We must heal the wounds of war we cannot see

While eyes cannot see a soul wounded or a mind suffering, aware eyes can see the results. It all depends on if you know what you are looking at or not. You can see it when they talk and their eyes are pointed down as their head tilts. You can see it when their bodies are clearly under stress with jerking muscles, fidgety fingers and pain so deep it shows in their eyes. You can notice it when they refuse to sit in the middle of the room or become more agitated with their back exposed to a door, even if it is closed. You can hear it in their voices during the day, just as the people they live with can hear it in the night when the nightmares come to haunt them. You can see it when they hear a sudden sound or anything that mimics the sounds of combat, like loud thunder, especially down here in Florida. What else you can see is when you look at their families, lost and confused, afraid and troubled by what someone they love is going through just as much as they are confused about what they are doing to the family.

To say you cannot see this wound is to admit you just don't know what you're looking at because the evidence is as visible as it gets.

We must heal the wounds of war we cannot see
By Pete Conaty

For too long, America has been in denial about the true cost of war. We have honored our veterans with our lips but we have refused to acknowledge the wounds we don’t see, the deep, painful psychological scars borne by so many of our veterans. Thankfully, we are at last beginning to recognize the depth of this problem. We are beginning to reach out a helping hand to those men and women who have borne the heat of battle and come home forever changed.


In his State of the State speech, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke eloquently and frankly about these wounded warriors and our obligation to make them whole again: “Too often our soldiers bring back the enemy with them in their heads. We are seeing and hearing all about a lot of post-traumatic stress syndrome . . . Those men and women need help.”


California’s concerted effort to help these veterans, however, dates back nearly three years, when the Armed Force Retirees Association, the Vietnam Veterans of America and other veterans groups won Governor Schwarzenegger’s signature on AB 2586, a groundbreaking law designed to give our most traumatized soldiers a chance to confront and overcome the psychological wounds of war. Under this alternative sentencing law, a judge first determines if a defendant is suffering from combat-caused post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).


If he is, the judge can steer the defendant into a psychological treatment program rather than jail. Without treatment, many of our fallen heroes would find themselves trapped in an unending cycle of crime and punishment as they struggle with their inner demons.


Eight months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court faced this issue and came down on the side of California’s law in a landmark ruling on the impact of combat stress on veterans. In that case, the high court reduced the death sentence of Korean War veteran George Porter to life in prison. The Florida jury that sentenced Porter to death in a murder case did not know he had fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. He came back a “changed and traumatized man,” the high court said. The sentencing jury would likely have spared Porter from the death penalty if it had known of his “horrifying” battlefield experiences, the justices said.
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We must heal the wounds of war we cannot see