The Shit Hits The Fan – Again, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #266
March 12, 2012 Mike Gold 7 Comments
As you probably know, yesterday a United States Army sergeant stationed in southern Afghanistan walked a mile from his base and slaughtered at least 16 civilians and wounded at leave five more, several critically. Anar Gula, a local resident, told The New York Times “All the family members were killed, the dead put in a room, and blankets were put over the corpses and they were burned. We put out the fire.”
I don’t have to tell you this is an act of unimaginable horror.
In America, some people are going to blame this on our being in Afghanistan. They are wrong. This is a separate issue – completely different from the war itself. Others are going to blame this on the military. They are wrong. We’ve got upwards of 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and over a million different troops since we got there. Odds are, eventually one of them is likely to act out in a criminally insane fashion.
President Hamid Karzai calling the rampage an “inhuman and intentional act,” and he is right. But it has nothing to do with the war: just about anybody can go out and murder 16 people at will, at just about any place, at just about any time. In fact, it happens all the time.
Nonetheless, this act will become political fodder. On the heels of last month’s Koran burnings by other U.S. troops, U.S. marines urinating on the bodies of dead militants, and the sheer physical presence of so many infidels, a lot of Afghans are going to look for blood.
Don’t blame their religion. Christians and Jews and atheists and the rest would feel the same way. In a land long ravaged by war, reaching for ordinance to secure revenge and relief is comparatively easy.
It will be interesting to see how we handle it here in the United States. Will some Republicans blame Obama? Of course; they’ve been blaming Obama for everything else. Will some anti-war advocates say this is why we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan? Most certainly. The pontificators will pontificate. Positions will be bolstered.
We will lose the memory of those 16 victims of mass-murder as we debate the wrong subjects. We will ignore the issue of dealing with such insanity, although I strongly suspect military doctors will see what they can do about weaning out such lunatics, identifying them before they go out on a bloody midnight creep.
But we won’t change human beings like acting like human beings. Some advocate peace. Some advocate conservatism. Others advocate their religion. But at the end of the day, we’ll still have pretty much the same number of insane potential mass-murderers as we had at dawn.
Don’t blame the soldiers.
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Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times) and available On Demand at the same place.
George Haberberger
March 12, 2012 - 10:40 am
Don’t blame the soldiers.
Thanks Mike. I agree with the rest of the your post also, but that point is especially important.
Doug Abramson
March 12, 2012 - 10:51 am
No, don’t blame the soldiers; just the one that did this. If he isn’t mentally incompetent, he should be transferred to Afghan custody. Maybe a sign of cooperation like that can blunt some of the backlash that is going to hit our troops in the region.If we are not at war with a country’s government, off base/off duty American troops need to be held accountable to the local authorities for any crimes that they might commit. If the Pentagon circles the wagons around this guy, the situation will only get worse.
David Quinn
March 12, 2012 - 11:07 am
Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus, Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness and Vonnegut wrote, well, Slaughterhouse Five, but almost everything he wrote, because the tragic truth is, the insanity of war drives some people to insane atrocities.
My first thought, I am sad to admit, was a question: how do crimes like this not happen every day?
R. Maheras
March 12, 2012 - 11:19 am
My heart sank when I saw the initial reports, because, in addition to the pain and grief this tragedy is causing for the families and friends of the deceased, it will no doubt fuel more violence and make life even more miserable for Afghani and Americans alike in that country — especially given the fact that it follows so closely on the heels of the Koran faux pas.
Any Republican who blames Obama for this — or the Koran burnings — is a fool, just as any Democrat who blamed Bush for Abu Ghraib debacle was a fool.
Such events are largely personality driven, not the result of presidential or institutional policy.
As with other similar infamous events, there may have been warning signs, but as we all know, hindsight is 20-20.
Rick Oliver
March 12, 2012 - 1:11 pm
Russ: Abu Ghraib was not the act of a single deranged individual, acting without orders. Abu Ghraib was a methodical and deliberate system of degradation approved at multiple command levels.
R. Maheras
March 12, 2012 - 2:55 pm
Rick — No, it wasn’t a “methodical and deliberate system of degradation approved at multiple command levels.”
And the “act of a single deranged individual” point is irrelevant and a red herring. My Lai was not the act of a single deranged individual either, nor was such behavior “approved at multiple command levels.”
Military members are not trained to treat people that way, which is why the Army itself started the investigation and filed charges before the average schmoe had ever heard of Abu Ghraib. It was rogue soldiers acting as no soldier is trained to act, and following no official rules of engagement that I’ve ever seen.
If I’d have been the NCOIC at Abu Ghraib, either it never would have happened, or someone would have had to put a bullet in my head to clear the way for it to happen.
Bush was not to blame for Abu Ghraib, nor was Cheney, nor was Rumsfeld — and anyone who says that they were does not know anything about military training and military rules, and is, in short, playing politics.
Ditto for Obama and these recent acts in Afghanistan.
Rick Oliver
March 12, 2012 - 8:45 pm
Russ: A few grunts took the fall, plus a general lost her job. Contract interrogators set the stage, using a playbook specifically designed to humiliate Muslims. Abu Ghraib was not a random act. I refer you to the Wikipedia entry on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
Note particularly the following:
“The commanding officer of all Iraq detention facilities, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was reprimanded for dereliction of duty and then demoted to the rank of Colonel on May 5, 2005. Col. Karpinski has denied knowledge of the abuses, claiming that the interrogations were authorized by her superiors and performed by subcontractors, and that she was not even allowed entry into the interrogation rooms.”
You might also read Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article on the subject. Here’s a quote:
“Taguba, in his report, was polite but direct in refuting his fellow-general. “Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during [Ryder’s] assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this investigation,” he wrote. “In fact, many of the abuses suffered by detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment.” The report continued, “Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder’s report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to ‘set the conditions’ for MI interrogations.” Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private contractors “actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.”
I don’t care who you choose to blame. I object to comparing it to the actions of a lone crazed gunman.
Your comparison to My Lai also reflects a lack of understanding of that event. While certainly not officially sanctioned, My Lai was an extreme example of what was unfortunately more common than we would like to admit during the Vietnam war. Philip Caputo’s “A Rumor or War” sheds some light on this subject.
You might once again refer to Seymour Hersh to see just how willing the U.S. military command was to acknowledge wrongdoing and do something about it in the case of My Lai.
R. Maheras
March 12, 2012 - 10:02 pm
Rick — I’ve never in my life seen a commander — particularly a general officer — who was unwilling to walk through everywhere and anywhere under his/her command to see what the hell was going on. Not one. Not ever.
And I don’t give a rat’s behind what the “New Yorker” or any other such anti-military rag has to say about the military. Why? Because you will most likely never see a contemporary balanced or positive military story in their pages. That’s a shame, because there was once a time — before Vietnam — when the “New Yorker” treated the military fairly and even-handedly.
Regarding contractors, I worked on three classified programs, and the contractors who helped maintain our equipment had to follow the Air Force’s rules. All of them.
As far as Abu Ghraib goes, let me say it one more time: There is no way a good NCO or officer would have let what happened in Abu Ghraib happen — regardless of how many contractors or other shady characters came in and tried to throw their weight around. And if someone in my chain of command told me to look the other way and let those guys in to do what they wanted, I’d have demanded that such an unlawful order be put in writing.
I understand perfectly well what happened at My Lai, and from a military person’s point of view, there is absolutely no difference between the local leadership breakdown there and the local leadership breakdown at Abu Ghraib.
As for your objection to my comparisons between one person mentally jumping the reservation and a group of people mentally jumping the reservation, all I can say is if you looked at the psychology behind the two, they are basically the same. What difference does it make if a Charles Manson acts alone or with a group of people he mentally or physically dominates? The results are the same. Either way the lashing out at helpless victims is a classic example of antisocial personality disorder.
Rick Oliver
March 13, 2012 - 5:07 am
Russ: If you read the article (by the guy who broke both stories) or just read the quote, you’d see that there is an official government report that supports the contention that what happened at Abu Ghraib was part of a deliberate, systematic program, not the action of a few “bad apples” run amok.
R. Maheras
March 13, 2012 - 2:06 pm
Despite the fact that he is a Pulitzer Prize recipient, Hersh has a history on anti-military investigative journalism that includes many anonymous sources and unsubstantiated accusations.
In short, he has an agenda.
I was in the military for 20 years. I worked with every service branch at nearly 50 locations all over the world. I know what training I received, what expectations were for being a good Airman and leader, and what rules of engagement I was given to follow during contingencies. I observed those around me (from raw recruits to leadership at the highest levels) in a variety of low stress, high stress and life-and-death situations. I KNOW how the military is supposed to function and what my responsibilities are as an NCO, which is why, when the Abu Ghraib story broke, as soon as the shock wore off I immediately suspected there was a leadership breakdown at the local level. The Army report confirmed my suspicions.
You, however, choose to ignore everything except what Hersh wrote — like he’s some god-like seer for all things military. But the truth of the matter is, Hersh probably has never written one positive story about the military in his entire life — or even a balanced one. He focuses entirely on the salacious, the sensational, and the despicable, and the “New Yorker,” to its discredit, gives him carte blanche and laps up the results like a supermarket tabloid on steroids.
I’m not saying the U.S. military is perfect. It isn’t, and can never be, because people are not perfect, and the military is made up of people. But Hersh’s obsession with the military’s dark side is not just unfair, it’s almost a psychosis.
Rick Oliver
March 13, 2012 - 2:37 pm
The most charitable spin I can put on Abu Ghraib based on your perspective is that there was “leadership breakdown at the local level”…which led soldiers to take orders from military intelligence officers and C.I.A operatives instead of from their own chain of command. The MI officers and spooks were trained in these techniques and encouraged the grunts to carry on the good work. How is this in any way comparable to a lone gunman going on a rampage? Oh, and although two enlisted personnel were convicted, the White House legal counsel concluded there was no real problem because the prisoners weren’t entitled to any rights under the Geneva Conventions anyway. The same opinion he had previously delivered regarding Gitmo. So, yeah, I going to go with the Bush administration bearing some responsibility here.
R. Maheras
March 14, 2012 - 10:13 am
Rick — As with anyone holding down a position of responsibility, people in the military are responsible for their own actions. Our training is apolitical and we are expected to do our mission by the book, to the best of our ability, in any situation.
As someone who spent more than a dozen years working daily with classified information — eight of those years in Strategic Air Command working on three special access required (SAR) programs — I, and the people I worked with, had the rules drilled into our heads. No one, regardless of their rank or position, was allowed access to to clasified equipment or information unless they had a specific SAR clearance for that program.
Let me give you an example of how that worked in practice (and this is only one example of many): In the late 1980s, while stationed at an SR-71 Blackbird detachment at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, I received a phone call from the entry control point security forces guard that there was someone at the gate requesting entry to visit the avionics shop I supervised. I walked down to the gate, and there was a young man in civilian clothes sitting in a car. He said he was an OSI agent (think NCIS agent, but for the Air Force), flashed a badge and ID, and said he needed to come in and talk to me regarding a background check for one of my civilian contractors. Now anyone who’s been in the Air Force any length of time knows that all OSI agents wear civilian clothes, they could be either enlisted member or an officer, and they are normally given unfettered access on an installation. But the alleged badge and position did not matter to me because he was requesting to enter a controlled area with Secret-SAR equipment and documents present. My response to him went something like this: “How do I know that badge and ID is real? It could be a Junior G-Man badge.” I told him to he had to wait while I called the OSI office on base and gave them his name and description so they could verify he was who he said he was. When his supervisor vouched for him, I let him enter — but he was under my escort the entire time, and when discussing the contractor’s background check information, the OSI agent did not get one word of classified information.
At Abu Ghraib, a good officer or NCO would have challenged anyone entering their area of responsibility, and if any activities were requested by outside agencies that seemed inappropriate or outright unlawful, the request should have immediately been run up the chain of command IN WRITING (especially considering the obvious gravity and unusual nature of the requests). That such was apparently not done by anyone is, to me, simply mind-boggling — especially the statement from the general in charge who said she was “not allowed” in the interrogation rooms. That statement is so incongruous with the normal authority and responsibility of a senior officer it sounds absolutely unreal — which is why, I suspect, she was charged with dereliction of duty. Hell, I’d have had a paper trail a mile long in a situation like Abu Ghraib.
Rick Oliver
March 14, 2012 - 11:11 am
Russ: I will certainly defer to you regarding proper procedure, but…
The Bush administration established and promoted a policy that stated that suspected insurgents in custody were not prisoners of war but were instead “enemy combatants” and as such were not entitled to any rights under the Geneva Conventions. In fact, according to the Bush administration there was no document that defined any rights for “enemy combatants” and so they effectively had no rights.
Given that policy, a tragedy like Abu Ghraib wasn’t just likely; it was practically inevitable.
R. Maheras
March 14, 2012 - 4:18 pm
But Rick, I’m telling you the Geneva convention issue and finger-pointing at Bush, Rumsfeld, et al, is a red herring. There is no training military people get that encourages them to abuse prisoners who do not fall under the umbrella of the Geneva Convention.
The lieutenant colonel who commanded the battalion that was guilty of the abuses wrote this to the Washington Post: “I have been made the scapegoat in this event. Frederick was the NCO (noncommissioned officer) in charge of that wing of the prison. No one higher in his chain of command, starting with his platoon sergeant, knew what was occurring. If he thought that his actions were condoned, then why were they only conducted between 0200-0400 hours for a few days in late October and early November?”
And the NCO the colonel refers to was a reservist whose normal civilian job back in the U.S. was a corrections officer — and I know of no prisons in this country where the Abu Ghraib abuses are taught and condoned.
Abu Ghraib was an example of a breakdown in unit discipline at multiple levels and startlingly bad decisions by relatively few soldiers. Similarly, that’s exactly what happened at My Lai.
Rick Oliver
March 14, 2012 - 4:50 pm
Russ: How many prisons in this country employ contract interrogators who were trained in Gitmo and Afghanistan?
The Bush policy was common knowledge. How could it NOT affect soldiers’ attitudes? You could argue that it SHOULD not have done so, but we’ve already established that no one is perfect.
As for My Lai, only one person was ever prosecuted and only for 22 murders — and he only served three years house arrest, because the president of the United States had him moved from federal prison to house arrest and then pardoned him (after the military had reduced his sentence from life to 20 years to 10 years). The message their was pretty clear.
After almost 50 years of experience, it’s pretty clear that we don’t know how to wage conventional warfare against an enemy that stubbornly refuses to wear uniforms, and maybe it’s impossible to wage conventional warfare in those circumstances. But one thing seems fairly clear to me: When the rules you were taught don’t apply and you no longer know what the rules are, bad shit can happen.
R. Maheras
March 14, 2012 - 11:50 pm
Rick wrote: “When the rules you were taught don’t apply and you no longer know what the rules are, bad shit can happen.”
Again you show a fundamental misunderstanding of the realities of military life and responsibilities of leadership. During the course of my career, There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of instances where there were no specific rules for a particular situation, or the rules were gray. There were even instances where, because an area was new, or had changed and needed updating, that it was ME who actually wrote official guidance for those in my career field to use in the future.
It is situations where the unknown looms large where good leaders earn their pay, using their experience and training to come up with solutions that not only solve the problem or rectify the situation, they do so in a way that does not violate the spirit of their training and basic integrity.
Because you have a political axe to grind with the previous administration and want Bush and his cronies to shoulder the blame for Abu Ghraib, you are attempting to rationalize the behavior of a small cadre of unit-level troops that, from my vantage point, is indefesnsible. But even more ironic, you appear to have the opposite view for My Lai, where you appear to chide the Nixon administraton for not going after all of the unit-level culprits involved with that case.
That’s politically-motivated pile-on, not an objective look at the real cause-effect of both situations: Leadership failure at the unit level.