The problem with telling them it's misplaced guilt is you're not letting them own their guilt and they want to own their guilt. And so these protocols aren't working because they're misunderstanding the nature of trauma born of war. There are multiple things that are happening or there are multiple strains on the soldiers who are spending more and more time on these rotations.
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. A truly remarkable book about the unseen ideological foundations of American militarism: American civilians are enjoined to venerate troops, deferring to their traumatized positionality. The first in a two-part interview.
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Buy: Fighting in a World on Fire by Andreas Malm versobooks.com/books/4138-fighting-in-a-world-on-fire
The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History of Debt, Misery, and the Drift to the Right by David Roediger haymarketbooks.org/books/1879-the-sinking-middle-class