In the past few weeks, I’ve seen a number of news stories regarding “war veterans with PTSD” who have unjustly taken the lives of other people – a park ranger, a police officer, and a 14 year old girl.
In each case, headlines loudly proclaim how PTSD is the cause of all of this, and the articles lay out neatly for us that these men were veterans who just couldn’t handle life after such intense combat.
When I dug deeper, I found that these articles were not entirely accurate. I will say that the Seattle Times did a good job investigating Barnes, but none of the news outlets that quoted the Seattle Times mentioned anything more than that Barnes was kicked out of the Army after a DUI and weapons charges.
So here we go, in alphabetical order.
– Benjamin Barnes shot four people at a party and then murdered a park ranger (Park rangers are some of the coolest people on the planet, by the way). He was in the Army and was deployed to Iraq in 2008. He was in a headquarters company and did not receive a CIB, CAB or CMB, which would have indicated that he saw combat during his time in Iraq.
– Michael Stewart shot six police officers who were serving a drug warrant on his house. One died. Stewart was in the Army in the mid-1990s as a communications tech and did not see any combat. He was stationed in Germany for part of his enlistment. Rough times. In one article, he is referred to as a “decorated Gulf War vet.”
– Sean Warner injected a few teenaged girls with heroin, and one died. He was a Navy Corpsman who was deployed to Afghanistan. Finally, a real combat vet, right? No. He was a laboratory technician who may have been assigned to a MTT, probably providing medical support to US Army soldiers who were training/advising Afghan soldiers. It’s possible that he saw combat, but photos of his loadout in Afghanistan do not indicate to me that he was doing the work of a field corpsman.
Barnes was a lowlife who had thuggish tattoos and posed shirtless with crappy guns. Stewart saw no stressful service whatsoever. Warner’s parents had “drug and alcohol problems,” and he somehow grew up to have drug problems after joining the Navy to learn more about drugs. They were losers before they joined the military, and they were losers after they left (or were kicked out of) the military. Despite what has been made out to be by the media, it would seem that none of them have known the combat or stress they are supposed to have known. None of these “men” saw what some of the men I know have seen.
I know men who have lost limbs and men who have lost eyes. I have seen the emptiness in the eyes of a fellow Corpsman who had just watched his best friend die, despite the Corpsman’s best efforts to save him. I’ve sat and talked with Marines as they described watching their friends get ripped in half.
And yet, the friends I refer to here, the Marines and Sailors I knew and deployed with – they do not murder park rangers, do not shoot at police officers serving drug warrants, do not shoot up little girls with heroin. They are police officers, truck drivers, military contractors, business executives, roughnecks, IT guys – and many more are still on active duty.
I see a major problem with the way PTSD is addressed in our society. Especially in the last few weeks, the media has allowed, or perhaps even encouraged, the idea that anyone who ever served in the military and now has “problems” is suffering from PTSD. The takeaway for the general public is that combat vets are crazy and not to be trusted, when the reality is that combat vets are some of the most well-adjusted people I know. They’ve seen the worst the world has to offer, and are determined to enjoy and make something of the rest of their lives.
Thanks for having an informed perspective. Fight the good fight against hysteria and hyperbole.
I feel like I’ve been waiting for someone to say this. Kudos.
As an aside, my one experience with a park ranger was being kicked out of the swimming area at a lake. We were throwing ice at each other from our cooler in a playful manner He called it littering. I guess you can litter potable water into a lake…
Andrew, there are two reasons to denigrate the military, the political and the personal.
The political reason to denigrate the military is because there is a tendency of most people to look up to soldiers. They served at least honorably, and perhaps bravely, so they have a certain moral authority. Theyâve offered their lives, so they get honored and even deferred to. The problem is that the vast majority of people in military service come from rural areas, and mostly relatively conservative backgrounds. If these relatively conservative people are being looked up to and honored, then they are in a position to influence people around them. The liberal cannot allow this. He has to denigrate the veteran as somehow broken mentally and emotionally to counter the natural tendency of others to look up to the veteran. He has to make some of them into victims so that he can champion their cause and cover himself with some of their reflected glory. By pointing out that this veteran or that one was driven crazy by the horrors of war, he wins three times. First he makes himself look good. Second, he makes veterans look crazy, and third he makes the military look callous and uncaring in its treatment of veterans.
There is also the personal reason for denigrating the military and veterans. It is vital for those who never served, especially those who never served due to their own personal cowardice, to denigrate service members whenever possible. They had their chance to sign up, and they failed to do so. They looked their own cowardice in the face and they blinked. Now all they can do is write stories that validate their decision to avoid serving. âEvery man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier. â It isnât just a quote, itâs the truth.
Well spoken, Sean.
“It is vital for those who never served, especially those who never served due to their own personal cowardice, to denigrate service members whenever possible.”
Gee whiz! I guess I don’t know myself as well as I thought: I know I haven’t served, but I didn’t know I had such a need to denigrate those who have. Thanks, Sean.
This is plain nutty/tinfoil hat stuff… The real problem is just shitty reporting.
Well said Sean. I’m not a soldier, I chose a different path. I must say I have some regret about that. I console myself with knowing that I probably wouldn’t have met my wife or had chance to raise our three kids.
I do have several friends that are currently serving and others that have served in the past. These are some of the most impressive people I know. One recently told me that lots of guys that go into the military and don’t serve with a front line unit feel like second class soldiers and harbor some anger or depression because of it.
This isn’t excusing un-soldier like behavior. I offer it merely as another perspective, NOT an excuse.
To reword what you’re saying:
Some people are bad. Some bad people have served. In other news, water falling from the sky is called rain.
Please note I am not trivialising the senseless deaths of police officers, civilians or park rangers. I’m simply stating that I for one is a bit tired of some ex-servinceman SOB tarring my ass with the crazy/violent/peado-brush simply because we once wore the same pattern cammies. It happens all over the world and it’s terrible jounalism.
Good research, great post.
Thanks for de-bunking the idiocy of the network news cycle, and the blatant omissions of the print media!
As a Veteran, I appreciate the support as its not always easy dealing with the ‘issues’ of PTS (I refuse to accept the “D” in my case no matter what the Vet Center Counselors tell me…) with the specter of someone (namely the Government) swooping in and ruining my life.
One point of critique though, lack of CAB doesn’t necessarily imply lack of combat. Some units are terrible at getting paperwork done (or with the case of 4-25 ABCT during their first deployment, absolutely refuse to do it apparently), and that award requires eyewitnesses and signatures… Some combat vets I know don’t have them, nor care for them. That being said however, if someone was on a FOB like some of these guys, taking mortars and rockets sure as hell doesn’t turn you into a homicidal maniac… Especially at the infrequent (compared to say the Somme…) rate of our current enemies.
As with all things, these dirtbags made a choice to be dirtbags. They just happened to wear a uniform at one time in their lives…
I was seeing a gal for the longest time. She had family in liberal academia… You know the type I am talking about. At one point the girlfriend said, “I thought the military was filled with the dreggs of society…the type of people who can’t afford college and have to get the military to pay for their schooling.”. Needless to say she isn’t my girlfriend any more.
I am just loving the fact that PTSD suffers in general are getting hammered on this. Not.
PTSD suffers include sexual assault victims on an almost 100 percent basis. PTSD is being conflated with violent destructive behavior. It is becoming the “ADHD causing problems” of this era….
It’s sad to see this denigration of the military come back.
After what our country did to our Vietnam Vets, you think there would have been some lessons learned.
This has happened after every war in modern times, including the Second World War. Some vet does something stupid and the link between military service and homicide gets bruited about.
Andrew,
Good on you for doing some research when your gut told you that something didn’t add up. It’s important to catch these sorts of fabrications.
Have you looked into previous media hysteria about veterans at all? I’m wondering if they were any more honest about the matter back then.
A skeptical person might assume that the media (mainly left leaning) and the current administration would like to make out soldiers (who tend to be a bit more right or center) out as potentially dangerous individuals. Just like anyone else who has experience with or an interest in weapons. This is because people with weapon training pose a potential threat to those that would like to see a more controlling government. It’s a lot easier to sell the “domestic terrorist” label after you have documented “news” articles as examples to point to. Of course this would be a skeptical person’s thinking.
It’s just typical sensationalism. Wouldn’t have the same ring if the headlines were, “Ex-military shitbirds surprise world with homicidal shenanigans!” Every branch of the military has that 10% that somehow weaseled through basic and continue to thwart the principles of becomming a decent human being. Add in some firearms/medical training to the mix and the resulting product shouldn’t be surprising. The tragedy (other than the victims in each case) is that the rest of the upstanding 90%, who have served with digninty, now have to endure the consequences for those shitbirds.
For conspiracy theorists, those three examples only solidify DHS’s decision to add the term “veteran” as another ridiculous vernacular for terrorism.
Amen brother. Amen indeed. Hope you are doing well!
Interesting that British soldiers don’t experience PTSD the way American soldiers do:
http://www.military.com/news/article/study-british-troops-less-likely-to-get-ptsd.html
There may be a couple of reasons, the duration and exposure time to combat is one but societal expectations are another. Duration of combat as a contributing factor to mental exhaustion has been observed since WWII, there was a days-in-combat limit beyond which mental issues were expected.
PTSD as an entity is a creation of Vietnam-era psychologists and psychiatrists who were often strongly anti-war. The incidence of PTSD in Britain is lower overall than in the United States, possibly in part due to the “Keep Calm and Carry On” expectation of British society. We were raised with the “Crazy Vietnam Vet” history, with the expectation that combat is supposed to make people crazy, but there is a serious overlay of drug abuse and alcohol abuse in the Vietnam-era population (particularly in the post-68 period) and there is the issue that when you draft as sizable percentage of the 18 year-old male population you’re going to also sample a sizable percentage of people who haven’t had their first bipolar episode or schizophrenic break. Sometimes it’s not someone’s combat experience that makes them “strange” thereafter, it’s their previously-undiagnosed substance abuse or psychiatric disorder. The populations of people in the military today and back then are radically different, but the expectation that being shot at means you’re going to get PTSD persists. I think PTSD is real, but I also think like ADHD it may be overly diagnosed.
Thanks for giving the back story on these losers. I am never surprised to find out that there is more to the “crazy vet” story than the press narrative allows. I have met many veterans from WWII, Vietnam and Korea and have yet to find one truly bent by their combat experience. Many of them may not wish to discuss the circumstances or events out of the knowledge that because I wasn’t there I wouldn’t understand, and I respect that. In fact, one of the best-adjusted people I have had the honor to meet is Charlie Plumb, a Navy pilot shot down on his 75th mission and tortured for over 5 years in North Vietnam before coming home to find his wife had divorced him and remarried. You’d think that would be sure to induce PTSD, but the incidence of PTSD in Vietnam-era POWs is close to zero.
Another article about the history of PTSD and possible worldview issues relating to it, noting the difference between British and US veterans’ rate of PTSD diagnosis after Iraq/Afghanistan:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-invisible-division-us-soldiers-are-seven-times-as-likely-as-uk-troops-to-develop-posttraumatic-stress-2264849.html
Andrew I have always enjoyed your articles. This has to be one of my favorite ones, many people will just rant at something they do not like. This article just shows the truth and dismisses allot of the lies that the news threw at us.
I think this comes down to basically poor quality reporting / research on the part of media, and the knowledge that creating fear drives viewership, which increases add revenue. As a local TV reporter told me at a double homicide a few years ago, “it’s all about filling up the black.” On another note, barnes’ tattoos were predominantly white-power related, which most media never bothered to report – probably because it doesn’t play into the narrative of the victim of PTSD angle that they’re pushing.
I like your account of the “true facts” as opposed to the media “created facts”.
PTST is however real and my heart truly goes out to those who suffer for its effects. I don’t subscribe to the theory that it turns them into gun crazed mass killerr
The military is full of people with checkered backgrounds. Some intend it as a way out, and truly want to better themselves. Others, I don’t know why they enlist. Steady pay, maybe? I digress. The PTSD thing is ridiculous. I have a story. When I returned from Afghanistan in 2009, I got snippy with an Army Civilian during reverse SRP (I wanted to see me son, and wasn’t in the mood to be poked, prodded and questioned; not an excuse but whatever) and was immediately referred to anger management. So I show up the following day to the Ft. Campbell mental health facility, and was thrown in a group discussion with a therapist and about 6 other soldiers. So, out of the 7 soldiers, I was the only one that didn’t spend and entire deployment on Baghram Air Field. In 12 months, BAF took 3 rockets that landed 500m away from the actual base and on the opposite side of the flight line. Anyway, these other 6 soldiers are complaining about PTSD symptoms and how their deployment was so rough. I got up and walked out, never went back. PTSD has become a crutch, an excuse and a tool for blame. Some guys need help, and I COMPLETELY understand why. However, the legitimate cases are being lumped in with the fakers and the excuses for being a shitty human being. There needs to be some change. Deployment records need to be researched and vetted, and otherwise shitty people shouldn’t be used to stigmatize people who need help.