systemic ills and Afghani innocents
Music: Shearwater: Animal Joy (2012)
Friday the federal government revealed the identity of the American soldier who killed 16 Afghani civilians in a murderous rampage. The government has alleged the 38-year-old Robert Bales, devoted father of two and husband to an apparently loving wife, went on the killing spree after drinking with other soldiers.
What I find interesting---well, what I always find interesting---are the printed speculations about the motives and reasons behind the incident before official details are formally released. Initially, reports circulated that Bales' family life was strained and he was disgruntled that he was on a third tour. Other reports suggested a "brain injury" sustained in a previous attack may be to blame. Others speculated about possible psychosis, reaching for rationales that would reduce the cause of the violence to a tragic flaw or shortcoming of Bales person.
These speculations have now receded as reports of Bales personal and professional life have been released. His lawyer has actively denied the suggestion of an unstable marriage or that Bales suffered from any kind of mental illness. Reports from Bales' colleagues have been, thus far, universal in their assertions that Bales' behavior was very uncharacteristic of the man. In short, it's coming out that there was nothing really to come out: the man was previously "stable" and of good character. A good soldier. A good father. A good husband.
There are two un-goods that appear to remain: first, Bales was disappointed at having been passed over for a promotion, and second, his lawyer will be pursuing a PTSD defense, which "is common" in cases such as these.
The impulse of the mainstream media reporting machine, and to some extent those of us who read and watch the machine, is to "pin the tail on the donkey"---to find fault with Bales or identify some essential brokenness (or as is often the case, to suggest some harbored evil or racism or hatred). This projective tendency makes it easier to confront our enjoyment of the reportage of such atrocities---"oh, the horror!'---while overlooking, of course, the true locus of horror here: that all of us are capable of unspeakable things and subject to the influence of larger structures and the environment (if two days stranded in a Dulles airport can almost "snap" me, I cannot possibly imagine what a combat zone would do). Of course, the military is suggesting alcohol . . . but why not the conditions of war? From Hollywood to personal life narratives, all of us have been exposed to the message that "war is hell" and that the stresses and pressures of a combat situation are almost incomprehensible (or are, as in the case of PTSD).
A murderous rampage is truly evil and repugnant, but it's also a kind of script---someone plays out the script on autopilot; it's consequence of a flipped switch that turns the Other into a pixilated character in "real life" video game. So what caused the shift to autopilot? What flipped the switch? Alcohol may have been a lubricant, but that's hardly the explanation. I think we have to face up to the fact a Bales is at some remove the inevitable consequence of a well-run death machine. That machine is not new, but has been in operation for almost a century (I date here modern warfare and its technical instrumentality to the first World War). There have been many Bales before. There will be many more.
Hasn't anyone seen Full Metal Jacket? Why is that "fictional" film not a better explanation for Bales' deed than the digging for personal dirt?
What is new is that this kind of information and atrocity gets reported almost instantaneously. What is new is that the secrecy that has been the cloak of the Nation-state dagger is increasingly difficult to wear. What's new, perhaps, is that we have to start thinking about atrocity systemically, not as the product of an individual pathology. PTSD is not an person's flipped switch, but the consequence of "snaps" or "breaks" produced by a Leviathan that, as reports about failures in Afghanistan seem to hit, is in more control of "us" than we are of it.
Again, as Jaggar once sang: "I shouted out, 'who killed the Kennedys'/ when after all, it was you and me."