A recent New York Times study found 121 cases in which U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars committed murder or were charged with homicide after returning home. This reveals yet another tragic consequence of imperialist war and occupation.
The actual number of homicides committed by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans likely is higher. The study was conducted using a search of local news reports and an examination of police, court and military records, and interviews. Since the study relied heavily on public information, it is likely that the study uncovered only the minimum number of such cases.
According to the study, about one-third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives of soldiers. One-fourth of the victims were fellow military personnel. Thirteen veterans committed suicide after the killings, and two more were fatally shot by police. The New York Times encountered several veterans who have attempted suicide or are suicidal.
While these homicides resulted from multiple factors, there is no doubt that the trauma of carrying out the dirty work of war and occupation for the U.S. ruling class played a tragic role. The New York Times found an 89 percent increase in homicides involving active-duty military personnel and new veterans, from 184 cases to 349, since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Three-fourths of the cases involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
The overwhelming majority of the 121 veterans had no criminal history, unlike most homicide offenders. Few had thorough mental health screenings at the end of their deployments. While many displayed symptoms of combat trauma after returning to the United States, they were not evaluated for or diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder until after they were arrested for homicide.
This was true of 20-year-old Matthew Sepi, a Navajo Indian who joined the Army at age 16. He was deployed in April 2003, one month before President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, and assigned to attack Iraq Republican Guard strongholds near Baghdad. Each night, Sepi and his unit were given a list. They crept through towns after midnight and set off C-4 plastic explosives at each address on the list.
After leaving the Army, Sepi found work in Las Vegas at a plastic juice bottle factory. When he began feeling the effects of combat trauma, he sought help at a local Veterans Affairs hospital. However, he could not make his appointments because of his 12-hour factory shifts. Sepi began self-medicating with alcohol to help him sleep.
One night in July 2005, Sepi drove to a convenience store with his AK-47 assault rifle under his coat and paid a stranger to buy him alcohol. Although at 16 he was allowed to fight and kill in the name of imperialism, four years later, he was still under the legal drinking age. He was encountered by two alleged gang members. Sepi fatally shot one individual and wounded the other.
When the police questioned him later that night, Sepi asked “Who did I take fire from?” He explained that he had been ambushed and “engaged the targets.” According to his public defender, when she first met him, Sepi began crying out: “We had the wrong house! We had the wrong house!” (New York Times, Jan. 13, 2008)
The New York Times study found over 100 cases like Sepi’s, including a 20-year-old veteran who killed his 2-year-old daughter while recuperating from injuries sustained in Falluja, and one veteran who enlisted in the Army to obtain health care when his wife got pregnant. He killed his wife and then himself nine days after returning from Iraq.
Realities of imperialist war
Neither the Pentagon nor the U.S. Department of Justice tracks homicides committed by veterans. Nor do they provide quality medical treatment for injured veterans. The deplorable conditions of VA hospitals are well documented.
Over $450 million is spent every day to finance war and occupation in Iraq, yet the military mental health system remains inadequately financed, overburdened and understaffed, according to a Pentagon task force.
This is always the case in imperialist war, where working-class people are targeted by the military to fight wars in the interest of the capitalist class.
For example, according to the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, 15 percent of male veterans still suffered from full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder more than a decade after the war ended. In the mid-1980s, Vietnam veterans made up 20 percent of the U.S. inmate population.
When the Pentagon was given the findings of the New York Times study, it declined to comment. Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense, questioned the validity of the findings, asserting that the homicide figures may seem inordinately high because of “an increase in awareness of military service by reporters since 9/11.”
Absent in this dismissive comment is any concern for the well-being of veterans and their families or a guarantee of improved medical treatment. It is clear that the war machine cares nothing about the soldiers it uses to spread imperialism. It only cares about advancing its military goals.
While a direct cause-and-effect relationship between combat trauma and homicide cannot be assumed, it is clear that committing homicide is an extreme manifestation of trauma stemming from the realities of imperialist war, and that such trauma exacerbates pre-existing psychiatric problems and personal issues.
PTSD is highly treatable psychiatric disorder, but the ruling class has no interest in providing treatment for troops once they have completed their deployment. To the contrary, one-third of the troops involved in Iraq and Afghanistan have been deployed multiple times, and the military willingly sends personnel with pre-existing problems, such as mental illness, drug abuse or domestic abuse, into combat.
Not one more U.S. soldier should fight and die for empire in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not one more soldier should sustain life-changing physical or mental injuries. Not one more family should have to deal with the devastating effects of combat trauma. And not one more Iraqi or Afghani should die or be forced to flee their homes for safety.
Standing together in resistance to imperialist war is necessary.
