The Expanded Epistemic Injustice of Rejecting Moral Injury Testimony

International humanitarian law and modern just war reasoning lead some to interpret many veterans’ moral injuries as mistaken attributions of guilt to themselves rather than to the aggressors responsible for the negative consequences of a just war. This rejection of morally injured veterans’ knowledge is similar to what Miranda Fricker describes as testimonial injustice. Unlike the cases Fricker describes, however, this particular injustice is based not on identity prejudices against veterans but rather on prejudices against the other characters in their testimonies: the combatants and civilians they’ve harmed. As such, rejecting morally injured veterans’ testimonies as mistaken constitutes an injustice not only against the veterans themselves, but represents an expansion of the category of testimonial injustice because it perpetrates an injustice against those of whom the veterans speak. The result is a failure to recognize both harmed persons and the harms they’ve suffered.