Two Afghan officials who have interviewed villagers say that no villager saw more than one shooter. This pretty much lays to rest the earlier reports of several soldiers doing the shooting. Another report says that Bales “told comrades that he had killed some local men, according to a senior official.” Bales’s lawyer says that the government file does not say this: “That’s not true either. As a matter of fact, the government’s paperwork on file doesn’t have that in it all. I’m very suspicious about that report.”
The case will be tried in a U.S. military court. Bales was once a stock broker. A case was lodged against him and associates for fraud. “… an independent arbitrator later found that Bales engaged in fraud, unauthorized trading and unsuitable investments.” The fine was $1.4 million. It was at that time, around 2000, that Bales joined the army.
When the charges against Bales are released, perhaps today, more information will be forthcoming.
The lawyer for Bales, John Henry Browne, has said that the defense will be “diminished capacity.”
Will Browne place the U.S. Army on trial? Will he argue that Bales did not have the capacity to premeditate murder due to the various influences and pressures on him that were imposed by the Army? He cannot go too far in that direction without alienating the military court that is trying the case. Will the prosecution argue the opposite, namely, that Bales is a bad apple? It cannot go too far in that direction without supporting the diminished capacity defense.
This case is embedded in a political thicket and a moral thicket. The members of the court will be subjected to pressures from all sides.
Will it be as big as the Dreyfus affair? Probably not. Will it engender the anti-war sentiment that the My Lai Massacre did? There are no signs of that, at least not yet.
In the My Lai case, many soldiers and many more killings were involved. It was easy for Americans to identify that event with the whole Vietnam War and become disillusioned with it. It is not as easy for Americans to identify the case of a single soldier executing 16 Afghan civilians with the Afghanistan War and as a symbol and symptom of a war that should never have been started. It is even less easy for them to identify it with the war on terror as a war that also should never have been started.
The Bush-Obama war on terror, brought to bear in Afghanistan, lies behind the Panjwai massacre. This is the war that must be stopped.
9:04 am on March 22, 2012
