Lawyer James Culp with his client Pfc. David Lawrence, May 25, 2011

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I got to know James Culp, a lawyer who specializes in military defense cases, a little bit around the time he was defending  Sgt. Evan Vela, whom I have written about many times. After news broke about an Army Staff Sergeant who allegedly walked off base in Afghanistan and murdered 16 Afghans last weekend, I thought of Jim partly because the Army Staff Sergeant, on his first deployment in Afghanistan after three deployments in Iraq, was said to have suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq, which may or may not have had anything to do with his alleged action. The last case of Culp's I followed concerned Pfc. David Lawrence, a young soldier suffering from mental problems (PTSD and schizophrenia), who was nonetheless prosecuted for murder of a Taliban commmander in US custody -- even though he had sought help from military psychologists after seven of his fellow soldiers were killed, and even though Army experts ruled he was not criminally responsible for his actions (story here and here). Lawrence is currently serving 12 1/2 years at Leavenworth.

Jim sent along some general observations about the strain the US government is imposing on our armed forces after ten years of war, which he gave me permission to post.

Three and four combat tours are too many for any one person. The amount of combat our Soldiers are being forced to endure is unprecedented in our history. The mental wounds our Soldiers are enduring may be invisible, but they cause catastrophic damage. Sometimes the damage is borne by the warrior alone. The suicide rate of our service members and veterans has never been higher in the history of our nation. Sometimes innocent lives are destroyed by the invisible wounds as well.  It will take another two decades to know the full extent of damage that has been inflicted on the minds of a very few whom we have repeatedly sent back into harm's way in a war where the enemy inflicts daily death and destruction upon our service members, but then escapes retribution or counter-attack by seamlessly blending into the population. (Emphasis added.)

It is human nature to desire retribution. We see this in the Afghanistan response to the massacre. It is not irrational to want retribution, to need retribution. What is irrational . . what is maddening . . .is that the deep need for retribution by our fighting men who are consistently ground up like cattle by anonymous IED's planted by an invisible enemy goes un-satiated. This maddening aspect of guerilla warfare is exacerbated ten-fold by overly restrictive Rules of Engagement that are meant to restrict civilian casualties at the expense of the safety of our men and women warriors. I suppose a Soldier or Marine can be put into such a mind altering environment for one tour of duty and be expected to remain relatively sane. Perhaps even two combat deployments under such circumstances. I think the deadly actions of this soldier scream an important question that we are repeatedly finding the answer to the hard way: How much combat, especially guerilla warfare, is too much for one human being?