Moral injury in relation to public debates: The role of societal misrecognition in moral conflict-colored trauma among soldiers

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed fast-growing scholarly interest in the concept of moral injury, which addresses the link between the ethics of military intervention and deployment-related suffering. However, current research on moral injury, predominantly psychological in nature, tends to approach the phenomenon as an internally contained disorder. Consequently, it medicalizes moral injury and de-contextualizes it from the people who send soldiers to conflict zones and ‘welcome’ them back. This article addresses the ways in which the experience of moral injury is embedded in and shaped by public debates on military intervention, drawing on relevant literature from the fields of psychology, philosophy, and social sciences, and on in-depth qualitative interviews collected in 2016 and 2017 with 80 Dutch veterans. The article examines the explicit public condemnation experienced by Dutch veterans deployed to Bosnia as peacekeepers, and the more subtle public misunderstanding experienced by Dutch veterans deployed to Afghanistan as combat soldiers. It demonstrates that public criticism and admiration may both be experienced as misrecognition, and, in turn, societal misrecognition may directly or indirectly contribute to moral injury. Moreover, not only soldiers and veterans may struggle with the moral significance of military intervention, but society as well.