OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: Marine Capt. Tyler E. Boudreau Puts a Human Face on War

Prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, documents released by the Department of Veterans Affairs said it expected a maximum of 8,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.

However, according to a study released last year by the RAND Corporation, there are more than 320,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffering from major depression, PTSD and/or traumatic brain injury. The report found that the VA has been and continues to be ill-equipped to deal with these cases when soldiers return from combat, especially after multiple tours.

An Army task force last year also found major flaws in the way the VA treated and cared for veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries.

Boudreau said the treatment of post-traumatic stress is antithetical to the mantra of “Mission Accomplished.”

“The mission will always supersede treatment,” Boudreau said. “And because of that the treatment will always be dubious.”

And all the talk from bureaucrats about putting an end to multiple deployments, which has been blamed on the skyrocketing cases of post-traumatic stress and suicides, is inconceivable,” Boudreau said.

“I’ve heard the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say ‘we have to change this ethic,’” Boudreau said. “But it’s not going to happen. Why? Because the military cannot afford a 20 percent reduction in its force.”

Since writing Packing Inferno Boudreau has become an outspoken advocate for veterans.

Over the past four months, he has penned op-eds on veterans issues that have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Progressive.

In a New York Times op-ed, Boudreau argued that the decision not to award Purple Hearts to veterans is wrong and feeds into the cultural stigma the military has for veterans who bear the psychological wounds of war.

“Why, for instance, if a veteran has been given a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress and awarded benefits, should he not also be awarded a Purple Heart?

“Perhaps a new decoration, a new medal, could be established specifically for those suffering from post-traumatic stress. It would be awarded to those whose minds and souls have been sundered by war.

“I suggest we call this medal the Black Heart. Certainly the hearts of these soldiers are black, with the terrible things they saw and did on the battlefield. Certainly the country should see these Black Hearts pinned on their chests.”

In addition to his work on behalf of veterans, Boudreau has taken on the Iraqi refugee crisis and recently traveled to Jordan to call attention to the matter. Last year, he and his colleagues formed the nonprofit organization Iraq Veterans’ Refugee Aid Association (IVRAA) in response to inadequate measures by the U.S. government to effectively deal with the crisis, he said.

This summer, Boudreau is undertaking a cross-country bicycle tour with other veterans to search for “what’s on ‘the other side’ of the battlefield.

“It is very much about veterans who have found themselves hurled suddenly to the other side of a catastrophic injury, or Post-Traumatic Stress [sic], or an inexplicably dysfunctional life in the aftermath of war. But it is also about the nature of warfare itself. There is a great mythology associated with battle. We seek ‘the other side’ of that mythology. We seek the other side of ourselves. We travel to ‘the other side’ of the country to find it,” Boudreau explains on his website.

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