Sorry- I am a little addled this morning. There are three trials nearing the endgame that all have implications for National Security to one degree or another- two of them are mirror images of one another: Major Hassan, who went over to the other side and killed his fellow unarmed soldiers, and Staff Sergeant Bales who went mad and began to kill civilians on his fourth combat deployment.
Both are tragic, in their way, since both could have been stopped, if anyone had the courage to buck the PC crowd who has characterized Major Hassan as a disgruntled worker, rather than an enemy combatant who conducted an act of terror. Sergeant Bales had seen too much, and his chain of command should have picked up on the fact that he was about to snap and got him some help.
Now they are both going to be convicted. Major Hassan wants to die as a jihadi. SSG Bales apparently wants to live, though he will never see the outside of the correctional barracks at Fort Leavenworth.
More curious is the PFC Bradley thing. There is a significant number of people who believe he was a whistle-blower or some nonsense. He got precisely what he deserves: his crime was the disclosure of a breathtaking number of classified cables to those at WikiLeaks to whom he knew were not entitled to the information.
The wrinkle on that this morning is the curious attachment photo he sent to his First Sergeant on his deployment to Iraq. He was wearing a blonde wig and make-up, and this morning, in a statement to the press, declared he was transgendered and wished to commence hormone therapy and be addressed with a feminine pronoun and the name “Chelsea.”
I am in favor of people being the gender they want to be, but I am opposed to paying for it from taxpayer accounts. I don’t know how his sentence to the Correctional Barracks at Fort Leavenworth is going to sort out with all that. I imagine it is just another challenge for today’s action military.
But I definitely think that if the First Sergeant had not thought that the then-Corporal Manning was trying the Klinger Strategy as the Jamie Farr’s character in M*A*S*H did, he might have saved us all a lot of trouble.
Ditto with the Major and the Staff Sergeant.
I think all three cases represent a certain delusional attitude on the part of some important institutions. The Justice Department for the bizarre assertion that Major Hassan’s murders are a case of “Workplace Violence.” That betrays a seriously flawed world view about Islam, and what the Major himself has been saying. I don’t expect this Administration to wake up to that anytime soon. Their track record on being seriously wrong about the nature of our enemies is too well established.
Staff Sergeant Bales is a classic case of combat fatigue that should have been identified before he snapped, and saved a good soldier and a lot of innocent people. The Army is in denial about what we have done to so many young people in multiple deployments in truly awful conditions.
And as to Chelsea- well, he did tell his chain of command. I don’t think that qualifies to mitigate the damage he did, but this is a totally separate issue. He should have been eased out as unsuitable for service. Oh well. Goes to show, I think, that even the best institutions can be run right into the dirt.
I have a copy of the picture that Chelsea sent his/her First Shirt, but I am not going to use it. You can find it easy enough elsewhere. Instead, I will close this with one from a gentler and less crazy time:
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303