The Afghan massacre: Well, what did you expect?

The story of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the solder from Joint Base Lewis-McChord who went on a killing spree in an Afghan village that left 16 people dead including 9 children, has been on my mind lately. He should and will be held responsible for his actions, but there's enough blame to go around. A Canadian blogger who goes by the nom de clavier "The Mound of Sound,"  published an article on Sunday, entitled "Afghan Murder Spree Blame Lies on Capitol Hill." Mr. Sound put into words a lot of what I was thinking. So, unless he objects and asks me to delete it, here is his article in full.

Following the recent killings of 16-Afghan civilians by a US Army sergeant, the critical details began rolling in.  Married man, father of two.  Ten year veteran.  Three tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan.   Two previous head injuries sustained in combat.   Sent to Afghanistan against his will.   Tick, tick, tick.  

The soldier's name isn't important.   What matters is his profile.  He enlisted in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  He wanted to defend his country.  He thought he'd do his bit.   What he didn't understand, what no one told him before he signed on, is that he'd be sent to war for a country that wouldn't stand behind him.

The U.S. government has shamelessly exploited those volunteers.   They were never enough for the job handed to them, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  More were needed but the supply of volunteers dried up.  So they had two choices.  Reinstate the draft or take the politically cowardly way out and simply keep recycling the existing volunteers, sending them back into war again and again and again.

Head injuries are a signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.   The concussive blast of an improvised explosive device can be more injurious and longer lasting than the shrapnel.  We're a lot better at patching up torn bodies than we are fixing pulped brains.   This sergeant in Afghanistan had been pulped, twice.   He thought his combat days were safely behind him.  He was promised as much.   And then he got his orders to Afghanistan.

Does this mean he's not responsible for killing those Afghan civilians?   No, a court will have to decide that on the medical evidence.   What it means is that there are others who are probably just as responsible, perhaps even more so.   This guy shouldn't have been sent back into combat.  His commanders shouldn't have been left so short-handed that they had to send him back.   Someone, at the very top, should have stood up for this guy and all the other walking wounded like him and at the very least resigned in protest.   And, above them, the political leadership is morally if not criminally liable for dodging the draft that, of itself, ensured this man was sent to Afghanistan.   And that indictment includes Congress and the White House.

You can read the original article at http://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.com/2012/03/afghan-murder-spree-blame-lies-on.html .

In case you don't think a Canadian has any business commenting on this topic, consider these facts: (a) Canadians are part of the coalition that's over there (or they were - 950 are still there); (b) I'm Canadian; and (c) I have a dog  two dogs three American dogs in this fight.

And (d) Mr. Sound isn't the first person, American or Canadian, to think these thoughts, or write them down.

And (e) while you may not agree with everything he says, you have to admit that he makes a lot of really good points.

UPDATE: You can read a follow-up news story, one that clearly aims to be sympathetic but ends up being very fair and even-handed, on Yahoo! News. I don't know how long that link will remain valid.

Bin Laden is Dead: Some Thoughts and Some Praise

The thoughts first:

Osama bin Laden is dead. He was killed by a bullet through the left eye, a bullet fired by an American warrior. The deed was done in the middle of a moonless night, on the top floor of his impregnable fortress, by American warriors who dared to violate the airspace of a sovereign nation, at tremendous personal risk, to hunt down and eliminate the enemy of the United States and of the entire free world.

It was a simple and swift end to the life of the first monster of the twenty-first century. It is altogether fitting to compare bin Laden to Adolf Hitler, the worst monster of the twentieth century. Because of his monstrous deeds, Hitler is famous, but not revered or glorified (except by kooks and hatemongers). The civilized world has put safeguards in place to ensure that nobody like Hitler will ever rise again. Likewise, not too many years from now, the civilized world will adopt measures to protect itself from any future Osama bin Ladens.

The official word is that bin Laden's body was buried at sea, partly because no country would accept it for burial within the prescribed 24 hours, and partly to keep anybody from turning his burial place into a shrine. We have no reason to doubt this story. Personally, I was hoping that they would capture him alive, and that he would accidentally fall out of the back of a C-130 flying a few thousand feet over the Indian Ocean, halfway to Diego Garcia. However it happened, normally a burial at sea is accompanied by a bugle tattoo or a ship's whistle, and salutes from the assembled crew, the last honors to a fallen warrior. Let us hope that the last command given, as the board tilted and the body slid down, was not "Present arms" but "About face".

Now, for the praise:

First, to President Obama, for managing and executing this operation in the right way. One MSNBC article outlined Obama's agendas on the five days he met secretly with the NSC to discuss the operation. You gotta give the guy credit for playing a fantastic game of poker. Even going golfing on Sunday, the day the operation was carried out, was a great ruse -- other presidents would have spent the day holed up in the Situation Room. You also have to give him credit for knowing enough not to meddle in the details. He let the warriors run the war.

Obama did not wring his hands or agonize over the moral or political implications of what he was doing. His objective was clear: to kill bin Laden, not to capture him. His tactics were clear: don't tell anybody about it until it's done. We do this on our own. Get in, do it, and get out, and woe to anybody who gets in the way.

Second, to Leon Panetta, director of the CIA. I blasted Panetta's nomination in an earlier blog entry, lamenting the fact that he had no experience that qualified him to run the CIA. Panetta had oversight over the whole operation, from the day in August 2010 when they got a lead on bin Laden's confidential courier, to the final wrap-up of the operation on Sunday night. This included daily meetings on it for a couple of months, weighing all the options and guiding a herd of analysts, agents, experts, politicians, and military assets -- and talking Congress into giving him the money needed to make it all happen, without letting the secret out. Panetta did all right.

This was also Panetta's final act as DCI. He's now slated to replace Robert M. Gates, who is retiring as Secretary of Defense, while General David Petraeus has been nominated to take Panetta's CIA seat. I look forward to be proven wrong about Panetta a second time.

Third, to President George W. Bush. Let's give credit where it's due. Bush guided the nation through a difficult time, a crisis which may well define the entire century, and laid down the challenge to the world which culminated in bin Laden's demise. He said: "We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail." Obama was successful because of the foundation Bush built.

I commented in an earlier blog about President-elect Obama's graciousness extended to Bush. In a twist on protocol, the newly inaugurated President (and Mrs.) Obama had escorted the outgoing President (and Mrs.) Bush from the dais where the inauguration had taken place, through the Capitol Building and down the front steps, where a Marine helicopter, one of the presidential fleet, was waiting to take the Bushes on one last trip to Andrews AFB, thence to take one last flight home on Air Force One. I think that was a presidential first.

Obama showed that same gracious character this time. After the operation wrapped up but before he told anyone else about it, including the nation, the president phoned Mr. Bush and told him about the operation in great detail. They had a deep and substantial conversation. After Obama's press conference, Bush issued his own congratulatory statement to the press.

Fourth, to the small group who planned the whole thing, headed (or at least organized) by Vice Admiral William McRaven. Once again, he kept the whole thing secret but, like Panetta and Obama, made it his top priority for months. He chose a good team and gave them everything they needed to be successful.

Fifth, the brave warriors that comprised the assault force. Most of this is Navy SEAL Team Six, also known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or "DEVGRU". They didn't do it for praise or glory. They are motivated by, um, shall we say, nobler ambitions. Only a true warrior can understand that. Even I don't, although I've been honored to get glimpses into it.

These warriors put their lives on the line in a big way to make this happen. They didn't hide behind women, using them as shields, as bin Laden and his cohorts did.

SEALs aren't brainless, testosterone-fueled, killing machines. They are highly intelligent, educated, trained, motivated, moral, passionate, humble, confident, and a bunch of other adjectives that never made it into the Boy Scout Law. If all men had the heart of a Navy SEAL, ... well, the world would be a much better place.

And finally, there's everybody behind the scenes:
The analysts who sifted through mountains of data, put it all together into a coherent story, and kept everybody informed and updated.
The field agents and other covert personnel, on the ground in Pakistan.
The elected members of Congress, who supported the operation and kept the secret.
The staffers and bureaucrats in the White House and in the military, who did all the grunt work or enabled others to do the grunt work, and kept the secret.
The military and CIA personnel who stood in support teams in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Indian Ocean, Germany and all the other critical locations, whose quiet contributions enabled the SEALs to get from Point A to Point B and back again.

That Didn't Take Long: McChrystal is Out, Petraeus is In

This morning, President Obama announced that General David Petraeus would be taking General McChrystal's place as the head military guy in Afghanistan by General David Petraeus. General Petraeus did a great job turning the Iraq war around, and had been serving as the head of the U.S. Central Command, which includes Asia and the Middle East. Petraeus will actually be stepping down one level to fill the Afghanistan slot.

David Petraeus is a highly regarded officer and an extremely intelligent person. He has figured out how to work with, or maybe around, all the civilian meddlers and egomaniacs in Washington. This may work out satisfactorily after all.

But I'll bet you good money that no reporter from Rolling Stone will be invited to accompany Petraeus anywhere -- or any other military leader -- ever again.

Keep General McChrystal; fire some of the civilians instead

A Rolling Stone reporter got a chance to interview General Stanley McChrystal, currently (but maybe not for much longer) head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The reporter, Michael Hastings, was supposed to fly home after two days, but then the volcano in Iceland blew its top, and the reporter ended up following McChrystal and his staff across Europe and all the way to Kandahar and back to Washington. The two-day trip turned into, what was it, 28 days? Longer?

(NPR aired a telephone interview with Hastings today. That's where I got those facts from. Hastings sounded a little stressed out -- he lashed out unnecessarily at Michelle Norris, the NPR interviewer. He's back in Kandahar, and I think that maybe he needs to come home.)

The result of spending 28 days with the general and his staff, with his "notebook in one hand and tape recorder in the other," as he said it, was that he saw the general and his staff let their hair down a few times, and it became clear in those unguarded moments that the military leaders in Afghanistan do not have a lot of respect for the civilian leaders in Washington.

Now, we could debate whether that's right or wrong, and whether the military leaders are supposed to, as Oliver North said, "salute smartly and charge up the hill" or whether they're allowed to have (and voice) their own opinions. I don't want to debate the rightness or wrongness of the general's behavior.

Political reality being what it is, he's toast. But firing him would be the stupidest thing those civilians in Washington could do right now. McChrystal has pointed out, without actually saying it, that Afghanistan has out-Vietnamed Vietnam. It's a war run by the civilians in Washington, an appalling number of whom have never held a gun or stood in a uniform. That was one of the big mistakes of Vietnam.

Let the warriors run the war, for Pete's sake. Nobody in the White House right now knows how to fight a war. The president surrounds himself with experts, he says, but they're the wrong kind of experts. There is no Colin Powell, no Norman Schwartzkopf, to provide the perspective of Someone Who's Been There.

McChrystal was absolutely right when, in January, he stood up to Vice President Joseph Biden when Biden wanted to put more UAVs and fewer troops into Afghanistan. And the contempt for the civilian leadership, which unfortunately leaked out during the reporter's stay, and which was also unfortunately published for all the world to see, is a contempt that those civilian leaders have earned.

Would it have been better if McChrystal had enforced the discipline among his staff so that they kept all of that contempt bottled up while the reporter was around? The contempt was real, and to hide it for 28 days would have been dishonest.

If McChrystal is fired for this episode, it will be because he was honest. And once the political leadership of this country starts firing people because of their honesty, we're in trouble.

You may not believe me. You don't have to. But I was right about the banks, I was right about the car companies, and I was right about the post-Nov-2008 Democrats. I'm right about this, too. You'll see.

Postscript: Hastings said (to quote NPR) that he "remembered being shocked by the general's candor and outspokenness during interviews, but he did not anticipate his article would cause the hullabaloo it has." That's baloney. He entitled his article "The Runaway General," indicating that he knew exactly what kind of reaction the article would get. After spending weeks witnessing the honesty of a great man, Hastings resorted to a lie to try and weasel out of taking responsibility for his own words.

Save us from inept politicians and spineless reporters.