ABSTRACT
Current research on moral injury, predominantly psychological in nature, tends to approach the phenomenon of moral conflict-colored trauma as an internally contained disorder. Consequently, it medicalizes moral injury and de-contextualizes it from the people who send soldiers away and ‘welcome’ them back. This chapter advances an interdisciplinary understanding of moral injury. It discusses how the experience of moral injury is shaped by public opinion on military intervention, drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with former Bosnia (Srebrenica) peacekeepers and Afghanistan combat soldiers. It examines the public condemnation that Bosnia veterans faced and the mixed reactions that the Afghanistan mission evoked. It turns out that not only public criticism but also admiration may be experienced as misrecognition, and that perceived societal misrecognition may directly and indirectly contribute to moral injury. At the same time, not just veterans struggle with the moral significance of military intervention, but society does as well. But in neither mission did this lead to a rapprochement between soldiers and society. Contrarily, how public debates tried to resolve societal discomfort with the missions only alienated veterans further from society. In fact, it engendered not only a sense of estrangement from society, but also from themselves.
