In 2006, one in ten returning veterans from the war in Iraq exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. This number has continued to rise with repeated deployments, and many believe it is still under-diagnosed, as symptoms may not appear for years after returning from a conflict.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder brought on by being part of, or even just witnessing, violent acts. The symptoms are obsessive recollections, flashbacks or nightmares. In sort, PTSD is a debilitating condition suffered by veterans of war who cannot forget the violence and brutality of war. That’s what it means to remember war.

PTSD was called “Shell Shock” in World War I, but it was poorly defined and there was virtually no treatment. My grandfather served in the trenches in France during WWI and spent the rest of his life as an alcoholic, self-medicating to try to forget what he had experienced and what he had done. He survived a mustard gas attack because he fell on top of other soldiers in the trench; mustard gas sinks and those who were on the bottom died below him, choking on their own lungs or drowning in the water-soaked cavities of the trench as those on top pressed down on them. He remembered hearing the dying on both sides moaning and shrieking for hours in the no-man’s land between the lines, their own troops pinned down by the others and unable to get to the wounded who then became the dead. He obsessed about those buddies whom he had left to die in no-man’s land; he obsessed about those whom he had killed and seen killed. He remembered and remembered and remembered until he died.

When, in high school, I read All Quiet on the Western Front for a class assignment, I remember my surprise at how the book was so like my grandfather’s memories I had heard as a kid. And when guys I knew from high school came back from Vietnam, I saw them become alcoholics and self-medicate with drugs and then I listened to them remember the war, again and again and again and be unable to stop.

There will be speeches and flags and words about heroism spoken this weekend, but relatively little about what war is really like and what it costs. Websites for veterans and their families tell us “Post-traumatic stress disorder and other combat-related mental problems can lead to family strife, divorce, alcohol and substance abuse, and unemployment.” How many people should we remember when we remember war? The total is very high: veterans, spouses, children, parents, grandparents, friends, and even employers. We should remember the war dead, on both sides.

Judith Herman writes, in her groundbreaking work on post-traumatic stress disorder, Trauma and Recovery, “Trauma is contagious.” I certainly hope so, because right now the country as a whole seems to have developed a mental block about the real human costs of these wars we are currently fighting and badly need to be shocked out of complacency. We need to catch a little of this trauma to keep from making another tragic mistake and pursuing another war.

Let us not be deluded about war and seduced once again by rhetoric of heroism, even by, or especially by those who say their experience of war qualifies them to make war again. No matter how many times you make war, it never comes out right and it never justifies the past. I listen to John McCain and I am very fearful that he is still trying to win in Vietnam. It makes me sad, but it also makes me afraid. I have heard this before, so many times.

Just remember this: what we have learned from the studies of PTSD is that remembering war over and over and over again makes a lot of people crazy. Tragically, that’s what it should mean to remember war, since war is the greatest moral evil on the face of the earth.