Month: July 2012

Rampages, drones, and moral insanity (Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dean Hammer, Psy.D.

Drones ready for launch. Image in public domain

The escalation of drone warfare by the Obama administration is 
not being scrutinized by the same moral compass as the rampage of Robert Bales.

Conservative estimations 
indicate that there have been minimally three to four hundred innocent 
civilians killed by drone assassinations.

The public is dealt the expected 
rationalizations. We are told that these military interventions are 
sanctioned as “acceptable risks” in the war against terror. The mounting 
civilian deaths are written off as “collateral damage” and “incidental 
killing.” Unlike Bales, who was acting with severe cognitive deficits, Obama appears to be an intelligent person with intact cognitive capacities.

So how do we understand the errant 
leadership of those justifying the drone killing fields?

 In 1835, physician James Cowles Prichard coined the term “moral 
insanity” to denote abnormal emotions and behavior in the apparent absence 
of intellectual impairments. He highlighted that this type of madness 
entailed morbid perversion of feelings, habits, and moral behavior.

The 
construct of moral insanity helps us to understand a dimension of the 
impaired leadership of our government.

 Faithful peace activists continue to challenge the 
drone assassinations (e.g., the ongoing resistance campaign at Hancock Air 
Base in Syracuse, NY). However, the steamrolling of our government’s war machine threatens to overshadow the protesters’ voice of sanity.

As electoral fever mounts, the electorate 
has a critical responsibility to raise questions regarding the immorality of drone warfare. Amidst the cacophony (the “droning,” if you will) of the debates between Obama and Romney, we need to put them to the test to see if either recognizes that drone warfare is unacceptable and insane behavior.

The Fourth Geneva Convention (adopted by the United Nations in 1949) grew out of the bloody wars of the 20th century. This body of international law mandates the protection of civilian populations in war zones. These codes of ethics are a critical safeguard against falling into the clutches of a collective form of moral insanity.

Reclaiming an ethical plumb line that includes the protection of innocent civilians is essential to any sense of true democracy and sanity.

Dean Hammer practices and teaches clinical psychology in Vermont and New Hampshire. He is a member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. 
Contact information: dhammer2@tds.net

Rampages, drones, and moral insanity (Part 1)

Posted on by kathiemm

by guest author Dean Hammer, Psy.D.

The war in Afghanistan has borne a series of gruesome events including: 
marines urinating on dead civilian victims, U.S. soldiers bringing home victims’ fingers and other body parts as souvenirs, and most recently the 
rampage by Robert Bales.

Robert Bales
Robert Bales. Image in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons.

The juxtaposition of these events with the scourge 
of drone warfare raises critical questions regarding the disintegration 
of the moral fabric of our country.

The etiology of the gruesome actions of the marines and other soldiers in the Afghanistan war is a complex question. However, the deleterious effects 
of these types of actions on the collective psyche and on the reputation of the U.S. are clearly very severe.

The profile of Robert Bales indicates that he suffers from a traumatic brain injury and was deployed for one too many 
tours of duty. Adding probable alcohol intoxication, he was an accident waiting to happen.

There is also strong evidence that he did not act alone and that the Pentagon has covered up the complicity of his accomplices.

The 
immorality of these events seems quite evident. Even Leon Panetta, U.S. Secretary of Defense, has declared the Bales rampage “morally deplorable.”

The repulsive behavior by the U.S. soldiers claiming dead victims’ body parts and urinating on dead victims is mind-boggling and heart-wrenching. Wikipedia’s discussion regarding necrophilia suggests that this type of pathological behavior is related to the impulse to “seek self-esteem by expressing power over a homicide victim.”

This disorder is also likened to thanatophilia, which can be defined as “an obsessive fascination with 
death and corpses.” Perhaps this is one of the resultant side effects of 
fighting a war in general.

Dean Hammer practices and teaches clinical psychology in Vermont and New Hampshire. He is a member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He may be contacted at dhammer2@tds.net.

The pain of being brutally honest with myself (A Marine remembers, Part 8)

Posted on by kathiemm

[A continuing series by guest author Ross Caputi]

Ross Caputi in Iraq
Ross Caputi in Iraq

The more I thought about it, the more I felt like there was something about these experiences that the world needed to know.

Everyday at the barracks it was staring me in the face, and every night it replayed itself in my head. Bradley and the old man he shot, Brendan’s mother, Fallujah, the innocent Iraqis who never wanted any of this, all the drinking and drugs, and everyone who told us that we were heroes–all of their individual stories put together seemed to tell a much larger story.

I tried writing, but at first everything that I wrote didn’t seem to do justice to what actually happened. Like that feeling in my gut, my story could not be put into words. I could not seem to put my finger on the significance of it all.

After many years of writing and editing and starting over, I began to realize that the elusive feeling was the significance of my story. Over time I dug deeper into my own psyche, and over time I was able to handle the pain of being brutally honest with myself.

That period was the worst and the most necessary in my life. That tormenting, indescribable feeling set me down a path that led to where I am today. It was that feeling compounded with everything that had happened and everything that I was seeing daily. It all seemed so incredible and tragic.

I could not make sense of it, but I wanted to. So I set out looking for answers. The answers I found were far more troubling than that feeling ever was.

To understand the change that I experienced, you have to understand the world that I was a part of–the Marine Corps and how Marines see themselves. You  also have to recognize my ordeal in Fallujah, and in the ghetto where I bought drugs, and on a long and difficult journey through my tormented mind as I tried to understand how it all happened.

Ross Caputi, former Marine, founder of the Justice for Fallujah Project, and former president of the Boston University Anti-War Coalition

Swept up in the violent hysteria (A Marine remembers, Part 7)

Posted on by kathiemm

[A continuing series by guest author Ross Caputi]

I spent many nights on post or lying awake in bed, wrestling with my memories and trying to understand the links among them.

Bombing Fallujah
Second siege of Fallujah. Image in public domain

I remembered that it was because my command made me an unofficial translator that I spent more time in the villages and had more contact with Iraqis than most others. I heard their grievances and saw that we were not helping them.

I remembered that it was because my command hated me that they made me the captain’s radio operator for Fallujah, and because of that I was more isolated than most from the bloody, gory combat. I was able to witness what was happening with a clearer head than all the others who got swept up in the violent hysteria of those few weeks.

And because my command hated me and made me stand post at the barracks more than anyone else, I was there to witness the effect that Iraq had on all of us. I saw it every night when I was on duty.

Once everyone was good and drunk or stoned, the stories started to pour out of them. I listened as they told me about when they had pulled the trigger and wished they hadn’t, or had watched friends bleed to death in the street and weren’t able to go help them because they were pinned down by enemy fire.

I remembered the family man that we had arrested in the villages outside of Fallujah who was not presumed innocent until proven guilty, and who would not get a jury of his peers.

I remembered the family photos that clung to the bullet-riddled walls of the homes in Fallujah.

Ross Caputi, former Marine, founder of the Justice for Fallujah Project, and former president of the Boston University Anti-War Coalition