An article entitled Wartime PTSD cases jumped roughly 50 pct. in 2007 brings us back to the reality of what war does to so many of the people sent to fight it. The fact that we have a syndrome with a name does not mean that there are others who have been scarred in ways that have not yet been given a name and may never be. They too, if they exist, are victims. Are there other victims? I think so. Back in 1961 Frantz Fannon published The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre).
Frantz Fanon's most famous work, written during and regarding the Algerian struggle for independence from colonial rule. As a psychiatrist, Fanon explored the psychological effect of colonisation on the psyche of a nation as well as its broader implications for building a movement for decolonization.
Pardon me if you don't see the connection here, but I will try to develop it in a convincing way beneath the break.
First let us review the article about today's military victims since it is clearly a problem of huge magnitude in its own right.
The number of troops with new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder jumped by roughly 50 percent in 2007 amid the military buildup in Iraq and increased violence there and in Afghanistan.
Records show roughly 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with the illness, also known as PTSD, since 2003. Officials believe that many more are likely keeping their illness a secret.
"I don't think right now we ... have good numbers," Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker said Tuesday.
Defense officials had not previously disclosed the number of PTSD cases from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Army statistics showed there were nearly 14,000 newly diagnosed cases across the services in 2007 compared with more than 9,500 new cases the previous year and 1,632 in 2003.
It is worth remembering the massive numbers of military personnel who suffered from this and related disorders during the Vietnam conflict. I have diaried about this before.The universal soldier: from Homer to today(Book Rev)
The book Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of National Character Is an excellent source on this. So it is happening again. The article today went on to report:
We're trying very hard to encourage soldiers and families to seek care and to not have them feel in any way, shape or form that we're looking over their shoulder or that we're invading their privacy," Schoomaker told a group of defense writers.
Noting that stigma is a problem in American civilian society, not just the military, he said, "I think that's the preferred way to do it."
The accounting of diagnosed cases released Tuesday shows those hardest hit last year were Marines and Army personnel, the two ground forces bearing the brunt of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army reported more than 10,000 new cases last year, compared with more than 6,800 new cases the previous year. More than 28,000 soldiers altogether were diagnosed with the disorder over the last five years, the data showed.
The Marine Corps had more than 2,100 new cases in 2007, compared with 1,366 in 2006. More than 5,000 Marines have been diagnosed with PTSD since 2003, the data showed.
There have been many who have asked why the opposition to this war is not as active as to the Vietnam War. The absence of the draft is surely a factor, but may I suggest that Fannon is a clue to another, deeper, and more insidious factor. Fannon's thesis as a psychiatrist was that the French were doing the entire Nation's psyche severe harm by conducting the Colonial opression in Algeria. Let's examine the Wikipidea review further:
A controversial introduction to the text by Jean-Paul Sartre presents the thesis as an advocacy of violence (which Sartre has also examined in his then-recent Critique of Dialectical Reason). This focus derives from the book’s opening chapter ‘Concerning Violence’ which is a caustic indictment of colonialism and its legacy. It discusses violence as a means of liberation and a catharsis to subjugation. It also details the violence of colonialism as a process itself. The interpretation of the text as a promotion of violence is argued as a limited way of approaching the text fueled essentially by Sartre’s opening comments.
Further reading can find a thorough critique of nationalism and imperialism while also developing to cover areas such as mental health and the role of intellectuals in revolutionary situations. Fanon goes into great detail explaining that revolutionary groups should look to the lumpenproletariat for the force needed to expel colonists. The lumpenproletariat in traditional Marxist theories are considered the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked class consciousness. Fanon uses the term to refer to those inhabitants of colonized countries who are not involved in industrial production, particularly peasants living outside the cities. He argues that only this group, unlike the industrial proletariat, has sufficient independence from the colonists to successfully make a revolution against them.
Also important is Fanon's view of the role of language and how it molds the position of "natives", or those victimized by colonization. Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth has become a handbook for any and all political leaders faced with any type of decolonization. It is still read in the Pentagon today as advice on dealing with the conflict in Iraq. There are two different English translations in publication; the most recent, by Richard Philcox, is more well-received by scholars.
The original title of the book is an allusion to the opening words of The Internationale.
There was a great deal of attention paid to this book during the Vietnam War. It was discussed with some intensity. Many at the time were convinced that the United states was a new France in the context of Fannon's analysis and that the harm we were doing to ourselves would last and be difficult, if not impossible, to heal.
Then the tone of the opposition to the war changed and people who were willing to talk about such ideas gradually dissapeared. Much of it was due to successful red baiting and the change in tone of opposition to the war from radical ideas back to the electoral politics the establishment was willing to tolerate among the protestors.
I maintain that something was lost in that process. The idea that a National sickness has befallen our Nation was dismissed. Now, as we are once again in a situation where our Nation has clearly descended to such depths again we are constantly told that this war and Vietnam are very different. There are comparisons with lists of details attempting to prove this point. What is being missed is not the lists of facts and details. What is being missed is the fact that like a sick soldier who can not diagnose himself, the Nation has not recovered from a terrible psychic wound and is inflicting more harm on itself as a result. These are difficult ideas to talk about. Where are the experts we can consult on such matters? There are none. Future historians may have some way of seeing the whole of this situation, but we are immersed in it at this very moment and subject to a very potent blindness about our own circumstances.
Yes we are harming members of the military. We empathize with them, at least some of us do. What about our collect self as a Nation? Is it possible that we are very sick and can not know it? It is worth trying to find out before we let the situation worsen. maybe the reason this election is becoming so great a trauma for us is that it is part of an attempt to seek help via new leaders and change. Will it work? Only time will tell. My thesis is that it will have a better chance of working if we confront the process up front and try to help it along. What do you Think?