at this link<\/a>, if you want to read the whole 569 pages, but here is my evaluation that leans heavily on my 20\/20 hindsight of the incident and my experience as an infantry platoon sergeant. <\/p>\nIn previous posts that we’ve written here about Bales, folks who knew him criticized us for judging him based on news reports. However, after reading the report which goes into his character and his performance at the Village Stability Platform (VSP) Belambai leads me to believe that he wasn’t a very good NCO, especially for the position in which he found himself – leading two infantry squads. Not all of it was his fault, though.<\/p>\n
To begin with, he had “private problems” at home, meaning that he had problems back home which indicated an immaturity not consistent with his rank and position. That should have raised a red flag for his leadership that he needed direct supervision. There was no direct supervision of Bales at VSP Belambai. His two squads were there in support of a special forces operational detachment and he was the senior NCO of those squads. The special forces there, rightfully, maintained a “hands-off” approach to the inner workings of their infantry attachments. <\/p>\n
The special forces detachment issued Bales a 9 millimeter pistol so he wouldn’t have to carry his M4 everywhere with him inside the VSP. The fact that he accepted the handgun should have given them a bit of insight into the type of NCO he was. Yeah, I would have taken the pistol, too, but I still would have carried my M4 like my soldiers – you can never have too many guns when you need them. <\/p>\n
The actual platoon leader and platoon sergeant with direct control over Bales were both stationed together at another VSP separated by time and distance from Belambai, leaving Bales pretty much unsupervised. Bales was known to abuse steroids and alcohol at the VSP and that was tolerated by the special forces soldiers and Bales’ subordinate NCOs. The investigation blames the special forces NCOs for either ignoring or tolerating Bales’ behavior. <\/p>\n
Me? I blame that platoon sergeant for not taking his platoon leader aside and telling him that one of them needed to physically locate themselves at Belambai to supervise Bales. I know that, as a platoon sergeant, my job was to keep the lieutenant out of trouble, and the potential for an immature NCO to be leading half of my platoon without supervision to get my LT in hot water was nearly a foregone conclusion. I can’t ever remember half of my platoon off on their own without me or the LT being there with them – especially for an extended period of time like Bales and his two infantry squads. <\/p>\n
The investigation noted that the special forces folks at Belambai had rejected a request for either the platoon sergeant or platoon leader to be at the VSP. I’m sorry, but it seems to me that they shouldn’t have a say in that decision. They wanted two infantry squads, fine, they don’t get to dictate the composition of the unit. <\/p>\n
The investigation also uncovered incidents where Bales had acted irrationally and made overtly racist comments about their allies, the Afghan Army and their support elements. An NCO who knew him before the deployment described Bales as an “angry drunk”. He had assaulted an Afghan truck driver. <\/p>\n
Operationally, Bales seems to have been a superior performer, but an NCO is tactically proficient and behaves like an adult during the times that those skills aren’t required. In a combat situation, there is no “time off” for the soldiers and especially their NCOs. <\/p>\n
Don’t get me wrong – the fact that Bales committed that horrendous crime all by himself, it’s totally his responsibility, but there were some leadership failures that he took advantage of which could have prevented him from having the freedom of his actions which allowed him the opportunity to become a monster that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a response to a FOIA, the Army has released a redacted copy of their 15-6 … The Robert Bales Incident<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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