AFTERWAR OTHER BOOKS BY NANCY SHERMAN The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of our Soldiers Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue Aristotle’s Ethics: Critical Essays editor ✯ ✯ AFTERWAR Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers Nancy Sherman 1 ✯ ✯ 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. 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U22.3.S439 2015 616.85′21206—dc23 2014034743 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Marshall, Kala, and Jonathan The Loves of My Life Yes. A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and dont try to hold him, that he cant escape from. —William Faulkner, Light in August Contents Foreword by James M. Dubik xi Prologue 1 Chapter 1 Reborn But Dead 7 Chapter 2 Don’t Just Tell Me “Thank You” 23 Chapter 3 They’re My Baby Birds 57 Chapter 4 Recovering Lost Goodness 77 Chapter 5 Rebuilding Trust 105 Chapter 6 Hope After War 133 Chapter 7 Homecoming 155 x ââContents Afterwords: Where They Are Now 163 Acknowledgments 169 Notes 173 Bibliography 213 Credits 227 Index 229 Foreword Expanding Our Understanding of the Moral Dimension of War America may be tired of war, but from all indications, war is not yet tired of America. The United States is entering its 15th year of war. Those being recruited and trained by our armed forces were 4, 5, and 6 years old at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Yet with Al Qaeda affiliates spreading in North, West, and East Africa; the continued conflict in Yemen; the Taliban’s intent to control Afghanistan; and ISIS, formerly Al Qaeda in Iraq, eras- ing the border between Syria and Iraq and solidifying its control over a self- declared Islamic State, more war is on the horizon. A renewed interest in the moral aspects of war, therefore, is only natural; for war inherently risks, uses, ends, and changes lives—of the innocent, of citizens-who-become-soldiers, and sometimes of the political community itself. I want to claim a relatively unique perspective on war’s moral dimension. I was a field commander—retiring from the Army as a Lieutenant General in 2008 after over 37 years of active service—and I am a moral philosopher. xii Foreword I am an infantryman, a paratrooper, and a Ranger. I led units as small as a platoon of about 40 soldiers to a corps of over 46,000. I’ve worked and trained with the Armies of many nations: British, French, German, Polish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Iraqi, and Afghan. And I’ve commanded U.S. and multi-national troops during operations in Haiti, 1994; Bosnia, 1999; and Iraq, 2007–2008. During “the surge” in Iraq I was responsible for accelerating the growth of the Iraqi Security Forces in size, capacity, and confidence. As a moral philosopher, I taught philosophy and just war theory at West Point, 1982–1985; just war theory at Dickinson College, Penn State Law School, and the Army War College, 2012–2013 as the Omar Bradley Chair in Strategic Leadership; and received a doctorate in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 2014. I have both studied and lived war’s moral dimension. Traditional just war theory—jus ad bellum, the justifications for going to war, and jus in bello, right actions in the conduct of war—has been the way moral philosophers and others have categorized war’s moral dimension. It is also the way soldiers and commanders learn about the moral aspects of their profession. Traditional just war theory categories, however, have been found wanting. Jus ad bellum, for example, assumes that war is primarily between nation states. Non nation-state entities were treated as sub cases, usually in the form of a nation’s internal rebellion or civil war. Now, not only have they risen from a “sub case,” but they are also waging war in the space between crime and war. In the face of the post-9/11 wars, traditional just war theo- rists, whether philosophers or lawyers, are rethinking the principles of jus ad bellum to account for non-nation-state entities like Al Qaeda and the kind of wars they are waging. One need only google “jus ad bellum and the war against terrorism” to see the breadth of this rethinking. The principles governing traditionaljus in bello are also being challenged. Previously, the principles of jus in bello were focused narrowly on right con- duct during combat. The principle describing a legitimate act of war, the combatant/noncombatant distinction, the principles of proportionality, double effect and double intent, and due care/due risk—all address the moral responsibilities of those fighting a war. Traditional jus in bello principles arise from the tension between winning and fighting well. This account has been the framework, for example, used to discuss the moral and legal use of Forewordââ xiii drones. This traditional account is necessary but insufficient, for it leaves out the moral responsibilities of those sending citizens-who-become-soldiers to war in the first place. War-waging responsibilities are the jus in bello responsibilities of senior political and military leaders at the strategic level. These leaders decide and act far from the battlefield, yet have a direct effect on how the war is fought, whether the war is prolonged unnecessarily, and whether the lives used are used in war are used well or wasted. These strategic, war-waging responsi- bilities arise from three interlocked and shared responsibilities of the senior political and military leaders who wage a war: (1) set and achieve war aims by making strategy, policy, and military campaign decisions that increase the probability of being right, or at least less wrong than one’s enemy; (2) translate those decisions into action to achieve war aims at the least cost—in lives and resources—and least risk to one’s political community, then adapt decisions and actions as the war unfold; and (3) do all of the foregoing while observing the war convention and maintaining legitimacy, along with public support of the war effort. Waging war justly is connected to the following question: “What does the nation owe its citizens-who-become-soldiers?” This question grabs media attention in that it concerns the availability and quality of post-war treat- ment of soldiers who are wounded—physically, emotionally, or psychologi- cally. This attention is both necessary and welcome, for it reminds all citizens that institutional and fiscal support will be required beyond a war’s end. The question, however, begs a deeper answer. One such answer comes from expanding the traditional focus of jus in bello. That is, in recognizing that the conduct of war involves both fighting a war and waging a war and that war waging responsibilities and principles must be included to provide a complete account of jus in bello. Nancy Sherman’s Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of our Soldiers provides a second, deeper answer; one that involves just war theory’s still- developing jus post bellum. Thus far, the jus post bellum discussion has been primarily about how warring parties end war justly. But Afterwar takes a much more interesting and innovative approach by looking at war’s endur- ing mark on the souls of those who fight. Professor Sherman goes to the very xiv Foreword heart of the question, “What does the nation owe its citizens-who-become- soldiers?” She pulls back the curtain of war and exposes us, the political com- munity on whose behalf soldiers fight, to the moral injuries war necessarily produces.