"In psychiatric terms, war memories are often measured by incidence of mental illnesses such as PTSD and depression (and via Western diagnostic standard manuals such as the DSM-IV). Translating what wars leave behind in collective memory onto the sanitized vocabulary of psychiatric diagnostics such as these reduces history to artifacts of clinical symptoms. The question that instead needs to be at the forefront of any discussion about military interventions is what it means for a "liberated" society, as well as for the global community in their relation to them, to live in conditions of constant rupture; to be "liberated" while experiencing enduring loss and grief caused by the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers; or to be children growing up in exploded neighborhoods and looted houses, internalizing and suppressing wartime anxieties."
- Orkideh Behrouzan, The Psychological Impact of the Iraq War
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