Robert Bales: War is evil
The Washington Post reports on a letter written by Robert Bales, that former staff sergeant now serving a life sentence for murdering in cold blood 16 Afghans in the dark of night, then setting his victims on fire. Of course, Bales blames the war for his unconscionable act;
“My mind was consumed by war,” Bales wrote to a senior Army officer late last year as he made a plea for clemency. “I planted war and hate for the better part of 10 years and harvested violence.”
[…]
“I still don’t believe the PTSD, [traumatic brain injury], alcohol, steroids, and sleeping pills were the only factors in my actions on 11 March 2012,” he wrote to Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza. “I believe there is much more. I worked hard wanting to be the best combat Soldier in the Army. I was obsessed with studying manuals, watching war documentaries and reading about insurgencies. Later in my Army career, I began to change. I didn’t want to make a bad decision on the ground and [lose] one of my guys. We trained hard and most of the guys understood why we trained hard. … I had been through fire fights, IEDs … mass casualty situations, and many other combat situations. So, going into my fourth deployment, I was experienced.
“Normally that would be a good thing, but now I know it made me paranoid and ineffective.”
You know, hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers and leaders went through much more than Bales and they haven’t murdered civilians while those civilians slept. Millions of veterans who have experienced war on varying levels go to work every day and do their jobs and come home at night without starting an incident with police, without going on a shooting rampage in their workplace. Thousands of soldiers are currently deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, many have already experienced multiple deployments, and they’re not murdering children in their beds.
No, it wasn’t PTSD, but Bales, in contravention of command directives consumed drugs and alcohol while deployed. That, to me, indicates that he wasn’t as good a soldier as everyone wants me to believe. The “experts” blame the drugs, the alcohol, and anti-malarial drugs, but, you know what? A good leader doesn’t take drugs and alcohol when lives depend on him being 100% all of the time.
Yes, war is evil, but millions of Americans who went to war didn’t let the war make them evil like Bales.
Category: Shitbags
“I still don’t believe the PTSD, [traumatic brain injury], alcohol, steroids, and sleeping pills were the only factors in my actions on 11 March 2012,” he wrote to Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza.”
Wow. Just wow.
“Other than that; how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
Yeah, cause we all know that booze, drugs and ‘roids won’t mind fuck you at all.
Must have been that damn imperial military construct that did it.
Explain to me again why they didn’t just put his ass down?
Did anyone ever figure out what was going on at that FOB where a Soldier could just stroll in and out of it in the small hours of the night?
Kaf,
My FOB in the ‘stan, I knew ways in and out without anyone seeing. I knew what the patrols were, when the blimp was up and down, etc. I was a Senior NCO and could go anywhere and look at anything, including into the TOC. As an E-6, he could do the same thing and knew what he needed to.
Difference is, I didn’t leave the FOB secretly. I didn’t go kill civilians in their sleep, light them on fire, etc. I didn’t use alcohol or drugs (Motrin doesn’t count, its a staple). There are thousands of troops who were in the same situation and didn’t do what he did.
Having said all that, this took planning, rehearsing, researching, etc., on his part. He didn’t just wake up and walk off in a stumble. So, he can blame drugs, alcohol, the mormon tabernacle choir, a butterfly flapping it’s wings in the Amazon, blah blah blah blah.
At the end of the day, he knew what he was doing and should be hanged for it.
Amen brother, post of the year so far.
Many have served honorably without killing innocent civilians, this bales guy is no better than those who use excuses to commit atrocities.
Criminals always find someone else to blame. If it’s not the victim, it’s their family, or their employer. THEY refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. It’s what makes them criminals in the first place.
Because he pleaded guilty in order to avoid the death penalty.
The guy was a mess, according to accounts given by his subordinates. It must really suck to be drug and alcohol free, as he presumably is now, and realize that you murdered 16 people (mostly children, at least one age 2) in some hazy rage.
No moral compass + violating rules of war + drugs + alcohol = Murderous Criminal Sociopath
Nothing further!
So, now that Bales has sobered up and has to face reality, he’s making excuses for being a murdering thug.
Why is this not a surprise?
An important part of warfighting – even if you’re “consumed” by it – is distinguishing between the people you’re supposed to kill and the people you’re not supposed to kill. Sorry, Bales, I’m not buying it. You knew better.
Well he’s right about one thing, war is evil. it’s often an unfortunate necessity in response to violence, but it’s never good. Sometimes it’s just a necessity to prevent violence against your nation by taking a pre-emptive approach and using violence before the other side does to minimize the risk to your own nation. We know that every war kills people who have nothing to do with the conflict except they are unfortunate enough to live in a land where the interests of the US involve the use of violent attack to advance the national interests of the US. Whether those people are truly innocent or not is open to debate by those with more esoteric philosophical interests than I possess. It’s always interesting to me that the deliberate killing of a houseful of so called “innocents” by a JDAM targeting a single other individual in the house is an acceptable form of killing those innocents, but shooting them in the face and burning their bodies is not. The attempts to justify why we kill innocent people as part of collateral damage necessary to the prosecution of the conflict are often interesting to read, one notices we dehumanize those enemies as much as possible to make their deaths seem less horrific…burning them or dropping a building on them is justified when it suits our purpose but not when it doesn’t. Why is that? If their lives are worth nothing when they house someone we want to kill why are their lives worth more when they don’t? It’s all quite arbitrary really. We do ourselves a disservice pretending that it’s all morally justifiable in the one circumstance but not the other. We should cast off the pretense and make it quite clear none of their lives matter to us in any way should it be decided their deaths will advance our cause. That’s the true heart of the decision process. Burning a village to the ground, or bombing a city into ruin as a means to save our own troops or advance our own interests negates the value of those we… Read more »
The dirty little secret every combat veteran of every war has to deal with is that battle is probably the most exciting, exhilarating thing he will ever do in his life. We, as a society, send out our young men and young women, to fight, and then we (as veterans) are expected to come home and go back to being good peaceful citizens. And you know what? Most of us do. But we can’t forget.
Not all scars show.
The lengths people will go to in a feeble attempt to rationalize shitty behavior never ceases to amaze me.
I’ve heard every excuse in the book through the years and still I find myself in disbelief of their actions and their attempts to cover it up.
To quote a great comedian, Flip Wilson, “The Devil made me do it!”
Not giving this guy a pass at all, but if you mix alcohol with something like Ambien, it’s never good.
I worked with a girl who did that, and the EMTs pulled her out of her car after she rammed a telephone pole at 4am. The last thing she remembered was going to bed around 10 – she had no idea she was out of the house, let alone driving somewhere. I’ve talked to other EMTs and ER nurses who say they’ll get 1-2 “Ambien zombies” a month.
I am in no way trying to pass the blame, just saying that if he got wasted and took some Ambien, Bales may very well not remember anything from that night. That doesn’t excuse his actions in the least, though.
There were many times I wanted to just unload on the entire country of iraq. I can understand bales desire to kill those people en mass. I could even stand behind him deserving a lighter sentence and getting to spend his twilight years free, except for the drug and alcohol use. I was a Bales defender for a long time, not justifying his actions but understanding what could push someone to that point. When the drug and alcohol while deployed issue was raised, I was hoping he would be fried. I’m not going to lie, I don’t give 2 shuts about any of those people he killed, or any of the others in that country or any part of the middle east (except kurds, good people), but to be a leader of men in combat and you can not refrain from drinking or useing? That is the unforgivable sin
Nicely put Smitty…I am thinking I am with you regarding the dead…they matter not even a little in the overall discourse.
Actually, they do. Try working with a Kandak or provincial officials after this jackoff pulled his stunt. This ain’t Platoon – your actions affect others in the field. He was a detriment to the entire goddamned mission in country.
Not me. This is no justification for his excuse upon excuse upon more excuses. He’s just another sociopath attempting to find some way to appear normal, at least for the rest of this week when it seems to his advantage to appear normal.
Sure he was consumed with manuals – except that he didn’t read anything there about it being OK to be drugged out, alcohol impaired, sneak off base to commit criminal acts, or blame others for his illegal activities. So, yeah, not buying that he was in the slightest concerned with manuals or how to properly prosecute a war.
I might have had a tiny drop of sympathy for him until I heard about his drug & alcohol use over there, but after that, FUCK HIM, let him rot!
I feel you Smitty war is not fun but it is what it is.
STFU Dalton Coldiron the BCT washout/bunny-kissing, unicorn-lusting, Care-Bear-hugging glittery gargoyle gonad sniffing creampuff of a candyassed booger-eating thumbsucking bedwetting bucket of fresh toad and slug snot! OOOHH yeah, you say you made it back in and made it through this time, but guess what? I CALL BULLSHIT ON THAT, others here on TAH have the resources to verify your claims, but we TAH regulars know that it’s a waste of time because you’re a confirmed lying POS, thus your word means nothing here. My real name? I AM JACK SHIT, and you don’t know me at all!! UP YOURS sideways with ten tons of broken glass and a thousand dead porcupines rolled in asbestos!
The problem I really had/have with Bales after the fact that he was a murderer is that while he was locked up nice and safe in the US we had to wander out and deal with the fallout from his actions. Ultimate Blue Falcon.
I was there for that, just a little further East. It caused shitstorms all over.
The “experts” posted in the beginning of this story are the same silver tongued devils born to be defense attorneys. Manipulation is the name of their game. The story does not identify Ambien as his sleeping pill of choice; others posters do. From my personal experience with Ambien, I can promise you I did a shitload of crazy things, many of which I had no idea until being reminded by my wife. That would include waking up in the middle of the night, standing on my tip toes urinating in the kitchen sink. O. K., I’m not in the NBA, but our sink is low and my toes reach tall. Add to this a few bouts of falling out of bed and some stories of others and their behavior while on Ambien. That would include one high level exec. lady who woke up in jail one morning, not a clue that she had consumed one drink the previous night along with her Ambien, and totaled her new Cadillac. Another called her daughter at work (hospital), begged her to come to her mother’s home ASAP because, “Someone has broken into my home and left a bunch of food.” Daughter arrived, asked the right questions and realized her mother had been to Winn Dixie the night before, bought groceries, paid with a check, brought them home and had no recollection. My point here is that as a former Ambien consumer, I NEVER had any thoughts about hurting anyone. EVER! Yep, some people have different reactions, especially when mixing alcohol and certain prescription drugs. My wife advises me when I was on the big “A”, I never ever gave her reason to suspect that she was in danger. Maybe the professional manipulators need concentrate on alcohol and possibly other drugs.
If you have ANY real morals, if you have reached your breaking point, you go and quit. PERIOD. You get to a safe location, tell your command you can’t take anymore and deal with it then.
You don’t kill sleeping innocents. Period.
Headline should read-
Evil convicted murder of innocent women and children states: “War is evil.”