Robert Bales – Engaging Peace

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

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. 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.