Bringing Them Home

January 4th, 2025

The news media have spent a great deal of time reporting on the recent acts of deadly violence in New Orleans and Las Vegas. In particular, there has a been lot of speculation as to the motives of the two perpetrators. Since both men are dead, it is unlikely that we will ever really know why they did what they did. Speculation is ultimately pointless. What is of interest to me is that both individuals were veterans. I am wondering how significant that fact is.

At this point, the military background of Shamsud-Din Jabbar and Matthew Livelsberger would seem to be the only common denominator between the two men. In most other aspects, they led very different lives. It makes me wonder.

I have a son, Hans, who is a combat vet. He was deployed with the Army to Iraq. He’s been back for well over a decade, but his experiences in Iraq have had a long-lasting effect on him. The two veterans who committed terrorist acts a few days ago may have also been permanently scarred by what they saw or did in Afghanistan. This is clearly a gross generalization, but some vets never really come home. They return to America as warriors who are still fighting.

There is a series of ancient legends about Cú Chulainn, a fierce Irish warrior from the Celtic times. The stories speak at length about how Cú Chulainn would go into a violent frenzy while in combat, and how difficult it was to calm him down afterward. In Wikipedia there is part of a tale that explains what other warriors (in this case his enemies) had to do bring him out of this berserker mode:

“He returns to Emain Macha in his battle frenzy, and the Ulstermen are afraid he will slaughter them all. Conchobar’s wife Mugain leads out the women of Emain, and they bare their breasts to him. He averts his eyes, and the Ulstermen wrestle him into a barrel of cold water, which explodes from the heat of his body. They put him in a second barrel, which boils, and a third, which warms to a pleasant temperature.”

The story is not to be taken literally, but it effectively describes what measures are required to return a soldier from a war. I had a conversation several years ago with Native American rancher whose daughter had fought in Iraq and had been wounded there, at about the same time my son was deployed. The rancher’s culture, like the traditional Celtic culture, has rituals and time-tested methods of healing a warrior. The rancher told me about “horse medicine”, a way to establish a bond between a returning vet and a horse to help dissipate the warrior’s rage and fear. The rancher told me that the horse would absorb the negative energy from the veteran, sometimes to the extent that the horse would die. The process of healing took a long time for his daughter, but she was able to finally leave Iraq. I’m not sure that my son has ever been able to do that.

What does all this have to do with Jabbar and Livelsberger? Maybe nothing or maybe everything. Our American culture does not have traditions or rituals to heal a veteran and bring the warrior back home. We somehow just expect that the soldier will adapt and recover on their own. That is often not the case. Many vets never leave Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan.

They continue to fight their wars to their own detriment, and sometimes to detriment of those around them. Then these old wars may find a new home in New Orleans or Vegas.