Editor’s note: This op-ed is by award-winning journalist Telly Halkias. It first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
The recent killings in Panjwai of 16 Afghan civilians, as a result of a shooting spree by a U.S. Army sergeant, punctuate several things about war no one wants to say out loud.
While government authorities investigate and the Obama administration continues its damage control, we’re left to ponder an uncomfortable notion: It could have been any of us pulling the trigger.
I don’t say that lightly. Rather, as a veteran with a modicum of appreciation for the chaos in which we’ve placed our troops the last 11 years, I can only consider this tragedy with a heavy heart.
Not that the act itself is foreign to war, or any human conflict involving the imposition of power and authority. We don’t need to look as far back as the Holocaust, or the Ottomans eliminating Kurds. Today, the genocide in African tribal rivalries remains a humanitarian embarrassment for both East and West.
Apparently, the only difference between killing now as opposed to biblical times is the ubiquitous and instantaneous broadcast of graphic images and real-time streaming video to the public, courtesy of media’s great equalizer, the Internet.
This alone can exacerbate or mitigate our view of war, because what we see are only selections of the grind a combatant experiences. So these days, thinking we know more than we do is commonplace. However, here’s the truth: Such knowledge is a fraction of reality, a slice of genetic material endemic to second guessing.
That makes it easy for armchair warriors — present administration included — to rattle off diplomatic platitudes of apology, and float politically correct notions such as the possibility of this shooter facing the death penalty — a punishment still in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but which the Pentagon last used on April 13, 1961.
In that same vein, those of us who abhor violence can always stand on moral high ground in resistance to war, our hands clean from any stain of responsibility.
Aren’t we the lucky ones?
What’s much more difficult is to take the questions emerging from this maelstrom and consider how circumstances and environment might have affected us.
A sampling: Why is a soldier who had once suffered a traumatic brain injury in a Humvee rollover back serving his fourth combat tour, and in an area that sees intense action to boot? Or: How can someone who allegedly suffered a mental breakdown, possibly from combat fatigue, not immediately be removed from the killing fields?
Put it like this: The sergeant in question — a husband and father of two children — didn’t raise his right hand 11 years ago, and swear to defend the Constitution, all so he could butcher sleeping civilians. That wasn’t on his, or any American soldier’s, “to do” list.
We’ve known and dissected these answers for centuries: The unit takes precedence over the individual. And combat culture breeds a loyalty among comrades which pushes even tortured souls back into the cauldron for fear of weakness, dishonor and letting their buddies down.
So when does the reverse occur? When does the collective finally look at someone whose nerves are frayed to the point of snapping and say: Stay home this time; you’ve done enough. Someone in the chain of command, from that sergeant’s bunkmate to the president, should have.
Undoubtedly, there are times when a soldier breaks down and no one sees it coming. For perspective, consider random shootings we’ve experienced in civilian life. Given the little revealed of this disaster so far, someone knew something.
And sadly, no political equivocation can ever wipe clean the blood of those sleeping villagers. That burden belongs to us all, even the moralists with clean hands. It’s a messy thing to look in the mirror and realize that under the repeated conditions of this man’s combat nightmare, one of us could have imploded the same way.
So we shouldn’t be too quick to anoint ourselves apologist or hangman. But as if we needed reminding, the incident demonstrated not much has changed in 2,500 years. At least not since Plato warned us that only the dead have seen the end of war.
