For Your Consideration

[garyedolan]

For Your Consideration

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Washington Post
March 14, 2012
Pg. 15
Consumed By Wars Without End
By Robert H. Scales
I guess I knew it would eventually come down to this: Blame the Army’s institutions in some way for the horrific and senseless slaughter of 16 innocent Afghan civilians in Kandahar, allegedly by a U.S. infantry non-commissioned officer (NCO). In their search for a villain, the media seems to be focusing now on Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, where the accused soldier was stationed before his fourth deployment to a combat zone.
Before we get too involved in attacking institutions, perhaps it might be right and proper to suggest that the underlying issue here is not about failure of our Army. Perhaps the issue might be that no institutional effort can make up for trying over the past 10 years to fight too many wars with too few soldiers?
The accused NCO is an infantryman. Two weeks ago I talked with infantry soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., and I couldn’t help contrasting them with those of my generation of Vietnam veterans. What caught my attention were the soldiers’ amazing stories of patient, selfless, introversive commitment. First I took to heart the enormous disparity in stressful, extreme experiences between the infantry and other branches and services that have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The senior NCOs I spoke to all had at least three, and in some cases five, tours, virtually all in close combat units. Contrast this with returning Vietnam NCOs and junior officers, most of whom in that era had only one tour in Vietnam.
Of course infantry combat in Vietnam was perhaps more intense, but close fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was more pervasive and lasting, thus more likely to cause personal trauma in my mind. The infantrymen I spoke to at Fort Benning were different from those in my generation. They were more emotionally exhausted and drained, less spontaneous and humorless. My generation of professionals spent a great deal of time on Friday nights at the officer’s club, talking over a beer about the Catch-22 nature of Vietnam and many of the stupid and hilarious experiences we endured. None of this at Benning today. No clubs, no public displays of hilarity and certainly no beer. These guys seemed to view their time in combat as endless and repetitive. My sense is that their collective, intimate exposure to the horrors of close combat was far more debilitating than what we experienced.
This of course in no way justifies what happened in Kandahar. But I think if someone wants to place blame, it should be on a succession of national leaders who fail to recognize that combat units, particularly infantry, just wear out. Lord Moran concluded in his classic about combat stress in World War I, “Anatomy of Courage,” that the reservoir of courage begins to empty after the first shot is fired. The horrors of intimate killing, along with other factors such as fatigue, thirst, hunger, isolation, fear of the unknown and the sight of dead and maimed comrades, all start a process of moral atrophy that cannot be reversed. Lord Moran rightfully concludes that nothing sort of permanent withdrawal from the line will bring soldiers back to normalcy.
The media is trying to make some association between the terrible crime of this sergeant and the Army’s inability to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. Perhaps the Army could have done more. But I think Lord Moran had it more right; the real institutional culprit is the decade-long exploitation and cynical overuse of one of our most precious and irreplaceable national assets: our close combat soldiers and Marines.
If someone just after 9/11 would have told me that a very small Army and Marine Corps would fight a 10-year-long set of close combat engagements in two wars and still remain intact, I would have called them crazy. Well, we’ve done just that, haven’t we? But at what cost to the few who have borne an enormously disproportionate share of emotional stress?
Robert H. Scales, a retired U.S. Army major general, USMA '66 and former Commandant of the Army War College, is president of the consulting firm Colgen.

[Jim]

Agree completely!

[hobbit]

There was a film on the Documentary Channel the other night about a 173rd Abn. outpost in Afghanistan that suffered 500 contacts in its first year of existence. That's enough to drive anyone crazy.

[mortar_guy78]

This is an institutional issue. Not in the sense that the Army is a bad institution, but in that we have not been properly supported or prioritized. Now they want to take 80,000 troops who have sacrificed all for their country and throw them out on their asses.

The current SMA blames soldiers and junior leaders for the current issues in the army (this from a guy with only 1 overseas tour...in staff). It's not the fact that we have been pushed past the breaking point fighting a war on two fronts for ten years while undermanned and undersupported. It's that SSG with 5 combat tours doing his job fucking SUPERBLY on the battlefield who doesn't make his guys shave off their sideburns at the top of the ear.

All these guys are trying to turn us back into a garrison force while we are still at war, draw down troop levels, underfund the VA and overturn disability claims because of budget concerns. And they wonder why some dude goes apeshit. I think it's a testament to our army that shit like this doesn't happen more often.

[colt1rgr]

Policy is almost always driven by REMFs which is bad enough, but when you have liberal assclowns (arguably most liberal in our history if not communists and quite possibly "traitors") in the civilian leadership shoving it down your thoats, the guys in the arena are "damned if they do, damned if they don't" and for what? Whats our OBJ in A-Stan? Somebody reclue me cause I must have forgotten.

[Chiron]

That article should be passed around. I don't think many people understand what our troops are going through. I for one didn't think about it that way. It makes sense and I wonder what the long term effects after the war (as all wars end) will be.

I venture to say that every war has a different effect on the soldiers fighting. As they also have a different response from the civilian population when they come home, this one as it has not finished yet will no doubt have its toll.

Will we be ready to welcome them home one day and will our institutions be there to help?

[GoldCoast]

What I got out of that article:

The Army needs more beer. It restores morale and some other stuff.