Dear Mr. Dryer,
Your article on your experiences during the Iraq War moved me to write. I am glad to see you taking the first steps in your new profession. Being a writer is a wonderful thing. I've been one for several years, and you have a future filled with beautiful prose and excruciating writer's blocks. That much I can tell from the quality of your style. The topic you chose is heavy, but your ability for being self critical yet objective at the same time bodes well for your chosen path.
First, you should congratulate yourself. I know, this seems like a weird thing to say given the tone of your article. You may even be angry at me for saying it. You feel true remorse for your own actions and the atrocities you were witness to. I will not patronize you. I do not personally understand your plight the way you do. I can offer no "I've been there too." My instinct is to empathize, but I know even that has its limitations. What I can tell you is you are exceedingly brave. Other veterans in your position have seen the exact same inhumanity and have collapsed. They did not seek out the pen to try and work through it. Some reached for a gun to end it all, others became hardened by their experiences to the point where they have none of the humanity they came in with, while others find ways to cope in the dark. Many men go back home to their wives and find themselves quickly in divorce court. Your family seems intact, or at the very least, you're still a father. You looked your problem in the eye. I do not criticize you, nor do I criticize the Veterans who found different ways to deal with their problems, but credit should be given where credit is due. You are wrangling with the truth, in every detail, in every facet. My heart is not strong enough for that. Yours is.
What your unit did was not as "inhuman" as you might think. What I mean, is that humans have a darker nature that is every bit a part of us as our gentler nature. If you study war carefully, and think of it in purely human terms (removing nationality and race), remove the poetry, then you will see the same story of brutality, dehumanization, destruction, and hate. Many people in these situations react this way. Desecration of corpses was done by the Soviet, American, and German armies. French troops in China during the 1900s went on a rape binge in several of China's major cities. The chain of command explicitly looked the other way. It is the person that doesn't that is the exception that proves the rule. Nothing changes that, so long as humans have not evolved past their animal side. It doesn't matter if we're talking about Japanese, Russians, Americans, or Nigerians; the story remains the same. The people the army is supposed to "save" are instead treated like the enemy, and the brutal logic that this entails. Your unit was not the first where the chain of command looked the other way. I suggest watching the movie "Die Welle" and "The Third Wave" experiment to read about studies done on authoritarianism to understand this phenomenon from a psychological standpoint.
Ignore your detractors; they are merciless, broken people. They write off your experiences and they are offended that you are even having an attack of conscience. Saying that "those officers that let that happen should've been dismissed" is a meaningless phrase when you consider the fact that those officers were not dismissed. People who inflate their egos by not sympathizing with others, offering their own ignorant advice to cover up for their inability to feel for others, are weak. Forgive them. They drink in the dark, beat their wives, force themselves on younger female officers, and live a life of silent depravity. They are deeply tortured people. Many of them can hardly string a logical sentence together and get caught up in radicalism that feeds their needs for unquestioning authority. Some of course don't fit this profile, but if someone is quick to tell you they have no sympathy for you, tell them you are in no need of that. You deal with your problems head on and you are working for a better world using your experience as a template. Your detractors are not. They have no ideas beyond doing the same thing over and over again.