Wounded Warriors: Contemporary Representations of Soldiers’ Suffering By Alison M Bond A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Wendy L Brown, Chair Professor Ron E Hassner Professor Kinch Hoekstra Professor Ramona Nadaff Fall 2017 Wounded Warriors: Contemporary Representations of Soldiers’ Suffering Copyright 2017 by Alison M Bond Abstract Wounded Warriors: Contemporary Representations of Soldiers’ Suffering by Alison M Bond Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor Wendy L Brown, Chair There has been a long-term suspicion in religious and psychological literatures that unethical wars will have an especially detrimental impact on the soldiers who fight in them. This project examines public depictions of the psychological suffering of contemporary U.S. soldiers, evaluating their effects on public discourses about war’s ethics. The analysis shows that over the past decade, these portrayals have developed potentially detrimental effects on civic processes, limiting and constraining public debate about war’s justifiability. Furthermore, the full expression of soldiers’ varied experiences of distress also appears to be constricted, preventing insights that might emerge into the ethics of current wars. In trying to understand how different discourses of suffering tend either to illuminate or to foreclose debates about a war’s justifiability, I draw on a variety of sources including medical discourse, political debate, advocacy materials designed to inform the public about soldiers’ post-combat struggles, and cultural accounts of soldiers’ distress in journalism, film and literature. The analysis highlights how the language and narratives used to portray soldiers’ distress have shifted dramatically over the past four decades: initially associated with criticisms of war in the immediate aftermath of Vietnam, soldiers’ suffering has gradually become associated with arguments against such criticism. The first of the dissertation’s five chapters lays out the contemporary assumption that war criticism harms veterans. Chapter 2 shows how 1970s psychological discourse made just the opposite assertion—interpreting the underlying illegitimacy of the U.S. war in Vietnam as the primary cause of soldiers’ post-combat distress. Over time, however, psychological depictions of distress lost many of their war-critical associations, as they were first codified into the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 1 diagnosis in 1980, and then further refined to comport with evidence-based medical standards—developments which inevitably neglect variable and hard-to-measure symptoms such as ethical concerns. Chapter 3 examines how key cultural and political narratives in the 1980s further transformed public associations between a war’s illegitimacy and soldiers’ mental harm. Reagan’s prominent use of the phrase “Vietnam Syndrome,” for example, and the infamous Rambo films presented soldiers’ distress as caused by civilian neglect and antiwar sentiment. These accounts set up a new narrative, where dissenting civilians replaced war as a central cause of soldiers’ mental harm. Furthermore, war was positioned as psychologically curative, not only for the individual soldier, but for the nation as a whole. Chapter 4 shows how war metaphors—used in military publications and the extraordinarily popular 2014 film American Sniper—position distress as an internal foe to be “defeated” via psycho-active medications and Cognitive-Behavioral therapies. These depictions allow suffering to be framed predominantly as a problem to be removed, rather than as a source of potential insight into the moral stakes of a war (as 1970s formulations suggested). Chapter 5 argues that the intrusion of military priorities and the restriction of debate are also evident in recent comparisons between suffering soldiers and the “timeless” and “heroic” attributes of ancient Greek warriors. For example, Theater of War performances of Sophocles’ Ajax aim to initiate discussions about mental health concerns and reduce the stigma associated with post-conflict mental health symptoms. While undoubtedly effective in these goals, the performances also depict war as natural and timeless, suggesting that war is beyond meaningful ethical debate. Of course, to some, assessing the justifiability of the wars might seem better suited to other more overtly “political” settings than the cases selected above—including debates between politicians, pundits, military leaders, scholars, and journalists. Contemporary cultural scholars note, however, that soldiers’ experiences are one of the most discussed aspects of the current wars, garnering sustained civilian attention, which suggests that these discourses are tremendously influential. The analyses offered in this project suggest that the assumption that we can understand the ethics of the current wars without engaging with soldiers’ suffering is deeply flawed. However, because our contemporary accounts of that suffering are often partial or incomplete, we need to aim for more comprehensive accounts of soldiers’ experiences. And that expansion, in turn, shows that any effort to grasp the significance of soldiers’ suffering depends on engaging with debates about war’s justifiability. 2 To Dolores i Table of Contents Acknowledgments iv Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Suffering and Antiwar Veterans 2 Suffering, but No “Politics” 4 Anti-Critical Discourses 5 Controlling the Audience Response 5 Military Contributions 7 Veterans Disagree 8 Not Questioning the Wars in Presidential Debates 9 Not Questioning the Wars on Television Talk Shows 11 Evaluating War’s Justifiability and Soldiers’ Suffering 14 Chapter 2: PTSD and Moral Injury 18 Introduction 18 Some Limitations of PTSD and the Rise of Moral Injury 22 Key Contexts: Trauma, Military Medicine, and Literary Portrayals of Suffering 30 PTSD: Antiwar Associations (but not an Antiwar Construct) 35 Moral Injury: A Supplementary (and Initially Anti-Critical) Category 40 Lifton and Shay: Making Anti-Critical Effects Visible 43 Guilt 45 Rage and a Sense of Betrayal 48 Conclusion 51 Chapter 3: “Vietnam Syndrome:” Interpreting Domestic Divisions as Civic Malady 54 Introduction 54 1970s Emergence: Medical and Political Versions 58 Vietnam Syndrome as Political Metaphor 62 Post-Vietnam “Revisionism” 66 Contrasting Views of the War 69 Reach and Influence 70 Soldiers’ Distress, and the Status of Antiwar Views 73 Presidential use of “Syndrome” as a Political Metaphor 76 From Reasonable Disagreement to Sick and Harmful 79 Conclusion 85 ii Chapter 4: “War Metaphors, Clinical Treatment Approaches, and Military Interests” 90 Introduction 90 Metaphor 94 American Sniper: Stress and Adrenaline Go Within 97 At War with PTSD: CBT Treatment Approaches 101 “Internal Conflict” and Ethical Struggles 104 Trudeau: Military Access and Personal Reversal 108 Conclusion 111 Chapter 5: Ancient Greeks in America 115 Introduction 115 Doerries’ “Theater of War” 117 Key differences Between Shay and Doerries 122 Stigma 123 Exclusions of Politics and “Healing” 127 Moral Injury and Prevention 131 The Greeks: Timeless Equivalence or Myriad Lessons 134 Differences in Degree: Heroism 139 Changes in Doerries’ Approach Over Time 142 Conclusion 146 Bibliography 151 iii Acknowledgments I am very grateful for the many wonderful people who helped me work on this project. Thank you to the departments and centers at UC Berkeley that supported this work by way of grants and employment: Political Science; International and Area Studies; Rhetoric; Environmental Science, Policy, and Management; and the GSI Teaching and Resource Center. Thank you, Rotary International, for bringing me to Berkeley. Thank you to Aaron Belkin and to San Francisco State University’s Palm Center for support while I was finishing. Special thanks to the veterans, clinicians, and others who were willing to discuss the project with me. You enriched my understanding of the diversity of responses people can have both to war and to public discourse. I’m most grateful. Esteemed committee! Wendy Brown, Ron Hassner, Kinch Hoekstra. I greatly appreciate your patience. Thank you for helping me find my own path forward, and for illuminating the academic terrain through your distinctive, shining examples. Ramona Naddaff, thank you for excellent contributions as my outside committee member. I am also very grateful to these remarkable people: Rebecca Wallace and Audrey Lin for research assistance; Pam Duffy for humor and flexibility in troubled times; Doomsday deadline-enforcing robots: I could not have done this without you; Isabel Gottlieb proofread the penultimate draft; Filip Wojciechowski impressed order upon the footnotes; Nina Hagel endured the Rambo films; a cohort of specialists - EC, MD, TD, DL, and BMS – generously offered their expertise to the cause; the Barker family provided multifaceted support; my grandparents knew the suffering of war first-hand, and passed on some of its lessons; my parents, Barnett Bond, Graham Campbell, and iv Heather Campbell, conveyed the importance of working hard, and of paying attention to the past. Thank you, also, to the beloved people who buoyed my spirits throughout, by way of writing dates and accountability groups, as well as breaks from work to enjoy their fine conversation, unrehearsed Shakespeare readings, hikes, early morning runs,