This evidentiary video episode of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal is a fascinating conversation with Dr. Kelly Denton-Borhaug, whose work began soon after the events of 9/11 with her investigation of what she came to call “U.S. war-culture.” In more recent years, Denton-Borhaug’s focus moved to “military moral injury.” This invisible epidemic (linked to the frighteningly high numbers of service member and veteran suicides) springs from the intolerable moral pain and suffering experienced by too many of the 1% fighting on the front lines of our war-culture.

Her book And Then Your Soul Is Gone: Moral Injury and U.S. War-culture explores military moral injury in detail. Moral injury not only impacts individuals; but also is deeply connected to the structural and cultural violence of war-culture that characterizes the United States.

Denton-Borhaug’s newest book in development, Light at the Tip of the Candle: A Moral and Spiritual Response to the Despair of Moral Injury, will tell the stories of a group of veterans who are living with the pain of moral injury, and will also explore how this individual suffering is profoundly connected to deeper veins of violence in U.S. war-culture. 

Watch the video here: