Vulnerable soldiers, eroded judgment
Grief of losing buddies can overwhelm troops, experts say
By Kelly Kennedy
Times staff writer
Had it been a lone soldier accused of raping and murdering an innocent local woman, the mind might more easily be able to accept the shock: a criminally deranged individual who acted on opportunity.
But that up to four soldiers are suspected of taking part in the allegedly premeditated attack March 12 in a small farming town outside Baghdad — and that no one acted to stop it — amplifies the horror of such an act.
To those who study the psychology of troops in the war zone, and those who have been there, such incidents are rare but not beyond explanation: Combat stress, long separations from loved ones and the deaths of comrades can erode moral judgment, they say.
Documents filed in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Kentucky on June 30 charge former Pfc. Steven D. Green, 21, with the rape and murder of an Iraqi woman, as well as the murder of three members of her family — including a 5-year-old girl. He had been released from the Army because of an unspecified “personality disorder” before he was identified as a suspect in the attack.
As many as four other soldiers from the same platoon in 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, may have participated — three in the Iraqis’ house and one left behind at the checkpoint — according to the documents. Those documents portray Green as the leader in the alleged crimes. The Army has not released the names and ranks of the other soldiers.
Robert Jay Lifton, an editor of the book “Crimes of War: Iraq,” which came out in March, said he would not be surprised if it turns out that the private was indeed able to lead others in the attack. After serving as an Air Force psychiatrist in the 1950s, Lifton was a founder of the Wellfleet Psychohistory Group in the 1960s, which looked at psychological motivations for war, terrorism and genocide. He is a visiting professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
“It isn’t just [Green] influencing them alone,” Lifton said. “It’s them being vulnerable to that kind of behavior. Almost all atrocities reflect some kind of group behavior.
“This example of rape and murder is extreme, but surely it was affected by the overall psychological climate for American soldiers in Iraq,” he said. “In terms of killing civilians, [troops] suffer the angry grief of losing buddies. That angry grief contributes to killing women or old people or even children of the enemy.”
In fact, 17 soldiers in 1/502 have been killed since the unit deployed in November.
Army officials say they were unaware for more than three months that soldiers possibly carried out the rape and slayings until details emerged during a combat-stress briefing.
Counselors conducted that briefing after three soldiers from the unit were slain in mid-June, including two who were kidnapped from a traffic control point in Yusufiyah and later found mutilated and booby-trapped. During the briefing, two soldiers came forward to talk about the incident near Baghdad, according to the charging documents.
Other allegations
The recent rape and murder charges follow news of at least four other investigations in which service members have been accused of unlawfully attacking civilians — including the alleged attack in Hadithah, Iraq, on Nov. 4, where a group of U.S. Marines may have killed as many as 24 Iraqi civilians after a roadside bomb killed a lance corporal.
“Unfortunately, it’s going to happen if people are at war,” former 502nd soldier Christopher McEnroe said. “They put us in superhuman situations and still expect us to act normal.”
McEnroe, who served with the 502nd during the unit’s first tour in 2003, said the Mahmoudiya case left him feeling “revolted — especially that it was guys in my unit.” But he could see how it could happen. McEnroe attends nursing school in Columbus, Ohio, after leaving the Army as a sergeant.
His tour in Iraq “was a little hairy here and there,” McEnroe said. “People would have to calm each other down.”
One of his worst days came when Spc. Brandon J. Rowe, 20, died in Ayyub on March 31, 2003.
“He was my soldier at the time,” McEnroe said. “We had been at a firefight alongside the river the day he was killed.
“We took a prisoner right after Brandon was killed, and you just had to remember they’re soldiers too,” he said. “It seems like there would always be one person to say, ‘Hey! Knock it off,’ when things started going the wrong way.”
McEnroe also talked about the value of having a “professional Army” — a close-knit group of soldiers who work well together.
That meant getting rid of the guys who weren’t team players before they deployed. He said 1st Sgt. Dennis Largent sat all the sergeants down and asked who didn’t fit in. And then they out-processed three or four guys, McEnroe said.
For instance, while in Iraq, he said he heard soldiers from the 101st grouse about a man named Sgt. Hasan Akbar. The soldiers said Akbar should never have been allowed to deploy, McEnroe said. “That was way before the grenade.”
Akbar is on death row for throwing a grenade into a tent and killing two officers and wounding 14 soldiers.
‘Slipped through the cracks’
Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Washington-based Lexington Institute, told The Associated Press it is common to out-process soldiers who can’t maintain military discipline.
“Despite all the stories about the military having trouble recruiting, it is considered anathema to retain somebody like that,” Thompson told the AP. “It isn’t Army policy to retain somebody who isn’t dependable. I’m certain this person slipped through the cracks. ... The whole point of boot camp is to find people who can’t hold up under stress and get them out before they get in the field.”
When he was in Iraq, McEnroe said, the leadership used out-of-control situations for briefings.
“You have to sit them down and say, ‘This is happening, guys,’” he said. “‘If you lose control, this is what can happen.’ But it’s hard to get time to talk to everyone because they’re always busy.”
Lifton, who interviewed soldiers involved in the My Lai massacre of at least 350 villagers during the Vietnam War, as well as Vietnam vets struggling with the psychological aftermath of war, said talking isn’t always enough.
The soldiers, he said, are surrounded by death; they are asked to kill as part of their jobs; and they don’t know whether they’re helping someone who killed a friend the week before.
“One would like to think we would do the right thing,” Lifton said. “But one doesn’t know. You become socialized to it. It becomes your environment.”
Lifton said heroism comes from restraint, rather than from strong moral values, and that the only My Lai veteran who refused to fire did not abstain because of the value system he had held since childhood.
“He told me he drew strength from his commitment and idealism of the military,” Lifton said. “He saw his standards for the military being violated and refused to fire.”
As for Green, he was arrested June 30 in Marion, N.C., at a relative’s home by FBI agents. He’s being held in Louisville, Ky., where he will be tried. Green pleaded not guilty to the charges July 6, and is scheduled for arraignment Aug. 8.
If convicted, he faces the death penalty for the four counts of murder, as well as life in prison for aggravated sexual assault. He faces civilian prosecution under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows crimes committed in foreign countries by members of the military to be prosecuted as if they had been committed within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., according to U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky David Huber.
The four other soldiers who may have been involved in the attack remain in Iraq.