A Disillusioned American Soldier's Return From Iraq

By Corine Lesnes
Le Monde
Posted by Bulatlat

One thing has become intolerable to him: fatty food. French fries, hamburgers. Since he's been back from Iraq, soldier Erik Bunger hasn't been able to go into a fast-food restaurant, although before he went to them "all the time." He can't bring himself to watch television. "There are lots of things about Western society that don't work for me any more," he says.

At 23, Erik Bunger has already spent three years in Iraq and Afghanistan with the parachutists of the 82nd Airborne Division. He signed up in order to pay for his studies. Now the Army is financing his tuition at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at the rate of $1,000 a month. He has begun to let his beard grow, a sign of recovery far from the Army. The Democrats have tried to enroll him as a candidate in the next elections, but he has resisted.

"I am sorry for whoever is the next president," he says. "The situation in Iraq can't be fixed." Three years after the start of the war, two thirds of Americans think as he does, according to the latest polls. "The clan culture has gotten the upper hand," the soldier explains. But Erik Bunger also deplores the prejudices that are rife and hardy in the United States: "There are a pile of stereotypes about Muslims. People think they're the same as terrorists."

On the ground, the young soldier never received any psychological support. Officers did not encourage consultations. They gave a name to those who sought help: "psychos." After leaving the Army, Erik began to have panic attacks: "That happened to me whenever people began to argue." He's had nightmares, suffered from anxiety: classic symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The trauma has decreased since he began to militate with other veterans. They are campaigning against the administration's plan to revise the criteria to define PTSD in order to limit reparations.

According to an Army report, one soldier out of three returning from Iraq suffers from mental problems. The proportion of personnel affected is the highest of all recent conflicts, from Bosnia to Afghanistan. "In Iraq, there's no front line," explains Colonel Charles Hoge in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Eighty to eight-five percent of personnel have been witnesses or participants in a traumatizing act: enemy combat, death of an adversary, IED attacks.

"In Vietnam, there were secure zones where people could recuperate," indicates Steve Robinson, director of an association that advocates for veterans in an interview with the Washington Post. "That doesn't happen in Iraq; every place is a war zone."

18 March 2006

Posted by Bulatlat

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