What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars

by David Wood

Overview

*Winner of the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize*

From Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist David Wood, a battlefield view of moral injury, the signature wound of America's 21st century wars.

Most Americans are now familiar with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and its prevalence among troops. In this groundbreaking new book, David Wood examines the far more pervasive yet less understood experience of those we send to war: moral injury, the violation of our fundamental values of right and wrong that so often occurs in the impossible moral dilemmas of modern conflict. Featuring portraits of combat veterans and leading mental health researchers, along with Wood's personal observations of war and the young Americans deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, What Have We Done offers an unflinching look at war and those who volunteer for it: the thrill and pride of service and, too often, the scars of moral injury.

Impeccably researched and deeply personal, What Have We Done is a compassionate, finely drawn study of modern war and those caught up in it. It is a call to acknowledge our newest generation of veterans by listening intently to them and absorbing their stories; and, as new wars approach, to ponder the inevitable human costs of putting American "boots on the ground."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316264150
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	11/01/2016
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	436,201
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

David Wood, a veteran war reporter, is a staff correspondent for the Huffington Post, where he won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting on severely wounded warriors. A birthright Quaker and raised as a pacifist, Wood has spent more than thirty years covering the U.S. military and conflicts around the world, most recently in extended deployments embedded with American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Prologue: The Baptismal Font 3

Chapter 1 It's Wrong, but You Have No Choice 7

Chapter 2 Regardless of the Cost 36

Chapter 3 The Rules: Made to Be Broken 53

Chapter 4 A Friend Was Liquefied 73

Chapter 5 Just War 100

Chapter 6 Trotting Heart, Shell Shock, Moral Injury 116

Chapter 7 Grief Is a Combat Injury 133

Chapter 8 It's Really About Killing 142

Chapter 9 Vulnerable 163

Chapter 10 Betrayed 174

Chapter 11 War Crime 184

Chapter 12 Atheists in the Foxholes 205

Chapter 13 Home 220

Chapter 14 The Touchy-Feely Tough Guys 234

Chapter 15 Listen 261

Acknowledgments 273

Notes 277

Select Bibliography 281

Index 283

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/12/2016
Wood, a longtime war correspondent, takes on the monumental task of conveying to civilians the emotional turmoil veterans endure upon returning home from war. Post-traumatic stress disorder tends to dominate headlines, but Wood focuses upon “moral injury”: the deep-rooted psychic trauma that grips people when they believe they have violated the profound taboo of killing another human. Though the book touches on other conflicts, including soldiers’ responses to discovering concentration camp survivors during WWII, this is primarily a powerful and gut-wrenching look at the 21st-century Americans who have faced multiple deployments in Afghanistan. Even as drill sergeants train soldiers in the dark arts of killing and surviving encounters with the enemy, the American military barely acknowledges the long-term repercussions. Wood probes how soldiers learn to cope with—or fail to recover from—these debilitating experiences and reveals how a few stalwart medical professionals help them deal with the types of profound pain that leave no visible scars. He also covers the work of chaplains tending to spiritually wounded veterans and grapples with the experiences of soldiers who have been sexually assaulted by comrades-in-arms. Wood delivers searing, elegantly told reportage on a little-understood and long-ignored facet of war. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"With What Have We Done David Wood has written what may be one of the best, most riveting and accessible presentations on moral injury and how it differs from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)....David Wood is a major voice moving moral, ethical and spiritual dimensions front and center in understanding and helping our warriors."—Edward Tick, PhD, author of War and the Soul and Warrior's Return, co-founder and director of Soldier's Heart, Inc.

"David Wood makes other reporters smack their foreheads and ask themselves why they didn't do that story. It was sitting right there in front of you and you didn't see it until David put it all together."—David Martin, national security correspondent, CBS News

"What Have We Done is a landmark effort. Extraordinary work, and exceptional treatment of a strange, damaging phenomenon. We cannot begin to solve the problem until it's properly identified. Perhaps now we can begin to heal. Bravo!"
—LTC Kevin Petit, U.S. Army (ret), veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan

"David Wood is a treasure—a defense reporter who is both knowledgeable and morally perceptive. Plus, he can write. Read this and you will learn about our soldiers, our wars, and even the times in which we live. If I could, every time I heard someone thank someone else 'for their service,' I'd give both parties a copy of this book."
—Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco and The Generals

"The most critical part in warrior development is what we call the moral component—the set of beliefs that allows the soldier to trust his chain of command and his mate, and to do what warriors must do. We do that brilliantly in America, up to the point the trigger is pulled. What David Wood has produced here in a gripping, superb storytelling manner, is the analysis of the aftermath of the trigger pull, and how we must improve how we as a society help the warrior return to peace."—Paul D. Eaton, Major General, US Army (retired)

"Wood has brilliantly articulated the harsh and lasting realities of the moral injury from Iraq and Afghanistan for so many who fought and served honorably. He uses his own, vivid memories of war, and the haunting memories of those who fought our wars to 'pressurize the soul' of America, urging all of us to deal with this almost universally ignored injury of the heart and soul. Heartbreaking and compelling!"
—Admiral Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2007-2011

"David Wood is the best of the best. He gets out in the dust and mud and danger with the troops, and they revere him—which I know from them directly. Tissues at the ready! You will weep."
—Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD, author of Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America

"This is a rare achievement. It is highly personal, emotionally charged, comprehensive, provocative and evocative, and, thus, educational. I see this as a must read for students and clinicians."—Brett T. Litz, PhD, clinical psychologist, VA Boston Healthcare System and Boston University Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

"It's not often that a war correspondent reveals the darker consequences of military service... Mr. Wood has detailed their suffering in soul-numbing detail. Read his words and grieve."—The Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette

From the Publisher

09/15/2016
The "collateral damage" of civilian death has been a feature of armed conflict for millennia, especially during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pultizer Prize-winning journalist Wood, who has served several tours as a foreign reporter for Time magazine and other publications, applies his investigative skills to the question of how the men and women of U.S. armed services have dealt with the emotional trauma of war and the moral consequences of intentional and unintentional injury to noncombatants in a war zone. Wood interviews several military personnel who share their stories, including the heavy burden they carry as a result of their experiences in the chaotic midst of violence that so often characterizes warfare in the modern era. The author asks readers to go beyond the act of parades and polite applause and make an effort to listen to our servicemen and -women as they describe the emotional and mental anguish they carry as a result of upholding their duties. VERDICT This powerful book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the life of a soldier after they return home from war.—Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

Library Journal

2016-10-05
A wide-ranging study of the moral costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, costs that are certain to carry over into future conflicts—to say nothing of civilian life.“The army trained you to fight. It did not train you for psychological shock.” So said a military veteran to Pulitzer Prize–winning Huffington Post correspondent Wood. The author examines a range of related problems, both abstract and concrete, wrought by wars waged against largely unseen, unknowable enemies—with the result that, too often, the foe becomes a preteen with a Kalashnikov. An overarching malady is “moral rot,” which one West Point military ethicist holds to be the logical result of cynicism and corruption at the top, manifested infamously by the Abu Ghraib prison case, less openly by such things as escalating rates of military suicide, mental illness, divorce, and other woes. While field soldiers were “struggling to apply their moral codes to the chaos of combat,” writes Wood, “those above them were blatantly violating the military’s own moral code of values, both to accomplish their mission and for their own career advancement.” Whether career soldiers or single-hitch enlistees, many warriors returning from the fight are afflicted by what is informally called “war trauma,” a cousin of but unlike the better-known PTSD—though it shares with PTSD the resistance of those in the hierarchy to admit such a thing exists in the first place. As Wood notes, Jonathan Shay, a clinical psychiatrist, prefers to call this category of illness “moral injury” rather than disorder, because it places the onus on the afflicted rather than on the agency of being called on to behave unjustly in war and must bear the burden. Killing, even justifiable, exacts a toll on the perpetrator as well as the victim; as one soldier told the author, meaningfully, “you know, I’m not a psychopath.” The psychological and moral aspects of war and trauma are not well-understood, and Wood’s book is a welcome contribution to the field. A good complement to David Finkel’s Thank You for Your Service (2013).

Kirkus Reviews