When Torture Follows You Home

Several months ago, the L.A. Times, which this year seems to be outpacing many of the other American leading newspapers for its independent and relatively in-depth reporting of aspects of the Iraq war, published a troubling Op-Ed piece about a writer's involvement with an Afghanistan war veteran who went on to commit suicide. Troubling aspects abound in the opinion piece, including the writer's admission at the end that really, she probably should have done more than she did to make sure the vet got help (sounds true, so far as it goes).  But most troubling of all is the implication that this Marine committed suicide over what he saw -- acts committed by others that he felt powerless to stop.  Actions on our side, essentially by what amount to CIA contractors who were torturing detainees.  The prospect of those actions is of course troubling (there's that word again), but even more so, the consequence of how they could affect someone else's conscience so deeply that he felt that suicide was his only solution.  That's a very, very sad outcome indeed.  It makes you wonder, though.  War is hard enough on direct combatants, ostensibly because of the actions they have to perform to get by and get through.  It's hard to contemplate that sometimes, what veterans see others doing, that goes against their conscience, is too painful for them to bear.  Such seems to have been the case with the Marine whose suicide this opinion piece describes.  This article is called, "For One Marine, Torture Came Home."  If the dead man's allegations are true, it's crushingly sad that he found no other way out than to take his own life.