On March 11 Army Staff Sargent Robert Bales left his military base in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan during the wee hours of the morning. He entered civilian homes in the small Afghan village of Panjwai and murdered 16 people. The bodies were found the next day with bullet holes, stab wounds and severe burns since Robert had apparently attempted to pile up some of the bodies and burn them. Nine of the victims were children; three were womyn.
After a few days of silence on behalf of the military, Robert Bales's identity was released to the public. Immediately detailed reports on Robert filled the US media discussing his distinguished but grueling four tours of service, a head injury in a Humvee rollover, the poor psychological track record of his home base in Washington and even his family's financial and domestic troubles. His picture has appeared in most news papers, and outrage against his actions has been meet with a great deal of concern for his (and other service men and womyn's) mental health.
We can assign blame lots of places. It can rest one Robert personally, on the military machismo tradition that discourages people under combat stress from seeking help, or on any of a thousand factors within the military or government policy. But the fact remains the same: 16 Afghan civilians were murdered without reason by a US soldier. Laura King of the Los Angeles times phrased it best:
"In American minds, the moral distinction between the accidental and the deliberate, between the carefully judged risk and the deranged act, is incalculable. But for Afghans, the result — the shrouded bodies, the wailing relatives, the bite of shovels into dusty ground — speaks to the numbing sameness of unexpected and violent death."
Her article was one of the few in mainstream American to acknowledge a sad truth. No matter how awful this incident seems to us, it's normal for Afghans. Last year an average of 5 civilian non-combatants died each day. Blame the Taliban, blame the drug trade, blame the religions. Five more people died today. Robert Bales, his wife and two children, and me. There's five.
Yet no matter how atrocious the deed, or how horrific the war, condemnation alone is never constructive. Will this lead to better psychological screening and treatment in the US military? To a certain extent, I'm sure it will, but that doesn't address the real issue. The important question is, will this incident lead to a change in the relationship between the US occupying force and the Afghan people? Hopefully. Afghan president Hamid Karzai has demanded immediate and serious changes to what is going on in his country, including the withdrawal of foreign forces form rural areas and the withdrawal of all private security forces from Afghanistan by Wednesday.
As Karzai's cabinet grows increasingly conservative towards foreign military presence and Afghans rally in protest against occupation around flash-points such as the Qu'ran burning last month, the US withdrawal date of 2014 seems to be getting further and further away. But for many Afghans disengagement can't come soon enough and a strong government has trouble growing under complete occupation.
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| A family member weeps, showing the evidence of the massacre to western media sources. With such an act of vulnerability, it seems he must have been hoping something would change. |
We can assign blame lots of places. It can rest one Robert personally, on the military machismo tradition that discourages people under combat stress from seeking help, or on any of a thousand factors within the military or government policy. But the fact remains the same: 16 Afghan civilians were murdered without reason by a US soldier. Laura King of the Los Angeles times phrased it best:
"In American minds, the moral distinction between the accidental and the deliberate, between the carefully judged risk and the deranged act, is incalculable. But for Afghans, the result — the shrouded bodies, the wailing relatives, the bite of shovels into dusty ground — speaks to the numbing sameness of unexpected and violent death."
Her article was one of the few in mainstream American to acknowledge a sad truth. No matter how awful this incident seems to us, it's normal for Afghans. Last year an average of 5 civilian non-combatants died each day. Blame the Taliban, blame the drug trade, blame the religions. Five more people died today. Robert Bales, his wife and two children, and me. There's five.
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| Afghans clean up the sight where Bales piles up the bodies of his victims and burned them. The family of the deceased will live here long after the US military is gone. |
As Karzai's cabinet grows increasingly conservative towards foreign military presence and Afghans rally in protest against occupation around flash-points such as the Qu'ran burning last month, the US withdrawal date of 2014 seems to be getting further and further away. But for many Afghans disengagement can't come soon enough and a strong government has trouble growing under complete occupation.
