The Role of Political Practices in Moral Injury: A Study of Afghanistan Veterans

Abstract

While much research has been conducted on military trauma, conceptualizations of deployment-related suffering have been predominantly approached through a medical, individual-focused lens. Since the military is an instrument of the state, it is crucial to expand the conceptual scope to include political processes, particularly for the fast-growing literature on "moral injury," which refers to the emotional impact of perpetrating, witnessing, or falling victim to perceived wrongdoing. This article examines the role of political practices in the onset of moral injury as well as the micropolitical responses of morally injured veterans. A study of the Dutch mission in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, shows that decisions and frames at the political level helped create distressing quandaries on the ground and that in all the ways the political leadership acknowledged the problems that veterans subsequently developed, it also maintained a silence on its direct contribution to these problems, as such perpetuating them. Consequently, veterans tried to make the political leadership take a material and symbolic share in their burden. Clearly, moral conflict may exist both in the veteran and between the veteran and the political domain, and therefore, experiences of institutional betrayal and a resultant search for reparations should be included in theory on moral injury.

Moral injury in relation to public debates: The role of societal misrecognition in moral conflict-colored trauma among soldiers

“…non-cooperation between the Dutch NATO contingent and US-led troops -as well as informal consequences, namely a fear of political repercussions felt at all levels of the military organization (Molendijk 2018b). This fear proved well founded.…”

“…Nevertheless, the image exists, and an image is powerful; it shapes public perceptions and as such influences decision-making(Ringsmose and Børgesen 2001, Dimitriu andGraaf 2016). As I have discussed elsewhere(Molendijk 2018b), the Dutch self-image of possessing strong moral principles encouraged the Dutch government to contribute peacekeepers to…”

Defining Moral Injury Among Military Populations: A Systematic Review

“…Of the top-ranked articles, eight explored moral injury through qualitative approaches, such as semistructured interviews and focus groups, with U.S. veterans, chaplains, and other professionals or clinicians working directly with U.S. military personnel (Drescher et al, 2011(Drescher et al, , 2018Gibbons, Shafer, Hickling, & Ramsey, 2013;Held et al, 2018;Schorr et al, 2018;Sullivan & Starnino, 2019;Yeterian et al, 2019). Additionally, Molendijk (2019) used qualitative semistructured interviews to capture the lived experienced of 80 Dutch Infantry veterans.…”

Moral Injury Related to Immigration Detention on Nauru: A Qualitative Study

“…In our participants, the perceived agent of the moral transgressions was the (Australian) government. Molendijk (2019) advocates a moral injury theory that not only focuses on the conflict within the individual but also includes conflicts between the individual and political domains. She places moral injury in the context of "institutional betrayal", an expansion of the betrayal trauma theory (Freyd et al, 2007), which comprises harm caused by institutions to individuals who trust and/or depend on that institution (Smith and Freyd, 2014).…”