Afghan massacre sparks questions about war

He is accused of the kind of crime that makes people shiver, the killing of families in their own homes under cover of night, the butchery of defenseless children. Under normal circumstances, Americans would dismiss such an act as worthy of only one response: swift and merciless punishment.

Not so in the case of Robert Bales -- at least, not for some Americans.

So far, many seem willing to believe that a 10-year U.S. military veteran, worn down by four tours of combat and perhaps suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, simply snapped. That somehow, somewhere, there must be, if not an excuse, at least an explanation.

Exactly what set off the Army sergeant accused of massacring 16 civilians in Afghanistan's Kandahar province is far from clear.

But already, organizations and individuals with differing agendas have portrayed Bales as the personification of something that is profoundly broken, and have seized on his case to question the war itself or to argue that the American government is asking too much of its warriors.

On the website of Iraq Veterans Against the War, organizer Aaron Hughes declared that Afghan war veterans "believe that this incident is not a case of one 'bad apple' but the effect of a continued U.S. military policy of drone strikes, night raids, and helicopter attacks where Afghan civilians pay the price."

Those veterans, he wrote, "hope that the Kandahar massacre will be a turning point" in the war.

Bales' lawyer, John Henry Browne of Seattle, was flying Sunday to Kansas and preparing for their face-to-face meeting on Monday. Bales is being held in an isolated cell at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Formal charges are expected to be filed within a week.

Authorities said the 38-year-old married father of two from Washington state stalked through two villages on March 11, gunned down civilians and attempted to burn some of the bodies. The dead included nine children.

In Lake Tapps, Wash., neighbors knew Bales as a patriot, a friendly guy who loved his wife and kids.

"I kind of sympathize for him, being gone, being sent over there four times," said Beau Britt, who lives across the street. "I can understand he's probably quite wracked mentally, so I just hope that things are justified in court. I hope it goes OK."

Talk like that infuriates Fred Wellman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel from Fredericksburg, Va., who did three tours in Iraq. He said comments like those of Bales' neighbors and his attorney simply feed into the notion of "the broken veteran."

Thomas L. Amerson, a retired Navy captain from Ledyard, Conn., argued that, too often, Americans absolve the leaders who start the wars and "invest the full responsibility in the combatants themselves and the families that support them."