ABSTRACT

While much research has been conducted on military trauma, conceptualizations of deployment-related suffering are predominantly approached through a psychological/medical, individual-focused lens rather than an interdisciplinary one. Since the military is an instrument of the state, the conceptual scope should be expanded to include political processes, particularly for the fast-growing literature on moral injury, which refers to the psychological impact of moral transgressions. This chapter examines the role of political practices in moral injury and the micro-political responses to these practices of morally injured soldiers and veterans. Detailed case studies of the Dutch missions in Afghanistan (Urzugan) and Bosnia (Srebrenica) show that decisions and narratives at the political level helped create morally injurious quandaries on the ground. Also, the case studies reveal that while the political leadership acknowledged the problems that veterans subsequently developed, it also maintained a silence on its direct contribution to these problems, as such perpetuating them. Consequently, veterans felt betrayed and tried to make the political leadership take a material and symbolic share in their burden. Drawing on these case studies, this chapter introduces the notions of perceived political betrayal and the search for reparations, argued that they should be included in theory on moral injury.