The latest issue of GQ features a stunning read, written by Michael Powers, about former Air Force drone sensor operator Brandon Bryant and his military service. One of the first pilots to speak out about his experience with the drone program, Bryant paints a frightening portrait of death-dealing from a distance, and the psychological trauma wrought by his nearly six-years of service as a drone operator. Its a captivating read – one definitely worth reading in its entirety – but we were particularly struck by the section exploring Bryants PTSD diagnosis, which he received just a few months after his heavy concscience led him to leave the Air Force: It was an unexpected diagnosis. For decades the model for understanding PTSD has been fear conditioning: quite literally the lasting psychological ramifications of mortal terror. But a term now gaining wider acceptance is moral injury. It represents a tectonic realignment, a shift from a focusing on the violence that has been done to a person in wartime toward his feelings about what he has done to others — or what hes failed to do for them. The concept is attributed to the clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, who in his book Achilles in Vietnam traces the idea back as far as the Trojan War. The mechanisms of death may change — as intimate as a bayonet or as removed as a Hellfire [an air-to-ground missile common aboard Predator drones]—but the bloody facts, and their weight on the human conscience, remain the same. Bryants diagnosis of PTSD fits neatly into this new understanding. It certainly made sense to Bryant. I really have no fear, he says now. Its more like Ive had a soul-crushing experience. An experience that I thought Id never have. I was never prepared to take a life. In total, the military estimates Bryant, specifically, contributed to the death of 1,626 human targets. He hadnt lased the target or pulled the trigger on all of the deaths tallied, Power notes, but by flying in the missions he felt he had enabled them.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 15:43:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015