Mind, Body & War

The Pentagon recently decided not to award the Purple Heart (the medal for getting wounded or killed in combat) to those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Three arguments are being used in favor of this decision. All three are based on the claim that mental wounds are not central to warfare.

Defense Department Spokeswoman Eileen Lainez:

The Purple Heart recognizes those individuals wounded to a degree that requires treatment by a medical officer, in action with the enemy or as the result of enemy action where the intended effect of a specific enemy action is to kill or injure the service member, [...] PTSD is an anxiety disorder caused by witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event." It is not "a wound intentionally caused by the enemy from an outside force or agent," but is a secondary effect caused by witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event.

Army Staff Sergeant Jeremy Rausch (who saw combat in Iraq):

PTSD can be serious, but there is absolutely no way to prove that someone truly is suffering from it or faking it.

John E. Bircher III of the Pentagon-supported service group, the Military Order of the Purple Heart:

You have to had shed blood by an instrument of war at the hands of the enemy of the United States, [...] Shedding blood is the objective.

(Interlude: 1 in 5 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have some form of PTSD)

The official DoD line explicitly cleaves off mental wounds from the true nature of warfare by pointing to the intention of warfare. The question of fakers does this by privileging the visible body over the invisible mind. And the invocation of blood places the body of the soldier as the direct implement of the state.

Yet, the Iraq war was carried out, proudly, under the banner of Shock and Awe - whose central tenet is the inducement of a specific mental state:

The aim of Rapid Dominance is to affect the will, perception, and understanding of the adversary to fit or respond to our strategic policy ends through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe. [...] This means that physical and psychological effects must be obtained.

So, clearly the DoD is aware that in warfare one might go about purposely inflicting mental anguish. The world doesn't need me to write a post to show that the folks at the Pentagon are a bunch of bastards and hypocrites. But why is there a need to maintain this particular hypocrisy?

(Interlude: in 2000 a plaque was added to the Vietnam Memorial "to honor the veterans who died after the war from exposure to Agent Orange, post-traumatic stress disorder and other causes not directly related to combat wounds".)

A large effort was made to disseminate, legitimize, and establish as an improvement the concept of Shock & Awe, and specifically the capability of the U.S. military to succeed through psychological and not physical means. The U.S. military has supposedly transcended physical force. This seems to be a crude attempt at what Der Derian has called "virtuous war".

Virtuous war is an attempt to fulfill a dream of the Enlightenment, delivering a force that is complete and yet seemingly self-induced therefore impossible to resist – a machine that renders its calculating logic invisible, obscuring the grotesque practices that are necessary for its maintenance. (Culp, Virtuous Bombs)

However, PTSD brings out the fact that there is nothing transcendent about "psychological warfare". (Even insurgents can do it with makeshift IEDs.) In fact, all warfare is psychological and force and power are never located solely in physical violence. So the Pentagon's refusal to grant Purple Hearts to victims of PTSD is not merely petty, cruel and bureaucratic. It is part of a larger attempt to control the conceptualization of war and power.