The Hill I’ll Die On is Riddled with Bodies

And They Belong to Our Nation’s Veterans

Picture this: you’re a 22-year-old kid from middle America.  You joined the military because it was your best chance to obtain a college education.  You aren’t a pacifist, per se, but you’re also not comfortable with the idea of killing anyone.  So you intend to keep your head down and pursue a military occupational specialty (MOS) as a public affairs officer; meet the minimum service requirements to qualify for the GI Bill; and then move on.

But that’s not what happens.  Given your skillset and the unique demands of wartime, you’re instead assigned an MOS as a drone pilot.  Eight years later, you’re spending 12-hour-days locked in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), often missing holidays and other special occasions with your family.  Just last night, your spouse cried because they were left alone to raise two children, with another on the way.  

It’s not the first time you’ve talked about divorce.  But the next day, you still get up and go to work.  It’s your duty, after all.  

As you take your seat in front of the controllers, you recall the mantra of your early days: “It’s okay.  We only kill the bad guys.”

A few years in, and experience forced an amendment: “It’s okay.  We do our best to only kill the bad guys.”

But last week, the intel was wrong and you hit a family gathering of innocents.  12 people died, including four children.  You went home that night and wept, haunted by the indecipherable faces of those children killed in the pursuit of a war in which they neither participated nor understood.  Those dreams will follow you through the rest of your life.

THAT’S a moral injury.

No, that one didn’t land?  That’s okay, I’ve got another.

Picture this!  You’ve been in service for 20 years, including four deployments to the Middle East.  Just last week, you returned home from an 18-month stint in Afghanistan.  The week before you flew home, your interpreter—the very man who shielded your body from an improvised explosive device (IED) and lost his own legs in the process—went missing.

Over the next three months, you are repeatedly contacted by the Taliban to pay a ransom for your friend.  You go to your superiors for help, but are denied: “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”  So you go to their superiors, only to be denied again.  No help is forthcoming.  Eventually, you’re sent a video of his beheading.  

Years later, and you’re still in touch with your interpreter’s widow; in some bleak attempt at salvation, you’ve been financially supporting her and her children since your friend’s death.  But it’s now August 2021 and you turn on the television to see the utter destruction at Abbey Gate.

“This time,” you think to yourself, “I’m going to save them.”

You commit yourself fully to rescuing your interpreter’s family.  For 20 months, you revisit your superiors in the pursuit of any meaningful assistance that could help the family relocate to the relative safety of the U.S.; once again, you are denied at every turn.  Meanwhile, the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, especially for women.  Eventually, you lose contact with your friend’s widow.  Months later, you learn that she was murdered for appearing in public without a male escort, because her children were gravely ill and needed medication.  

You never learn what happened to the children, but it’s enough to make you realize that the military you’ve served faithfully never intended to honor its commitment to our allies.  You retire in a blaze of dissent, knowing that you’ll never fully recover what you’ve lost: your friends, your integrity, or your sense of self.

That’s ALSO a moral injury.

More broadly, moral injury refers to the psychological harm incurred when one participates in, witnesses, or fails to prevent an act which violates their own moral beliefs.  The injury only began to attract mainstream media attention recently, when the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan caused such immense and lasting damage to veterans and civilians alike that they demanded to be heard, lest they die in silence.  

Because that’s exactly what’s at risk here: death.  According to a recent study, 48 percent of Afghanistan veterans reported a moral injury in 2023, and “[f]or some . . . the burden of that guilt can be too much to bear—leading to suicide.”

A mere two weeks in the calendar year, and the fatal consequences of moral injury has already punctuated this news cycle.

First came the death of veteran Andrew Stewart, a former Marine who was serving at the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) when Kabul fell. In December 2024, Stewart took his own life “after succumbing to the wounds of moral injury.” According to his family, “Andrew honorably served alongside his team and the horror and loss [he] sustained were unimaginable and he could not endure any longer.”  He was only 26.

Next came the attack by Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an Army veteran who drove his car into a crowd of people on New Year’s Day, killing 14 and injuring 30 others.  Jabbar previously served as a human resources and information technology specialist for the Army, with a deployment to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010.  He earned numerous medals for his meritorious service, and separated in 2020.  In searching for a motive, it’s been noted that Jabbar had recently expressed sympathies for the Islamic State.

In a piece by Will Selber, he contends that “[i]n less than four years, Jabbar likely got flipped—either online or by a handler.”  Flipped or not, one thing rings true: something caused such a seismic shift in Jabbar’s world view that in just four short years, he began attacking the very people and institutions he had once sworn to protect.  

And later that same day, Matthew Livelsberger—a highly decorated Green Beret who deployed to Afghanistan twice—fatally shot himself before detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas.  Following the incident, notes were found on his phone stating that Livelsberger needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”  Other personal letters aired a series of political and social grievances, with the FBI finding that this “ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was struggling with PTSD and other issues.”

It’s imperative that we call these “other issues” by their name, lest we be condemned to repeat the mistakes of our past. 

Our history of engagement with PTSD bears a meaningful lesson in this respect.  The signs of PTSD have been present in our veterans since the Civil War, and reached a fever pitch following the return of 2.7 million servicemembers from the combat fields of Vietnam, with nearly 15% of the population affected.  But Vietnam veterans returned to a country in which PTSD was largely unacknowledged or even dismissed, feeding into their symptoms of isolation and shame.  A 2008 study found that approximately one in three Vietnam veterans who served in combat zones had been diagnosed with PTSD; a 2016 study estimated that some 30,000 Vietnam veterans have died by suicide since the war ended.  

How many of those lives could have been saved with proper recognition and treatment? 

With this in mind, we shouldn’t deny that moral injury is poised to become the next PTSD: a mental health scourge that is barreling towards one of our nation’s most vulnerable communities.  Early evidence suggests that veterans who report high moral injury are four times more likely to consider suicide than those without moral injury, and with a Global War on Terror (GWoT) veteran population totaling some 2.7 million people, our continued disregard bears predictable but lethal consequences.  

And that’s why this issue is the hill I’ll die on: to disregard the threat of moral injury is to effectively step on the memories of the veterans who should still be here, if not for our inaction.

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(If you are struggling, please know that you have options.

Dial 988 to contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or text SIGNS to 741741 for the Crisis Text Line.

My colleagues at Give an Hour maintain a database of providers who offer free mental health counseling.  

My friends at Operation Recovery sponsor the Heroes Wellness Collective, which centralizes mental health resources and connects them to veterans in need. 

In my 10 years working at VA, I’ve only heard positive things about the assistance offered by the Vet Centers.  They’re staffed almost entirely by veterans; offer quicker turnarounds than traditional VA Medical Centers; and although they are affiliated with VA, are independently-run.

And you can always—ALWAYS—reach out to me at katekovarovicAFG@gmail.com.  Let’s talk about it.)