Abstract

Almost five million Americans volunteered to serve in the U.S. armed forces between 2001 and 2021 and returned home as discharged veterans. Among them, 30,177 men and women have taken their own lives, an awful toll that is more than five times the number of Americans killed in combat in our twenty-first century wars. As part of the roundtable, “Moral Injury, Trauma, and War,” this essay argues that the reasons are many, but one major factor may be the moral pain that many experience in wartime and the vast emptiness they often encounter when their military service ends. Our society has an obligation to the post–9/11 veterans to understand their experiences and truly welcome them back. The rising toll of veteran suicides suggests there is little time to lose.