Blog Them Out of the Stone Age

Army Begins Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injury Chain Teaching

PTSD, mTBI Chain Teaching Home

by Jerry Harben, MEDCOM Public Affairs
For immediate release, July 18, 2007.

Every Soldier should gain an understanding of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) over the next three months, as a program of “chain teaching” will be carried out by unit leaders throughout the Army. Commanders will use a standardized script and supporting audio-visual products describing signs and symptoms of these conditions and reinforcing what Soldiers know about taking care of each other. There also will be a companion video oriented towards family members.

“Our Army is doing everything possible to come to grips with a very challenging and complex issue,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. “The goal is to educate all Soldiers and leaders on PTSD and TBI so they can recognize, prevent and help Soldiers receive treatment for these debilitative physical and mental health issues, and remove the stigma associated with seeking care. Look, this is not just a medical problem, it is an Army problem, and we are going to do all we can to help our Soldiers.”

“We emphasize that every commander needs to be able to do an individual assessment of each Soldier. If a Soldier has an issue, that commander needs to be able to reach out and help that Soldier. Soldiers also need to be able to help each other” said Col. C. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Surgeon General of the Army.

All Soldiers in combat suffer stress, but most recover quickly. Those whose symptoms persist may have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

PTSD is a condition that often follows a terrifying physical or emotional event, causing the person who survived the event to have persistent, frightening thoughts and memories, or flashbacks, of the ordeal. People with PTSD often feel chronically, emotionally numb.

Soldiers with PTSD may have three kinds of symptoms for weeks or months after the event is over and the individual is in a safe environment. These symptoms are re-experiencing the event over and over again; avoiding people, places or feelings that remind them of the event; and feeling keyed up or on-edge all the time. These symptoms may interfere with the ability to live their normal lives or do their jobs.

PTSD is treatable, especially if treatment begins early. Treatment options include medication and talking therapy. Most Soldiers diagnosed with PTSD are treated successfully and remain on active duty.

Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries (mTBI) may be commonly referred to as concussions or “getting your bell rung.” Unlike severe TBI in which there may be a penetrating head injury with an obvious wound, a mild TBI or concussion may have no physical signs. It may result from a hard blow or jolt to the head, or a blast exposure that causes the brain to be shaken within the skull. TBI may involve confusion, disorientation, or impaired consciousness, dysfunction of memory (amnesia), or loss of consciousness.

Most people with mild TBI recover fully, but recovery can take time. One purpose of the chain-teaching program is to equip Soldiers to recognize symptoms of these conditions in themselves or others so they can obtain treatment.

“It is important to remember, although you may not be struggling, your battle buddy may be. We know that combat and operational experiences will impact every Soldier differently,” says the chain-teaching script.

Soldiers and leaders must understand that seeking mental-health assistance is not a sign of weakness, and that a Soldier’s career is endangered not by treatment, but by allowing a mental-health condition to worsen without proper care.

The Mental Health Assessment Team IV (which evaluated mental health among Soldiers in Iraq in 2006) demonstrated that stigma continues to be a problem despite all the interventions we have put in place over the last four years. This will be another intervention to promote taking care of ourselves and our buddies,” said Ritchie.

“This is an attempt to shift the culture. We know it will take time, but we need to act now,” Ritchie added.

The Army provides many resources to help Soldiers suffering from PTSD, TBI or other behavioral-health problems. These include chaplains, deployable stress-control teams, medical and behavioral-health clinics and the Military One-Source hotline (1-800-342-9647), through which up to six free, confidential counseling sessions per issue can be scheduled.

Information about PTSD is available at www.behavioralhealth.army.mil and information about TBI is at www.DVBIC.org.

From Army Behavioral Health via DefenseLink

Sorry for the dearth of posts in recent days.  I’ve been in the throes of my move from Columbus to Carlisle, Pa., where I’ll spend the coming year as the Harold K. Johnson Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army War College (AWC).

Right now things are quiet at the AWC.  The resident class of 2008 graduated in early June and has now departed.  The resident class of 2009 doesn’t officially arrive until next week, and the academic year proper doesn’t start until August 1.  The only students already here are the 40 international fellows:  officers from other countries who will be taking the year long course of study as well.  They’re here early because in most cases, they’re not just transitioning into a new assignment but also into a new culture.

Most of the faculty are away on leave.  The main exceptions are the ones tasked to help orient new faculty members like myself.  We just completed a week-long introduction to how things work at the AWC.  It’ was far more elaborate than anything I recall when I joined the OSU faculty sixteen years ago, and included not just administrative info but also a lot of info about adult learning (andragogy) and discussion-based instruction.

Instruction at the war college is built around tightly knit seminar groups consisting of 15 US officers, 2 international fellows, and 3 faculty members — one from each of the main teaching departments:  Command, Leadership, and Management; Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations; and National Security and Strategy.  The “tightly knit” doesn’t happen automatically.  The AWC expends a lot of effort by way of ice breaker events for each seminar, mandatory softball games in which one seminar competes against the others, etc.  The core curriculum of six courses is centrally planned but executed by the faculty members within each seminar, and as long as the major learning objectives are achieved there’s considerable flexibility in how this is accomplished.  It could hardly be otherwise, given that the faculty’s role is mainly to facilitate, not lecture.  Most instruction is done via discussion among the students, who will have done the readings for the day’s lesson and, ideally, will conduct a focused dialog on the readings with minimal intervention from the faculty.  Faculty and students normally wear business attire, not uniforms, in order to minimize rank consciousness and encourage candid exchange of views.

I’m off to a mixer with the international fellows.  More soon.

Believe Me, It’s Torture

What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist —- not inflict —-it.

by Christopher Hitchens August 2008 issue of Vanity Fair

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

Exploring this narrow but deep distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their country’s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world. They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.

Full article (Hat tip to Bob Bateman)

Although it could hardly have done otherwise, it’s still refreshing to find the Army able to make such a critical and self-critical appraisal of the sequel to COBRA II.

Occupation Plan for Iraq Faulted in Army History
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
New York Times, June 29

WASHINGTON — Soon after American forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Gen. Tommy R. Franks surprised senior Army officers by revamping the Baghdad-based military command.

The decision reflected the assumption by General Franks, the top American commander for the Iraq invasion, that the major fighting was over. But according to an Army history that is to be made public on Monday, the move put the military effort in the hands of a short-staffed headquarters led by a newly promoted three-star general, and was made over the objections of the Army’s vice chief of staff.

“The move was sudden and caught most of the senior commanders in Iraq unaware,” states the history, which adds that the staff for the new headquarters was not initially “configured for the types of responsibilities it received.”

The story of the American occupation of Iraq has been the subject of numerous books, studies and memoirs. But now the Army has waded into the highly charged debate with its own nearly 700-page account: “On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign.”

The unclassified study, the second volume in a continuing history of the Iraq conflict, is as noteworthy for who prepared it as for what it says. In essence, the study is an attempt by the Army to tell the story of one of the most contentious periods in its history to military experts — and to itself.

. . . The study documents a number of problems that hampered the Army’s ability to stabilize the country during Phase IV, as the postwar stage was called.

“The Army, as the service primarily responsible for ground operations, should have insisted on better Phase IV planning and preparations through its voice on the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” the study noted. “The military means employed were sufficient to destroy the Saddam regime; they were not sufficient to replace it with the type of nation-state the United States wished to see in its place.” . . .

The report focuses on the 18 months after President Bush’s May 2003 announcement that major combat operations in Iraq were over. It was a period when the Army took on unanticipated occupation duties and was forced to develop new intelligence-gathering techniques, armor its Humvees, revise its tactics and, after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, review its detention practices.

A big problem, the study says, was the lack of detailed plans before the war for the postwar phase, a deficiency that reflected the general optimism in the White House and in the Pentagon, led by then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, about Iraq’s future, and an assumption that civilian agencies would assume much of the burden.

Full article

On Point II will be available for download tomorrow.

The first volume, On Point, is online at Global Security.org.

Roger Ebert, my all-time favorite film critic, has added Triumph of the Will to his list of Great Movies. Sort of.

…By general consent [one] of the best documentaries ever made.

So I wrote in 1994, in a review of what in fact is a better documentary, Ray Muller’s “The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.” I was referring to Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will” (1935), about the 1934 Nazi Party congress and rally in Nuremberg. Others would have agreed with me. We would all have been reflecting the received opinion that the film is great but evil, and that reviewing it raises the question of whether great art can be in service of evil. I referred to “Triumph” again in the struggle I had in reviewing the racist “Birth of a Nation.”

But how fresh was my memory of “Triumph of the Will”? I believe I saw it as an undergraduate in college, and my memory would have been old and fuzzy even in 1994, overlaid by many assertions of the film’s “greatness.” Now I have just seen it again and am stunned that I praised it. It is one of the most historically important documentaries ever made, yes, but one of the best? It is a terrible film, paralyzingly dull, simpleminded, overlong and not even “manipulative,” because it is too clumsy to manipulate anyone but a true believer. It is not a “great movie” in the sense that the other films in this group are great, but it is “great” in the reputation it has and the shadow it casts.

Full Review

A Guest Post by Ethan S. Rafuse

The Department of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College has just posted an announcement for a military history teaching position.

While we have hired folks who were ABD in the past, a Ph.D. is now pretty much mandatory for consideration for a position. A record of publications, academic presentations, etc., is very much appreciated, and our department leadership strongly encourages its members to engage in scholarly activities, as evidenced by our strong presence in the SMH recently and record of professional publications. Nonetheless, this is first and foremost a teaching and service institution. Experience in the classroom is essential, as is the ability to work in a bureaucratic environment within a set and highly structured curriculum. If it this not the sort of thing you could deal with on a regular basis, or you can’t handle the thought of putting in 40+ hours a week in the office and classroom, this probably is not the place for you. There is no tenure system here, but we pay very well (in a very affordable section of the country) and give folks the opportunity to teach military history in an environment where it is valued.

Also, while our curriculum is overwhelmingly focused on U.S. and European military history, applicants with a specialization in 19th and 20th-century U.S. and European military history (esp. the U.S. Civil War) will be at a slight, but by no means prohibitive, disadvantage. Needless to say, those who specialize in such fields as Asian, Middle Eastern, or pre-modern military history will have a definite leg up.

More details are available at these websites.

HISTORIAN ALLAN R. MILLETT
TO RECEIVE 2008 PRITZKER MILITARY LIBRARY
LITERATURE AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

$100,000 Award to be Presented at October 4, 2008 Gala in Chicago

Chicago, IL (June 23, 2008) – Allan R. Millett has been selected to receive the 2008 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. The $100,000 honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation, will be presented at the Library’s annual Liberty Gala on October 4, 2008 at Chicago’s Drake Hotel. The announcement was made today via Internet webcast by the Library’s President and Founder, COL (IL) James N. Pritzker IL ARNG (Ret.), at www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.org.

The Pritzker Military Library Literature Award recognizes a living author for a body of work that has profoundly enriched the public understanding of American military history. The recipient’s contributions may be academic, non-fiction, fiction, or a combination of any of the three, and his or her work should embody the values of the Pritzker Military Library. A national panel of historians, writers and individuals related to the study of American history and heritage - including the first recipient of the award James M. McPherson - reviewed nominations and definitive works submitted by publishers, agents, book sellers and other professional literary organizations. The finalist recommendation was unanimously endorsed by the executive council of the Foundation established to oversee the award process.

James N. Pritzker states, “The selection committee has honored an individual whose life’s work in the area of understanding and writing about military history is at the highest scholarly level. Allan Millett’s written work, teaching and other pursuits have educated and informed us all in a most profound way. In creating this premiere annual award to recognize one author’s lifetime commitment to scholarly writing on military topics we ultimately hope to contribute to a better understanding of the horrible complexities of war, past, present and future.”

The Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and Ambrose Professor of History, University of New Orleans and the Maj. Gen. Raymond E. Mason, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Military History, The Ohio State University, Allan R. Millett is a specialist in the history of America’s military policy, twentieth century wars, and military institutions.

He is author of many books including Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps; The Politics of Intervention: The Military Occupation of Cuba, 1906-1909; The General: Robert L. Bullard and Officership in the United States Army; and In Many a Strife: General Gerald C. Thomas and the U.S. Marine Corps. He is the co-author of For the Common Defense and A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War.

(Continued)

This story, which has been making the rounds in the military blogosphere, has been much on my mind in recent days. It’s been known in outline form for several months, but this June 10 Army Times article is the most up to date account.

It’s important to know at the outset that a First Sergeant is the highest ranking non-commissioned officer in an Army company or battery: the NCO counterpart of the Captain who is the company commander. A key element of his job is to keep tabs on the day-to-day welfare of the troops. In basic training, the relationship was explained to us this way: “The captain is the father of the company. The first sergeant is the mother.”

In a home movie, 1st Sgt. Jeff McKinney sings softly to his new son while his wife, Chrissi, gives the baby a bath. McKinney teases tiny Jeremy about this, his first nude video.

Someday, McKinney says, the family will show off the footage to Jeremy’s first girlfriend.

“Cause that’s how our parents did us,” McKinney sing-songs. “You’ll be 15, 16 years old, and you have your first date … .”

It won’t ever play out that way, though. The McKinneys made the movie during his two weeks of home leave halfway through what was supposed to be a 15-month Iraq war deployment. He spent the break bonding with his new son and talking to his 18-year-old son, James, about going to college.

But everything changed July 11 in the bright sunshine of Adhamiyah, Iraq. That day, while out on a simple meet-and-greet patrol, McKinney stepped out of his Humvee and yelled.

“F— this!”

He raised the barrel of his M4 to his chin and squeezed off one shot.

The first sergeant - who sang Sesame Street songs to his men and teased them just enough to make them feel like family - left his soldiers shattered.

At first, they scrambled to find the sniper who they believed must have fired the shot. When they realized the truth, they wondered how Top could have deserted them.

“That’s not First Sergeant McKinney,” his driver, Spc. Anthony Seashore, who witnessed his death, later told investigators. “Never.”

His family also felt blindsided. McKinney had no history of mental health issues. But as his parents and wife accumulated documentation from the investigation into McKinney’s death, the case became clearer.

The leadership demands of an Army at war, the untold emotional and physical injuries of combat and the unrealistic stoicism of a dedicated soldier all collided in tragedy.

Full article

There’s little doubt that First Sergeant McKinney, like most soldiers in theater, was familiar with this concise guide to Combat Operational Stress Reaction (COSR), an injury that has been well described as a normal person’s reaction to a combat environment. And as a conscientious NCO, 1SG McKinney would have monitored the troops in his company for the indications of COSR. The problem is that although he saw his troops as human beings as well as soldiers, he could not allow himself the same humanity. The role he felt obliged to model was superhuman. He was, as MAJ Ray Kimball expresses it, one of those leaders who care (too much).  And as result, he let his condition metastasize from COSR into something far worse.

Cross posted from Altercation’s Correspondence Corner

Now and again I pass on a good link, hopefully something that many might miss were it not for the suggestion. Also, usually, I’m hoping to give some insights. Well, if you want to read, laugh, admire, and commiserate with one of our better young officers, then go to this lieutenant’s blog.

Be warned, however, that you may lose several hours, particularly after you start going back and reading his older posts. (I recommend starting in November and reading forward from there.)

UPDATE, July 3: Kaboom is kaput, having been shut down by the military. Bob Bateman recommends several other blogs for your consideration. Let’s hope his recommendations aren’t a jinx.

FURTHER UPDATE, July 10. Kaboom has been revived — sort of — by its author’s fiancée.

Film trailer for Soldier’s Heart (2008)

From today’s New York Times:

Role of Soldier Haunted by Internal Battle Is Close to Actor’s Heart
By IRIS HISKEY ARNO

Dobbs Ferry

“SOLDIER’S Heart,” an independent film that won the prize for Best Narrative Feature Film at the G.I. Film Festival in Washington last month, stars an actor for whom the film has personal resonance. The actor, James Kiberd, who has lived here for 21 years, said his father served in World War II “and his friends all said he came back changed.”

“He never talked about what had happened to him in the war,” Mr. Kiberd said. “But he inflicted it on his family.”

Shortly before filming “Soldier’s Heart,” Mr. Kiberd (pronounced KYE-bird) found out the specific event — related to a battle in the North Atlantic — that had haunted his father, who is now deceased. Mr. Kiberd has kept the knowledge to himself, for the most part, but used it to develop Elliot, his character in “Soldier’s Heart.”

Elliot is a Vietnam War veteran struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, previously known as “battle fatigue,” or “Soldier’s Heart” during the Civil War era. Brian Delate, the film’s writer and director, who also plays a smaller role, is himself such a vet. He suffered from symptoms of the disorder upon his return home from Southeast Asia and again after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

A study released by the RAND Corporation in April reported that as many as 20 percent of veterans return from Iraq and Afghanistan showing signs of post-traumatic stress or major depression. Mr. Kiberd is emphatic about the importance of reintegrating these soldiers into society. “We prepare them to go to war, but do we prepare for them to come home?” he asked. “You have to welcome them back, invite them to share their stories and then, as a culture, be willing to bear the burden of the stories. We are not doing that yet.”

Mr. Kiberd has portrayed soldiers before, including the emotionally scarred Vietnam vet Mike Donovan in the ABC soap opera “Loving.” But the role for which he is best known is Trevor Dillon, the mercenary turned detective on another ABC daytime drama, “All My Children.” Originally conceived as a five-day role, that character, which Mr. Kiberd helped develop, became an integral part of the show for 11 years. It was so popular that the actor harnessed his fans’ passion to raise more than $100,000 for Unicef. He became one of its celebrity ambassadors, traveling to Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa and the Dominican Republic.

“I’ve always wanted my art to challenge and examine who we are,” Mr. Kiberd said. Before he took up acting, he was trained as a painter, and with financing from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, he became an artist in residence in Haverstraw, in Rockland County. He worked in a storefront studio and ran a cultural arts enrichment program, hiring disadvantaged youths to paint murals and otherwise beautify their community through art.

“I saw that when the kids spent the summer changing the way the place they lived looked, it changed the vibe of the community,” he said.

Because Mr. Kiberd and Mr. Delate, who have been friends for 20 years, hope to reach veterans with “Soldier’s Heart,” its premiere at the four-day G.I. Film Festival, which celebrates the successes and sacrifices of the American military through film, was particularly significant. A highlight of the event for Mr. Kiberd was meeting Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, the head of the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury and a champion of mental health treatment for veterans.

Full article

Soldier’s Heart Film Web Site

Cross-posted from Civil Warriors

I’ve received an inquiry from a reader who’s looking for info to help identify the watercolor painting at left (click the image for a larger view). Here’s the background info he was able to provide. Any ideas?

I own a wonderful and early watercolor from the Mexican War era. Before I purchased it, the seller had sent a scan of it to Dr. Bruce Winders with the Alamo Museum, and to him, it looked representative of the Mexican War era. After I found more information independently on my own about the original owner, it reinforced that statement as I determined that the original owner, Mr. John Robert Matcek, who died in Temple, Texas in 1952 collected of all things — Mexican War books and paintings - bought and sold them - and it was in the possession of his descendants where I purchased it from the seller at the estate auction.

I have been corresponding with several Mexican War authors and experts and I received one response below from Donald S. Frazier, Ph.D who participated in the recent PBS program about the Mexican War:

He said “My best guess is that he is an officer of volunteers in Northern Mexico, Monterrey or Saltillo. I wonder if he isn’t among Jack Hays’ Rangers of the 1st Texas Mounted Rifles? Perhaps John Coffee Hays, Ben McCulloch or Sam Walker (Samuel Hamilton Walker)?”

“Could be central Mexico, but it just struck me as being circa Buena Vista. Looks like a cavalry issue sabre, a bowie knife, and a paterson colt. All of which I think Hays carried. I googled his image, and I could see a potential match there . . . Try looking at the tintype of Samuel Walker on the Wikipedia page for Texas Rangers . . . ”

I also googled and found an image of Ben McCulloch who could be a possibility - although most images of men in later years shows them with beards so the face is not entirely shown and of course the men are older too in the available photographs.

The Mexican War era watercolor appears to have been dry mounted on a hard stock board at some time in the past - perhaps by Matcek and the original watercolor has evidence of it being in a frame at one time as there is a ghost image along the edges where the inside edge of the frame met the picture image - approximately 3/4 inch wide.

The watercolor is in remarkable condition, and I have tried below to write as best a description as possible, given my limited knowledge of the subject:

(Continued)

Nicholas Kristof, in today’s New York Times:

World leaders fight terrorism all the time, with summit meetings and sound bites and security initiatives. But they have studiously ignored one of the most common and brutal varieties of terrorism in the world today.

This is a kind of terrorism that disproportionately targets children. It involves not W.M.D. but simply AK-47s, machetes and pointed sticks. It is mass rape — and it will be elevated, belatedly, to a spot on the international agenda this week.

The United Nations Security Council will hold a special session on sexual violence this Thursday, with Condoleezza Rice coming to New York to lead the debate. This session, sponsored by the United States and backed by a Security Council resolution calling for regular follow-up reports, just may help mass rape graduate from an unmentionable to a serious foreign policy issue.

The world woke up to this phenomenon in 1993, after discovering that Serbian forces had set up a network of “rape camps” in which women and girls, some as young as 12, were enslaved. Since then, we’ve seen similar patterns of systematic rape in many countries, and it has become clear that mass rape is not just a byproduct of war but also sometimes a deliberate weapon.

“Rape in war has been going on since time immemorial,” said Stephen Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador who was the U.N.’s envoy for AIDS in Africa. “But it has taken a new twist as commanders have used it as a strategy of war.”

There are two reasons for this. First, mass rape is very effective militarily. From the viewpoint of a militia, getting into a firefight is risky, so it’s preferable to terrorize civilians sympathetic to a rival group and drive them away, depriving the rivals of support.

Second, mass rape attracts less international scrutiny than piles of bodies do, because the issue is indelicate and the victims are usually too ashamed to speak up.

Full article

… is underway at Cardinal Wolsey’s Today in History.

Here’s the mandatory final exam essay for my recently concluded World War II course. The structure of the question is based on an approach recommended by my university’s Writing Across the Curriculum Program. This was a take-home exam. The students had four days in which to complete it (and had access to the documents, though not the question) for an additional two days prior to the exam. Responses were limited to 1,000 words.

Analyze the following three documents using insights from the basic concepts in Dower’s War Without Mercy. What are the commonalities and differences in the ways these documents portray the enemy? What are the commonalities and differences in the ways these documents portray the nature, purpose, and values of the United States? What conclusions do you draw from your analysis?

1. Excerpts from FDR’s Fireside Chat radio address to the American public, December 1940. (1,512 words)

2. Excerpts from National Security Council Memorandum 68 (NSC 68) to President Harry S Truman, April 1950. NSC 68 was the basis of the U.S. strategy of military containment of Communism during the Cold War era. (1,742 words)

3. Excerpts from the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, issued by the White House, September 2006. (1,487 words)

In addition, you may find it helpful to view a 2005 documentary by Eugene Jerecki entitled Why We Fight. I neither endorse nor challenge his perspective, and you are not required to discuss the film in your essay. However, the film in effect examines the essay question from Jerecki’s own political perspective, and you may find it useful to see what he came up with.

I’ll tell you what my students came up with in a future post.

Does the “red badge of courage” — Stephen Crane’s famous phrase for a wound suffered in battle — have to be literally red?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Today’s London Daily Telegraph has an article that states, somewhat misleadingly, Traumatized US Soldiers to Get Purple Hearts.

Actually, as the article makes clear, that’s far from certain. The idea is on the table. Whether it will become reality is another matter.

American soldiers who suffer post traumatic stress disorder would be awarded Purple Heart medals, usually given to those who are wounded in action, under a controversial plan being actively considered by the Pentagon.

Nine decades after soldiers were executed for “cowardice” brought on by what was then called shellshock during the First World War, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan may be the first to have their mental injuries treated the same as battlefield wounds.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has urged Pentagon advisers responsible for battlefield awards to study the proposal after Army psychologists said widening the criteria for a Purple Heart would increase the acceptance of soldiers suffering from PTSD, and persuade more to seek help for their problems.

Pentagon figures show that 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress since 2003 but it is classified as an illness not an injury, making it ineligible for a Purple Heart under current rules.

Officials say one in eight combat troops in Iraq and one in six of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants like Prozac or sleeping pills.

John Fortunato, a military psychologist at Fort Bliss, Texas first suggested Purple Hearts for PTSD last month. “These guys have paid at least as high a price as anybody with a traumatic brain injury, as anybody with shrapnel wound,” he said.

Mr Gates immediately proclaimed it an “interesting idea” that needed to be looked into.” But the plan has sparked a fierce and impassioned debate among the US military, with a flurry of comments in the pages and on the websites of publications like Stars and Stripes and the Army Times.

Ray Kimball, an Army major who helped found the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America support group, is a strong supporter. He believes the move would have “huge impacts on the perception of mental health issues in both the Armed Forces and society as a whole”.

He said: “PTSD is a combat wound. We already treat it as such for the purposes of medical evacuation, readiness for combat, and post-service disability assessments. So let’s take it one step further.”

But an anonymous Army intelligence officer told Army Times: “It’s an insult to those who have suffered real injury on the battlefield.”

“An insult to those who have suffered real injury”? That’s strong stuff, and might be dismissed as a fringe opinion. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

Maj. Ray Kimball, the proposal supporter quoted above, is a founding member of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He has written about this issue on the IAVA Blog and in a piece that appeared last month in Military.com:

PTSD is a combat wound - we already treat it as such for the purposes of medical evacuation, readiness for combat, and post-service disability assessments. So let’s take it one step further - make anyone with a diagnosed manifestation of PTSD that in any way impairs function eligible for the Purple Heart.

The current criteria in existence for the Purple Heart would not have to be changed - nowhere do those criteria specify severity of wound, or how the wound was physically inflicted. They only require that the servicemember be wounded or killed in action - in fact, the criteria spend far more time spelling out which “actions” qualify than in addressing the character of wounds. Nor would this action debase or cheapen the Purple Heart - in fact, the award has already evolved significantly from its original establishment in 1782 as a Badge of Military Merit. Whether the change was including wounds wrought by terrorist acts or allowing awards for friendly fire, the changes each addressed an overlooked aspect of the wound that needed to be honored by the nation.

PTSD has remained a hidden wound for too long. DoD’s new campaign is a huge leap in the right direction of erasing the stigma of this affliction, and properly recognizing this hidden wound with the Purple Heart is the next logical step.

Kimball went on to invite comment on the Military.com Discussion Board. He got it — most of it sharply critical and even contemptuous of the very idea that soldiers with PTSD should get the Purple Heart.

The objections, generally speaking, are emotionally charged and have a knee-jerk quality that I’ve often seen in connection with civilian psychiatric disorders. The not so subtle message is that physical illnesses and injuries are “real,” whereas psychological illnesses and injuries are not, but are instead attempts to throw the cloak of illness / injury over what are “really” defects of character. This, in turn, testifies to the persistence of the idea of the mind/ body split. In scientific and medical circles the idea of such a split was exploded decades ago, but it remains firmly embedded in everyday, “common sense” perception.

One reason for this is the denial of what is otherwise a highly disquieting thought: that physical changes — specifically biochemical changes — affect the functioning of the brain and therefore, it is supposed, of one’s basic identity. To admit this connection is to admit the possibility that it can happen to anyone, and I suspect the most vociferous opponents of awarding the Purple Heart to soldiers with PTSD are, at bottom, more fearful of this possibility than most.

Thursday, Jun. 12, 2008
A Veep on a White Horse?
By Mark Thompson/Washington
TIME.com

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign is considering picking a military man as a running mate to compensate for his own limited national-security experience. But it’s far from clear that military experience raises the prospects for a successful presidency. While Dwight D. Eisenhower won pretty good White House grades following his 43-year Army career, Jimmy Carter (seven years in the Navy) didn’t do so well. Old soldiers still grimace when recalling the military highlight of his presidency: 1980’s failed mission to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. The Desert One fiasco killed eight U.S. servicemen, doomed Carter to lose to Ronald Reagan later that year, and primed the pump for Reagan’s military buildup.

The glad-handing and stroking that come naturally to politicians are not the norm for more button-downed military officers. They’ve spent years smartly saluting and being saluted, issuing and carrying out orders. That’s probably not the best prep for a role in which persuasion and cajolery are vital. None of that dims the luster a former general or admiral — they tend to be slender, ramrod straight, and well-spoken, especially on foreign-policy matters — can bring to a ticket. (Well, not always: the late James Stockdale, who was Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992, was a retired Navy vice admiral who famously opened up that year’s vice presidential debate by saying, “Who am I? Why am I here?”)

Robert Scales, a retired Army major general, suggests that having a military officer on the ticket is a mixed blessing. “The great strength of a military guy would be credibility on national security,” says Scales, a military historian and former commandant of the Army War College. “The great weakness is that he lacks any type of regional attraction, which, to my mind, is really the primary purpose in picking a running mate.” Indeed, military officers often move every three or four years, making them essentially political transients.

Still, the Obama camp is considering the option. Here’s a quick guide to the ex-servicemen they’re in the frame to join the Illinois senator on the ticket:

Full story

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 (coming)

The United States has a elected a large number of generals as presidents (admirals not so much). An even larger number have run for president unsuccessfully. It’s rare, however, for officers of flag rank to hold the second spot on the ticket (except in the case of politicians who merely happened to have been generals earlier in their careers.)

But today’s Boston Globe reports that Senator [Kent Conrad of North Dakota] Says Obama May Seek Military Leader as Running Mate:

A running mate from the military ranks could help address concerns that Obama lacks foreign policy experience, having served just three years in the Senate. It could also provide a counterpoint to the military bonafides of the GOP ticket, which will be led by Vietnam War hero John McCain.

[Possible choices include] retired General Tony McPeak, who was Air Force chief of staff during Operation Desert Storm; retired Major General Scott Gration, who flew repeated combat missions and has worked with Obama on a range of military issues since before he began his presidential campaign; and Richard Danzig, who was secretary of the Navy under President Clinton…. Obama might also look at former rival Hillary Clinton’s top military advisers in a gesture of unity, retired generals who include Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; or Wesley Clark, who led the war in Kosovo and sought the Democratic presidential nomination four years ago. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, who served as Navy secretary under President Reagan, has also been frequently mentioned as a possible running mate. … NBC News reported that one name being discussed is retired General James Jones, the former NATO supreme allied commander.

Until recently, most presidential aspirants were veterans with at least several years of active duty service. Consequently the motivation was slight to select a running mate principally on the strength of his military credentials. Offhand I can recall only two instances in which a running mate was a career officer of flag rank: Admiral James B. Stockdale, selected by Ross Perot in 1992; and General Curtis E. LeMay, selected by George C. Wallace in 1968. Both, of course, were third party candidates. Even in those instances, I don’t think they were chosen because of their military credentials, particularly since both Perot and Wallace were themselves veterans.

Elaine Sciolino and Eric Schmitt, in the New York Times Week in Review section, June 8, report A Not Very Private Feud Over Terrorism:

A bitter personal struggle between two powerful figures in the world of terrorism has broken out, forcing their followers to choose sides. This battle is not being fought in the rugged no man’s land on the Pakistan-Afghan border. It is a contest reverberating inside the Beltway between two of America’s leading theorists on terrorism and how to fight it, two men who hold opposing views on the very nature of the threat.

On one side is Bruce Hoffman, a cerebral 53-year-old Georgetown University historian and author of the highly respected 1998 book “Inside Terrorism.” He argues that Al Qaeda is alive, well, resurgent and more dangerous than it has been in several years. In his corner, he said, is a battalion of mainstream academics and a National Intelligence Estimate issued last summer warning that Al Qaeda had reconstituted in Pakistan.

On the other side is Marc Sageman, an iconoclastic 55-year-old Polish-born psychiatrist, sociologist, former C.I.A. case officer and scholar-in-residence with the New York Police Department. His new book, “Leaderless Jihad,” argues that the main threat no longer comes from the organization called Al Qaeda, but from the bottom up — from radicalized individuals and groups who meet and plot in their neighborhoods and on the Internet. In his camp, he said, are agents and analysts in highly classified positions at the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

If Dr. Hoffman gets inside organizations — focusing on command structures — Dr. Sageman gets inside heads, analyzing the terrorist mind-set. But this is more important than just a battle of ideas. It is the latest twist in the contest for influence and resources in Washington that has been a central feature of the struggle against terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.

Officials from the White House to the C.I.A. acknowledge the importance of the debate of the two men as the government assesses the nature of the threat. Looking forward, it is certain to be used to win bureaucratic turf wars over what programs will be emphasized in the next administration.

Full article

For a sample of the feud, compare Sageman’s op/ed piece in the June 8 Washington Post with Hoffman’s caustic review of Sageman’s Leaderless Jihad. It’s in the current Foreign Affairs.

(Hat tip to Brian Sandberg)