The sharp and unforgiving suffering of the morally injured veteran cannot be fully understood, much less effectively addressed, without a comprehensive investigation of moral injury’s underlying causes in American culture and society. This book exposes the threads of violence that tie together the naturalized dynamics of U.S. ways of war and militarization with collective practices of national distraction and self-deception. It shows how these same threads of violence are also tightly woven and sacralized in the tapestry of U.S. national identity, tragically concealing moral injury from greater consciousness, and sourcing its toxic growth – ironically — in the very lives of those the nation claims it most highly esteems, our military service members and veterans. Drawing on Claudia Card’s philosophical framework, moral injury here is characterized as an atrocity, “a foreseeable intolerable harm caused by culpable wrongdoing.” These atrocities are shown to be flash-points revealing important truths regarding the unlivable consequences of U.S. war-culture and highlighting the urgent need to rethink the meaning of U.S. nationalism, desacralize violence, and support life.

First, this introduction provides an overview of the phenomenon of military moral injury and the current state of research about it. Second, I outline the purpose and aim of this manuscript, to undertake a social analysis of moral injury. I contrast my method with other moral injury research and justify the significance of this approach. This leads to explanation of the primary theoretical frameworks I utilize, Johan Galtung’s theory of “the triangle of violence”; and Claudia Card’s theory of atrocity. The Introduction closes with a brief summary of each of the book’s chapters.

Chapter One explores individual experiences of moral injury in the wider context of “U.S. war-culture,” beginning with a case study of one veteran’s painful struggle. But structures and social practices of U.S. war-culture, and the ideology of “the necessity of war-as-sacrifice” promote concealment of the destructiveness and costs of U.S. war, and muddle awareness of the moral injury’s devastation in the consciousness of most Americans. Chapter One also draws on two recent novels that highlight a more personal and descriptive portrayal of moral injury, The Yellow Birds, a National Book Award finalist, by Iraq veteran and author Kevin Powers; and Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain. These literary depictions push past concealment to a deeper understanding of the inner dynamics of moral injury, and suggest that moral injury inevitably is sourced by diverse structural and cultural factors of violence in the war-culture that lie at its roots.

Chapter Two investigates three pillars of structural violence embedded in the war-culture of the United States that inevitably are linked to the development of military moral injury: 1) the permanent war economy, 2) the U.S. “empire of bases,” and 3) the reverberations of “interpenetration,” as the structures of militarization continuously interact with and influence countless sites of supposed “civilian” life in the United States. Many scholars have written with compelling urgency about the destructive forces of structural violence in U.S. war-culture, yet seemingly paradoxically, most U.S. citizens appear to be unconcerned and/or unaware. I draw from the theory of Latin American Liberation theologian, Jon Sobrino of El Salvador, who characterizes the contemporary world by way not only of its structural and cultural violence, but also its practices of concealment of both injustice and violence. One of the most significant concealers of the devastation of war-culture involves the role of religion; Chapter Two explores how sacrificial rhetoric and cognitive framing rising from religious and civil religious sources mask and reframe violence. Lastly, the concept of “the grey zone” from writer Primo Levi is introduced as a frame that helps us better understand the ambiguity faced by servicemembers and veterans in the world-turned-upside-down of structural violence in both war and war-culture.

Chapter Three, “Moral Injury and Cultural Violence,” turns to Galtung’s final tip of the violence triangle, the role of culture at the deepest roots of the phenomenon of military moral injury. Three vectors of inter-mixing cultural violence sourcing military moral injury here are investigated: 1) ideologies of military masculinity, 2) the role of religion, and 3) the interplay of dominant frames of national identity. I identify and explore three exposes of “military masculinities,” that reveal the deep ambiguities faced by members of military branches. Stated military values, such as those from the U.S. Army, “loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage,” deeply conflict with actual realities of military acculturation in the U.S. armed services. Religion also comes into play here, because training in “expendability,” as Kathleen Barry describes one primary model of military masculinity, is both undergirded and justified by way of (civil) religious patterns that extol “the ultimate sacrifice.” Religio-national frameworks of masculinity derive from both structural and cultural sources and intermix with dominant portrayals of nationalism. All these factors form the bedrock that gives rise to moral injury, and both mask and rationalize the resulting inequitable distribution of suffering and loss. The chapter concludes with reflection on the case of one veteran, “Mr. Jones,” a military convoy driver, who was ordered to commandeer his military vehicle to crush an Iraqi boy who did not get out of the middle of the road. We trace the myriad causes leading to this particular case of military moral injury, and also analyze what went wrong with regard to the professional treatment of his suffering, following his return to the United States and discharge from military service.

Chapter Four, “Moral Injury and Atrocity,” introduces the philosophical theory of feminist philosopher Claudia Card to propose the following: moral injury is an atrocity, as described by Card, a “foreseeable intolerable harm produced by culpable wrongdoing.” Card’s theory of atrocity sets moral injury into sharper relief, demonstrating why our understanding must move beyond a focus on individual experience, to a deeper investigation of moral injury‘s structural and cultural violence. In contrast to various fatalistic or unquestioning attitudes, Card writes, “We need a theoretical account of what makes wrongdoing serious enough to count as evil or in what ways it is serious. `Evil’ is a heavy judgment.” Card’s theoretical distinctions provide a pathway to sift through the many ambiguities and complexities involved in ethical deliberation about moral injury as an “evil,” such that in the end, thought about the phenomenon of moral injury is advanced, leaving us in a better place, as Card hopes, to better know what to do about this evil, and how to transform it. The chapter applies Card’s theory to one last case study, the suffering experienced by “Andy,” a veteran whose moral injury led him to the brink of self-destruction. Analysis of Andy’s experience, including the interplay of structural and cultural violence in his individual experience, shows how and why the macro phenomenon of military moral injury as a whole, should be understood as “atrocity.” But going further, the chapter also explores the gradual transformation that is taking place regarding Andy’s leadership in a relatively new Moral Injury Program that has been developed at a Philadelphia Veterans Affairs hospital. The labor that has been undertaken by Andy, other veterans, and the professional caregivers in this program, reveals insight about the indispensable need and role for a deeper social analysis of military moral injury, for people like Andy, their families and care providers, everyday citizens, and people across the world whose lives are affected by U.S. wars.

Chapter Five explores the consequences rising out of a social analysis of moral injury: a clearer view motivates a new perspective, seeing war through a different lens, and rethinking the human worldbuilding of war-culture. Increased collective awareness regarding moral injury an atrocity, an intolerable and culpable harm that human beings have the power to mitigate, challenges human assumptions regarding war as inevitable and a sacred pillar of the nation. This new lens strengthens nascent cultural swerves in national patterns of thought, imagination and identity. Examples of such morphing notions of identity, and concomitant decision-making regarding the use of violence, include the Covid-19 pandemic, that has strengthened collective calls for a pause among militaries and militias, the complete overhauling of institutions of police in the U.S., and at least a temporary ceasing of the violence of war in order to address the needs of public health. Calls to address the violence of police brutality in the 2020 landscape of the United States may not be separated from the violence of war-culture coming home to roost in the nation’s streets, communities, and places of incarceration. Human beings are capable of rethinking our world-building. A shifting, swerving U.S. national identity could dethrone war and militarism in the national imaginary. But any re-evaluation involves effort to refuse the dominant mode U.S. nationalism that sacralizes war and militarism as “the necessary sacrifice for human/national security and wellbeing.” Unsettling such ground opens the way to further questions, regarding beliefs about conflict, security, militarism and war; indeed, we cannot help but be faced with the senseless world-building in a culture of war, and our deep ties of identification with it. In the end, if human beings were to discard the assumption that moral injury is a necessary ethical accommodation in a world of war, what other kinds of identity, and what architectural shapes of world-building would we create?