Cassandra Calling...Again

I’ve said it before here on the blog somewhere – I often feel like Cassandra, which leads to some interesting lines of thought.

Cassandra was Pandora’s sister. Apollo fell in love (more likely lust, given his reputation) with her and tried to seduce her by giving her the gift of prophecy, but she rejected his advances. As punishment for spurning him, Apollo twisted the gift – no one would believe her prophecies. Cassandra was driven to madness in fairly short order thereafter.

Years ago, when we were first starting our punitive, pre-emptive wars, I sat at my desk and tried to imagine how I would strike back at the US if I were in Osama’s shoes. Now granted, my cultural mindset is in no way comparable to Osama’s, but this exercise has often proven useful in the past. It is a way of coming up with the “most dangerous enemy course of action”. Military planning doctrine is to use the “most dangerous enemy course of action” and the “most likely enemy course of action” into consideration. You plan your main effort against the most likely course of action and you build a contingency plan to deal with the most dangerous.

My worry years ago was that if Osama was as evil a thinker as I can be, then he would find a way to strike back at our military asymmetrically. The best way to do that, I felt, was to strike back at the home bases of the troops deployed to find and kill him. This would serve two purposes, both which would benefit him. It would demoralize some elements of our forces – create a strategic psychological distraction, and at the same time would enrage these same forces, potentially causing them to commit atrocities in violation of our rules of engagement and the laws of war. He, in turn, would use these atrocities to further his campaign to turn the conflict into a true Jihad, portraying us as being anti-Islam. His defense against our counter charges would be that the Koran speaks of only two lands – Dar al Islam – the land of submission to Allah/God and Dar al Harb – the land of war.

Conventional wisdom would have it silly to attack a military base, but conventional wisdom is often wrong. The only personnel with ready access to weapons are the usually undermanned Military Police-type units and possibly contract security guards at the gates. The military bases have huge housing areas full of families with either a father or mother deployed. There are commissaries and post exchanges and administration buildings, all soft targets full of unarmed people once initial access is gained.

As it turned out, Osama never did hit our bases – he never had to. We provided enough ammunition to keep his propaganda campaign going with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and Bagram. Then, last week, in a what had to be a vain attempt at martyrdom, one of our own committed the act that I had conceived as Osama’s most dangerous course of action.

Twice in the past two weeks now, we’ve had our own turn on us. First in Helmand Province, an Afghan Policeman opened fire on a British unit and his own comrades, killing five before escaping. This week, there are thirteen dead in Texas because a US Army Officer could not reconcile his personal beliefs with the orders he had been given and the information he had received as a military psychiatrist. Rather than resign publicly as the senior Department of State official in Zabul Province, Matt Hoh, did recently or quietly as many more have, he chose to punctuate his protest with mass murder.

At the risk of sounding like Cassandra again, I expect an insanity defense to be presented. However, in the military justice system, insanity is not a defense to the act, but merely mitigation in the sentencing. I expect the officer to be found guilty of twelve counts of murder in the first degree, and quite probably sentenced to death, which will be reduced to life imprisonment due to the insanity. Death would make him the martyr he wishes to be – the exclamation point to his protest. Life in Leavenworth will mean disappearing from all but the memories of the victims and their families – an ellipsis instead of an exclamation point. Perhaps that is a better punishment – almost Cassandra-like, in its own way. A lifetime of insanity, knowing that your protest was in vain.

While I feel no pity or sympathy for Nidal Malik Hasan, I have to admit to feeling a slight bit of empathy. On the last day of combat operations in Operation Desert Storm, I too was confronted with a situation seemingly completely antithetical to my core beliefs, both as an Army Officer, and as a human being.

The last several hours of Desert Storm were basically a race. We were racing to retake every square inch of Kuwait from Iraqi control and the Iraqi's were racing to stay ahead of us to avoid capture. In doing so, they abandoned equipment seemingly haphazardly in their single-minded flight. They also, as it turned out, abandoned their wounded.

We had reached our stop position in Northern Kuwait by mid-morning. We, in short, were exhausted. We had been going for virtually the entire 100 hour war with less than 4 or 5 hours of sleep interspersed. Despite this exhaustion, my boss, the unit intelligence officer and the intelligence sergeant took a wheeled vehicle back to look at some abandoned equipment we had passed earlier in the day. This was at the end of the Cold War and we intel types could not pass up the chance to look at some functional Soviet-made equipment. They took off and left me in the command post with the junior intelligence sergeant.

After a bit, we heard them on the radio. "Demon 2 Alpha, this is Demon 2, over."

"Demon 2, this is Demon 2 Alpha, go ahead, over"

"Demon 2 Alpha, this is Demon 2, tell Demon 3 to send the Band-Aids to my location, vicinity charlie papa 41. There are at least five zero wounded Iraqi soldiers in bunkers this location who need medical attention and will not last the night."

"Demon 2, this is Demon 2 Alpha. Roger. Verify charlie papa 41, five zero plus casualties. Wilco."

What that basically said in the radio-speak of the day was that my boss had stumbled upon an abandoned Iraqi field hospital that we had overrun unknowingly in our haste. My boss was asking me to go to the operations section (Demon 3) and ask them to send the Medical Platoon (Band Aids) back to checkpoint 41. The wounded were in underground bunkers, essentially holes in the earth, with no heat or light. The nights were getting down close to freezing, hence the warning about not lasting the night.

I put down the radio handset and walked out of my command post vehicle and over to the Operations command post vehicle. There, on duty, were three Captains (I was a First Lieutenant then). I reported what my boss had told me and requested that they send the medics over.

They refused to do so. They told me basically 1. the medics were asleep, 2. who gives a fuck about wounded Iraqis, and 3. these fucks were shooting at you three hours ago, what are you thinking, and 4. who authorized Captain S. (my boss) to go back there anyway.

I first tried to persuade them by telling them that we had to do this - we owned the land now. I was told to leave.

I then tried to use the argument that if we took no action, that this could be considered a war crime. I was told to leave now - in rather profane terms.

Finally, almost in tears of complete frustration, I implored two of the three whom I knew were West Point graduates (as I was) that this was our Duty and Honor at stake. I was then bodily pushed out of the operations track and ordered back to my vehicle amidst tauntings at my lack of emotional control.

I can honestly say that I have never been so frustrated in my adult life. My intelligence sergeant had heard most of the interplay and saw the tears streaming down my face. He was very perceptive and afterwards told me that he knew that I was "on the edge of a cliff." He jumped into my vehicle and spun the dial on the safe, locking it. That was where we kept the grenades. Pretty astute on his part.

Luckily for me, before I could get to my vehicle, the Battalion Executive Officer showed up. He saw the look on my face and assumed that something tragic had happened. He stopped me and asked me what was wrong, so I told him. This Major got it instantly. He directed me to use his radio and relay the message to the Medic Platoon.

When I did so, the Captains in the Operations track tried to cut me off, telling the Medics to "Disregard Demon 2 Alpha's transmission". The XO heard this and told me to use his call sign and that he would deal with the Captains. He went into the operations track and the yelling began.

I got the message to the Medics and off they went. When they got there, they found over 120 wounded Iraqi soldiers in the bunkers and they assisted another unit that had come upon the scene, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, in ensuring that the wounded received proper care.

The Captains were verbally reprimanded and over the course of the next few days, each of them, individually, apologized to me for their conduct. They blamed their actions on their exhaustion and their misunderstanding of what I was telling them. The Battalion Commander also talked to me, subtly pressuring me to take no further actions. I took no further actions, seeing how the realpolitik was shaping up. The histories make no mention of the event nor of the medevacs. The closest there was to an acknowledgement of what happened came almost ten months later, when I was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for my actions during the war. In presenting it, the same Battalion Commander joked (poorly) that he wasn't sure if it was for telling him where the Iraqi forces were, telling him where the Iraqi wounded were, or not killing his three Captains (who had all been transferred out by then).

In all truth, I don't know to this day. I do know that were it not for the timely intervention of a decent human being, I might have snapped due to my inability to reconcile the orders and actions of my superior officers with what I knew in my heart of hearts to be right. I have to believe that this was the same pain, anguish, and frustration that Nidal Malik Hasan was feeling, misguided as it may seem to the rest of us.

Pity, no. Sympathy, none at all. Empathy - a little, yes - for I have stared what had to be a similar madness in the face and felt its fury. At West Point they taught me that often one must choose the harder right over the easier wrong. Easy to say, hard to implement when the adrenaline is coursing through your veins.

Over the years, I've shared this story with a select few, usually veterans. A few of them have told me their own, similar stories of staring the Berserker in the face, looking over the edge of the abyss and feeling the pull towards madness. I offer it now, not as excuse, but as possible explanation to those who do not understand.

In the current case, perhaps the cruelest twist of all is that Nidal Malik Hasan was, by training, a healer. A healer who dove into the pit and became the opposite - a destroyer of life. To use another religion's deity - he became Shiva-like - creator and destroyer, a paradox. By most mainstream interpretations of Islam, he is simply what we perceive him to be, a murderer. He did not strike directly at his tormentors - he struck randomly, just as Osama did on September 11th. Mainstream Islam says that as such, he will be forgotten by Allah and tormented in Islamic hell. I think he will have pretty much the same in this life as well.