A selection of this week's op-eds, on Iraq, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and a potpourri of other topics...
Leonard Pitts Jr. in the Miami Herald has "mixed emotions" about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. "There is elation, of course, thankfulness that American servicemen and women will be home in time for the holidays. But a patina of bitter shades the sweet and it is bound up in the fact that: they are coming home from a place they never should have been." And he concludes that "a fitting way to honor our servicemen and women as they return to families they have not seen in far too long might be to promise that next time we ask them to go into harm's way, we will recall how the bitter shaded the sweet this day. Those men and women are the pride of this nation. They deserved better."
Rita Nakashima Brock writes in The Huffington Post writes of the newly-diagnosed "moral injury," "a wound in the soul, an inner conflict based on a moral evaluation of having inflicted or witnessed harm. It results from a capacity for both empathy and self-reflection on moral values, which means it happens to healthy human beings." And the wounds it leaves "do not heal when left unattended; instead, they may fester for years in depression, homelessness, addiction, and a half-lived existence finished by suicide, which doesn't end the suffering for those who knew and loved the one who died.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!