The Psychological Kevlar Act, 2007 - A Moral Conundrum

We in the West have come a long way in advancing the science of killing. Longer range artillery, cruise missiles, smart bombs have helped us build a cordon sanitaire between our forces and much of the carnage that results from today's warfare.

In my Dad's war, we had guns, they had guns; they were generally better with them but our side had a lot more. Soldiers, infantrymen at least, went into battle having to endure not only the slaughter they caused but also the same horrors sustained by their own side.

(By the way, the National Spot is taking a few liberties with the facts in its recent claims that the fatality rates sustained by Canada's combat forces in Afghanistan are higher than we sustained in all but one year of WWII. Technically that's true until you remember that the really violent warfare of WWII, at least for our soldiers, pretty much began with D-Day on 6 June, 1944. A year later Hitler was dead and the Nazis had capitulated. Naturally the Spot doesn't bother giving readers a statistical comparison of the 1944/45 year with what's been going on in Kandahar because that would simply gut their point. In other words, like much in the right wing media, what's in the Spot is true in a sense but utterly misleading. In that they do a real disservice to the guys who stormed their way through France and Holland and Germany or through the Po River valley and Ortona. For a nation then only 11-million strong, we suffered 42,000 dead and 50,000 wounded. So, forget it, there's no valid comparison between Afghanistan and WWII.)

There is a physical element and a psychological element to military killing. There's a lot of stress to it and plenty of room for moral qualms in the aftermath. It's stressful being under fire and a lot less stressful if you're the only one doing the firing. That's why it's easier to kill from the air. You're given a target, a house for example, you go in on a bombing pass, release your weapon, and you're already leaving the area when the bomb arrives.

What's now being debated is the morality of insulating combat soldiers from that psychological element of killing. Just how far can we go and how far should we go?

This is explored by Penny Coleman writing in Alternet. The article concerns what's commonly called the Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007 or at least one particular aspect of it, the possible use of drugs to immunize combat soldiers against stress. Coleman's focus is on a drug called Propranalol, also known as the "mourning after pill."

"Propranalol, if taken immediately after a traumatic event, can subdue a victim's stress response and so soften his or her perception of the memory. That does not mean the memory has been erased, but proponents claim that the drug can render it emotionally toothless.

If your daughter were raped, the argument goes, wouldn't you want to spare her a traumatic memory that might well ruin her life? As the mother of a 23-year old daughter, I can certainly understand the appeal of that argument. And a drug that could prevent the terrible effects of traumatic injuries in soldiers? If I were the parent of a soldier suffering from such a life-altering injury, I can imagine being similarly persuaded.

Not surprisingly, the Army is already on board. Propranolol is a well-tolerated medication that has been used for years for other purposes.

And it is inexpensive.

But is it moral to weaken memories of horrendous acts a person has committed? Some would say that there is no difference between offering injured soldiers penicillin to prevent an infection and giving a drug that prevents them from suffering from a post-traumatic stress injury for the rest of their lives. Others, like Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, object to propranalol's use on the grounds that it medicates away one's conscience. "It's the morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret, remorse, pain or guilt," he says. Barry Romo, a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, is even more blunt. "That's the devil pill," he says. "That's the monster pill, the anti-morality pill. That's the pill that can make men and women do anything and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn't work, what's scary is that a young soldier could believe it will."

War is hell. Shouldn't it stay that way? You decide.