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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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As someone who has a number of loved ones with serious 'issues', if you will,
this is heart-wrenching for me. There is no black and white. The grey areas
are all there is it seems.
It is all the more horrible for me because a former employee who I am close
to is a recent returnee from Afghanistan. He is going through a really hard
time. The Army doesn't give a flying phuk despite their voluminous lip-service.
I will post up a recent LA Times article on the hell they are living at
Fort Lewis, Washington. The statistics are truly horrible.
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Binks
climber
Uranus
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from cnn:
Despite photos of a muscular Barnes, shirtless, tattooed and brandishing two guns, Barnes wasn't a combat soldier. Instead, he was responsible for fixing radios and other communications equipment, Rolan said
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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Lets see if I can clarify what I think JL is saying,
When terrible acts are perpetrated on innocent people, we look for a cause to explain these events and prevent them from recurring. We have two fundamental possibilities, we can lay blame with an individual or we can lay blame with biological and environmental factors. If we lay blame with an individual for the "choices" he has made, it seems logical to lock him up for life. This prevents him from ever committing another crime. The other choice is to lay blame with biological and environmental causes. This leads people to identify the correlates of anti-social behavior and reduce their impact on future generations, thus reducing the probability of these events occurring in the future.
So which is better? I say the second. If we focus on punishing individuals for the choices they make, we will neither understand nor eliminate theses horrible acts. We will lock criminals in jail, or execute them, but never stop the flow. By focussing on the "causes" of behavior, we can improve the world and make it a safer place to live. It does't help to call someone a "psycho" or "crazy." It only means that you don't understand. We need to incarcerate criminals but stay focused on improving our understanding of human behavior.
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Kalimon
Trad climber
Ridgway, CO
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Has anyone observed that WE created this . . . the good old US of A trained this kid to kill, sent him to some hellhole to kill and allowed him to possibly kill innocent women and children . . . all for the good of the cause, so that we may live our sanctimonious little lives here in the land of plenty. Defending our life liberty and pursuit of happiness . . . what a crock of sh#t.
Expect more of this as the proverbial chickens come home to roost.
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nick d
Trad climber
nm
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I saw a news feature recently that tracked guys who had come back from, not sure, I think it was 101st. Out of just one platoon, which is, what 15 guys tops? Something like 9 of them were busted for a variety of serious crimes.
Armed robberies, dealing and using meth, attacking and beating random people on the streets. Most of them said they were really wigged out from their repeated tours, and that included all the guys in the platoon, not just the ones with felony warrants with their names on them. No sleep was an extremely common complaint, and take it from a guy who can't sleep, nothing puts you over the edge like not sleeping for a couple of months.
I make no excuses for this murdering slug, but if you think there are not many thousands more just like him ready to hit the streets you are deceiving yourselves. Guys like this are just the coming attractions.
Remember all those SEAL team members Coz raves about, they came back from the sh#t and murdered several of their wives. It was enough of a cluster to make the national news and to prompt the bigwigs to implement new "training".
Since anyone can arm themselves with what are essentially military weapons, anybody who's dissatisfied enough can make a real great evening news feature. There are a lot of dudes who think that sounds like a good way out.
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Robb
Social climber
The other side of life
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We seek to make this simple, and in fact it is, but in
a way that is far from much of the validating conjecture that has been posted already.
Truth is, we weren't him, weren't there. While there are obviously correlating factors, we will never really know (as many presume to).
I worked a case where a mans wife and infant daughter were strangled to death and stuffed under a wood pile in the back yard. It was done by the husbands best friend. Nothing done from simple interview to complex psychoanalytical profiling ever gave a clue as to why this happened.
For some people, they will never be "right" and their lives will go terminal.
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the goat
climber
north central WA
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Regardless of whether PTSD exacerbated his "illness," by all accounts this guy was a nut. Of course, the news media is still coming up with gems like this one-
The shooting renewed debate about a federal law that made it legal to take loaded weapons into national parks. The 2010 law made possession of firearms subject to state gun laws.
Bill Wade, the outgoing chair of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, said Congress should be regretting its decision.
"The many congressmen and senators that voted for the legislation that allowed loaded weapons to be brought into the parks ought to be feeling pretty bad right now," Wade said.
Where do these people come from? Remember, the perp was fleeing from an inspection stop to see if he was carrying tire chains. Should we admonish DOT or AAA for their lack of sympathy towards motorists "who can't deal with chaining up!" "Having trouble with traction or installing chains? If so, help is available"
OK, I'm being factious, but this guy had a ton of baggage before, or even if, PTSD became a problem.
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Hardman Knott
Gym climber
Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley, Ca
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Despite photos of a muscular Barnes, shirtless, tattooed and brandishing two guns, Barnes wasn't a combat soldier. Instead, he was responsible for fixing radios and other communications equipment, Rolan said
Shocking!!!!!!!!1111
Nick D wrote:
Remember all those SEAL team members Coz raves about, they came back from the sh#t and murdered several of their wives. It was enough of a cluster to make the national news and to prompt the bigwigs to implement new "training".
Reference(s), please? Not saying it didn't happen, but wondering how I missed such big news.
Navy SEALs? Really?
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Not to forget this as well. What will this cause?
Article from the Military written by Michael Hoffman. Dec 30th of 2011.
Traumatic Brain Injury
Service leaders will have much more than hardware to worry about in 2012. Traumatic brain injury is an issue that will not go away, as a 2011 Defense Department survey found half of U.S. troops have been exposed to bomb blasts in Afghanistan but only one in five seek treatment for concussions.
This isn't a new problem. And it's one the Army continues to take seriously. What has held the service and the medical community back for so long has been the lack of research into concussions.
The sports world serves as a prime example: Despite the millions of dollars invested in him, the best hockey player in the world, Pittsburgh Penguin center Sydney Crosby, can't stay on the ice because of concussion symptoms. And the Penguins' doctors can't figure out why they won't go away.
The Army is in a similar situation, yet it has an entire force returned from Iraq and still deploying to Afghanistan racked with concussion symptoms.
What's changed is the Army wants to make up for lost time and capture as much blast data as possible in the last year's of the Afghanistan war.
The Army Rapid Equipping Force teamed up with the National Football League and Indy Racing League to design blast gauges that attach to a Soldier's helmet and body armor. Small black boxes at command posts and inside vehicles measure the effects of blasts to a Soldier and compare that with their medical diagnosis.
Service doctors and the medical community at large plan to use the data collected in the upcoming years to better diagnose Soldiers and get those afflicted with concussions out of combat quicker so they can recover and return to their jobs.
New leadership
The Army will lose one of its champions for treating traumatic brain injury when Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli retires in 2012. Chiarelli has made TBI and reducing Soldier suicides his top priorities during his time as the Army's no. 2 leader.
“anti-malarial drug Lariam”
‘96 Canadian doc prescribed some of that S$it to me for a trip. Talk about nasty scary drug. Problem was it "delayed" or when 7 days goes bye it kicks in. You are in a state of a frightening feeling till it wore off in an hour or two? You had to take once a week for five weeks in the area that you were going to be exposed to malaria, again the second pill would kick in the second week same thing. You had no clue what was going on.
Finally when I got home took that last one hour goes bye and had to go to emergency, called a cab, got to the hospital, RCMP came to take a look, left, finally seeing the emergency doc.[finally wore off by time I saw him] Told him just got back from Asia, the symptoms, when and what I felt.
He asked me were you taking Lariam. I said yes “what does that have to do with anything? He said you are not the first and finding out there is a lot of the same complaints.
I said Oh! Now you tell me why didn’t tell me this before. Said we are just finding about it now.
F%ck I would rather gotten the malaria.
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Shack
Big Wall climber
Reno NV
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If there had only been a law prohibiting guns in the park, or better yet,
a big sign that said, "No guns allowed in the park", surely a nutjob like that would have left his guns at home.
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Hardman Knott
Gym climber
Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley, Ca
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It's possible that he was so traumatized by the harrowing experience of fixing radios and other communications equipment that he might have cowered in terror upon seeing such a sign. Ya never know!
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reddirt
climber
PNW
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How Rangers/DHS (Homeland Security) pilots warned snowshoers/campers of the whole incident... link w/ video.
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Kalimon
Trad climber
Ridgway, CO
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Nice response COZmon.
I like the reminder that this indeed has been going on for centuries. Monkey killing monkey . . . over and over again. Hell, humans have even attributed nobility to the "art" of war. The American Civil War is an excellent case in point regarding the pointless savagery and waste of human life juxtaposed with a ceremonial approach to the act of war.
There is however a much different dynamic occurring in today's modern warfare. The guys are trained and indoctrinated as never before . . . and they then enter into an arena without a definitive enemy, where it is virtually impossible to differentiate the "good" guys from the "bad" guys. As a result every local inhabitant becomes a suspect and a potential source of danger . . . kill or be killed. We must also consider the technological discrepancies that now exist in our warfare. We are just slaughtering these poor people with their inferior weaponry.
The sum of these factors is a new breed of soldier never quite seen before. The resultant psychological damage inflicted on these young, impressionable kids is a potentially dangerous exercise in permanently changing their psyche. As a result their ability to integrate and function in "normal" society is severely compromised. Hence the reference to coming home to roost.
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nick d
Trad climber
nm
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Coz, my apologies, I had remembered it as Seals but it was actually Delta Force. I didn't smear them all, I'm just aware that there are a lotta messed up dudes coming home. Some of them were probably messed up before they left, but being in fear for your life constantly and regarding everyone around you as a hostile surely does not help.
For those who missed this in the news:
Soldiers kill wives after serving in Afghanistan
By Charles Laurence in New York
A spate of wife-killing involving Afghanistan campaign veterans returning to their Special Forces base at Fort Bragg in North Carolina yesterday prompted a US Army review of its family counselling services.
In a series of murders that began on June 11, three of the four soldiers who allegedly killed their wives at the base had returned from combat units in Afghanistan.
There has also been a steep rise in domestic violence at Fort Bragg, according to a support group for wives at the base, who have reported a large number of calls for help.
In two of the fatal incidents, the men committed suicide after killing their wives, while two soldiers, both non-commissioned officers, have been charged with murder by the civilian authorities.
All four cases involved troubled marriages and sexual jealousy, according to an officer at the base yesterday.
There had been no domestic killings within the Fort Bragg garrison, which includes the Delta Force special forces troops, for more than two years until the men began returning from Afghanistan duty.
Henry Berry, the manager of family programmes at the base, said: "It's mind-boggling. To be absolutely honest, I was completely caught off guard. We're going to look at these cases to prevent similar cases happening in the future."
Major Gary Kolb, spokesman for the Special Forces Command, said yesterday that Col Tad Davis, the Fort Bragg garrison commander who is in charge of day to day life at the sprawling, closely guarded base, had launched a review to see if more could be done to help soldiers make the transition back to domestic life after combat.
"It's very much a tragedy. I wish it were easy to pinpoint one thing and say it will never happen again," said Major Kolb.
The string of killings began on June 11, when Sgt Rigoberto Nieves shot his wife Teresa and then himself at his off-base home in Fayetteville, the nearest city to Fort Bragg. Nieves had been back from Afghanistan for just two days after requesting special leave for personal problems.
On June 29, according to the local sheriff's office, Master Sgt William Wright strangled his wife Jennifer. Two days later, he reported her missing. On July 19 he led detectives to her body, which he had buried in a shallow grave, and was charged with murder.
Wright had been back from the combat zone for a month. Since returning, however, he had moved out of his family home into bachelor quarters on the base.
His mother-in-law, Wilma Watson, at her home in Ohio, said her daughter had been raising the alarm about his behaviour. "Until he came home from Afghanistan, I didn't worry about violence. He was getting these attacks of rage. She was afraid of him," she said.
On July 19, the day that Wright was arrested, Brandon Floyd, a Delta Force sergeant, shot his wife Andrea and then himself in their home in nearby Stedman.
Mrs Floyd's mother, Penny Flitcraft, said that there had been rising tension in the marriage since Sgt Floyd's return from Afghanistan in January, and that jealousy had turned him into a "control freak". "I truly in my heart believe that his training was such that [he believed] if you can't control it, kill it," she said.
The fourth killing came on July 9. Sgt Cedric Griffin has been charged with murder, and is accused of stabbing his estranged wife Marilyn at least 50 times before setting the house on fire.
No clear links have emerged between the spate of murders and the men's recent combat experiences. The chaplain for the Special Operations Unit, Col Jerome Haberak, is, however, adamant that "our Special Forces are not under any more stress than other personnel".
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nick d
Trad climber
nm
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I believe 2002 is when that cluster of crimes occurred.
edit: So the children they orphaned are probably 10 to 15 years old, say. Bet they think it was pretty recent.
edit edit :: What I was pointing out is that was a bunch of famous guys, because they were "Delta Force" , our most secretive, highly trained (again, not to knock any other Ranger, Seal, Recon, whatever. I know all those guys are cut from the same cloth and get the same level of training, albeit with some different specialties) and ironically, most famous black-ops soldiers. Plenty of stuff like this goes on with less famous guys, and there is no denying that for a long time more of our soldiers died from their own hands than from enemy action. That many suicides has got to ring some kind of a bell !
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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It's not meth itself that normally causes the insane behavior, but the sleep depravation that goes with it, the lack of food and other intoxicants that are poured on top. Couple days into a meth bender and you got a monster.
JL
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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During the Second World War, the U.S. Army discharged 1,225,300 troops as permanently disabled due to non-battle injuries, tropical diseases, or psychiatric disorders incurred in combat zones.
Why wasn't there post war murder in the streets?
How is modern warfare any more stressful than the mass mayhem of the Greek or Roman phalanx, the rivers of blood at Bull Run, the years! of trench terror of WWI?
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Chester
Mountain climber
NY, New York
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Police are scouring a national park in Washington state for an Iraq war veteran wanted in connection with the killing of a ranger.
Mount Rainier National Park was been closed since Margaret Anderson, 34, was shot dead while trying to stop a vehicle on Sunday morning.
The suspected gunman, Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, has also been linked to an earlier shooting at a New Year's party.
The US Marine is reported to have post-traumatic stress disorder.
Police said they had recovered his vehicle, which had weapons, body armour and survivalist gear inside.
The gunman sped past a park checkpoint that was monitoring if vehicles had tyre chains, sometimes required in snowy conditions.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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TGT,
I think the WWII and Korean vets felt they were doing something more meaningful.
I also think people were just that much more stoic back then.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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(The following doesn't necessarily apply to what happened at Mount Rainier.)
During and after World War II, the US army put much effort into analyzing and studying the war, using all the modern statistical methods they had. One (uncomfortable) conclusion they reached was that overall, the German was man for man the most effective army - although the Finns may have been close. A main reason was better trained and experienced German junior officers.
Another surprising conclusion was that the majority of US infantrymen, although they fired their rifles in combat, did not aim at the enemy. Well over half. They had cultural, moral, and religious upbringing that the army couldn't overcome in basic training. So, using the techniques of industrial mass production, the army sought to overcome that. They brought in changes in training over the next few decades, which particularly in Vietnam bore fruit. Dehumanizing the enemy was a part of it. (It was easiest in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, to characterize the enemy as "gooks" - racism. Germans couldn't be so easily dehumanized, given that so many Americans had German connections.) The difficulty being that once they'd broken down such inhibitions, they were difficult to restore once a recruit had finished serving - in effect, the soldiers were reset. Not that they put a lot of resources into it - soldiers throughout history are often abandoned by the countries they've served.
Military historians suggest that soldiers in World War I and II particularly saw as much combat in a week as earlier soldiers saw in a month or a year, or more. Industrial warfare, and of course most earlier wars were relatively brief, or if longer, had only relatively short periods of active combat. Societies then were perhaps a bit more inured to violence and early deaths, but also until World War I, there probably wasn't a single war anywhere in the world where more soldiers were killed in combat than by disease.
A result was that with Vietnam and after, more troops have more of the kind of experiences that scar them for life, leading for many to alcohol and drugs, to some to psychoses and violence, and to most to withdrawal - they just don't talk about it, except with buddies who shared the experience. Add in social and cultural change, and it's a toxic mess. (We have all this in Canada, too, faithfully copying our neighbours.)
The Canada, British and US armies at least learned from World War I that all men have limits in terms of what they can tolerate, and it's not cowardice to yield to them. Leading to regular rotations in and out of combat, some limit to the amount of combat overall, and field recognition of shell shocked ("PTSD") and otherwise incapacitated soldiers. Most other armies, particularly the Soviet and Japanese, continued to treat "cowardice" and "desertion" with savagery, usually shooting such men. In the case of the Soviets, amounting to hundreds of thousands if not millions shot.
Modern armies have learnt well how to maximize results from their men and materiel, in part by dehumanization of trainess. Now if only they put equal resources into restoring them to sanity afterward.
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