On March 11, 16 villagers including 9 children, were murdered by an American staff sergeant in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province in rural, southern Afghanistan. The early reports told a horrifying story. The sergeant was part of a village stabilization operation. The team was trying to develop relationships with village leaders and help organize local policeman to search out Taliban leaders. It has been reported that the soldier is 38 years old with 11 years of service. He is married with two children and had been on three tours of duty in Iraq. The sergeant left his base, walked more than a mile, forced his way into three separate homes and went on a killing spree. He subsequently burned some of the bodies. A patrol had been dispatched to find him when he was reported missing, and apprehended him after the killings on his way back to the base. He hasn’t provided any explanations for his actions.

The massacre provoked official reaction. President Hamid Karzai called the act inhuman, intentional and demanded justice. President Obama and Secretary of Defense Panetta extended their condolences and promised a thorough investigation. President Obama, further, characterized the actions as tragic and shocking. The NATO spokesperson expressed his deep sadness.

It is feared that the massacre will set off riots and others forms of violence. Common reactions outside of Afghanistan are revulsion and puzzlement. How could such an atrocity happen?

According to Jonathan Shay, M. D., Ph.D., this type of outrageous killing by an isolated individual has been going on for thousands of years. Dr. Shay explored the subject in Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. He combines an examination of Homer’s Iliad with narratives and analysis drawn from his experiences as a psychiatrist treating veterans with chronic post- traumatic stress syndrome.

Shay’s chapter 5, “Berserk,” may help explain the current atrocities in Afghanistan committed by the staff sergeant,

Restraint is always in part the cognitive attention to multiple possibilities in a situation; when all restraint is lost, the cognitive universe is simplified to a single focus. The berserker is figuratively — sometimes literally — blind to everything but his destructive aim. He cannot see the distinction between civilian and combatant or even the distinction between comrade and enemy. One of our veterans was tied up by his own men and taken to the rear while berserk. He has no clear memory but suspects that he had become a serious threat to them.

Shay assembled a list of characteristics of the berserk state that are common to Vietnam combat veteran narratives and Homer’s Iliad. The list is as disturbing as it is long:

… beastlike; godlike; socially disconnected; crazy, mad, insane; enraged; cruel, without restraint or discrimination; insatiable; devoid of fear; inattentive to own safety; distractible; indiscriminate; reckless, feeling invulnerable; exalted, intoxicated, frenzied; cold, indifferent; insensible to pain; and suspicious of friends.

To illustrate the characteristics, Shay juxtaposes Vietnam veteran narratives with specific passages drawn from Homer.

Shay prefers to use the term berserk rather than aristeía which is frequently used by commentators on Homer. According to Shay, the origins of berserk is a Norse word which has been used to describe warriors who are seen as being frenzied, sometimes going into battle without clothes or armor and seemed to be possessed by god, but also display beast-like behaviors and fury. Some of these same characteristics are found in the Iliad in which the line is blurred between heroic behaviors and blood thirsty abuses. Was Achilles a prototype of a hero or a type of berserker?

There are, though, differences between the berserking actions of Homer’s warriors and the murderous rages of some Vietnam War soldiers. Many of the atrocities occurred after superiors urged solders to “not be sad but to get even.” This is not a characteristic of Homeric warriors. In the Iliad, berserk behavior is of shorter durations. Triggering events in the Iliad are usually much closer to the berserking behaviors. Both Homeric heroes and Vietnam soldiers share a feeling of the betrayal of “what’s right” as a conditioning element, especially as it relates to the passing of a very close brother in arms. Yet, grief alone is not a sufficient trigger. The absence of restraints seems to be an elemental trait.

Shay reflects:

On the basis of my work with Vietnam veterans, I conclude that the berserk state is ruinous, leading to the soldier’s maiming or death in battle — which is the most frequent outcome — and to life-long psychological and physiological injury if he survives. I believe that once a person has entered the berserk state, he or she is changed forever … If a soldier survives a berserk state, it imparts emotional deadness and vulnerability to explosive rage to his psychology and a permanent hyperarousal to his physiology — hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans.

In American military culture, the suppression of grief coupled with using revenge as motivation provoke berserk behavior such as that we have observed in Afghanistan, Shay strongly suggests. The prosecution of the staff sergeant who killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan will be a challenge, as will be managing the political repercussions of his monstrous actions. Is he a berserker? If so, how should the military justice system deal with him? How does his actions affect American policy in Afghanistan?

A singular atrocity shouldn’t influence national and international policies, but it appears this may be happening. President Karzai is asking for NATO forces to leave the villages and return to its bases, even though small village stabilization teams have been proven to be effective in numerous conflicts. Karzai also is suggesting that NATO forces might be exiting earlier than planned. It isn’t clear what the Afghan and NATO strategic objectives are. What is clear is that the United States’ all volunteer military has been asked to serve in combat for a decade or more, with telling consequences. Multiple deployments are taking their toll on military personnel. It is tearing them apart, and the physical, social and psychological toll on them, their families and communities is enormous. To date, PTSD has been a huge problem, but berserking has been rare and isolated. If berserking incidents increase should we blame the perpetrators, the military, or ourselves?

I am not completely satisfied with my last post. I’m afraid I wasn’t clear enough. I wanted to express my appreciation of Obama’s speech on Afghanistan, while highlighting what I see to be the limitations of his foreign policy. I wanted to show how, judged realistically, Obama’s speech on the Afghanistan drawdown was a significant advance, but also wanted to show why I think he did not go far enough. It’s about principles, not numbers.

Obama presented a vision of change in the direction of American foreign policy, although he didn’t fundamentally question the premise of America as a superpower with global responsibilities. I appreciate and support the vision, but question the premise. I also worry about the identification of defense of country and national security with military capability and response. But, I don’t expect the President of the United States to publicly challenge this identification. He is commander-in-chief and a politician who must ultimately make sense to the majority of the American people, while I can happily call myself a pragmatic pacifist, with all the contradictions that involves.  The speech struck me as being successful because Obama linked short terms goals with long term ends, i.e. withdrawing from an unpopular war while diminishing the power of Al Qaeda and giving Afghans a decent chance at determining their own just future, with changing the direction of American foreign policy.

I want a change of direction more radical than the President, but I still can’t be against all wars. Although I realize that non-violent action often gets things done more effectively and decisively than violent action, I believe that sometimes violence, including military force, is necessary. I understand, even support, the military action in Libya, but I also realize that the use of force in such situations is an indication of weakness. The most effective way to remove dictators with a democratic result is through non-violent action. But sometimes this is not possible, and thus, although democracy in Tunisia and Egypt is far from assured, it is much less likely in Syria, Libya and Yemen, not only because of the violence of the despots, but also because of the violent nature of the resistance. Political means have a way of defining their ends.

I find myself in an odd situation, the military interventions during my life time that have been most controversial from the beginning, in the former Yugoslavia and now in Libya, have been the ones I have favored. The ones that have been at least initially most popular, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf War and Vietnam, have been the ones I have found most problematic. I am more comfortable with international intervention when human rights and life are endangered, than calculated unilateral ideologically driven action, fighting against abstractions, be it international communism or the global jihad.

The other posts this week reflect on the question of war and peace as well. Corey is more or less of my generation. When he went to Vietnam, I went to college and made a decision to avoid military involvement at all costs. I tried to be a pacifist, but couldn’t persuade myself. But because I strongly objected to that war, I refused involvement. I was ready to go to Canada, but in the end, because of the accident of the draft lottery, it didn’t come to that. Many years later, I read, along with Michael, the stories about how poorly Vietnam vets were received upon their return, but I don’t remember anyone I knew responding to veterans in that way or ever seeing evidence of that sort of thing. I spent a lot of time with Vietnam vets in the summer of 1976 and 1977. I taught a course at the University of Chicago to future ROTC instructors, all Army captains and majors. We got along and compared my anti-war experience with their military experience. There were no reports of civilian antagonism to them. Perhaps they didn’t tell me, but I think just as likely is that the rumors of abuse were just that, rumors (as Gary Alan Fine knows is often the case).

To be sure, there was no celebratory homecoming. Yet, there also was no victory or even a definitive ending of the war to commemorate. Haltingly, Americans worked to come to terms with the experience of the war, as Corey recounts. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Moving Wall, Chicago’s Welcoming Home Parade, and much more, were commemorative acts that worked to put an end to the war and to remember it in a variety of different ways, from a variety of different viewpoints. I am rather convinced that this is the way it will be with military action in our times. There will be those who want to romantically celebrate heroes, but such romance will be elusive in wars that don’t have clear beginning and endings, or clear meanings. There will be political romantics, as Vince Carducci’s demonstrates in his review of Hitch 22, but I am convinced that they are becoming more marginal on the political scene. I think this is a good thing. Christopher Hitchens has been an entertaining clown when it comes to his support in Iraq, while the politics of such figures as Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger were significantly more serious, and disastrous.

As is his custom, Gary Alan Fine is again provocative in his latest post. He presents a number of important observations. Rumor and atrocity feed war. The truthfulness of atrocity is often unknown and unknowable. In the specific case of the alleged rape of Iman Al-Obeidi , the way she claimed to be raped and tortured leads Fine to wonder. Telling the difference between claims of atrocity and atrocity in the time of war is difficult. And sharply in his conclusion: “if you give generals authority to fight, they find wars that have no need to be fought.” The replies to his post confirm its major theoretical point. There is a fog of war when it comes to atrocities, and this can be, and often is, manipulated.

But I would amend his conclusion. My amendment: “give generals the authority to fight wars, and they will fight.” The need or absence of need for war is a political question, to be decided through political leadership and in political debate. Obama has attempted to lead in his speech, and we have the responsibility to critically respond and to critically appraise truth claims.