When we do something (or fail to do something) that deviates from our beliefs, we often feel uncomfortable, a phenomenon psychology calls cognitive dissonance. This can result from voting for someone we don’t like, or eating that second doughnut despite our New Year’s resolution. The basic mismatch between what we value and our behavior causes unease.
When that distress stems from a clash between moral beliefs — convictions of right and wrong — and one’s own actions or those of others, the distress is called moral dissonance. It can lead to greater trauma — as the stakes rise, so does the level of psychological distress experienced due to misalignment between core moral beliefs and actions (or from betrayal of those beliefs).
And almost nowhere are the stakes higher than in war, given its inevitably deadly consequences.
So when a soldier or sailor participates in a war they are unsure about or believe is immoral or even illegal, the moral distress can be extreme. So extreme that, when a clash like this cannot be rationalized or trivialized away, the misalignment can morph into variations of guilt, shame, anger and self-blame. This greater trauma is known as moral injury, which can leave lasting psychological wounds and is associated with greater anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide risk.
Today, U.S. service members are showing increasing signs of suffering moral injury caused by possibly illegal and unnecessary wars. Some may also be negatively affected by Pentagon policies that run against the professional military ethic of what many service members believe to be right. (These include summarily firing respected senior leaders, denying women and minorities promotion to senior ranks, forcing out valued transgender service members, attacks on women in combat, the dismantling of wartime civilian harm protection mechanisms and overt religious sponsorship by the secretary of defense.)
This increasing moral injury is reflected in the skyrocketing numbers of military personnel seeking to leave the service as conscientious objectors — as well as in the reasons they give for wanting out. It’s also evident in a sailor’s jumping off the USS Abraham Lincoln in what his wife described as a suicide attempt after months of a long deployment plagued by logistical issues. (Adding insult to injury, this sailor faces punishment for his actions, surely worsening his own moral injury and that of fellow service members witnessing such maltreatment.)
Today, U.S. service members are showing increasing signs of suffering moral injury caused by possibly illegal and unnecessary wars.
It’s important to recall that service members are already at a heightened risk for moral injury by virtue of their service. They’re ordered to kill, or otherwise participate in the military killing machine, despite internalizing since birth that it’s wrong to kill. They’re tasked with often time-pressured decisions involving risk of injury or death to civilians they’re charged with protecting, and other high-stakes decisions that affect others’ survival.
So when engaged in war — even if it is waged legally — the risk of moral injury is omnipresent, and the incidence quite real. For example, a U.S. submarine’s torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in early March near Sri Lanka — as the Iranian ship was heading home from India’s military exercise — was a lawful military strike. Yet that legality doesn’t erase the tragedy of the deaths of 130 Iranian sailors aboard that ship. These young men were conscripted by their radical government to serve, and surely weren’t all that different from the American submariners who killed them. Our sailors know that, and their humanity can’t help but be affected.
And when our service members kill innocent civilians — such as the 120 Iranian children killed in a strike on their school on the first day of the current war — the moral dissonance is even greater. (An early U.S. intelligence assessment found the U.S. was likely responsible for the errant strike, though the Pentagon hasn’t released a final report.)
Also consider that the majority of Americans don’t support the Iran war, a viewpoint that is surely not limited to the civilian population. It’s perceived by many as illegal, unnecessary from the onset plus counterproductive to U.S. interests. It’s easy to see how service members’ moral distress regarding the aforementioned violent incidents can progress to moral injury, given that the overall war is deeply suspect.
Simply put, the situations of moral dissonance inherent in war are amplified when our service members harbor grave misgivings about the propriety, morality and legality of the overall war itself — as well as similar misgivings about the senior leadership issuing the orders. The Iranian children killed by the U.S. military weren’t simply a tragic result of an inexcusably reckless targeting choice relying on severely outdated intelligence. Worse, their needless deaths also occurred during an unnecessary and likely unlawful war led by civilian Pentagon officials whose leadership is questionable at best, thus posing a severe moral challenge to many in uniform.
And the increasingly loud murmurs of moral distress among service members isn’t due simply to the Iran war. It’s been growing since last year, when the military was first being ordered to deploy in major American cities.
Then there’s the administration’s claim that it’s engaging in armed conflict in the Caribbean with alleged drug smugglers, a claim that starkly fails the legal criteria for being a war and has resulted in the killing of more than 200 people in boat strikes since last fall. These extrajudicial killings (technically crimes against humanity, not war crimes, as there is no actual war) committed by fellow service members taint everyone wearing the same American uniform. The moral distress felt by many due to this criminal campaign is real.
There is ultimately no way to completely safeguard military members from moral injury. There is plenty of evidence, however, demonstrating that mental health support, not punishment, can help treat it after the fact. Still, the most effective method of preventing moral injury to U.S. service members is having civilian leadership with a moral compass, basic humanity and a commitment to following the law.
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