Room for a View > Commentary
Common Denominators of the Aftereffects of War
by Lorna Tychostup

BA rehabilitation center was recently set up in Israel to care for former combat soldiers suffering “severe mental crisis” in relation to their war activities. As reported in the Israel daily Ma’ariv November 5, 2002, approximately 100 discharged veterans of elite units are being treated at the Izun rehabilitation village, in the old Roman port city of Caesarea, on the Mediterranean about a half-hour south of Haifa.

Reserve officer Omri Frish, a former combat officer and trained social worker, along with several other former officers, set up the facility. The original intent was to aid young Israelis returning from backpacking trips to the Far East in need of help with addiction problems. Wartime experience in the intifada conflict arose as a common denominator among those in rehabilitation, so the focus was directed to all cases of former combat soldiers in crisis.

“When we took up the task of helping [the young Israelis], we realized that in the majority of cases the phenomena is related to experiences of military service prior to going abroad,” a spokesperson reported to Ma’ariv. “It is not exactly shell shock. It is not precisely a post-traumatic condition either. It is just a very severe mental crisis.” Once Frish and his group made Izun known to the general public, they were staggered by the number of calls they received from ex-soldiers and especially parents telling painful tales of sons becoming drug addicts and trying to commit suicide—“more than 900 so far.”

“The problems are severe,” Frish is quoted as saying. “Soldiers who killed Palestinians, soldiers who by mistake killed a fellow soldier, soldiers who failed in their military tasks.”

The effects of war on those who fight are no secret. Homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, mental illness, isolation, and depression are all part of the great American war legacy. Swords to Plowshares, a community-based veterans’ self-help group founded in 1974 to advocate for veterans rights and to provide direct services to veterans, say they are still working with vets from WWII who suffer from illness, homelessness, and depression. Swords to Ploughshares claims that one-quarter of the US homeless population are vets, half of them having fought in Vietnam.

It was after the war in Vietnam when vets began a new battle fighting to get compensation for injuries and afflictions associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and exposure to Agent Orange. More than a decade since Operation Desert Storm, 156,031 of 697,000 Gulf War vets have come to be designated as service-related casualties, while another 42,685 who fought for their country are still struggling to get benefits and medical assistance for war-related illnesses.

This collateral damage—the care and rehabilitation of veterans from the ravages of their war experience—is not tallied into wartime military budgetary calculations.

Neither are the acts of violence committed by veterans returned home from the field. Recent headlines of violent crime have their own common denominator—all were committed by veterans of the 1991 Gulf War: Sniper mastermind John Allen Mohammed’s rampage killed 10 people; Robert Flores shot and killed three of his University of Arizona professors before shooting himself; three of the four Fort Bragg servicemen who allegedly murdered their wives were Gulf War vets; Jeffrey Hutchinson was convicted for killing his girlfriend and her three children in Florida in 1998; and Timothy McVeigh was executed for the 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

These are high-profile cases. Statistics on crimes committed by veterans are hard to come by, as are statistics that compare violent crime of Gulf War and/or other combat vets to the general populace. While studies have shown evidence of brain injury, including damage to deep areas within the brain which determine personality, advocates of veterans groups agree that more study of war-related ailments are needed. Topics in need of investigation include the effects of environmental toxins, low-level nerve agents, depleted uranium, oil fires, mustard gas, vaccines given to soldiers to guard against biowarfare and nerve gas, and stress.

“Gulf War veterans have a very high frequency of turning to violence to deal with frustration,” said Dr. William Baunzweiger, a California neurologist and psychiatrist who specialized in Gulf War ailments and testified at the defense trial of Jeffrey Hutchinson.

Defense Department spokeswoman Barbara Goodno cautions against generalizing the violent actions of a few to all those involved in Desert Storm. “There is no evidence to support the notion that Gulf War veterans are more violent than any other group.”

And while Steve Robinson, executive director of the Gulf War Resource Center, reportedly admits that the vast majority of those who suffer from Gulf War ailments will never turn violent, he receives letters and phone calls on a daily basis from vets suffering from Gulf War-related symptoms. One letter, written by a jailed vet involved in a vehicular homicide of a close friend, states: “I’m nervous all the time. I feel like my body is doing 200 miles an hour. I am always fatigued, my body shakes and sweats. I believe that because of the physical symptoms, I am a basket case. Anxiety and depression rule my life.”

A similar story is told by an Israeli soldier at the Izun Rehabilitation Village. “I served three years in the territories. We killed dozens of terrorists. I saw my friends getting killed. It made me very nervous. A few months ago I went on a drive in my parent’s car. Somebody bypassed me in his car and that made me angry. I chased him, caught him at a traffic light and opened up his door, dragged him out of his car and started to beat him up.”

“This situation is a real time bomb,” a senior idf officer reportedly told Ma’ariv. “These people are not taught to accept the possibility of failure. In these elite units they are told that failure is unacceptable and that a 90 percent success also counts as a failure. When you are 18, 19, or 20 you can believe in such standards. [As they get older], they become more realistic—but that’s too late...they go into a mental crisis and get into drugs.”