This highly recommended, if heart-rending, story from the Colorado Springs Gazette tells of a group of soldiers that returned from Iraq only to fall prey to severe mental illnesses that were largely self-medicated through, and as a result exacerbated by, drug abuse. The soldiers in the applicable unit have committed serial acts of violence, including murder, since their return. Although painful to read, the article focuses on one of war’s inevitable costs, a facet that rarely if ever gets the attention it merits (in fact, the cultural reluctance to acknowledge the severe mental trauma of war often leads to untreated – or self-treated – conditions that only get worse).
In the course of the reporting, the article also ends up highlighting some of the primary contradictions and limitations at the heart of the Counterinsurgency ("COIN") Doctrine – the military doctrine that has been given too much credit for "winning" the war in Iraq (Iraqis are still dying each month in the hundreds as the war continues) and that supposedly lights the way forward in Afghanistan.
