This does not touch on the policy question but, rather, to the vexing question of "what led him to do it?"

I have spoken to a psychiatrist friend of mine whose specialty is psycho-pharmocology to see if he could shed some light on Bales. He has had no directly relevant military experience; he has, though. been following the Bales affair. Here is what he had to say in schematic form.

1. Bales did not 'snap' i.e. erupt into violence suddenly. (Forget the technical term for that). He probably was suffering from post-concussive syndrome due to an earlier head injury in Iraq - which likely was not fully/correctly treated. That condition can be progressive when the person is physically active and is submitted to further stress.

2. Latter manifests itself in depression, confusion and impetuosity.

3. It could have been aggravated by an anti-malarial medication, taken by all soldiers in Afghanistan, which added an element of paranoia. That could explain the violence targeted at the Afghans.

4. It could have been marginally aggravted by the alcohol he consumed, depending on what he drank and how much.

5. The apparent premeditated planning of the killing, its methodical execution, its duration, the burning etc conform to this diagnosis. By contrast, someone who 'snaps' would have engaged in relatively brief, spasmotic violent acts.

I do not know all of the facts of this case and will refrain from any comments on any potential condemnations until those facts become clear. Then, it is likely, that some would need condemnation and reprimand. A question is how many of those who were jointly or separately culpable along the chain will actually be condemned and reprimanded.

But that is not for me to judge. I am neither judge, jury or hangman -- altough many think they can be all three with limited knowledge of the events.

When something like this happens, it should be seen as a sign that there are likely even bigger problems lurking. Accountability is the key to solving or at least mitigating those problems.

One thing I have learned from my many years working with the military is that they are often put under great stress on a daily occasion. They spend more time away from their families than any other group I know of. Many of the people I know in the military have been on four and more tours. Some have seen their family lives fall apart. Others have been maimed and injured in physical and psychological ways – some severely.

The OPTEMPO of this war, the war in Iraq and some of our other conflicts of choice has been at high speed, intense, and volatile for well over a decade.

The civilian leadership needs to wake up to the fact that this is putting immense stress on our military. There are some in the military who are resilient, strong, and real survivors no matter what. I count old friends who were war prisoners for years as some of those.

Others are not so strong or they have seen and felt things that would break even the most resilient of us.

This is not to excuse the completely reprehensible behavior of some of our (or their people) people in the wars.

Those civilians in leadership who have not seen the worst of it should at least think about it. This is not to weaken resolve in any truly needed conflict with the vital national security interests of the country at risk, but to see what is happening on the ground and in the barracks to some of our best and brightest.

I feel for the parents, brothers, sisters, friends and others who lost loved ones in the recent event. The shock and pain of this will be with them for the rest of their lives. It does not matter how much they may try to bury their pain in revenge and whatever else. It will be there.

Some of the people in Afghanistan who lost their loved ones and friends will be our ticking time bombs for the future. We need to get real about that.

The Afghan war will not be over when the troops leave. The threats will remain. The anger will remain. The world is a small place.

Indeed, this war seems to be not going well, and not just because of the recent events of horrific behavior on the part of the dishonorable.

Afghanistan was found to be an impossible place by the British, the Russians and even Alexander the Great. Ancient empires in the region fell ignominiously at the violent mountain passes and treacherous valleys of tribal Afghanistan.

Many have tried valiantly and have sacrificed much. There have been some small to moderate victories along the way. Some Afghans have been helped with health clinics, schooling, better security and more.

However, when galvanizing events like this happen one could expect a large part of the population of an occupied country to turn on the occupiers. One only has to think of Mi Lai or the Amritsar Massacre to see historical examples of such galvanization. Even with all of the good deeds, hard work and sacrifice, one or two or three bad apples and horrific events can change the course of a war and an occupation.

Think of the following. How many of you would accept an occupying force in the US? How would you react of someone from that occupying force killed children and women en masse in one of our small towns in the Midwest?

People are people. Add in poverty, poor education, many weapons, a tribal code of revenge, a long, hard war with lots of nightmarish times for all involved, and this could go even much worse.

I am glad that I am not the one to decide what the next steps should be. The Afghan war has become a Gordian Knot surrounded by cobras wrapped in a thick fog with high winds swirling about it at, possibly, the edge of a crevice so deep that even the best of us could get us out of what might happen.

I hope and pray that these problems do not make their way to our streets and our villages. It is a small world and it only takes a few people to cause a lot of trouble. There could be lots of ticking emotional time bombs out there.

Of course, I am speaking on my own. It is great to be in a country where I can do this. One day even the Afghanis may have this as well as a developed and prosperous place, but only they can make this happen.

Two additional thoughts. Americans find it exceedingly difficult to admit failure. For to do so not only is to call into question our vaunted prowess, it also threatens our self-image as Destiny's child. So the next exercise in mental gymnastics will be to proclaim Afghanistan an actual success since we crushed al-Qaeda and ensured that the Taliban could not return to the status quo ante circa 2001. Coming soon to a think tank near you.

Second, in the meantime we will put everyone into motion so as to distract from the reality of what's happening. Motion being substituted for action. Don't just sit there thinking, do something! Mr. Panettam your turn! So he gets on a plane to fly halfway around the world to meet with Mr. Karzai, hear his complaints, respond that we should work on them together - and then gets back on the plane for the 14 hour return trip. Pro-active.

In the aftermath of the gross crime committed against Afghan villagers by a US soldier, the brass hats and policy wonks in and out of government persist in thinking that we can do whatever we want in Afghanistan and that the Afghans have no ability to act against us. This is the kind of hubristic nonsense that led to our downfall in Iraq.

Presiedent Karzai ("our" guy) has now said he wants our troops out of their rural and populated areas and basically confined to cantonments. The Taliban have broken off negotiations with us. They will be back. They want us gone and the easiest way to get rid of us is to make a deal with us.

In the Pentagon the military functionaries and politically appointed civilians will refuse to believe that the "wogs" can order us out of their country but they can and did so in Iraq.

The media in the US are obsessed with basketball games and the GOP primary circus. They are not paying attention to this. Why? Simple. They do not understand anything that that they did not learn in journalism school.

The Republicans are lucky. If one of them wins there won't be much of an Afghan Problem by Inauguration Day.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304692804577283134169463996.html

I certainly concur with Colonel Lang. I would add that the act under discussion also may be the result of the pressure on the soldier in question -- and probably on all his colleagues in Afghanistan -- from fully knowing that presidents Bush and Obama had no intention of winning the war he and they were sent to fight in Afghanistan. They were and are, in essence, targets for our enemies and their civilian supporters. The best hope of our Marines and soldiers is to live through another useless exercise of war as social work in Afghanistan.

No man or woman wants to be the last soldier to die in any war, but the real question is why any man or women would serve in the U.S. military if they know that their commander-in-chief and his senior civilian and uniformed military advisers have no intention of winning any of the many wars they start. If Bush, Obama, Gates, Petraeus, McChrystal, Panetta, the COIN experts, the Brookings boys, et. al. really believe their mantra that "there are no military solutions" to the wars we fight, why do we got to war? To loose, as we have in nearly every conflict since Korea?

This approach to war is substantively wrong (there is always a military solution), ahistorical, dangerous for national security, massively and wastefully expensive, and contemptible in its disregard for the lives of our service people. As we approach our unnecessary war with Iran there must be a good number of soldiers and Marines worried that it will be yet another war which their president and four-star generals choose to begin and then lose at the cost of many of their lives.

I judge this crime to be the "work" of a man or men (who knows at this point?) who lost his way under the pressure of; too much combat stress, too much family separation, and physical trauma in "line of duty." Is that justification? No, but it probably adds up to an explanation. Where were his leaders? Where were his platoon leader, company commander, first sergeant, etc. up the chain of command? Wherever they were, they obviously failed to lead.

The Afghans will continue to howl for his blood. It is in their nature and their culture to do that. In Kandahar the mob is literally howling for the blood of the "crusaders," and "infidels." They are burning models of the cross. Do the political science "types" think these actions are sublimations of deeper feelings of nationalism and alienation from a stratified economy? We should not be deceived. We have reached a point in Afghanistan at which whatever chance there was of forming an alliance of convenience that would allow the continuation of a CT campaign from within the country is gone. I do not think it will be possible to maintain any US bases in Afghanistan. The Afghans will be no more accomodating than were the Iraqis.

"Nation" building COIN was never a realistic concept in Afghanistan. The problem is too large and far away for this to have worked We lack the resources of time available, skilled manpower and money to have made COIN work. Those who persuaded the president to adopt COIN as our strategy in that far away and vast place made a terrible mistake.

Let us leave as soon as possible.

In this intensely political year, it will be difficult to have a genuinely frank and open-minded national discussion on an issue such as whether or not to remain in Afghanistan until--or beyond--the 2014 deadline set by the Administration for the end of US combat operations. The recent shooting incident is the third in a fairly rapid series of especially damaging developments that have seriously undermined US popular credibility. Yet, the Administration so far has been gamely sticking to the plan to remain through its original 2014 deadline while some of the Administration's critics maintain that these and other earlier setbacks mean that the US should stay on even longer in an effort to set things right.

The halting course of the military effort, the largely failed attempts to engage the Taliban in a dialogue, the crippled struggle to win (or even avoid losing many more) hearts and minds, plus the iffy performance overall of the Afghan regime upon which we must pin our hopes for a stable future for Afghanistan appear to demand a return to the proverbial drawing board by all concerned. The US and its NATO allies already have been in Afghanistan over 10 years, and yet it does not seem that the situation has even recovered in some ways to what it was back in 2003 when the Bush Administration foolishly shifted its focus to (and diverted the bulk of relevant resources into) Iraq, a diversion that would last over 5 years--seemingly irreplaceable years in the course of the effort in Afghanistan.

Even by the end of 2014 it appears unlikely that the situation on the ground will be such that security could be turned over reliably to what is likely to remain a factionalized and uneven Afghan Army. And the credibility and competence of the Karzai Government probably will remain rather low, reducing further the chance that sufficient numbers of Afghanis of various stripes could rally around it. Finally, the danger to NATO personnel operating at close quarters with Afghan military and police cadres in an advisory or training mode quite possibly will now be more dangerous than ever before. Turning this situation around does not hold much promise either.

Consequently, staying on longer in Afghanistan in a robust role way beyond 2014 would seem to be a very dicey proposition fraught with potential costs and with potentially little to be gained in the way of substantially enhanced hopes for stabilization. In fact, perhaps reconsideration should be given to moving forward more speedily with the pullout of US and other NATO forces than is called for in the current game plan. This attempt at nation building had become a tough slog beyond 2009 as things stood; events since then might well have made it something beyond our reach in terms of the original NATO vision.

The latest Afghan atrocity, on the heels of the Koran book burnings, should be seen as a flare in the night signaling that the last act in this tragic drama is upon us. Recently we have been distracted from this slowly unfolding disaster because our attention has been fixed on the much greater disaster that awaits us in Iran. Relative disaster has become the standard measure of our foreign policy misadventures of the 9/11 decade.

Incidents similar to this happen in every war. American ground troops probably committed more atrocities in WW II than in Afghanistan. They received far less attention for two reasons: they were eclipsed by the magnitude of the war and its stakes; they had no bearing on its outcome. The second is key to understanding the significance of the current situation. Counter-insurgency depends on winning hearts and minds. At this point, we've pretty much lost them - to such a degree as to render unattainable our objectives even if a complete Taliban comeback is equally improbable.

That Afghanistan is failed projected has been obvious for some time. Yet all the anonymous high officials and commanders quoted in the news stories blather on about how NOW there is a risk of an otherwise viable strategy being stymied. This is either stupidity or criminal ignorance. The only way to prevent an ignominious collapse of our position there is to do some honesty thinking and convey the conclusions to the country. That means the President. Obama, though, is clearly incapable of soing somet...

Incidents similar to this happen in every war. American ground troops probably committed more atrocities in WW II than in Afghanistan. They received far less attention for two reasons: they were eclipsed by the magnitude of the war and its stakes; they had no bearing on its outcome. The second point is key to understanding the significance of the current situation. Counter-insurgency depends on winning hearts and minds. At this point, we've pretty much lost them – at least to such a degree as to render unattainable our objectives even if a complete Taliban comeback is equally improbable. That Afghanistan is failed projected has been obvious for some time. Yet all the anonymous high officials and commanders quoted in the news stories blather on about how NOW there is a risk of an otherwise viable strategy being stymied. This display of conceit and ignorance borders on the criminal. The only way to prevent an ignominious collapse of our position there is to do some honest thinking and to convey the conclusions to the country. That means the President doing his duty. Obama, though, is clearly incapable of acting in a manner that requires candor, courage and commitment. He thinks only of 4 more years. So he'll drag things out, come up with clever formulations, and hope that the glue holds until November. Afterwards, if reelected? I suspect the priority will be to do all in his power to keep whatever outcome is in the cards within the realm of the spinnable - thereby sanitized for inclusion in his memoirs.

“Criminal” is a strong word. Yet, it IS criminal to make the investment and to incur the risks as we have done without even specifying the stake. As of the last official pronouncement from the White House, we are in Afghanistan to "break the momentum of the Taliban." At the price of a trillion dollars and how many dead and maimed? That's one. It is criminal to justify it in terms of the "war on terror' when the result is a net increase in the threat to the United States. Al Qaeda as an organization has ceased to exist as little more than a brand name. Whatever offshoots (or similarly motivated groups) may attack American interests, they can do so more easily from other locations. Besides, the Taliban leadership broke with Al Qaeda long ago and has no reason to retie the knot. On the other side of the scale, we have motivated and provided training for thousands of potential militants thanks to our crude interventions in the region. That's two. Long term stability in Afghanistan in a form congenial to us is a pipe dream. There is no authoritative or competent government in Kabul. The country's political components now and in the future are warlords, clientele networks, and sectarian groupings. The army on which our hopes reside is dominated at the command level by Tajiks and Uzbeks. The same holds for the few elite units that exist. Pashtuns are not thrilled. Once outside aid is no longer funneled through Kabul, the army will crumble like a stale biscuit as fragments break away to serve the master of their choice. We've seen this movie before. That's three. It is criminal to view Afghanistan as separate from our other concerns and obsessions in the Greater Middle East - Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt. Still, there is not a hint of a comprehensive idea or strategy for connecting them. Nonetheless, we plow ahead in Afghanistan robotically. That's four.