Abu Ghraib and the Psychology of Men at War

The military scandal of Abu Ghraib, Iraq in 2004 was a huge disgrace for the United States Military in particular and the United States in general.  What happened here was a complete breakdown of military command.  Many US citizens responded with outrage; rightly so, however, the blame game went crazy and schizophrenic.

To understand what happened you must understand the psychology of what happens to men at war.  These men could be your brother, husband or co-worker who was the nicest guy you ever met.  Let me recount a little of my experience as a Vietnam Army veteran.  I arrived in Vietnam on 6 May 1968, just after the Tet Offensive.   After a week of temporary duty loading ammo at the Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon, I was assigned to the I Field Force headquartered in Nha Trang, on the Central coast of South Vietnam.  I recall that the first thing I saw upon disembarking was a sign that read "Although I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the evilest son of a bitch in the valley."  This was an offensive perversion of Psalm 23 in the Bible.  This saying was later discovered on Zippo cigarette lighters.  Click here for a story in the NY Times.  I looked at that sign and thought that I had just stepped into a very different world than what I had just left in the states.

After a few months in country I could see that some of my fellow soldiers acted like they were a law into themselves.  An example.  One night, after having a few drinks at a military club, a group of us were walking back to our barracks to pack it in for the night.  Along the way one of the guys decided he wanted to grab a person riding along the road in his motorcycle and throw him off the bike.  I challenged him and told him he was doing no such thing.  I could not help but think that this type of mentality was scary.  Who was to say that this person could not turn on anyone, including fellow soldiers?  Many men at war act like the moral compass they grew up with did not apply to them in a war zone.  Indeed, a few months prior to my arrival in Vietnam, the My Lai Massacre had occurred. Again, men at war who had lost their moral compass, and in this case, it included their commander, 2nd. Lt. William Calley.  A second lieutenant is the lowest officer ranking.  This commander, probably, had no, or very little, experience in war, or completely lost it.  It was his responsibility to control his men; he failed.  Understand, that it is difficult to assign blame here.  No one knows what these men were reacting to.  When you see your fellow soldier blown-up in front of you, or your best friend killed, you can snap and take out your rage on anyone.  No one can understand this if they have not experienced it.  War is hell, literally.  Sometimes men snap, and some men snap at smaller things.

To understand what happened in Abu Ghraib, you have to understand that, in my opinion, it was a complete breakdown of military leadership and command.  I'm referring to the commander of the prison.  When you're in the military, your commander is in total charge.  If you mess up, you will pay big, such as military disciple, which can include non-judicial punishment (Article 15) or judicial punishment.  The commander is the king, dictator, overlord and whatever you want to call him.  Military officers must keep a tight rein on everyone because if anyone screws up under their command, they pay the price also.  Whatever happens in a military unit, the commander must answer to it.  In some cases the commander can lose his command and his career is ruined.

What happened in Abu Ghraib was the responsibility of the commander, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski.  The commander either failed to train her troops on what was expected of them or failed to monitor them; simple as that.

Before going to Vietnam, we were taught military tactics but no ethics, culture sensitivity, nothing.  We had no idea of what to expect or how to act.  This was a failure of the military itself.  You cannot just send men into a war zone without training in ethics and culture sensitivity.  Without this training everyone is on their own.  I don't know if today's military does any culture or ethics training; my guess is that they do not, in light of Abu Ghraib.

Benghazi: Treachery and Shame

Unless you've been in solitary confinement on an isolated island, you've heard what happened in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.  You've also heard about how the Obama Administration perpetrated a lie about what happened by blaming it on an obscure video made by a private person in Cerritos, California and posted on YouTube, which only a handful of people had seen.  Here is a terrific documentary of what happened in Benghazi, by Fox News:  Click here to watch.   Some facts:

Libya had just experienced an insurrection where the dictator, Muammar al-Gaddafi, was hunted down and brutally killed.  The country was without a functioning government, infrastructure and a hot bed of militias who killed at will.  A totally lawless country.  In light of this why would any country, let alone, the most powerful country in the world, the United States, station a handful of diplomats in the middle of this hell on earth with only a half dozen guards to protect them?  Why did the Obama Administration not prepare for a possible attack on the anniversary of 9/11? Why did Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State at the time, refuse the Ambassador's pleading for more protection?  I could go on and on.  Given that it did happen why was nothing done?

Let's look at the possibilities of what could have been done, if properly prepared.  The United States has air bases in near-by Sigonella, Sicily, less than one hour of flying time from Benghazi, Spain and Aviano Airbase in Northern Italy.  In addition, the United States maintains the U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, which could have been positioned within 10 minutes of Benghazi.

The Obama Administration gave some pretty lame excuses such as it would have taken too long to respond; we did not know who to shoot at, and other stupid excuses.  Some simple questions:

• Why not send fighter jets over the area where the guards could have easily painted targets for them with a laser?
• Why was the rapid deploy force waiting in Tripoli told not to go? (stand down),
• Why did they even think of putting people in harm's way without the proper protection?
• Why did President Obama not stay in contact with U.S. agents and military forces in the area during the attack? The following day he left for Las Vegas to campaign. Check out this story to verify Obama's absence.
• Why were helpless Americans left to die with no help of any kind?
• Why did the American main stream media not cover this story? Check this for proof.
• Why does the American mainstream media (MSM) refuse to look into why this happened and the lies told afterward, to this day?  Can you imagine what would have happened if George Bush was president?

The cover-up continues.  The people close to this disaster, such as the second in command, Gregory Hicks, was disciplined and hung out to dry for refusing to go along with the Obama Administration's lies as to what happened.  Check out this story, along with an interview that ABC News did yesterday. By the way, this is the first I've seen of any MSM actually checking into this. I applaud ABC News.

What Happened to the War on Poverty?

As I've suggested on this blog, those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it, as philosopher George Santayana famously said.  History is a great teacher.  We learn lessons by learning from our mistakes.  This is true for a nation as it is true for each one of us in our personal life.  Are you making the same mistakes you made as a teenager?

One of the issues that fascinates me is what happened to the War on Poverty, started by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.  The highest poverty rate in the US was in 1959 with 22% of people in poverty.  By 1965 that rate had fallen to 17.3% (today it is 15%).  Johnson started the War on Poverty to great fanfare.  The left felt really good to do it; as it does to this day.  But as Lt. Columbo would say before he left his suspect:  One more question, if you don't mind:  Have we won the war on poverty?  and how much have we spent?  We've spent over 15 Trillion dollars.  Our current national debt is about 16 trillion dollars.  The result:  nothing.  That's right nothing.  Click here for verification. Had we not spent that 15 Trillion we would not have a national debt today.

What does the left want to do still to this day?  Spend more money to fight poverty.  Now, as one who loves logic, how does this square with facts?  The political left not only does not learn from history, it ignores it completely.  You see, for the left facts do not matter; feeling good about themselves does.  If you appear to be doing good, even if it does not accomplish what you intend, it does not matter to them.

Economist all over the world are in almost total agreement that poverty cannot be alleviated by government handouts; on the contrary government policies do most of the damage by their incoherent policies, such as minimum wage which causes more unemployment.  In the August 26, 2013 issue of "The Weekly Standard,"  An article titled "Don't Forget the Poor" states: "Moreover, many of the conditions that trap Americans in poverty are the direct result of governmental policies, often implemented with good intentions."  Further down in the article it says this:  "Government itself often holds back the poor, for instance through the ever-growing regulatory state.  Outdated union-protection laws like the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires union wages on many federal project, reserve desirable jobs for union members."

Listen to one of the best economists in the US, Thomas Sowell, talking about the economics of poverty.  Click here.

Et tu Brutè?

Et tu Brutè?  (you Brutus?) were the last words of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. when he was assassinated by being stabbed in the back by his good friend, Marcus Brutus.  One of the most shameful episodes in American history was the shameful betrayal of the brave men and women who answered their country's call to serve in Vietnam.  The Vietnam Veterans were treated as common criminals would be treated.  Returning Vietnam Veterans were not only not appreciated; they were despised.  What makes this even worse is that the men, most of them, were drafted and served their country honorably in a war that could not be won.  The war could not be won because American politicians put them in a box for which they could not get out of.  In Vietnam, you could not go after the enemy in their home turf.  You had to fight him within the confines of South Vietnam.  Advantage, the enemy.  The enemy could wait and attack you at their liking and at their advantage.  If they lost an engagement, as they often did, they would re-group at their convenience in North Vietnam.  No army can win with these conditions.  The Vietnam war was lost before one soldier hit the ground in Vietnam in the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s.

Today, whenever we see a soldier in uniform, most people go up to them to thank them and sometimes pay for their meal.  This is great; that it the way it should be.  The Vietnam Veteran had a very different reception.  The returning vet would be spat upon or called "baby killer."  Let me recount my experience, and my experience was not the worst, by any means.  When I returned from Vietnam in May 1969, the commercial jet full of returning soldiers landed in Fort Lewis, Washington.  No one was there to greet us.  I remember thinking why the Army did not even think of welcoming us home?  No one thanked us.  No one talked to any of us.  I felt totally abandoned and forgotten.  All of us got out and disappeared on our own; most to other airports for flights to our home.  When I arrived at LAX, the only ones waiting for me were my family.  No one even looked at me, let alone thank me for your my service.

Prior to leaving for military service I was a college student and had worked part-time for Calavar Corporation, a Santa Fe Springs, California company that serviced the telephone company (Pacific Telephone), vehicles.  I had not planned on returning to this type of work but since I had not found other work, I decided to ask this company if they had any work for me.  Calavar hired me.  Upon reporting for work I was not assigned any particular work; I just roamed around and helped out anyone who asked me; I had no supervisor.  They basically left me alone; no one talked to me.  After the first week, someone presented me with my first check.  This person said absolutely nothing to me, just handed me the check without a word.  Upon opening the envelope.  I read the word Termination on it;  nothing else.  I never asked anyone anything; I just left.

Most people blamed the American soldier for losing the war, not the real culprit, the incompetent and self-serving politicians in Washington DC who's idea it was to send us there.  I went to Vietnam willingly, never questioning the cause.  As I think about it today, I recognize the absolute folly and idiocy of this war.  This was a war not based on any facts but on what we would call neurosis.  In those days, the West was afraid of the possible spread of communism.  This developed into a neurosis about it.  The  "Domino Theory"was trotted out by our government as the reason to fight communism.

As for the Vietnamese, they were fighting for their freedom.  They had been colonized by France for several hundred years.  After World War II they fought and defeated the French with the final climactic battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.  The French fought brilliantly, but they were fighting, again, a war they could not win, no matter what.  The United States learned nothing from the failure of the French.  We ended up paying the price:  60,000 American dead and about 500,000 wounded; many wounded for life. Yet, when it came to thanking the American soldier for his sacrifices they spit in our face.  In a recent article President Obama recognized the shameful treatment of the Vietnam Vet.  Click here for the story.

There have been many wars where men lost their lives for no good reason and only for the folly, sometimes criminal folly, of such leaders as Hitler and Mussolini   The Nazis, for example, condemned over two million of their own men to death and 3.5 million wounded in Russia alone for a war that they could never have won.  Mussolini, condemned over 200,000 Italian soldiers to death in the Russian campaign of World War II supporting the Germans. The Hungarians, Romanians and Croats also sent troops to Russia and were eventually destroyed as well.  In 1805, the ambitious and despotic Napoleon Bonaparte, sent 500,000 French troops to Russia; only 5,000 returned alive.  All these men died in vain. All these men could say et tu Brutè? As my theme on this blog states:  Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

The Reluctant Pilgrim

The year of 1943 was not a great year to be born in Europe which was in the midst of a cataclysmic war. Three months before my birth, July 1943, the Americans, British and allied forces stormed ashore in Sicily, devastating the small Mediterranean Island like previous invading armies had done before, such as the the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Muslims in the eighth century AD, the French in the 12th Century and the Spanish after them. During the American/British invasion, my mother and my entire home town, Geraci Siculo, had to be evacuated, fearing allied bombing runs.  My mother recalls the day when a riderless mule suddenly appeared in town.  It was learned later that the rider was blown off his mule and killed by an allied bomb while he was crossing a bridge along Highway SS 286, a twisting mountain road, near the town of Castelbuono, while returning home.

Piano Caterineci

As a youngster in Sicily, I was a totally happy child; the environment suited me.  My dad was a shepherd and as soon as I could walk, he took me with him while tending his flock (outside of school days of course). By this time I had developed an emotional attachment to the land. Even though we were very poor, along with all the townspeople, I never knew it and was totally happy in my environment.

In the summer months, all the animal farmers would move their herds to distant lands for grazing.  Since Sicily is a heaven for wheat farming, most farmers would lease wheat field lands after the harvest. The animals would feed on the stubs that were left.  My dad joined several other shepherds, moving their herds about 60 kilometers east of Geraci in an area called Chibbò; an area of rolling hills and home to wheat fields as far as the eye could see.  Driving the animals there would take about three days.  We would sleep in the open sky, using nothing but a blanket under us and one over us.  To me it was heaven on earth.  I loved it.

Around 1954, when I was 10 years old, I learned that my parents were planning on leaving Geraci and moving to America.  For a long time I denied that this was the case.  I did not want to leave.  When my dad finally sold all his sheep and his other property, the reality hit me like a hammer.   When we finally left and before boarding the cruise ship, the Saturnia, in the Port of Palermo Sicily, I asked my mom if she would leave me behind.  I told her I could stay with one of my uncles, Uncle Domenico. She declined out of hand.  We all boarded the ship and landed in New York Harbor on March 23, 1956 after a stormy Atlantic crossing in the dead of winter.  From the harbor, we went straight to the train station for the trip to Los Angeles, where my dad's sister, Maria Santa, was waiting for us.

We arrived at Union Station, Los Angeles, on an overcast day three days later.   I recall that I'd never seen an overcast day.  In Geraci, it was either sunny, foggy, or rainy; never overcast.  My aunt, her husband Joe and two other fellow Geraci immigrants, met us at the station and drove us to a rented one-bedroom house in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. My uncle had a beautiful 1947 De Soto.

What followed after our arrival could only be described as  a disaster for my parents.  My father's sister was a very hard and cold woman; very demanding and hyper critical.  The most unfriendly person I'd ever encountered. She despised my mother for reasons unknown to anyone.  In short, she made life miserable for them.  Despite all the personal travails that we experience, we were successful.  Our neighbors were very nice to us and we made friends quickly.  The school we kids attended, Angeles Mesa Elementary, was very welcoming and made our lives comfortable.  Both of my parents started work right away; my father at a cheese company in Compton and my mother as a seamstress in the Hyde Park area of Los Angeles.  Three years after arrival, my parents purchased their first house in Compton with 40% down.  Ours was an American immigrant success story.  Despite the odds we prevailed and advanced; we never retreated. The credit for this goes to my mom and dad.  They did the heavy lifting.  Both are my heroes.

Chasing the Wind: An Example of the Insanity of War

Whenever I visit my cousin Giovanni in Rome, Italy, we always discuss childhood stories from my home town of Geraci Siculo, Sicily.  Such stories are full of nostalgia, laughter and one of the best ways I know of having a great time.  One of the most poignant stories that Giovanni recalls is that of a young man ordered to war in 1940, at the start of World War II.  This young man, I'll call him Cesarè, has just been called into the Italian military and must leave Geraci, his family, his farm and his goat herd.  He  approaches Giovanni's father and ask him to take his herd while he leaves for war.  Not having the resources to take care of an additional herd of goats, Giovanni's father turns Cesarè down.  Unable to find anyone else, he knocks on Giovanni's father's door at 4:00 AM to beg him to take his heard, since he must leave that day.  Having pity on the young man Giovanni's father asks his 13 year-old son, Giovanni, if he would be willing to take on Cesarè's herd.  Giovanni says he can and the problem is solved.

Recently, a good friend asked me to read a book he had just read, The Red Horse, the tragic story of the Italian Army in Russia during World War II.  In 1941 the Italians committed 235,000 soldiers to the Russian campaign to aid the German invasion of Russia.  The Italians were joined by 200,000 Romanian and another 200,000 Hungarian troops.  This allied force protected the east flank for the Siege of Stalingrad.  All three armies were destroyed by vastly superior Russian forces, aided to a large extent, by the brutal Russian winter that killed more troops than did bullets.  Again, the Europeans failed to learn from history.  Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 with 500,000 troops and was defeated by the Russians, aided by the brutal Russian winter.  Only 5,000 of Napoleon's French troops survived. The same exact thing happened to the Germans, Italians, Romanians and Hungarians armies.  All of these men were basically condemned to death by incompetent and foolhardy despots at home who wanted personal glory at their expense. There never was any hope of military victory given the circumstances.

The Italian troops, and the Romanian and Hungarians were ill equipped, ill trained and ill led.  The Russians had tanks and Katyusha rockets.  The Italian and allied forces had nothing close to this.  They fought tanks with rifles and ineffective cannons.  The coup de grace was the Russian winter.  Italian and allied forces suffered from inadequate equipment such as vehicles, arms and fuel, with no hope of reinforcements.  The common soldier slept wherever he could in -26 C degree weather where your hands and feet would freeze if you exposed them to the weather.  Many battles took place at night where the Russian forces had the decided advantage.  If you were not killed by gunfire or by artillery, you were killed by starvation or the brutal winter weather. Wounded soldiers could not be aided and if they did not die from their wounds, they died from the immediate freezing of their bodies.  The Red Horse is a compelling story of men at war and men who were thrown into a war without any preparation, plans or the needed resources; in other words they were condemned to die as if you had lined them up against a wall and shot them.  Theirs was a hopeless cause.

This is the insanity and total futility of war. Here was a young farmer who just wanted to work his farm and feed his family.  All of the sudden, he's in Russia with people hunting him down as he were a rabid dog.  Additionally, he goes from a mild weather area, where the temperature never goes below 45 degrees to an area where the winters are the coldest in the world and where you not only have to worry about being killed by a bullet but also by the weather.  What were they fighting for?  Russia never attacked Italy.  They were sent there by the folly and insanity of their political leaders.  In the Italian case Benito Mussolini.  In the German case, the insanity of Adolf Hitler.

For those who feel like you want to praise soldiers or armies for their accomplishments, that is fine and fair, but to make jokes about an army that lost a war they could never win, no matter what?  That is a different matter.  Being Italian by birth, I was subjected to many ethnic jokes and especially jokes about the performance of the Italian Army in World War II. People I knew would tell me such sick jokes to my face.  If you are one of these naive people, I ask you to read The Red Horse and then see if the joke applies.  I expounded on this situation in my last post on this blog.

A Farewell to Arms

It was a hot, humid night in July 1968 in Nha Trang, South Vietnam.  Not far from my barracks was a huge U.S. Air Force Base, and a South Korean Army base.  Nha Trang was a seaside town that used to be a vacation spot during the French colonial period.  I was assigned to the First Field Force of II Corps. I had finally finished my 12 hour shift in the Personnel office and had gone to bed in my double bunk surrounded by my mosquito net.  Reading Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms had captured my intense attention.  No one ever wrote with such skill as Hemingway.  As I'm reading I could picture in my mind the horrors of war he was describing during World War I.  It all made sense.  I had now spent my first two months in a war zone.   I arrived in Vietnam  just after the Tet Offensive that started in February 1968.  As my Continental Airways passenger jet full of Army soldiers made its landing approach to Bien Hoa military airport, I first got a taste of the chaos of a war zone.  Looking to my right, I can seen the flash of artillery firing.  Upon landing we're loaded on a Isuzu bus and driven to the Cholon section of Saigon.  The sounds and noise of war was everywhere.

Upon arrival at the St. George Hotel in Saigon I could see that the front of the hotel was full of bullet holes.  I'm thinking that I had just landed in hell.  Helicopter gunships were circling the area, and the rat,tat, tat sounds of machine guns was everywhere. We were at the hotel awaiting our assignment in country.  After unloading my gear I see a fellow soldier holding out a recording device out of the window.  When I asked him what he was doing, he said that he was recording the sounds of the battle so he could send it home.  I asked him if he was kidding; he was not.  At the hotel bar I can see about six or seven Australian soldiers having a beer.  Before resting for the night I got the assignment of patrolling the perimeter of the hotel with my M-14 Rifle that I had trained with in Fort Ord, California.  I don't remember sleeping that night.  Having spent and entire year in a war zone, I think I can speak with experience that war is no party or no glory.  I will not spend any time defending the Vietnam war here; my purpose is a little different.

As an Italian immigrant to the United States,   I occasionally was asked were I was from, since I did not look like the typical blond, blue eyed Scandinavian looking fellow.  When I answered that I was from Sicily, Italy, I was often told idiotic Italian jokes about the Italian military (referring to World War II).  The most frequent quip was "what is the smallest book in the world?  A list of Italian military heroes."  Why a person would intentionally insult me to my face is beyond my understanding.  I suppose if I had been a tough hombre, I would have levelled the person with a left hook or  picked him up and tossed him into the freeway, or out of the building, but I did not.  I feigned a smile, unprepared for such idiocy. This did not happen once or twice but many, many times.  Happily I have not heard it in the last 10 or so years.

I've never been able to figure out the mentality of such insults.  Surely, people making these sick jokes have never been nor could they ever handle being in a war.   The intellectually challenged person making such jokes has never walked in another man's shoes.  The Vietnam veterans were betrayed by their own people when they returned home.  Here was a man who left home, left his parents, brothers and sisters, his girlfriend and all his friends to fight to the death in the Ia Drang Valley or Khe Sanh.  Or how about going to a war that you could not win because you were fighting with rules that put you in a box where you could not go out of.  A war that made no sense and the politicians refused to let you win.  If you survived and came home the people often spat at you and called you a killer.  The draft dodger that fled to Canada was considered the smart one, the brave soldier who died for his country was forgotten.

Where was the idiot who makes such jokes?  was he in the foxhole?  Was he thrown into a situation where it was hopeless to win or get out of?  As a history buff, I often watch military documentaries.  One of most poignant one is the documentary of the Siege of Leningrad during World War II where the entire German 6th Army, about 500,000 men, was condemned to die from war, cold or starvation because a lunatic such as Hitler had sent them there and then refused to let them withdraw when it was hopeless.  Would the idiot making such jokes have been to such a place?  I don't think so.