Kandahar

View 717 Monday, March 12, 2012

I have to go bleed at the lab in a few minutes.

The story unfolds, but still isn’t complete. A Staff Sergeant from Washington State has apparently – there seems to be little doubt of it – left his base in Kandahar in the middle of the night carrying weapons. He walked a mile or so from the base and began systematic execution of Afghan civilians, mostly women and children. There is also a report of “burning the bodies” which may or may not mean he set their residences on fire. He then returned to base and surrendered.

The sergeant has not been identified, but it is reported that this was his third (one report says fourth) deployment, first in Afghanistan, the previous deployments being in Iraq. The average Army deployment is supposed to be one year, but the effective deployment period has been 15 months since 2007. That is a long time to be in a combat zone. In World War II once one was sent overseas it was generally for the duration, but there were some periods of relief from combat: not just R&R away from the front – there was, after all, a front – but in transport between operations. There were some secure zones in Italy and later in France, because by that time USAAF had established effective air superiority, and the civilian population wasn’t hostile. In Iraq and Afghanistan even our fortresses and enclaves are not really safe. Being in one of our enclaves is not quite the same as being in a trench in the Battle of the Sarne, but it is certainly more stressful than being in operations out on some lonely atoll during our Pacific war in 1943.

Stress and its results are among the costs of long wars fought with professional soldiers. Conscripts in a democracy generally can’t be kept deployed that long. Volunteer troops can be and are. Long term deployments in danger zones are stressful.

In World War I the “shell shock” rate among troops in the trenches was about 10% although after some of the more intensive battles the rate could be as high as 50%. “Battle fatigue”, the term used in World War II for what was called shell shock in WW I, had lower but not drastically lower rates. We don’t have much data about stress disorders among the long term professionals of the Roman Army or the Thirty Years war. There is some literature about the problems of veterans of the English Civil War as well as of our own, but the records are not all that good. We do know that the long term effects of deployment out on the western frontier during the Indian Wars resulted in a generally unfavorable view of returning veterans among the civil population and opinion makers; and we know what Kipling had to say about Tommy Atkins.

Shell shocked veterans are a major cost of long wars without clear objectives. They always have been and they always will be.

I note that one of the answers given to Congressional inquiry on justifications for deployment of US troops without a formal declaration of war is international authorizations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5zNwOeyuG84 Of course this has been true since the Korean War.

The American way of war has been all-out effort after a war is declared. That view was reinforced after our experiments in the Philippines – a nation building effort that was partially successful, but at a very high cost. “Let him never dream that his bullet’s scream went wide of its island mark, Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.” We returned to the American War of War after that, but the return was eroded after Korea under what was perceived as the new international condition. The Cold War continued, but when it ended we found ourselves in the Balkans, with the troops unable to know who were the good guys, who the bad, or what the devil we were doing over there, and why the United States. We widened the gap with Russia, but for what object we never knew.

President George H W Bush rightly understood the costs of a long term involvement on the ground in the Middle East. I thought the first Gulf War a mistake – better we should spend the money developing our resources and winning independence from the Middle East – but at least we got in and got out again.

Then came the second Gulf War and the occupation of Iraq, followed by victory in Afghanistan and following that quick victory a long expedition without clear objectives. Yesterday’s massacre was almost predictable, but we do not seem to have a policy of how to deal with this tragedy; and tragedy it is. The Afghans have lost men, women, and children. The United States has lost a citizen soldier. Who has won?

More another time. I have to go.