The Root Of Moral Injury
I've wondered for years why politics has gotten me emotional since returning from Afghanistan. Until recently, I just thought it was the crusty veteran thing to do but after reading a paper by a Dutch researcher, I now understand why I am affected by moral injury. Read until the end to find out why.
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The Root Of Moral Injury
I had a paper sent to me by my good friend and CAF member, L.S. He's been dealing with coming to grips with the entirety of his very successful career at CANSOF. He's morally crushed by his experience and can't, in good conscious, stay in the CAF.
I wonder how many of us feel the same way? I know I wanted to stay in but it was out of fear not from a place of abundance. While in my last few months of deployment, I wrote extensively about how idiotic the war in Afghanistan was. How we had zero willingness to win. But what did winning even mean?
The paper is titled, "The Role of Political Practices in Moral Injury: A Study of Afghanistan Veterans" by Tine Molendjik.
The Puppet Show
Molendjik quotes Dutch veterans calling their war in Afghanistan a "puppet show". Meaning that there was no political will to win. The strings were being pulled back at The Hague and the goal was to not incur casualties for fear of political reprisals. What this did to their troops was demoralize and cause serious harms in the form of PTSD and moral injury.
Below is the abstract from the paper. I encourage you to read it to get the idea behind what is being said. Let me summarize like a soldier.
The politics behind the war in Afghanistan were fucked. It created a disconnect between us (the soldiers) and our political leadership. This caused us harm but the political establishment won't accept their responsibility and hung us out to dry.
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Dallas Alexander
Last week I had a great chat with Canada's favourite sniper, Dallas Alexander. We chatted about his big let down from the JTF2. I used this paper as a guide to figuring out how a top tier soldier like himself could be discarded like some CLP covered rags after an exercise.
You definitely don't want to miss this episode of the Hard To Kill Podcast dropping on March 14th.
The Lab Leak (Canadian Version)
I recently released a podcast episode about the Canadian scandal surrounding the cover-up of a Chinese PLA scientist working in our level 4 bio-lab. This stinks and it's hard to hear how incompetent and treasonous our politicians can be. This just reinforces the thesis in the aforementioned paper.
Listen and find out more about what I have to say about this whole gong show.
Get Motivated to Live
I recently released my conversation with CAF veteran and personal trainer, Adam Sheridan. Find out how 100 burpees saved his life and why he thinks you need to shift your identity away from being a veteran so that you can embrace a new, healthier version of yourself.
Have a great week
THFE
Dave
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CCG Operationnal Planner - Commanding Officer 2nd Field Artillery Regiment, RCA
8 个月How do you quantify a moral injury? I do believe that a large portion of soldiers are questioning the why they did what they did? Why did they sacrifice mind, body and family? Is it truly a moral injury or simply the realization that it wasn’t what they thought it was and now are pissed. Canadian soldiers thought they had a mission to help in Afghanistan and want to believe that it was all for that. Considering the current situation and assessing the sacrifices, was it worth it? I ask this, what was the Canadian guiding principle, our governments mission statement and end state? What was our governments strategic objectives? Did we ever have those? When you don’t have those and you send soldiers to do a difficult job, soldiers give themselves those answer in order to move forward. Now many are facing a reality that what they believe is aligned with what they are seeing as concrete actions from the government. Not only that, many new policies are honestly very difficult to accept and follow. All of this adds up and has an impact on recruiting and retention, I am certain of it. ? ? I still love being a soldier and will continue to be one until my body and mind can't handle it. ?