The Moral Injury

Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo provides one of the more coherent and compelling accounts of the penultimate cost of war:

[T]he ethical damage of war may be worse than the physical injuries we sustain. To properly wage war, you have to recalibrate your moral compass. Once you return from the battlefield, it is difficult or impossible to repair it... War makes us killers. We must confront this horror directly if we’re to be honest about the true costs of war.

Read the article here.

Bridging the Gap

In a commencement speech he delivered at the Naval War College last February, Rear Adm. John F. Kirby said military members need to do a better job communicating with, understanding, and relating to the society we serve:

[I]t’s foolish to believe we are better than the society we protect. To believe that only further separates us from the rest of America. Not everything we do is or should be accessible to the public. But as public servants, answerable to the taxpayers, we as individuals absolutely ought to be.

Read the full excerpt of his speech here.