Out-of-control soldiers and Secret Service agents: the common thread is always alcoholism
The Afghani Massacre and the Secret Service Scandal: the Common Thread is Alcoholism
Stories of out-of-control American soldiers in Viet Nam drinking and drugging are legion. Soldiers engaging in Viet Nam massacres such as those at My Lai did not, as often inferred, use drugs to “deal with” the nightmare in which they lived. Those who commit murder and especially those leading others in committing atrocities, including wartime massacres, are nearly if not always alcohol or other-drug addicts first. They do not use addictively because they engage in carnage (“anyone who saw such horrors would drink!”); they commit atrocities and cajole others into engaging in them because their addiction requires the capricious wielding of power over others. Murder is one way by which to exercise such power.
Consider the soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal that broke in 2004, in which detainees were stacked in pyramids after being raped with phosphorescent light sticks and forced to masturbate in groups. Soldiers inside Abu Ghraib describe one of their own “with a strong personality and red flags in his record,” who triggered the group descent into “horrific behavior.” “Strong personality and red flags” is, especially when the phrases are used together, a euphemism for “alcoholic.” This includes the soldier described, Charles Graner, who was also characterized as being able to easily lead weak-willed people to do whatever he wanted. Recall the amphetamine-addicted alcoholic Jim Jones of Jonestown, Guyana, who led 909 men, women and children to commit Flavor Aid suicide, along with nearly every other cult-like leader in history.
Graner joined the marines in 1988 and left the service after the 1st Gulf War. He became a construction worker and then a prison guard at a state penitentiary, where he was reprimanded three times and suspended four times for showing up late or not showing up at all. Graner was never fired, nor was he ever apparently given a choice of job or sobriety, even though alcohol or other-drug addiction is by far the most common explanation (never an excuse) for serial tardiness.
Between 1997 and 2001 Graner’s then-wife got three restraining orders and accused him in court of threatening to kill her and trying to throw her down a stairway. There is nothing in the record to suggest any judge ever offered Graner a choice between prison and sobriety, even though alcoholism is the root cause of domestic violence at least 80-85% of the time.
After Abu Ghraib, fellow soldiers described Graner as “unafraid of confronting the enemy” and a “very charming guy. People tend to follow him, whether it’s the right way or the wrong way.” Graner is a classic in the annals of likely alcoholism: often charming and heroic, seemingly born leaders while intermittently destructive, in this case horrifically so.
On the other hand, risk-taking behaviors, which often appear volatile, can be helpful for human progress, which is one of the grand and perverse paradoxes of alcoholism. Alcoholics in the early stages of their disease frequently take risks the more sober among us would never consider. They often become successful and sometimes famous when those risks pan out (and more quickly lose everything when they don’t). They have an almost universal need to win regardless of cost—and sometimes for the benefit of the rest of us. Ted Turner brought us 24-hour news channels. Rush Limbaugh brought us talk radio. Multitudes of alcoholics innovated in the creative arts, including most of the greatest writers, painters and musicians, from Mozart and Beethoven to John Lennon (the most likely explanation for which is in issue # 31 of my client letter, Wealth Creation Strategies. Ulysses S. Grant helped win the Civil War while he was still a practicing alcoholic. At a military parade in 1863, the man whom contemporaries considered the finest horseman ever to attend West Point was so drunk he fell off his horse.
However, whether by purpose or sheer dumb luck the volatility and downside can destroy those who cross their paths, while addicts can bring themselves down by taking risks appearing as simply awful judgment. Such is the case in two recent seemingly unrelated events: Robert Bales’ alleged murder of 17 innocent Afghanis and the Secret Service scandal in Columbia.
Robert Bales, an Army staff sergeant serving in Afghanistan on his fourth tour of duty, reportedly trained his men carefully, was vigilant on patrols and treated Iraqis and Afghanis with the utmost respect—until he allegedly didn’t. He has been charged with 17 counts of murdering Afghan civilians, in a house-to-house bloodbath beginning around 3 a.m. after a night of “drinking,” which the addictionologist would strongly suspect was addictive in nature.
Robert Bales is a man about whom a friend, stunned over the Afghani massacre, said, “There is no way the guy I knew did this. You don’t go from being a local hero to a monster.” Other friends, who knew and worked with him for years, concurred with similar remarks.
Yet this was not the first time this otherwise heroic and patriotic soldier with a wife and two young children engaged in misbehaviors while drinking. In 2002, Bales set off a fight with a woman’s companion at a casino bar in Tacoma, WA after he grabbed her hand and put it in his crotch. The woman told police Bales had been “drinking heavily.” Prosecutors declined to press charges because “it was a mutual scuffle between two drunk adult males, and it couldn’t be determined who started the fight.” In an apparent separate incident at a bar, Bales was charged with criminal assault for threatening another customer and, after refusing to leave, a security guard. He paid a $300 fine and underwent anger management training to have the charge dismissed. (Studies cited in Drunks, Drugs & Debits suggest there are near zero incidents of anger management “classes” that have resulted in a reduction in the incidence of violent behaviors without treatment for alcoholism.) Bales also was linked to a drunken fight at a bowling alley in 2008. There is no mention of any judge ever giving him a choice between jail time and a program of sobriety as a result of such misbehaviors. And these are only the public cases; for every situation for which police are called, there are often dozens if not hundreds of similar incidents, swept under the rug by well-meaning friends who, after a shove or a missed punch, talk him down. There are no reports of any friends or family members giving him the option of getting sober or losing their emotional and financial support. More importantly, there is no mention of the Army telling him he could no longer drink if he was to be allowed to continue to serve.
Bales reportedly “drank” the night of the massacres. We know from previous episodes he drank addictively; therefore, “drank” in this case is a likely euphemism for “drank heavily” and, therefore, addictively. The description of what Bales remembers suggests an alcoholic blackout: he remembered a few things both before and after the alleged atrocities, but nothing in-between. During a blackout, events don’t enter the brain’s memory banks, leaving nothing to remember, even while he may have appeared stone-cold sober and capable of extraordinarily intricate and demanding tasks. This includes the commission of expertly-applied violence, just as alcoholic surgeons have operated and Boeing 747 pilots have flown during blackouts.
Alcoholism-fueled exercise of capricious power may take form in the commission of acts that appear to others as extraordinarily poor judgment. This includes Secret Service agents engaging prostitutes, thereby compromising the safety of the President before a visit to Cartagena, Columbia for a summit. Poor judgment rooted in alcoholism clearly includes the agent who, after a “wild night of booze,” ended up in an argument with a hooker over her $47 fee, resulting in her leaving his hotel room after the 7 a.m. curfew the hotel implicitly set for overnight “visits.” It also includes a number of other agents who had engaged 11 hookers in all. Most of the agents are married and, therefore, could be easily compromised and susceptible to blackmail. Ronald Kessler, an expert on the Secret Service and author of a book on the agency, said it could have resulted in a potential assassination attempt on the President, not to mention possible breaches of national secrets.
Nearly all law enforcers who act badly do so not because they are fundamentally rotten, but rather because they have the disease of alcohol or other-drug addiction. Since they hold particularly powerful positions in the public trust, more than others they need to be sober. The idea of enforcing sobriety among law enforcers is discussed in greater detail in this month’s “public policy recommendation,” below.
