In 2006, Congress ordered the Secretary of Defense to assess the mental health needs of the Armed Forces and the ability of the DoD to meet those needs. As a result, the DoD created a Mental Health Task Force that found:

"The system of care for the psychological health that has evolved over recent decades is insufficient to meet the needs of today's armed forces and their beneficiaries, and will not be sufficient to meet their needs in the future." (Read the full report)

While recognizing the existence of these needs is an important step, it is only the first of many important steps that we have to take on behalf of our wounded warriors. The unmet mental health care needs of the men and women we send to wage war in other countries are causing them to wage their own wars, with themselves and with others, in this one.

Consider 1st Lieutenant Whiteside. Lt. Whiteside faces criminal prosecution for trying to kill herself in Iraq. Granted, when she had her psychotic break she waved a gun around at her fellow soldiers to keep them away (so she could successfully shoot herself twice in the abdomen). The DoD acknowledges its institutional inability to ensure that its service members have the support and services they need to cope with extraordinary psychological stress and yet the Army believes Lt. Whiteside should be further penalized for what happened that day?

Research by CBS News revealed at least 120 vets per week in 2005 committed suicide. Seventeen veterans commited suicide every day that year. I wonder how many service members and veterans attempted to kill themselves the day that Lt. Whiteside tried to kill herself?  I wonder how many succeeded?

Meanwhile, between 2001 and 2006, 22,500 service members, many of whom served combat tours, were involuntarily separated from the military (with no mental health treatment) for "personality disorders." In July, both Houses of Congress introduced legislation (S1817 and HR3167) to stop these discharges until the DoD can explain how it plans to accurately distinguish between PTSD and a bona fide personality disorder. Both bills have languished in their respective committees since then and these discharges continue.Yet PTSD that is undiagnosed, mismanaged, or untreated can manifest itself in violence towards one's self or towards others. Of course, we don't keep official records of these casualties.

Senator Kit Bond recently told reporters that he was going to draft legislation asking the President to create a Special Review Board to re-evaluate the 22,500 service members who were discharged for these alleged “pre-existing” mental health conditions.

Americans like to keep the ugliness of war contained so as to maintain an illusion of civility. In short, we have evolved enough as a species to feel shame about engaging in acts of war but we haven't evolved enough to avoid these acts in the first place. When we see the men and women who have been broken, physically or psychologically, by combat, the degree to which we have failed to truly be civilized is hard to accept.
 
In "Just and Unjust Wars," the Michael Walzer wrote, "what we conveniently call inhumanity is simply humanity under pressure."  Our wounded warriors reflect the side of human nature in general, and America in particular, that most Americans do not want to think about.

So rather than take responsibility for sending these men and women to another country to do and see things that are really quite brutal (even if necessary), we ignore, minimize, or vilify the men and women who, in a very normal fashion, are traumatized in the process.  The more our institutions make the service members' problems about them, the less uncivilized, inhumane, and/or unreasonable we are--the socio-national equivalent of putting a rape victim on trial.

My point is this: our discomfort with our wounded warriors makes us even less civilized, not more. The very people whose wounds make us feel the least amount of pride individually are giving us an opportunity to do something to feel the most pride collectively. By tending to the wounds of those who remind us of our inhumanity, we become more humane. That means we have to do more than just bring our troops home, we have to take care of them when they are here. 

Pretending that we don't see them -- or trying not to think about them--doesn't make our wounded go away, it only makes it easier not to care.