The Concept of Moral Injury: Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream

The Concept of Moral Injury

An article in Tablet, one of the worst of the Jewish magazines, by an excellent author, a professor of literature, noted towards the end of the piece the concept of moral injury. The author was worried that the Jewish people will suffer moral injury as a result of the Gaza War.

Moral injury occurs when one engages or supports absolutely horrific behavior and then later on has to examine their behavior back in peaceful society. There is verifiable damage that can occur in these mens’ souls assuming they have a normal helping of empathy.

The moral injury takes the form of guilt and shame, but it also taints entire peoples and renders them seemingly evil for all of time, even the well-behaved descendants in later years. How do the Germans cope knowing what they did? The Japanese? The Serbs?

Good Men Go to War, Become Evil Men, and Return from the War Good Men Again as If Nothing Had Happened

Soldiers go off to war and they come back cold and crazy. They do things…