Review: "Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War"

When I sat down to read Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War, I expected a serious and reflective dissertation on the moral consequences of war, specifically as it relates to the deep and soul-breaking trauma experienced by those we send to fight our wars. I expected to hear stories from those willing to be profiled for the purpose of the discussion, followed by the examination of the treatments and methods - successful and unsuccessful - used to address this idea of moral injury and soul repair. The anti-war dispositions of the authors did (and does) not concern me, because we need to be open to all voices and perspectives when it comes to healing the soul damage experienced by so many who return from war. Despite conventional wisdom, you would be hard pressed to find many "pro-war" citizens. But in full disclosure, I am one who generally abhors war, but recognizes that it is sometimes necessary. I further deeply value the necessity and importance of the military and the men and women who choose to serve. It is for this very reason that I had high hopes for what Soul Repair purported to offer.

Instead, I found it wanting, and borderline disingenuous. The stories shared by the veterans profiled in this work are important, and brutally honest in their experience, primarily in the context of Vietnam and the 2003-2009 war in Iraq. But conspicuously absent from this work are profiles of veterans of other recent wars, namely the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 war in Afghanistan following 9/11. Virtually all of the veterans profiled share the belief that they were sent off to fight in "illegal and immoral" wars - a point relentlessly driven home by the authors in virtually every chapter, with the repetition of the descriptor "illegal and immoral" multiple times in successive paragraphs, and indeed multiple times within the same paragraph. It is as if the point of the book is not recovery, but rather to condition the reader (or beat him senseless) with the belief that Iraq 2003 was such a war. Quite honestly, that repeated editorial on Iraq takes the focus away from the vitally important topic of what we can do as friends, family, and society to aid in the recovery of moral injury.

This work would have been better served by a wider cross-section of veterans, to include those who believed (and perhaps still believe) in the causes for which they fought, and yet continue to deal to this day with the violations of their moral conscience. There are no such voices in this work, or at best, they are given reference as a passing aside. The vast majority of the book is mostly a take-down of all the ways we are failing our soldiers' recovery, with little to offer other than judgment. Only in the final pages of the final chapter do potential solutions or approaches surface, and there only in superficial form.

The reality of moral injury and the need for soul repair and healing is a critically important topic, and without question one that should be taken seriously, just as seriously as any treatment for our military men and women returning from action. In Soul Repair, an opportunity was missed, in my view, because the predominant message isn't about how we can contribute to the moral, emotional, and spiritual recovery of our warriors. And it should have been.