Staff Perspective: Thoughts About the Morality of War - A Marine Veteran Shares His Comments
Mr. Timothy Kudo served in the US Marine Corps from 2006-2011 as a captain and executive officer. He deployed to Iraq in 2009 and to Afghanistan in 2010 to 2011. His writing on Veteran issues, ethics, and public service has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. Some of his articles have focused on his experiences downrange related to moral transgressions and the morality of war.
More recently, Mr. Kudo worked as a consultant in the New York office of the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. He has a Master of Public Administration (MPA) and Business Administration (MBA) from New York University, a Master of Science in Teaching from Fordham University, and earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles. He currently is working on a novel.
After reading some of Mr. Kudo’s articles, I sent him questions about moral injury and the moral impact of war. Below are the written responses he provided to me. My hope is that mental health providers gain insight and sensitivity from his candid comments and thus communicate more openly with military clients about this often unspoken topic.
Please note that the views expressed below do not represent those of the Center for Deployment Psychology, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) or the Department of Defense (DoD). They represent those of Mr. Kudo.
Dr. Paula Domenici - How can civilians begin to comprehend the casualties of war and ethical impact of war beyond merely knowing someone who has died?
Timothy Kudo - One of the fundamental differences between the civilian and the combat Veteran is while the first is capable of understanding death only the second can comprehend killing. I view this type of moral knowledge as incommunicable. To know what it is like to kill another human being is to have experienced it, but by then it’s too late. This is one of the great ironies of war and why, I would argue, humanity continues to wage them.
This isn’t to say that all veterans perceive of killing in war as unethical. Just war doctrines, religious teachings, and patriotism can justify certain forms of killing (e.g. lawful combatants, acts of self-defense, etc.) and often, as people like David Grossman has noted in his book “On Killing”, distance can reduce the ethical impact of an action. However, for those engaged in close killing, killing of non-combatants (either through accident, pre-approved collateral damage, or necessity), and killing while living in close proximity to the enemy (as is required by counterinsurgency doctrine), the act transforms from the legalistic, abstract “killing” to the morally-loaded “murder.” It is, quite simply, impossible to understand murder without having murdered.
Losing men in war is also accepted and not indifferent from someone dying of an accident at home. The one case where there is a difference is when a person under your command or responsibility dies based on an action or decision you’ve made. Losing a person to combat is difficult, as losing anyone is, but when they die as a result of a decision you’ve made that difficulty is compounded. Responsibility for another’s death again approaches a moral boundary. However, it also is not common that someone dies as a result of a mistake or bad decision as opposed to bad luck. While both can carry moral weight and drive feelings of guilt, only one results in shame. It may be possible for police officers, fire fighters, or health care professionals to understand this, but it too is only understood through experience. The doctor who has never lost a patient may spend more time imagining it, but they cannot understand it until after the malpractice has occurred.
PD - You explained that the term, moral injury, conflates moral transgression and physical/psychological injury and it’s not the kind of injury you recover from with rest, physical therapy and pain medication. Please elaborate.
TK - There are two aspects of what is generally called “moral injury” (as I understand it as a layman): first, the moral consequences of an immoral act, and second, the physiological and psychological manifestations of dealing with those consequences. Moral injury is well suited as a description of things like depression, suicide, anxiety, panic attacks and other symptoms that might be seen in a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I have no doubt that people experience moral consequences that manifest in physical and psychological symptoms and where these are debilitating that therapy and pharmaceutical interventions may be appropriate. In this, moral acts can manifest as injuries not unlike PTSD or losing a limb.
Where I disagree is under the first notion of moral injury, which is integrally tied together with the second in the term. In my particular case, I participated in an escalation of force incident where we killed two unarmed people on a motorcycle. This is a tragedy by any account. Prior to shooting these two people, I followed the rules of engagement regarding escalation of force and was confident that our decision to fire was correct. In fact, it was by the letter of the law. I had no moral sense that what I was about to do was wrong. Immediately after we fired and I realized that the two men were unarmed – one was just a boy – it was obvious to me that we had done something fundamentally immoral (even if justified or allowed in war). That feeling of regret and abhorrence toward immoral actions and outcomes is, to my mind, what makes us human. To think that I shouldn’t feel regret over killing innocent people is a clinicalization of morality that can only serve to undermine moral actions. We should feel bad when we do bad things otherwise it’s not clear to me what we are or whether anything is moral.
To the degree that psychology is able to make “moral injury” a psychological rather than moral problem I worry that it will only serve the process of dehumanizing American sailors, soldiers, airmen, and Marines. Dehumanization has already been required to facilitate the killing that is necessary in war and if there are no after-effects that we need to worry about, what is ever to limit us in war?
PD - When civilians ask if you killed anyone, you note the importance of being honest and open about the deaths you caused. What questions can civilians ask that would help lead to an honest conversation about this? How can they approach interactions with service members to facilitate a more open dialogue rather than just thanking them for their service?
TK - I think civilians need to understand the true cost of war and what is being done in their name and on their behalf. If anything war is a necessary evil but all too often civilians do not recognize this. They see a split between hero and war criminal, but are unwilling to examine the middle ground where most combat Veterans live. Whether it’s drone strikes or strategic bombing or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we regularly kill civilians knowingly in order to simultaneously kill terrorists, larger groups of enemy combatants, or to weaken the will of the enemy. And yet when most people think of war they can only see the purely moral or the purely immoral.
It’s not clear that there’s any question that a civilian can ask in a one-on-one conversation that would be helpful to me. To the degree that it’s helpful for them and for the nation to understand this real, unavoidable, and irreversible cost, I’ve tried to write about my experiences. I cannot think of a person in my life who could have asked me about this in a way that would have been helpful to me or where I could have explained it to them verbally in a way they’d understand.
PD - What can mental health providers do to help Service members struggling with the morality of war and its aftermath? How can they help Service members move forward/live a full life after war, but not forget the responsibility they bear for the lives of others and for the consequences of their actions?
TK - Mental health providers need to primarily focus on addressing the psychological symptoms that manifest after immoral actions. As for the moral components, this is a trickier issue. I believe that people are more than the worst thing they’ve ever done and so even a sinner can live a worthwhile life. But they will also never be free from their past. Most Service members know little about the moral justifications for war and actions within war. Jus ad bellum and jus in bello are foreign concepts and yet for many, they could be helpful in understanding how to think about what they’ve done. I’m not naïve enough to think that a little philosophy is going to change how people feel about their actions, but I think they can realize that many of the features that drove their actions or the outcomes of those actions are present in many of our everyday experiences. It’s simply that by choosing to go to war they entered an environment of extremes where limit case outcomes result. Realizing that at a lesser level the things that drive immorality are always present can be helpful in recognizing their experiences as part of the nature of existence itself. When I returned from war, I viewed my experience overseas as completely separate from my experiences before and after. This disconnect created a feeling of anomie that only began to alleviate itself when I was able to create a sense of continuity between my life before, during, and after war. This work is by no means complete.
Instead of seeing war as fundamentally different than the rest of life I've come to see it as merely an extension of everyday experience at its utmost limit. The fear, guilt, shame, uncertainty, and unfairness that I experienced in war are experiences we all feel in our daily lives though to a dramatically lesser degree. This rapprochement has, to some extent, enabled me to think through my experiences using philosophical, spiritual, and common sense tools that I previously thought didn't apply.
By viewing war as an extreme extension of everyday experience rather than as a true break from it, I've been able to contextualize what happened in a way that doesn't absolve my responsibility but embeds it within the broader story of my life. It's this that allows people to say that while they've committed an irredeemable act that there is something still redeemable about their lives. When combat experiences are separate from everyday experiences though then a person is split in two: half bad and half good but irreconcilable. Such a person sees the two in isolation when humanity itself comes from their identity. The path from anomie, to me, is a process of this reconciliation, which in turn is also a reconciliation with the society we came from before putting on the uniform and the one to which we return after taking it off.
PD - You write that civilians can’t shoulder the responsibility for killing, but the social contract demands they care for those who do. Share examples about how they can do this, i.e., live up to their obligation of the social contract?
TK - At a basic level they need to pay their taxes and fully fund the VA. We’re very much failing at this basic task.
At a social level, and this is controversial, I don’t think it’s enough to support the troops without supporting the war. A person can thank me for my service, but they can’t thank me for what I did over there, or what I accomplished, or why I was fighting? If war is necessarily an extension of politics by other means, which is to say a situation where the ends justify the means, then it’s not clear that supporting the troops without supporting the war gets the job done. If I killed people to accomplish an end that a person fundamentally disagrees with then what are they really saying when they thank me for my service? It’s unclear to me.
PD - What role, if any, may spirituality play in a Service member's processing of ethical implications of war?
TK - I’m not religious so cannot say. I’ve often wondered if I were to go to a confession, say, and were given absolution whether it would mean anything. I do not think it would. What is felt is too fundamental to being to be resolved by something external. Ultimately, the only person who can resolve or understand the past or determine what is right and wrong and is each person himself or herself.
To read some of Mr. Kudo’s articles, visit the following links:
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Paula Domenici, Ph.D., is the Director of Civilian Training Programs at the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.
Mr. Timothy Kudo served in the US Marine Corps from 2006-2011 as a captain and executive officer. He deployed to Iraq in 2009 and to Afghanistan in 2010 to 2011. His writing on Veteran issues, ethics, and public service has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications. Some of his articles have focused on his experiences downrange related to moral transgressions and the morality of war.
More recently, Mr. Kudo worked as a consultant in the New York office of the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. He has a Master of Public Administration (MPA) and Business Administration (MBA) from New York University, a Master of Science in Teaching from Fordham University, and earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles. He currently is working on a novel.
After reading some of Mr. Kudo’s articles, I sent him questions about moral injury and the moral impact of war. Below are the written responses he provided to me. My hope is that mental health providers gain insight and sensitivity from his candid comments and thus communicate more openly with military clients about this often unspoken topic.
Please note that the views expressed below do not represent those of the Center for Deployment Psychology, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) or the Department of Defense (DoD). They represent those of Mr. Kudo.
Dr. Paula Domenici - How can civilians begin to comprehend the casualties of war and ethical impact of war beyond merely knowing someone who has died?
Timothy Kudo - One of the fundamental differences between the civilian and the combat Veteran is while the first is capable of understanding death only the second can comprehend killing. I view this type of moral knowledge as incommunicable. To know what it is like to kill another human being is to have experienced it, but by then it’s too late. This is one of the great ironies of war and why, I would argue, humanity continues to wage them.
This isn’t to say that all veterans perceive of killing in war as unethical. Just war doctrines, religious teachings, and patriotism can justify certain forms of killing (e.g. lawful combatants, acts of self-defense, etc.) and often, as people like David Grossman has noted in his book “On Killing”, distance can reduce the ethical impact of an action. However, for those engaged in close killing, killing of non-combatants (either through accident, pre-approved collateral damage, or necessity), and killing while living in close proximity to the enemy (as is required by counterinsurgency doctrine), the act transforms from the legalistic, abstract “killing” to the morally-loaded “murder.” It is, quite simply, impossible to understand murder without having murdered.
Losing men in war is also accepted and not indifferent from someone dying of an accident at home. The one case where there is a difference is when a person under your command or responsibility dies based on an action or decision you’ve made. Losing a person to combat is difficult, as losing anyone is, but when they die as a result of a decision you’ve made that difficulty is compounded. Responsibility for another’s death again approaches a moral boundary. However, it also is not common that someone dies as a result of a mistake or bad decision as opposed to bad luck. While both can carry moral weight and drive feelings of guilt, only one results in shame. It may be possible for police officers, fire fighters, or health care professionals to understand this, but it too is only understood through experience. The doctor who has never lost a patient may spend more time imagining it, but they cannot understand it until after the malpractice has occurred.
PD - You explained that the term, moral injury, conflates moral transgression and physical/psychological injury and it’s not the kind of injury you recover from with rest, physical therapy and pain medication. Please elaborate.
TK - There are two aspects of what is generally called “moral injury” (as I understand it as a layman): first, the moral consequences of an immoral act, and second, the physiological and psychological manifestations of dealing with those consequences. Moral injury is well suited as a description of things like depression, suicide, anxiety, panic attacks and other symptoms that might be seen in a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I have no doubt that people experience moral consequences that manifest in physical and psychological symptoms and where these are debilitating that therapy and pharmaceutical interventions may be appropriate. In this, moral acts can manifest as injuries not unlike PTSD or losing a limb.
Where I disagree is under the first notion of moral injury, which is integrally tied together with the second in the term. In my particular case, I participated in an escalation of force incident where we killed two unarmed people on a motorcycle. This is a tragedy by any account. Prior to shooting these two people, I followed the rules of engagement regarding escalation of force and was confident that our decision to fire was correct. In fact, it was by the letter of the law. I had no moral sense that what I was about to do was wrong. Immediately after we fired and I realized that the two men were unarmed – one was just a boy – it was obvious to me that we had done something fundamentally immoral (even if justified or allowed in war). That feeling of regret and abhorrence toward immoral actions and outcomes is, to my mind, what makes us human. To think that I shouldn’t feel regret over killing innocent people is a clinicalization of morality that can only serve to undermine moral actions. We should feel bad when we do bad things otherwise it’s not clear to me what we are or whether anything is moral.
To the degree that psychology is able to make “moral injury” a psychological rather than moral problem I worry that it will only serve the process of dehumanizing American sailors, soldiers, airmen, and Marines. Dehumanization has already been required to facilitate the killing that is necessary in war and if there are no after-effects that we need to worry about, what is ever to limit us in war?
PD - When civilians ask if you killed anyone, you note the importance of being honest and open about the deaths you caused. What questions can civilians ask that would help lead to an honest conversation about this? How can they approach interactions with service members to facilitate a more open dialogue rather than just thanking them for their service?
TK - I think civilians need to understand the true cost of war and what is being done in their name and on their behalf. If anything war is a necessary evil but all too often civilians do not recognize this. They see a split between hero and war criminal, but are unwilling to examine the middle ground where most combat Veterans live. Whether it’s drone strikes or strategic bombing or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we regularly kill civilians knowingly in order to simultaneously kill terrorists, larger groups of enemy combatants, or to weaken the will of the enemy. And yet when most people think of war they can only see the purely moral or the purely immoral.
It’s not clear that there’s any question that a civilian can ask in a one-on-one conversation that would be helpful to me. To the degree that it’s helpful for them and for the nation to understand this real, unavoidable, and irreversible cost, I’ve tried to write about my experiences. I cannot think of a person in my life who could have asked me about this in a way that would have been helpful to me or where I could have explained it to them verbally in a way they’d understand.
PD - What can mental health providers do to help Service members struggling with the morality of war and its aftermath? How can they help Service members move forward/live a full life after war, but not forget the responsibility they bear for the lives of others and for the consequences of their actions?
TK - Mental health providers need to primarily focus on addressing the psychological symptoms that manifest after immoral actions. As for the moral components, this is a trickier issue. I believe that people are more than the worst thing they’ve ever done and so even a sinner can live a worthwhile life. But they will also never be free from their past. Most Service members know little about the moral justifications for war and actions within war. Jus ad bellum and jus in bello are foreign concepts and yet for many, they could be helpful in understanding how to think about what they’ve done. I’m not naïve enough to think that a little philosophy is going to change how people feel about their actions, but I think they can realize that many of the features that drove their actions or the outcomes of those actions are present in many of our everyday experiences. It’s simply that by choosing to go to war they entered an environment of extremes where limit case outcomes result. Realizing that at a lesser level the things that drive immorality are always present can be helpful in recognizing their experiences as part of the nature of existence itself. When I returned from war, I viewed my experience overseas as completely separate from my experiences before and after. This disconnect created a feeling of anomie that only began to alleviate itself when I was able to create a sense of continuity between my life before, during, and after war. This work is by no means complete.
Instead of seeing war as fundamentally different than the rest of life I've come to see it as merely an extension of everyday experience at its utmost limit. The fear, guilt, shame, uncertainty, and unfairness that I experienced in war are experiences we all feel in our daily lives though to a dramatically lesser degree. This rapprochement has, to some extent, enabled me to think through my experiences using philosophical, spiritual, and common sense tools that I previously thought didn't apply.
By viewing war as an extreme extension of everyday experience rather than as a true break from it, I've been able to contextualize what happened in a way that doesn't absolve my responsibility but embeds it within the broader story of my life. It's this that allows people to say that while they've committed an irredeemable act that there is something still redeemable about their lives. When combat experiences are separate from everyday experiences though then a person is split in two: half bad and half good but irreconcilable. Such a person sees the two in isolation when humanity itself comes from their identity. The path from anomie, to me, is a process of this reconciliation, which in turn is also a reconciliation with the society we came from before putting on the uniform and the one to which we return after taking it off.
PD - You write that civilians can’t shoulder the responsibility for killing, but the social contract demands they care for those who do. Share examples about how they can do this, i.e., live up to their obligation of the social contract?
TK - At a basic level they need to pay their taxes and fully fund the VA. We’re very much failing at this basic task.
At a social level, and this is controversial, I don’t think it’s enough to support the troops without supporting the war. A person can thank me for my service, but they can’t thank me for what I did over there, or what I accomplished, or why I was fighting? If war is necessarily an extension of politics by other means, which is to say a situation where the ends justify the means, then it’s not clear that supporting the troops without supporting the war gets the job done. If I killed people to accomplish an end that a person fundamentally disagrees with then what are they really saying when they thank me for my service? It’s unclear to me.
PD - What role, if any, may spirituality play in a Service member's processing of ethical implications of war?
TK - I’m not religious so cannot say. I’ve often wondered if I were to go to a confession, say, and were given absolution whether it would mean anything. I do not think it would. What is felt is too fundamental to being to be resolved by something external. Ultimately, the only person who can resolve or understand the past or determine what is right and wrong and is each person himself or herself.
To read some of Mr. Kudo’s articles, visit the following links:
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Paula Domenici, Ph.D., is the Director of Civilian Training Programs at the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.