The War at Home
( <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/donjuanna/489552291/" target="_blank">donjuanna</a>/flickr
)
Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This weekend, the fourth Rambo film opened 20 years after the first one.
[BEGIN CLIP]
RAMBO:
Who are they to protest me, huh? Who are they, unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about.
MAN:
It was a bad time for everyone, Rambo. It’s all in the past now.
RAMBO:
For you! For me civilian life is nothing. Back there I could fly a gunship. I could drive a tank. I was in charge of million-dollar equipment. Back here I can't even hold a job.
[CRASHING SOUNDS]
Argh!
[END CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
John Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone, is an American soldier, brave and strong – and twisted. He is, of course, a veteran of the Vietnam War. I say of course because there is a persistent and pervasive stereotype of the Vietnam vet, fueled by such films as The Deer Hunter, Coming Home or Born on the Fourth of July, that is not the picture of mental health.
JERRY LEMBCKE:
People, gosh, really forget that most people came back from Vietnam and just went back into civilian life.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Jerry Lembcke is the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam.
JERRY LEMBCKE:
What people remember is the guy who stands on the street corner with a “Vietnam Vet, Will Work for Food” sign and the people who got into legal problems and claimed Vietnam war experience and PTSD as alibis or defenses for those crimes. And those are the people that Hollywood gives us lots of images of.
And, yeah, I think that if we're not aware of what happened with the Vietnam veterans, that, yeah, this very much could repeat itself in this new era.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
So why start our program with Rambo? Because some veterans fear that the Hollywood depiction of the depressed or the deranged vet could reassert itself. It’s that fear that may underlie the rage generated in some precincts of the military blogosphere by a piece in The New York Times earlier this month.
The paper kicked off a series about veterans with a 6,000-word report presenting the tragic and troubling stories of some of 121 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who had killed, or been charged with killing, after they came home.
The Times compiled its list by searching news reports and public records and with the help of interviews with the soldiers, their families, lawyers, law enforcement and the military. Lieutenant colonel and military historian Robert Bateman is among the enraged, and he says he’s the one who usually defends the press.
ROBERT BATEMAN:
I do. I try and explain to my friends and my peers that journalism is not out to get us, and then in the past couple of weeks The New York Times just dug a big pit, filled it with slime and dove in headfirst.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
He charges The Times with not contextualizing the number of veteran homicides – 121 – which the paper cites as evidence of, quote, “a quiet phenomenon tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.”
ROBERT BATEMAN:
They never mentioned that there had been at least 700,000 veterans who have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They never mentioned that if you compared that, say, as a percentage, you know, how many acts of mayhem per 100,000 returning veterans had occurred, they never noted that it’s many times less than what the average civilian rate is.
Journalists often complain that they get blamed for broadcasting when there’s bad news – when there’s a bomb going off in Iraq – and they often say, hey, look, you don't report that the sky is still blue. Well, this story is essentially reporting not only is the sky blue but it’s a bright and sunny day.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
The Times researched homicides by veterans for the six years preceding the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and for the six years after. They found an 89-percent increase from 185 cases of homicide to 349 cases, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
Deborah Sontag co-wrote the article, headlined “Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles.”
DEBORAH SONTAG:
We felt that our number was the minimum of cases that were out there that we could find; that there are probably many, many more that we are not finding. And so to come up with some kind of rate of homicide based on a shaky number, a minimum number, would not really serve a purpose.
And we did not think it would serve a purpose either to compare what the soldiers were doing with what civilians in the world at large were doing, because this is a distinct universe of individuals who were screened and vetted by the military before joining the service, who do not have a prior criminal record, which the majority of homicide offenders in this country do.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Paul Rykoff is the executive director and founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He says the reaction of veterans to the Times piece was mixed.
PAUL RYKOFF:
I know that some of the military bloggers were really aggressive in pushing back against this piece and felt that it was kind of an overly dramatic piece that didn't provide enough perspective. Other veterans were happy to see that The Times was covering veterans’ issues with such a high level of attention.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
He says that veterans tend to be hyper-vigilant when it comes to stories about them because they are so often misunderstood.
PAUL RYKOFF:
Less than one-half of one percent of the American population has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And if you compare it to World War II, where there was about 12 percent of the population that it served, there was just a general understanding throughout the population, and throughout the media, a more in-depth understanding of what the military was all about, the nuance of the military, and, I think, the issues associated with combat.
The bottom line is that nobody comes home from war unchanged. People don't all come home with amputations and they don't all come home with PTSD, but everyone comes home a little bit different. And I think as a country if we can better understand that, we'll all be better off.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
But the veterans of World War II had it far easier than those from Vietnam, who returned in defeat from a deeply unpopular war for which they were held responsible. Veterans’ benefits had shriveled, nor was there ready access to treatment for post traumatic stress disorder, or post-Vietnam syndrome, as it was called. There wasn't much public awareness of the problem when Johnny came marching home. The movies came later.
In fact, PTSD wasn't added to the standard manual of psychiatric disorders until 1980. Washington Post reporter Dana Priest has written extensively about veterans’ issues, including breaking the story of scandalous conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She says the specter of the Vietnam vet still haunts many reporters on the veteran beat.
DANA PRIEST:
I think part of that is driven by the understanding that we didn't do right the last time around during a controversial war, and a lot of people suffered because of it who should not have suffered.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
After Priest’s article about Walter Reed, millions of dollars were devoted to solving that problem, and, arguably, the media’s focus on PTSD has helped to expand resources there as well. But how much coverage is too much?
Vietnam historian Jerry Lembcke says the trauma already has become a distraction that takes the public’s eye off the issue of the war itself.
JERRY LEMBCKE:
The press very much made the coming home experiences of Persian Gulf War veterans and now Iraq War veterans a story about war trauma. That’s the primary narrative, the primary story that’s being told by the press.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
The trend has found its way to Hollywood in the film In the Valley of Elah, about a retired MP investigating the death of his soldier son near his base in New Mexico.
[BEGIN CLIP]
FEMALE ACTOR:
Retired cop, or just watch a lot of TV?
ACTOR:
Military police, retired.
FEMALE ACTOR:
Then you should know Army has jurisdiction over its own personnel. I'm sorry. I hope you find your son.
ACTOR:
Hey, I don't know what you think your job is, but if it’s anything like mine was, it’s to roll up drunks, twiddle your thumbs, not ask too many questions. But my son has spent the last 18 months bringing democracy to a [BLEEPED]-hole and serving his country. He deserves better than this.
[END CLIP]
JERRY LEMBCKE:
It moves the conflict from Iraq to a conflict here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Jerry Lembcke.
JERRY LEMBCKE:
In this case, the investigators, the police department, the father trying to find out the truth of what’s happened - and then the guys that came back, they're kind of messed up because of the war. It reminded me [LAUGHS] very much of Vietnam War films, post Vietnam War films. Absolutely.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
The Post’s Dana Priest sees two narratives emerging of the Iraq and Afghanistan vet. There’s the one of the soldier facing the challenge of physical disability, of amputation, say, with great courage and great support from family and community. And then there’s the silent sufferer.
DANA PRIEST:
One of my favorite things to remind people who want to go visit Walter Reed is that, you know, the President and his envoys who go over there to make people feel better, to buck them up, they never go to the psychiatric ward. They never trot out a soldier with PTSD who has come through it or who has gotten 90-percent better than when he or she went in the ward to say, look, I survived this, and this is how I did it.
PAUL RYKOFF:
I think the narrative of the Iraq War veteran is still a bit murky.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Paul Rykoff of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America says it will depend in part on the media.
PAUL RYKOFF:
And at the same time, it’s going to depend on how veterans do. Give them five or ten years and let's see how many of them are in Congress and how many of them are in jail, how many of them are continuing to serve in the military and how many are working in the media themselves. Having those folks making up a part, at least, a small percentage of the population of the media is incredibly valuable.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
But already, he says, the narrative is much improved. The Iraq vet will never suffer the fate of the veterans of Vietnam.
PAUL RYKOFF:
They were really suffering the full brunt and energy that was associated with the war in a very personal way. And I think thankfully people like me who've come home have been treated well.
Regardless of how people feel about this war, they've honored our service, they've respected our service and they can separate us from the policy. And I think that’s a key development in the American consciousness since Vietnam.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Deborah Sontag of The New York Times says the point of the pieces that have appeared in her paper is to ensure that there are no more silent sufferers.
DEBORAH SONTAG:
If you read, really read what we've written, we try and see the crime that has been committed in the context of this individual’s service, life, character and community. The people who commit these homicides on their return are an incredible minority, a teeny-weeny minority.
But the individuals who return from Iraq and Afghanistan and become dysfunctional are a larger minority. And if you look at the details of these cases, as some of the vets who have called us have said, they look at these cases and they say, there but for the grace of God go I.
And so we don't want to snip off this portion of people and say they are not to be discussed. In some ways, looking at the extreme situations that these guys have gotten themselves into and the horrible damage that they've caused is revealing. That’s what we wanted to say.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
It’s always difficult, she says, to discuss the consequences of a war while it is being waged. But the sooner those stories are told, the sooner attention will be paid.
The narrative of the unhinged Vietnam vet was, after all, also the story of an indifferent, ignorant nation. Perhaps that one, too, will be different.
And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This weekend, the fourth Rambo film opened 20 years after the first one.
[BEGIN CLIP]
RAMBO:
Who are they to protest me, huh? Who are they, unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about.
MAN:
It was a bad time for everyone, Rambo. It’s all in the past now.
RAMBO:
For you! For me civilian life is nothing. Back there I could fly a gunship. I could drive a tank. I was in charge of million-dollar equipment. Back here I can't even hold a job.
[CRASHING SOUNDS]
Argh!
[END CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
John Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone, is an American soldier, brave and strong – and twisted. He is, of course, a veteran of the Vietnam War. I say of course because there is a persistent and pervasive stereotype of the Vietnam vet, fueled by such films as The Deer Hunter, Coming Home or Born on the Fourth of July, that is not the picture of mental health.
JERRY LEMBCKE:
People, gosh, really forget that most people came back from Vietnam and just went back into civilian life.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Jerry Lembcke is the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam.
JERRY LEMBCKE:
What people remember is the guy who stands on the street corner with a “Vietnam Vet, Will Work for Food” sign and the people who got into legal problems and claimed Vietnam war experience and PTSD as alibis or defenses for those crimes. And those are the people that Hollywood gives us lots of images of.
And, yeah, I think that if we're not aware of what happened with the Vietnam veterans, that, yeah, this very much could repeat itself in this new era.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
So why start our program with Rambo? Because some veterans fear that the Hollywood depiction of the depressed or the deranged vet could reassert itself. It’s that fear that may underlie the rage generated in some precincts of the military blogosphere by a piece in The New York Times earlier this month.
The paper kicked off a series about veterans with a 6,000-word report presenting the tragic and troubling stories of some of 121 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who had killed, or been charged with killing, after they came home.
The Times compiled its list by searching news reports and public records and with the help of interviews with the soldiers, their families, lawyers, law enforcement and the military. Lieutenant colonel and military historian Robert Bateman is among the enraged, and he says he’s the one who usually defends the press.
ROBERT BATEMAN:
I do. I try and explain to my friends and my peers that journalism is not out to get us, and then in the past couple of weeks The New York Times just dug a big pit, filled it with slime and dove in headfirst.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
He charges The Times with not contextualizing the number of veteran homicides – 121 – which the paper cites as evidence of, quote, “a quiet phenomenon tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.”
ROBERT BATEMAN:
They never mentioned that there had been at least 700,000 veterans who have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They never mentioned that if you compared that, say, as a percentage, you know, how many acts of mayhem per 100,000 returning veterans had occurred, they never noted that it’s many times less than what the average civilian rate is.
Journalists often complain that they get blamed for broadcasting when there’s bad news – when there’s a bomb going off in Iraq – and they often say, hey, look, you don't report that the sky is still blue. Well, this story is essentially reporting not only is the sky blue but it’s a bright and sunny day.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
The Times researched homicides by veterans for the six years preceding the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and for the six years after. They found an 89-percent increase from 185 cases of homicide to 349 cases, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
Deborah Sontag co-wrote the article, headlined “Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles.”
DEBORAH SONTAG:
We felt that our number was the minimum of cases that were out there that we could find; that there are probably many, many more that we are not finding. And so to come up with some kind of rate of homicide based on a shaky number, a minimum number, would not really serve a purpose.
And we did not think it would serve a purpose either to compare what the soldiers were doing with what civilians in the world at large were doing, because this is a distinct universe of individuals who were screened and vetted by the military before joining the service, who do not have a prior criminal record, which the majority of homicide offenders in this country do.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Paul Rykoff is the executive director and founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He says the reaction of veterans to the Times piece was mixed.
PAUL RYKOFF:
I know that some of the military bloggers were really aggressive in pushing back against this piece and felt that it was kind of an overly dramatic piece that didn't provide enough perspective. Other veterans were happy to see that The Times was covering veterans’ issues with such a high level of attention.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
He says that veterans tend to be hyper-vigilant when it comes to stories about them because they are so often misunderstood.
PAUL RYKOFF:
Less than one-half of one percent of the American population has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And if you compare it to World War II, where there was about 12 percent of the population that it served, there was just a general understanding throughout the population, and throughout the media, a more in-depth understanding of what the military was all about, the nuance of the military, and, I think, the issues associated with combat.
The bottom line is that nobody comes home from war unchanged. People don't all come home with amputations and they don't all come home with PTSD, but everyone comes home a little bit different. And I think as a country if we can better understand that, we'll all be better off.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
But the veterans of World War II had it far easier than those from Vietnam, who returned in defeat from a deeply unpopular war for which they were held responsible. Veterans’ benefits had shriveled, nor was there ready access to treatment for post traumatic stress disorder, or post-Vietnam syndrome, as it was called. There wasn't much public awareness of the problem when Johnny came marching home. The movies came later.
In fact, PTSD wasn't added to the standard manual of psychiatric disorders until 1980. Washington Post reporter Dana Priest has written extensively about veterans’ issues, including breaking the story of scandalous conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She says the specter of the Vietnam vet still haunts many reporters on the veteran beat.
DANA PRIEST:
I think part of that is driven by the understanding that we didn't do right the last time around during a controversial war, and a lot of people suffered because of it who should not have suffered.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
After Priest’s article about Walter Reed, millions of dollars were devoted to solving that problem, and, arguably, the media’s focus on PTSD has helped to expand resources there as well. But how much coverage is too much?
Vietnam historian Jerry Lembcke says the trauma already has become a distraction that takes the public’s eye off the issue of the war itself.
JERRY LEMBCKE:
The press very much made the coming home experiences of Persian Gulf War veterans and now Iraq War veterans a story about war trauma. That’s the primary narrative, the primary story that’s being told by the press.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
The trend has found its way to Hollywood in the film In the Valley of Elah, about a retired MP investigating the death of his soldier son near his base in New Mexico.
[BEGIN CLIP]
FEMALE ACTOR:
Retired cop, or just watch a lot of TV?
ACTOR:
Military police, retired.
FEMALE ACTOR:
Then you should know Army has jurisdiction over its own personnel. I'm sorry. I hope you find your son.
ACTOR:
Hey, I don't know what you think your job is, but if it’s anything like mine was, it’s to roll up drunks, twiddle your thumbs, not ask too many questions. But my son has spent the last 18 months bringing democracy to a [BLEEPED]-hole and serving his country. He deserves better than this.
[END CLIP]
JERRY LEMBCKE:
It moves the conflict from Iraq to a conflict here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Jerry Lembcke.
JERRY LEMBCKE:
In this case, the investigators, the police department, the father trying to find out the truth of what’s happened - and then the guys that came back, they're kind of messed up because of the war. It reminded me [LAUGHS] very much of Vietnam War films, post Vietnam War films. Absolutely.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
The Post’s Dana Priest sees two narratives emerging of the Iraq and Afghanistan vet. There’s the one of the soldier facing the challenge of physical disability, of amputation, say, with great courage and great support from family and community. And then there’s the silent sufferer.
DANA PRIEST:
One of my favorite things to remind people who want to go visit Walter Reed is that, you know, the President and his envoys who go over there to make people feel better, to buck them up, they never go to the psychiatric ward. They never trot out a soldier with PTSD who has come through it or who has gotten 90-percent better than when he or she went in the ward to say, look, I survived this, and this is how I did it.
PAUL RYKOFF:
I think the narrative of the Iraq War veteran is still a bit murky.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Paul Rykoff of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America says it will depend in part on the media.
PAUL RYKOFF:
And at the same time, it’s going to depend on how veterans do. Give them five or ten years and let's see how many of them are in Congress and how many of them are in jail, how many of them are continuing to serve in the military and how many are working in the media themselves. Having those folks making up a part, at least, a small percentage of the population of the media is incredibly valuable.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
But already, he says, the narrative is much improved. The Iraq vet will never suffer the fate of the veterans of Vietnam.
PAUL RYKOFF:
They were really suffering the full brunt and energy that was associated with the war in a very personal way. And I think thankfully people like me who've come home have been treated well.
Regardless of how people feel about this war, they've honored our service, they've respected our service and they can separate us from the policy. And I think that’s a key development in the American consciousness since Vietnam.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Deborah Sontag of The New York Times says the point of the pieces that have appeared in her paper is to ensure that there are no more silent sufferers.
DEBORAH SONTAG:
If you read, really read what we've written, we try and see the crime that has been committed in the context of this individual’s service, life, character and community. The people who commit these homicides on their return are an incredible minority, a teeny-weeny minority.
But the individuals who return from Iraq and Afghanistan and become dysfunctional are a larger minority. And if you look at the details of these cases, as some of the vets who have called us have said, they look at these cases and they say, there but for the grace of God go I.
And so we don't want to snip off this portion of people and say they are not to be discussed. In some ways, looking at the extreme situations that these guys have gotten themselves into and the horrible damage that they've caused is revealing. That’s what we wanted to say.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
It’s always difficult, she says, to discuss the consequences of a war while it is being waged. But the sooner those stories are told, the sooner attention will be paid.
The narrative of the unhinged Vietnam vet was, after all, also the story of an indifferent, ignorant nation. Perhaps that one, too, will be different.
Produced by WNYC Studios