Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War

By: Robert Emmet Meagher

Narrated by: Paul Fleschner

Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Armies know all about killing. It is what they do, and ours does it more effectively than most. We are painfully coming to realize, however, that we are also especially good at killing our own ''from the inside out,'' silently, invisibly. In every major war since Korea, more of our veterans have taken their lives than have lost them in combat. The latest research, rooted in veteran testimony, reveals that the most severe and intractable PTSD - fraught with shame, despair, and suicide - stems from "moral injury".

But how can there be rampant moral injury in what our military, our government, our churches, and most everyone else call just wars? At the root of our incomprehension lies just war theory - developed, expanded, and updated across the centuries to accommodate the evolution of warfare, its weaponry, its scale, and its victims.

Any serious critique of war, as well any true attempt to understand the profound, invisible wounds it inflicts, will be undermined from the outset by the unthinking and all-but-universal acceptance of just war doctrine. Killing from the Inside Out radically questions that theory, examines its legacy, and challenges us to look beyond it, beyond just war.

©2014 Robert Emmet Meagher (P)2015 Robert Emmet Meagher

Historical Hypocrisy Replayed

This was an outstanding book that gave a historic rationale of the Roman priesthood's concoction of the Just War Doctrine. It became rather scholarly and biblical at points but the conclusions drawn were very cogent and contemporary.

Words that we must accept with gratitude.

Well written and researched; essential for understanding how we came to accept war. Thank you.

Helpful but not thorough

I was impressed by his work at acknowledgement of sin in the nature of war. But the author blanched and did not expose necessarily whose sin or how? Whose Sin? If someone attacks us, polluting it might be but do we gain a right to be exercised against our adversaries? What would be the limiting factor and what is your justification for that limitation? Again I enjoyed the work but thought it could be more then a polemic.

A must book for every citizen!

This brave book puts an honest mirror to society, and unveil the mask we use in order not to hear and not to see the suffering of veterans and combatants sent by us to what we wrongly see as just war. The author analyzes and dismantles the theory of just war, while showing the open yet hidden wound of moral injury. A wonderful book!

Required Reading

for: military leaders, chaplains, combat operations stress control personnel, VA providers, and would-be service members.

EVERY military leader should read this book.

Must read for every military leader and those working with veterans.

Strong start, a bit rough through the middle, but definitely worth reading through to the end.