The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

by Francisco Cantú

In his book What Have We Done, veteran war reporter David Wood examines the pervasiveness of “moral injury” among soldiers who have returned from the battlefronts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Long confused with PTSD, moral injury is a more subtle wound, characterized not by flashbacks or a startle complex but by “sorrow, remorse, grief, shame, bitterness, and moral confusion” that manifest not in physical reactions but in emotional responses as subtle as dreams and doubts. “In its most simple and profound sense,” writes Wood, “moral injury is a jagged disconnect from our understanding of who we are and what we and others ought to do and ought not to do.” As a soldier tells him, “Moral injury is a learned behavior, learning to accept the things you know are wrong.”