450,000 U.S. Soldiers Diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury Since 2001

Readers wondering why I have an aversion to America's endless wars should spend time with invalids suffering from TBI.

When I was living in Menlo Park, California in the years 2011-2015, I got to be pals with an affluent, patriotic man who was a benefactor the VA hospitals in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. He introduced me to a psychiatrist with whom I got to be pals, and on a few occasions I was given permission to accompany him when he visited his patients.

By far the most common injury I saw was what neurologists call a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). According to the National Institutes of Health (Occupation and Risk of Traumatic Brain Injury in the Millennium Cohort Study) rom 2000 to 2021, an estimated 449,026 active-duty U.S. service members experienced a TBI. These injuries were often caused by combat-related incidents, such as explosive blasts, and are considered a “signature injury” of post-9/11 conflicts.

The vast majority of these injuries are considered mild, but a “mild” diagnosis is cold comfort for those suffering from the syndrome and their family members, as mild symptoms include:

• Headache

• Dizziness

• Nausea and vomiting

• Fatigue

• Sensitivity to light or noise

• Blurred or double vision

• Balance problems

• Cognitive: Confusion or difficulty concentrating, memory loss or problems with recall, Difficulty with attention or problem-solving, and slowed thinking or processing speed.

• Emotional: Irritability or mood swings, anxiety or depression, difficulty sleeping, and changes in appetite.

• Other: Ringing in the ears, loss of consciousness (briefly), and seizures (rare).

The following 2023 news segment presents a pretty good overview of the epidemic. Note that, as of this posting, it has only received 235 views.

Though I haven’t analyzed it, I suspect that the TBI epidemic is related to the epidemic of suicide among U.S. service personnel. According to the 2021 Brown University Cost of War Project, since 2001, 30,000 active-duty personnel and veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died by suicide as of June 2021.

Most of the patients I visited had been diagnosed with moderate to severe TBI, and were profoundly debilitated. A remarkable feature of many severe cases of TBI is that they were not caused by a penetrating object such as shrapnel or a gunshot, but by the shockwave generated by a roadside bomb.

The U.S. military knows how to wage Blitzkrieg against an underdeveloped foreign nation, but when it comes to occupying the country to produce a favorable political settlement, our skills quickly reach their limits.

In the run-up to the Iraq War, key Bush administration policymakers such as Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz claimed that occupying Iraq would be like the successful post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan, revealing that they knew nothing about Iraq, Germany, or Japan.

Readers commenting on my post of earlier today - Smearing & Threatening Tucker Carlson Will Generate Anti-Semitism Instead of Quelling It - should evaluate the discussion in light of American fatigue with foreign wars.

If you are like Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham—who bragged to the Republican Jewish Coalition on October 31, 2025 how much they favor further war and “killing people” in the Middle East—you are going to generate enmity against yourselves and the self-described “Jewish” political coalition to whom you are publicly trying to curry favor.

Note Graham’s vulgar remarks at 7:49 on the tape.

We’re killin’ all the right people and cuttin’ your taxes. Trump is my favorite president, we’ve run out of bombs. We didn’t run out of bombs in World War II!”

It’s simple: when tens of millions of Americans have developed deep feelings of antipathy to foreign wars that never accomplish anything other than getting hundreds of thousands killed and maimed, you are going to be very unpopular with tens of millions of people.

If you, like Senator Graham, expressly call yourself “a coalition of Baptists and Jews,” you are going to generate antipathy towards the Baptists and Jews to whom you appeal. War and its terrible consequences have long been known to cause very hard feelings.