Moral Injury?

Can a nation suffer moral injury? I recently read an editorial with this title. James Childs, the author of the editorial, teaches at Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capitol University in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, he’s familiar with the field of moral injury as applied to combat veterans. The Defense Department describes moral injury as an extreme and unprecedented life experience that transgresses deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.

A combat veteran of the second Iraqi war illustrates a sense of moral injury: “Moral injury describes my disillusionment, the erosion of my sense of place in the world. The spiritual and emotional foundations of the world disappeared and made it impossible for me to sleep the sleep of the just … I have a feeling of intense betrayal, and the betrayer and the betrayed are the same person, my very self… What I lost in the Iraq war was a world that makes moral sense.”

Childs cautiously believes a sense of moral injury can be applicable to a nation.… Read the rest