The answer to Arnold Isaacs' question — about the possibility of institutional military moral injury — is "yes"

04 December 2019

Today, we look at cognitive dissonance

Between what we say we do — and what we actually do.

This example regards the American military as an institution.

You may have heard about "moral injury"

Arnold Isaacs defines the concept this way:

Moral injury is the lasting mental and emotional result of an assault on the conscience -- a memory . . . of "perpetrating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations."

Let's apply this idea . . .

. . . to the US military's Forever War's constantly dissonant posturing.

In that regard, Arnold Isaacs posed the following question:

Has the U.S. military as an institution, not just its individual service members, morally injured itself over the last 18 years?

This is a military force that never stops declaring it's the best and strongest in the world, but has not successfully concluded a significant war for nearly 30 years or maybe longer.

[I]s it unreasonable to wonder if . . . [the] wide gap between goals and actual accomplishments, might leave a collective sense of sorrow, grief, regret, shame, and alienation?

That's the list of feelings that Glenn Orris, a Navy chaplain, displayed on a chart in his symposium presentation and specified as the ones that keep morally injured service members awake at night.

I'm posing this as a question, not offering it as an answer.

My answer to Isaacs' question is — "yes"

Even if the American Military Institution deliberately fails to recognize its contribution to thoroughly decapitating former American values concerning:

peace preservation

justice

strategic effectiveness

moral proportionality

and

modeled ethics . . .

. . . its lack of confessed insight does not negate the injuries that it imposes (virtually every day), during the Forever War that it created.

Denial simply contributes to psychic harm that many probably feel, during their dark hours.

The moral? — Ain't what we used to be

After 9/11's grossly disproportionate response to terror, the United States has (arguably) become an immoral cancer that feeds on fear and propaganda — solely to profit its Military Industrial Complex.

After 18 years of strategically useless killing, destruction and harming — our militaristic culture has no legitimate ethical, or "real world" excuses left for its behavior.

Murderous greed is not a respect-worthy thing.

Not surprisingly, the more morally decent a participant is, the deeper his and her subsequent feelings of loss in having witnessed or participated in obviously immoral (or unnecessary) actions and happenings.

This is a no brainer.

Think back upon your own life, military or not. Aren't there instances in which you violated your own deeply held precepts about worthy behavior?

Those memories probably still hurt. Afterward, you probably strove to avoid repeat.

So, what is wrong with our military institution? Why doesn't it learn from its ethical and strategic errors?

Is this proudly displayed obtuseness just infatuation with greed and power?

Or is it an intentionally displayed and camouflaging mask? Do institutions elevate stupidity to demonic levels, as a matter of course?

Presumably (along that line of logic), the larger and more powerful the organization and its web, the more wrongs-dispensing both become.

Now, guess who owns the most powerful (fungus thread-like) institution in the United States.

PeteFree.com

The answer to Arnold Isaacs' question — about the possibility of institutional military moral injury — is "yes"