I read today in the papers that what happened in Af-stan was our My Lai for that war. That’s like calling the current recession akin to the Great Depression. I’m sorry. There’s absolutely no comparison.  Comparing what one soldier did (16 deaths) to what a company of soldiers did (400-500) forty four years ago is an apples and oranges proposition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

Let’s weigh the two. Firstly, one soldier did this. The poor man was on his fourth combat deployment in his eleven years of service. He had documented TBI from a non-combat vehicle rollover accident within the last several years and an excellent military record. No one could foresee this. Well, let’s backtrack. The brain inspectors at JBLM are paid to figure this kind of thing out.

Contrast that to what I believe Lt. William Calley and Charlie company did. Nobody, especially a green slats, would ever engage in a snuff party on civilians unless he had authorization to do so or was somehow encouraged to by his superiors (Capt. Medina).    If he did it without any goading, it would have been done on the sly and way off the beaten track-not in a hamlet like  Song Mÿ. This soldier got up in the night and wandered off base to do this. He had no encouragement and no co-conspirators. It was the act of one very mind-altered soldier. He turned himself in shortly after returning. He lawyered up instantly. In a word, he had a valid excuse by my standards of logic.

Monday morning quarterbacks from all the triple letter news agencies will beat this to death like a horse but there’s simply nothing remarkable about it. Take a family man of 38 years with two young children and deploy him numerous times into a combat setting. Wouldn’t you be more surprised if he came back whole with no defects?

My brains got somewhat acrambled after two tours back to back and I wasn’t in a combat setting the whole time(or even half of it). Now I read that the death sentence is on the table as a suitable punishment. Are ya kidding me? We don’t put idiots like Charles Manson to death for his horrific crimes and we’re prepared to crucify this fellow? Considering that the newsies abhor the whole idea of capital punishment, they’re all over this like white on rice and  licking their chops. Scapegoats are hard to come by in war. It seems the media love to expose them as the underbelly of the beast in all of us.

While I certainly don’t consider what the man did permissible, I also try to understand the circumstances that led up to it. I know the frustration first hand of having 200 zipperheads running around under our O-1  and having to wait for a) permission to “terminate them with prejudice” , b) a Frag order  and c) the aircraft with which to do it. Our Rules Of Engagement were enough to foment PTSD in their own right.  When someone (the Taliban or Al Quaeda) are actively engaged in trying to kill you and your buds, you might understand. When you are told to sit tight and be patient with them, you might be excused if you take matters into your own hands. When you are forbidden to thump a few 40mms into their mosque while they’re pounding you, you’ve already lost the war. Again, I don’t condone the man’s behaviour, but I sure do identify with it. War is messy and it has consequences both immediate and long term.

In 1970, our casualty rate up country was 30+%. It was a definite “us against them”  proposition because they didn’t take prisoners-period. Our ROEs forbid the use of napalm unless we had Ambassador William Sullivan’s personal okay. Compare that to what’s happening today. When the balloon goes up, I’m sure there are a few who become more aggressive than necessary. Few go off the reservation though. That is the hallmark of the American soldier. We don’t behave like barbarians for the most part. I wish someone would look at the antics of our enemy before condemning our brave troops and comparing them to Lt. Calley or Ted Bundy. Everyone has his breaking point. If anyone is to blame, perhaps we should motor on over to the Madigan PTSD clinic  at JBLM and see what the good shrinks there have to say about the the mental health of our Sargent and the suitability of  deploying him for a fourth tour. My guess is they diagnosed him with some “minor personality disorders” but none that disqualified him from another remote/isolated tour. At the end of the day my question is who rates the raters? How do we know they aren’t completely and utterly daft?

That’s all I have to say about that.