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| Jules Crittenden: Post-Traumatic Presidency |
| 2008-02-09 |
| That’s more or less what we’re looking at, like it or not. As a Marine wag not a long time ago in Ramadi, America isn’t at war. The Marine Corps is at war. America is at the mall. But the fact is that war has deeply injured the nation, deepened divides, doing damage on both sides of the aisle, and it has spread confusion and anger. You go to war, things get broken. Bodies, lives and nations. That is what happens. The question is, what do you do with that? The war is not over and still has to be fought. The nation may be damaged, but must continue on. No matter who is elected, it will be a post-traumatic stress presidency. Now the Republicans are getting ready to nominate a man who endured torture during years in a North Vietnamese prison. Expect the Democrat nominee, or more likely his or her surrogates, to make PTSD a campaign issue. The crazy, suicidal, homicidal tripwire vet has been a favorite figure of the anti-war left for a long time. Here’s one. Here’s another. Fringe cases. Don’t worry, it will make it into the mainstream. Suicidal, rage-filled John McCain, unsuitable for president. It’s already there, just below the surface of the temperament questions. Here the question is raised by someone whose commentary I usually enjoy and often agree with: A disparagement of two men who have given their nation superlative service in war and afterward. The fact is, traumatic experiences are part of maturation. Extreme traumatic experiences are part of the common human experience. They were once something leaders were expected to have endured and grown from, if they were going to be leaders worthy of respect. It is only in the very recent past that humans in comfortable First World societies, have managed to put trauma at arm’s length, and for political purposes, stigmatize it. Trauma is not limited to war. It happens in cities and suburban neighborhoods. It happens on highways and in hospitals. It happens in homes. It happens in the halls of power. Traumatic experiences teach you things about yourself and about others. They teach you how to make hard decisions in unforgiving situations. They both reveal character and offer quick, dirty instruction in the matter. They reveal who you can rely on and who you can’t. They teach you what is important in life. So many lessons, most of them merciless, though so often teaching the value of life and of mercy. While traumatic experiences may leave you feeling alienated in a world that rejects old warriors as detrius, and mocks their experience, traumatic experiences do not separate you from life. They make you that much more a part of it. Now we have a candidate who has been in heavy combat, having been shot down and beaten on capture, and years of torture and captivity. Throughout, he demonstrated himself to be a man of tremendous strength and character. And on his return continued to serve his nation, rising as a highly respected, level-headed senator. Does he suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Not visibility. Does he have any symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome? Probably. Are those occasional outbursts part of it? Maybe. That puts him in the same category as hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Americans who have experienced combat and perhaps captivity in war, and have gone on, despite the popular slurs, to live productive, stable, sometimes superlative lives. John F. Kennedy, for example. We all know — maybe don’t even know that we know — men who endured combat from moderate to unimagineably intense, and went on with their lives. They’ve lived quietly among us, successful professionals and family men, who survived beatings and starvation as prisoners of the Japanese, the horrible combat of the Bulge and Iwo Jima, the jungles of Vietnam, now the deserts, mud-hut villages and labyrithine cities of Iraq, and the mountains of Afghanistan. And they have continued on. Not without having to deal with stress and trauma. But if you haven’t experienced stress and trauma in your life, then what kind of life have you lived? Would you care to be led by someone who hasn’t? |
| Posted by:Mike |