This is topic War and Murder in Afghanistan and Henry V in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/taliban-vows-revenge-for-killings-by-us-soldier/2012/03/11/gIQAppTC7R_story.html?hpid=z1

quote:
The radical Islamist Taliban blamed “sick-minded American savages” for the attack, in which the U.S. soldier allegedly walked off his base near a remote southern Afghan village shortly before dawn Sunday and went door to door, opening fire on civilians inside three homes. Afghan officials said at least 16 people were killed, including three women and nine children, and that some of their bodies were burned. The soldier turned himself in to U.S. military authorities upon returning to the base, called Camp Belambay.
I keep thinking of the scene in Henry V where the king (in disguise) argues with Williams about the responsibility the king bears for the men he sends into battle.

quote:
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.

Henry disagrees.

quote:
there is no
king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to
the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all
unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them
the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder;
some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of
perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that
have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with
pillage and robbery.

But we know that a man mightn't be have such guilt on them before we turn him into a killer. His "spot" may not be fatal till we break him.

I think that Williams has the right of it and we are the king.

Anyway. One was to try to get my head around this tragic mess.

[ March 12, 2012, 04:42 PM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
 
Posted by Lara (Member # 132) on :
 
I'm a Civil Affairs Seregeant in the Army and was in Afghanistan in 2009-2010. Army culture reinforces good-natured "root for the home team" competetiveness, but under the wrong leadership at any level I've seen esprit de corps warped into justification of rabid hatred for the "other". I am amazed at the things Soldiers find acceptable to say about even American civilians in some military circles. It is definitely not the norm, but given the fire power we all carry in the military, that this could happen does not surprise me.
 
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
It's almost like the military is a state within a state with defence of the country outsourced to it rather than being an integral part of society.
 
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
 
What bothers me most about this situation is the man suffered brain damage on a previous deployment, and they sent him back. The common line "we never saw it coming" is, in my experience, usually untrue. I've seen someone go crazy, and there were warning signs months beforehand. He'd show up hours late, he'd poop in sinks, he'd walk around muttering to himself and have weird mood changes and bursts of anger. I imagine in this situation as well, perhaps the staff sergeant started showing signs he was cracking long before he suddenly walked off base and started shooting people. Those signs are hard to hide when you're around other people in a stressful environment, 24/7. Perhaps his men didn't want to ruin his career by reporting it (they probably saw him as a hero, because of his wounds) and talked themselves into believing it wasn't that big of a deal. Until it was.

This is a really horrible tragedy. I can't really think of anything we can do as a nation to lessen the impact thereof, either. If anything good comes out of it, hopefully it'll encourage the armed forces to step up the level and frequency of mental health screening, as well as destigmatizing and increasing the availability of psychiatric help. I returned from deployment several months ago, and my post deployment mental health screening lasted about 2 minutes and felt like a mere formality. I'm sure if I'd answered "yes" to any of the questions they would've taken further measures, but I was standing in an examination room with a bored looking doc reading questions off a sheet of paper. How many people are going to open up in that situation?
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
I don't really have a comment on the issue (hey, that's new for me!), but I did want to say to kate that this is one of the more interesting OPs I've seen in awhile. What a great way to start a conversation!
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Thanks. I thought it was better than just plain despair, more exhortations to get the hell out, or repeating that we should never have been there.

Or it could be I was just watching Kenneth Branagh late at night and contemplating the place of nature/nurture in Shakespeare's characters and how that involves responsibility.

Whether we broke that soldier or not, it is our responsibility that he was there. I don't know what we do about that except, please God, remember that this kind of thing happens when we send people to war.
 
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
 
No one seems to be interested, which is a shame, since this is a really interesting thread IMO. I'll go ahead and respond:

I definitely think we, the American people, are responsible for this. I think too many people take their country for granted, and ignore their civic duty. I realize such things are often said by those who think "patriotism" is a warm and fuzzy feeling you get while waving Popsicle stick flags and chanting "USA! USA! USA!", but it is, nonetheless, true. Americans are just as intelligent as any other people, but we're very politically stupid, because most Americans don't really put time and effort into the fundamentals of democracy: learning about candidates, elections, issues being voted on, writing their congresspersons, organizing and lobbying and protesting. And when they do put in effort, they often do it in an idiotic and profoundly uninformed manner. We've neglected our right to govern ourselves, and seem surprised when we're assigned responsibility for the actions of our nation. "No, that wasn't me! I just live here!"

What Lara and Blayne said really rings true for me. The military isn't really a group of citizen-soldiers any more, we're professional fighters, a warrior caste. This is becoming especially noticeable in my branch (ads for other branches of service advertise learning experiences and education and cool equipment, whereas the draw in every USMC ad is the right to call yourself a Marine), but it's more or less the prevailing ethos. The ideal of "fighting to defend your country" is wearing thin as our wars become only tangentially related to the preservation of our nation. The ideals of fighting for the men to your left and right, fighting because that's your job, your role in life, what you're best at, fighting because you like fighting, have replaced it.

There's a pretty strong sense of isolation. Physically yes - I've spent maybe a month of the past 2 years in CONUS - but also socially and culturally. We've become a distinct people, with our own ethics and values, or own ideas and memes (I loath what that word has been trivialized to mean), we even speak with a distinct accent. And that gap is only widening. We are the projected power of a sovereign people, but more and more it seems like we are, as Blayne said, a nation of our own, supported financially and recruiting our members from the USA, but only marginally related otherwise.

I've worked all day and I'm pretty tired, so I apologize if what I wrote is less than coherent or overstated. I'll be more than happy to clarify any points that seem foggy and ambiguous tomorrow.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
I'd love to hear you elucidate further on your previous post. It's very interesting.
 
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
 
I was sort of hoping others would come in and discuss raise questions, but people seem to be avoiding this thread like the plague.

Consider this speech for example. (Warning, some strong language) The setting is right before the invasion of Marjah in 2010. (I know some of the men in that crowd) The Taliban are only thrown in as an aside at the end. Most of the speech, the us vs. them rhetoric, is directed at the American people. (Represented by the unfortunate Mr. Metzenbaum) He recognizes the frustration and lack of recognition felt, reassures his men that what they do is important, reminds them of the community they've formed as a company, and motivates them for the upcoming battle.

It's a good representation of how the average Marine actually feels at the ground level. The generals and high ranking officers will of course give speeches about family, freedom, and the American Way, but we all know it's mostly formality. During Vietnam there were massive, constant protests of the war. In the USA today, most people aren't consciously aware on a day to day basis that there *is* a war going on, that every day their fellow citizens are dying in a conflict that they sent them to. Because unless you have a family member in the military, it doesn't really effect you, so it doesn't matter.

That's it for now, is there anything in particular you wanted me to expand on?
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Thanks, Dogbreath. Both for your service and your willingness to talk about it.

During Vietnam, people were getting drafted. These days, the protests are made up of a strange group of teenagers and old hippies. And nuns. I know that there are some bad apples that are anti-soldier, but in my experience they are few and far between. I realize that it seems contradictory but by far, most of the protesters feel that they are protesting for those that are doing the fighting and dying as much as for anyone else. I meet a lot of veterans at protests.

I can't help feeling that what that broken soldier did is our failure. Our country, our military, and our anti-war effort.

I don't know if is possible to send people to kill other people and be in almost constant danger of being killed without breaking at least some of them emotionally and spiritually. We hear a lot about "shell shock" in WWI and PTSD now. We don't hear a lot about it for WWII. I don't know if there was somehow less or if men who had been through the Depression and whose fathers had been in WWI had different ways to cope or if just covered it up.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
It may be a matter of experiencing different kinds of culture, kmbboots. I've seen quite a few WWII films, played quite a few such games, watched many series, so on and so forth. In my experience, PTSD and shellshock are things that are pretty present in our society's thoughts about WWII, y'know?

Of course I don't mean to suggest any of that stuff makes me an authority, even of the least degree, on WWII. That'd be deeply silly. I also can't say which series you've watched, or movies, and so on and so forth. I'm just referring to how we as a country look at WWII in my experience, but of course it's really subjective.

-------

Dogbreath, chalk me up as another person who is quite fascinated by your thoughts on the subject. I tend to think your posts are pretty rad even when they're not from an insider's perspective cogently presented about societies most of us have so many opinions about, but little direct knowledge.

------

I wish our culture was less half-assed about preventative practices in general, maintenance, medicine, social matters, law enforcement, etc., but especially when it comes to the people we give guns and throw up against other people with guns, for (I believe) very good causes today, but at many points in the past pretty awful ones sometimes too.

Talking about games and movies above got me imagining I was playing a game such as one of the many Civ games, or SimCity, or many others. It's as though there were a slider somewhere, for example 'troop support'. Within that section, there's a tab for 'ongoing medical and psychiatric care', and you can decide how much you're going to committ to that section. There's a warning there, too: spending too little will trim valuable dollars out of the budget to be used elsewhere, but too little and there's a very real chance that someone we don't tend to but also give major firepower will, after a long time of suffering and improper care, will tumble off the straight and narrow. Sometimes they'll just kill themselves, or their friends or loved ones. Maybe they'll start doing more and more serious drugs. But maybe they'll head into a village and massacre some people. Then afterwords we think, "Shit! Should've had that tab further over for more spending. I'll fix that now," and maybe we do. Until the next budget crunch years later, then it's decision time again.

Put another way, I agree with your perception of our society in general with regards to the military: most of us really just don't give a shit. We've got our military in areas of potentially vital international interest, and have for a decade now. They've been fighting and dying and killing and being wounded and just living. But over here, back in the States, in a country that even in recession still has it incredibly soft, nearly all of the election clamor is about the economy. Wars we're in right now aren't even an major issue at the times we set aside as a country specifically to talk about and raise hell over major issues.
 
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
I don't know if is possible to send people to kill other people and be in almost constant danger of being killed without breaking at least some of them emotionally and spiritually. We hear a lot about "shell shock" in WWI and PTSD now. We don't hear a lot about it for WWII. I don't know if there was somehow less or if men who had been through the Depression and whose fathers had been in WWI had different ways to cope or if just covered it up.

Shell shock/PTSD was a *huge* issue during WWII, especially in the Pacific. Psych wards in Navy/Army hospitals were packed. The HBO docudrama series "The Pacific" is actually pretty accurate in portraying how horrible the war really was, if that interests you at all. You could also try "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut, which took him 20 years to write because of how intensely painful the memories were for him.

The main reason you don't hear about it is that during WWII we had an immense and extremely effective propaganda machine that was unique to that war. It worked - partly because of it's scale - but mostly because the American people *wanted* it to work. It was a total war, and the people wanted and needed to believe in that image of the plucky GI. If a reporter were to try and run an article about shell shock or, say, a soldier going crazy and killing civilians, he'd quickly find himself out of a job. That mentality was so overwhelming that it still influences modern day depictions of the war.

Of course, there are plenty of books now that talk about what the war was like, and I grew up hearing stories from my grandpa and great uncles, but filmmakers still seem unwilling to shoot WWII movies portraying U.S. troops as being less than perfect. Which is unfortunate, because we committed greater atrocities and killed far more civilians in that war than any other. We killed over 100,000 civilians in Okinawa alone, for example.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
My thoughts on that, the what so far as I have read is a greater number of warcrimes in WWII than elsewhere, is because that is a war that, more than anything in our history-even the Revolution, perhaps, with its divided loyalties-it's a war that started out with us being seriously wronged. It was a nearly universal public opinion and even the government at the time was united on the subject that the Empire of Japan just had to effing pay.

I think when you start with that, as opposed to 'these guys are Commies, and Commies are bad because someday they want to ruin our way of life' or 'this crappy army is sometimes paid by the guy who's been sticking it to us for awhile, and may someday nuke some of us', well. Not that those last two aren't pretty bad (and also serious), but they don't have the power of screaming headlines in every newspaper everywhere with huge letters, angry or grim voices on every radio, with a flag that can be stuck to it and so many millions wearing it. When you start from there, the tumble to war crimes is perhaps nearer to hand.

But when I've thought that, it also occurs to me that since WWII was bigger than any other, with more US involvement, perhaps the atrocities were simply...proportional only, greater in that sense only. I'm not sure. Haven't studied it, and I suspect it'd be so hazy anyway.
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dogbreath:

The main reason you don't hear about it is that during WWII we had an immense and extremely effective propaganda machine that was unique to that war. It worked - partly because of it's scale - but mostly because the American people *wanted* it to work. It was a total war, and the people wanted and needed to believe in that image of the plucky GI. If a reporter were to try and run an article about shell shock or, say, a soldier going crazy and killing civilians, he'd quickly find himself out of a job. That mentality was so overwhelming that it still influences modern day depictions of the war.

This is what I am talking about, I think. We are starting to see more about WWI shell shock in culture (Downton Abbey for example, and I read two mystery books in a row that feature it*) but we still have this idea of WWII as "a good war" and think in terms of the "greatest generation" as if they emerged heroic and unscathed. If we failed to learn the cost of war from WWI, we unlearned it from WWII, ignored it in Korea, despised it in Vietnam, and...what are we doing with it now? Threatening to pile a war in Iran onto these soldier who have been at it for over 10 years already? Our involvement in WWII was really only 2 1/2 years.

* Now that I think of it, all of that has been British art rather than American. Maybe that is the difference?


ETA: Just yesterday there was a report of a 27 year old Iraq vet killing his 11 year old sister before killing himself.

[ March 16, 2012, 11:12 AM: Message edited by: kmbboots ]
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
... But when I've thought that, it also occurs to me that since WWII was bigger than any other, with more US involvement, perhaps the atrocities were simply...proportional only, greater in that sense only.

I wonder about this too.
As a minority, I was thinking that when people are talking about WWII bringing people together, it sure brought the Japanese people together into concentration camps. But that's in the middle of a world war in multiple theatres and high death tolls (soldiers and civilians alike). Would current restrictions and spying on Muslims really not progress into something similar if the War on Terror really was on the same scale? Or what if a war with China broke out with nukes somehow taken out of the picture?

Hopefully, we won't have to find out, but I find myself cynical that we've really progressed quite as far as some hope.
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
When I think of WWII atrocities it is more along the lines of Dresden or Tokyo. When I think of Vietnam atrocities, I think of My Lai. Very different kinds of horror in terms of scale, decision making - strategic decisions made by generals as opposed to personal decisions made by troops. The latter is more...I guess the word would be personal? The only similar types of atrocities I can think of with WWII would be killing POW which is yet a different situation.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Well, I think Dogbreath touched on it when he mentioned the WWII propaganda machine and then Okinawa. (i.e. the first reducing the number of personal atrocities that would be highly publicised and the second having personal decisions depicted say here)
That explains one direction.

Going the other way, strategic crimes in Vietnam, it probably just depends on how you interpret the numbers.
e.g.
Tokyo
quote:
The US Strategic Bombing Survey later estimated that nearly 88,000 people died in this one raid, 41,000 were injured, and over a million residents lost their homes. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated a higher toll: 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 124,711 casualties including both killed and wounded and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed.
vs.
Agent Orange
quote:
The Vietnam Red Cross reported as many as 3 million Vietnamese people have been affected by Agent Orange, including at least 150,000 children born with birth defects.[35] According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 people being killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.
(from wiki)

One could debate the numbers of course (i.e., it's a bit unfair to compare one raid versus a series of sprayings), but the differences seem more on scale rather than sharp differences.

[ March 16, 2012, 02:31 PM: Message edited by: Mucus ]
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Mucus, I think what I am trying to get at here (and doing it in a very clumsy, roundabout way) is the question of our responsibility for the souls (for lack of a better word feel free to insert appropriate atheist substitute) of the human beings we send to make war on our behalf. I think that there can be no doubt among reasonable people that we are responsible for the actions of our military whether they are large scale, impersonal atrocities* or more personal, individual atrocities. I don't think the "one bad apple" rational hold water. But individual soldiers are responsible for their own actions, too, whether they are following orders or have lost their mind and started shooting up villages. And how responsible are we when what we ask them to do "breaks them"? And why are we surprised when, over and over again, we do break them?

That is where my mind is wandering about on this.
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Looks like we are not taking responsibility at all at this point. I am not sure what else we can do other than charge him with murder without causing more destruction, but I would really like this tragedy to spur some wider conversation and an attempt to fix a broken system.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Charging him in the US probably will cause more destruction as well. Increased terrorism and the like are pretty much assured when pulling this kind of extra-territoriality stunt.

Edit to add: As for two posts ago, as an atheist, I don't have any objection to simply saying that we have a responsibility for those that we send to war.
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Anything short of letting mobs tear him to bits is going to be less than satisfactory to a certain number of people. Our putting him to death is probably politically expedient. A not guilty for reasons of insanity or diminished capacity which may be appropriate would throw gasoline bombs onto an already nasty fire.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
It's certainly true that there will be no way of satisfying *everybody*. I'm just pointing out that taking him out of local jurisdiction is a good way of satisfying that pretty much *no one* in Afghanistan will be satisfied.

If the shoe was on the other foot, well America would probably invade Afghanistan [Wink]
 
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
 
And Obama saying he'll be trialed as if he murdered US citizens... No US soldier was sentenced to death for crimes abroad since 1960s. I have seen movies of US war crimes in the Middle East and what your soldiers do sometimes is terrifying. I have never experienced war and I hope I won't. I am aware that Polish troops in Afghanistan might also commit war crimes, but when several noncombatants were killed by Polish soldiers (by mortar, when they were returning fire and missed, it in Nanghar Khel) they were all facing possible life sentence for crimes against humanity. Such things dont happen in the US, I guess. They were cleared from all charges, though.
 
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
Anything short of letting mobs tear him to bits is going to be less than satisfactory to a certain number of people. Our putting him to death is probably politically expedient. A not guilty for reasons of insanity or diminished capacity which may be appropriate would throw gasoline bombs onto an already nasty fire.

What if he really is insane, though? Every aspect of this incident makes me suspect that's the case: 4 deployments, a head injury, seeing a friend injured right beforehand. Would you still support putting a mentally ill person to death? Especially when that illness was caused by his service to his country?

Punishing him more severely for political reasons is setting a dangerous precedent. A little blood doesn't sate a mob, it only puts it in a frenzy.
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
I know. That is the tragedy. How the hell can I support any of it? I suspect that you are entirely right about mental illness - the "may" was because I don't know all the facts. How many people died because some idiot burned copies of the Koran? How many will die if Sgt. Bales is acquitted? Where is the justice for the people he murdered? How is justice served by executing a sick man? How many more will die no matter what we do? There is no good thing to do, no right thing anymore. Except to get out and never do it again.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
That is not the only good thing to do, the only just thing to do. We could go around and around on this for months, but I wanted to register that it is not at all a given.

Nor is it true that people died because 'some idiot' burned copies of the Koran, or that is certainly not the whole truth. The truth is that people died because some other people think it's acceptable, when someone burns a holy book, to go ahead and kill *other* people, including their fellow Afghanis, who didn't have anything to do with it in the first place.

This is an awful tragedy in many ways, not least because t was preventable. But let's not get hysterical.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Three things:
1) It should be pretty obvious that random Afghani civilians didn't just turn on a dime and kill random American tourists "because" a book was burned. Rather, after a decade of occupation, drone strikes killing wedding parties, and other atrocities, the burning of the book is merely a convenient trigger. This kind of thing can only happen with deep underlying resentments.

2) It's a bit early to be talking about how to sentence the accused. Note, I'm talking about charges and jurisdiction earlier.

Both the defence lawyer and the Afghan authorities investigating the case have concerns about the poor evidence against the guy. Particularly in the latter case where the investigation seems to be showing that multiple soldiers were involved. Removing the guy from local justice can only hamper the investigation, an investigation that might even exonerate him.

3) The death penalty is not an insurmountable challenge. Even a small nation like Canada has successfully negotiated that the death penalty be taken off the table when extraditing criminals to developing countries like China and the US. I'm sure that the US could negotiate something similar with a much stronger hand.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
It should be pretty obvious that random Afghani civilians didn't just turn on a dime and kill random American tourists "because" a book was burned. Rather, after a decade of occupation, drone strikes killing wedding parties, and other atrocities, the burning of the book is merely a convenient trigger. This kind of thing can only happen with deep underlying resentments.

*snort* This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. There were more than a few Afghanis, not limited to their own government, even, that were committing atrocities upon their own fellow Afghanis before the occupation, though of course it can't be forgotten that things were far from nice for generations before that as well.

My point is that, no, random Afghanis don't just start murdering Americans (and Europeans, and Asians,and other Muslims, of course) on a whim. But there are many for whom this sort of thing isn't a trigger, but an excuse. It is deeply frustrating when people speak as though well yes obviously terrorism is just an angry response to oppression! That's as absurd a perspective as to suggest that terrorism is always totally unprovoked and cowardly./
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Well, yes. I thought that would have been pretty obvious as well. Imagine the tables were turned, the US were under foreign occupation, and a riot in progress because an American flag was burned. You would fully expect to see a mix of people, those taking the opportunity to vent their rage and those that were already committing terrorist acts joining in. You'd also expect people in that mix taking the opportunity to kill not just occupying troops, but also immigrants, minorities, anyone that may be blamed for remotely causing the situation (or even if they're just resented in some way).

My point there was just that there's probably too much focus on the book/flag when there's so much else going on.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
My point there was just that there's probably too much focus on the book/flag when there's so much else going on.
That was my point as well. It didn't exactly sound like it was yours, but I understand what you're saying now.
 
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
There is no good thing to do, no right thing anymore. Except to get out and never do it again.

Wait 20 or 30 years, it'll happen again.
 


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