Published By ... Only days before Staff Sergeant Robert Bales left his base at Camp Belambay the evening of March 11th, walked to two nearby villages in the rural Panjwai district in southern Afghanistan and allegedly murdered 16 Afghan civilians in their sleep—nine of whom were innocent children—another US Army soldier fell in battle. 

He was Sergeant William Stacey. 

Stacey had left a letter for his family to read in the event of his death. Its message provided a bitter contrast to Bales’ actions. In part, Stacey told his loved ones, “My death did not change the world; it may be tough to justify its meaning at all. But there is a greater meaning to it….If my life buys the safety of a child who will one day change this world, then I know it was all worth it.”

Placed on the same battlefield, Bales and Stacey set off to fight in different directions. The difficulty is in understanding why.  

There were similarities between the men. Both were noncommissioned officers (NCOs); both were combat infantry soldiers; both had served multiple combat tours (Stacey was on his fourth in Afghanistan while Bales—on his first tour in Afghanistan—had served three previously in Iraq).

But there were differences too. 

At 38, Bales is 15 years senior to Stacey. Following an IED explosion in Iraq that caused the vehicle he was in to rollover, Bales suffered a head injury and was subsequently diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The glaring difference, however, was while Stacy fought to preserve the lives of Afghan children, hoping to provide them with a better future, Bales sought to deny at least nine Afghan children a future at all.

No stranger to combat, Bales had been involved in one of the bloodiest battles with militants in southern Iraq in 2007. An observation he later made as he looked back on that battle is haunting in view of the March 11th massacre for which he now stands accused. 

Bales commented, “I’ve never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day. For the simple fact that we discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us. I think that’s the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy…”

As occurred with the media firestorm generated by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Grahib in 2004 by American warriors gone bad, this incident will undoubtedly witness a similar firestorm. By doing so, by keeping open the wound of an atrocity committed by just one soldier gone bad, sadly other good soldiers will be endangered. 

 The headlines about Abu Grahib continued for months despite the fact the vast majority of offenses there qualified as prisoner abuse—not prisoner torture. Yet the media kept re-opening that wound by periodically publishing pictures then used by Islamic extremists to stir up anti-US sentiment. We will never know how many Iraqis were motivated after the Abu Grahib pictures and stories flowed to take up arms against US soldiers performing honorably or how many of these soldiers were killed as a result.

While investigators attempt to piece together Bales’ motivation, an insanity defense will undoubtedly be raised by his legal team. Such a defense may well prove successful if it can be shown the suspect performed well prior to suffering his TBI with that performance taking a noticeable spiral afterward. (A Bronze Star award was apparently pending.)  

Bales’ legal defense team will seek to identify factors to support the fact he had no control over his actions and had simply gone mad.  

One of their targets will be the medical center at his home base, Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Washington. Reports have surfaced physicians there were pressured to put TBI victims through a “quick fix program” just to get them medicated and back out on the battlefield to avoid the high costs of long term medical treatment.  

Also a factor upon which the defense team will focus were Bales’ irrational actions beyond just murdering the victims as he also attempted to burn some of the bodies. They will argue, why else would one who took great pride in distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants in the heat of an earlier battle act so horrendously against noncombatants when no bullets were flying. 

Other factors impacting upon Bales’ sanity were his unhappiness, after three deployments to Iraq, over having to go to Afghanistan. He also was dealing with severe financial issues. There were pressures too of not knowing who among the Afghans with whom he was serving was friend or foe based on dozens of incidents in which Americans have been killed by a foe thought to be a friend. 

And, most telling was the fact that hours before the massacre, a fellow warrior standing next to him at the time had his leg blown off. All these pressures, coupled with his TBI diagnosis, it will be argued, came into play with the loss of his fellow warrior’s leg then becoming the triggering event sending Bales over the edge. 

Tracing this chain of responsibility for the 16 deaths will keep re-opening wounds, not only for the Afghan families who lost loved ones, but for the US military as well. For although, on its face, this massacre appears to have been the work of but one soldier callously tossed back onto the battlefield while suffering from a TBI detaching him from the reality of “the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy,” the entire US military will suffer the impact. 

Not only do all suffer the sadness over innocent lives being lost by the incomprehensible act of a fellow warrior, but they will also suffer the stigma of those seeking to attach the Scarlet Letter “A” for “atrocity” upon them as a fighting force. The perception will take flight that all veterans returning from war are broken in some way.

Lost in all of this will be the fact the overwhelming majority of those serving in uniform in Afghanistan are no different than Sergeant Stacy. They know the difference between right and wrong. They know the importance of protecting innocent lives on the battlefield, especially those of children, not only because it is their duty to do so but because they cherish the sanctity of human life. 

Most would undoubtedly have laid down their own lives to have saved those taken in the March 11th massacre had they the opportunity to do so.

It is often the wont of the media when such atrocities occur in America’s wars to focus the spotlight on the horrors to which they give rise but not to illuminate the acts of courage that sometimes are involved as well. Nowhere was this more obvious than with the Vietnam war’s 1968 My Lai Massacre.  

The name of Lieutenant William Calley who ordered his platoon to fire upon unarmed Vietnamese men, women and children immediately was emblazoned upon America’s psyche by a media determined to report only the horror of the incident, while ignoring the courage to which it also gave rise. 

Lost in media reports at that time and only decades later becoming the focus of very limited media coverage was the name of Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson. 

Flying an observation mission in his helicopter over My Lai, Thompson quickly realized what Calley was doing. He swooped down in his aircraft, landing it in between Calley’s platoon and the fleeing villagers. He threatened to turn his guns on the platoon if they continued their massacre. Calley broke off his attack with Thompson’s actions undoubtedly saving hundreds of lives.

Nearly a quarter century after My Lai, a 1992 book published about the massacre brought Thompson’s actions to light, starting a campaign to recognize his heroism. It took another six years for that to happen. Sadly, Thompson’s death in 2006 from cancer at age 62 sparked little media interest as well for an American hero lost.  

A contributing factor in the March 11th massacre may well prove to be a punishing rotation cycle that has our troops deployed as if on a treadmill. The downside of an all volunteer military is that, in times of war(s), the conflict may be perceived to be endless but the list of those who can be sent into battle is not. Repeated tours of intense combat eventually take their toll.  

Bales was on his fourth combat tour. Last year, we lost a warrior on his 14th tour who, perhaps, having survived 13 tours, may have lost his edge during his last one. 

As the cause of the suspect’s aberrant behavior is analyzed and re-analyzed, “the real institutional culprit,” a recent oped by retired Major General Robert Scales suggests, may prove to be “the decade-long exploitation and cynical overuse of one of our most precious and irreplaceable national assets: our close combat soldiers and Marines.”   

Scales goes on to cite a classic work on combat stress during World War I by Lord Moran—“Anatomy of Courage”—noting that “the reservoir of courage begins to empty after the first shot is fired. The horrors of intimate killing…all start a process of moral atrophy that cannot be reversed. 

Lord Moran rightfully concludes that nothing short of permanent withdrawal from the line will bring soldiers back to normalcy. In other words, the more exposed the warrior is to the horrors of combat, the less focused becomes the line between right and wrong.     

Clearly those sending our national assets off to war have a duty to ensure they are mentally qualified to do so—regardless of the financial cost. They also have a duty to ensure our warriors are allowed sufficient time between deployments to realign a moral compass that may have become disoriented due to excessive exposure to battlefield pressures. 

Finally, as the media embarks upon its efforts to keep the massacre newsworthy by focusing on its horrors, we must keep in mind, among our fighting forces, good men like Sergeant Stacey and Warrant Officer Thompson represent the rule while Staff Sergeant Bales represents the exception. 

We must not allow a media - detached from the reality of warfare and a sometimes gullible public it feeds so often with slanted information - to attach the stigma of the Scarlet Letter “A” to all our magnificent warriors.