympathetic to those who continue to approach him. Why? Because he was afraid that those missing Marines would put the remaining Marines in danger, due to low troop levels and the loss of key positions.
A commander cannot serve in earnest both the mission and the psychologically wounded. When the two come in conflict, as they routinely do as a result of repeated deployments, the commander will feel an internal and institutional pressure to maintain the integrity of his unit. I did. And there begins a grassroots, albeit subconscious, resistance to Mullen's plan to destigmatize the people who seek help. Because as much as I cared about my Marines, it was difficult to look upon those who sought to leave without suspicion or even mild contempt.
Where psychological and traumatic brain injuries can still, to some extent, be doubted and debated, and when their treatment stands in opposition to troop strength and to mission accomplishment, the needs of those wounded service members will be subordinated.
The result by necessity, which we are already witnessing today, will be dubious treatment protocols within the military aimed at retention, diagnosed soldiers returning to the battlefield, and a slowly diminished emphasis on screening. It will happen. It has begun already. There will be no policy shift. There will be no change in the language we hear from our leaders. But we will know all too well that our soldiers are still not being properly treated by the ever-increasing number of suicides that occur.
The pressure from the top is to allow service people to seek psychological help without any kind of derision from their commanding officer. At the same time, the commanding officer is trying to keep all of the persons under his/her command safe. Captain Boudreau argues that that is just not possible, and so, he, too, chooses between the Scylla and the Charibdes. But which?
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America posted on March 6, 2009, that 18 soldiers had killed themselves during the month of February, 2009.
"For the second month in a row, the Army suicide numbers reflect a deepening crisis in our military. The alarm bells could not be louder, and we must start listening. When this many soldiers are taking their own lives, we need to go beyond suicide prevention. We need to reassess the entire way our country is addressing psychological injuries. These brave men and women deserve a dramatically improved support system, starting with mandatory face-to-face mental health screening when they come home. We look forward to a strong response from DOD, the VA, and the President." Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
For those of you keeping track, there were 18 reported dead in Operation Iraqi Freedom (most combat-related, although a couple were from injuries sustained in other ways.) Which means that for every serviceperson killed in Iraq, another is taking his or her life upon returning home.
This is obscene.
We live in a nation that continually preaches that the highest duty one can perform in service to one's nation is to serve its military. We post television commercials that demonstrate the virility of the Marine battling evil with his long, phallic-like sword; we have army ads now that tell teenagers how to talk to parents about joining the army. We promise job skills and career opportunities. The chance to see new lands. The chance to be part of a brotherhood, of something greater than oneself.
And when we have lured them, Charibdes-like, into the whirlpool of Iraq and Afghanistan, we watch them drown in their nightmares, panic attacks, depressions, uncontrolled rages, and despair. They get sucked down into the widening gyre, and we hear not their screams.
It's a hell of a choice we are making. To sacrifice a few in hopes of saving more, but each time we send servicemembers back to Iraq and Afghanistan, we increase their chances of winding up in a graveyard—either at enemy hands, or by hands that they once loved, but now loathe.