8 GROUNDCOVER NEWS IN REVIEW Read "Outsourcing Duty: the Moral Exploitation of the American Soldier" DAVID KE DODGE Groundcover contributor Over five years ago, I wrote a book review which was published in the May 2018 issue of Groundcover News. The book reviewed in that issue is titled "What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars" by David Wood. At the time that book was written in 2016, the concept of moral injury in veterans and service personnel who are racked with guilt over things they have done in combat was just starting to receive attention by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In his book, Mr. Wood comprehensively describes what is meant by “moral injury” and the state of the art of helping persons who suffer from moral injury. In "Outsourcing Duty," Robillard and Strawser redirect the issue of moral injury from its burden upon veterans and service personnel, to parties who, in a sense, obliviously carry guilt, which is, to my mind, greater and more shameful than that of combatants: the citizens of the nation which grooms, targets, selects, recruits, trains and sends especially vulnerable parties into combat in never-ending, gratuitous wars. The term “the one percent” has been around for some time, at least as early as the start of the Great Recession of 2008, referring to the one percent of the U.S. citizenry who control a vastly disproportionate amount of the nation’s wealth. “Outsourcing Duty” redirects its readers’ attention to another one percent: the portion of the U.S. citizenry who incur “dirty hands” on behalf of another portion who, in too large part, is indifferent to the nation’s eternal war-making. The maldistribution of the moral burdens of war creates a sense of injustice in our military personnel. This is succinctly characterized by the statement of an unknown service member who served in Iraq, which heads up chapter three of the book: “We were at war while America was at the mall.” Those of us who no longer wish to be obliviously complicit in our nation's war mongering will do well to read this book. "Outsourcing Duty" is available online at my favorite bookstore, Literati, for $38. Buy it, read it, keep it. JULY 28, 2023
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