Iraq war veterans and Iraqi refugees share parallel trauma burdens

Evidence

One was the “patriot” defending national honor, the other branded a “terrorist” for no other reason than the land he came from. Both pawns, and indeed, both victims. John knew men who could no longer bear the terror they saw in Iraq and took their lives shortly after coming home. Hussein had family members and beloved friends who were slaughtered by fronts of American plunder with pithy names. Years later, he still contemplates why “God chose to take them and not me.” That weighs on him, it was clear. But he has his new life, his family and children, and a community that counterbalances those unseen battles that still rage within him. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 207

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the paired psychological costs of one war on its two victim populations — American veteran suicide and Iraqi survivor guilt — as a form of shared, unnamed terror.