Stars and Stripes February 19, 2015

Volume 7, No. 10 ©SS 2015

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015

Character doesn’t count Military lawyers are losing the ‘good soldier’ defense

ILLUSTRATION BY BEV SCHILLING / Stars and Stripes

For information please contact Waverly Williams 803-774-1237 or waverly@theitem.com

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COVER STORY

Good character is no longer a defense

BY NANCY MONTGOMERY Stars and Stripes

Can good soldiers do bad things?

It stands to reason that they can, just as good dentists, police officers, politicians, priests, astronauts and football players can.

But unlike their civilian counterparts, military criminal defendants had recourse to “the good soldier defense”: to try to convince court-martial judges and juries — through service records, ratings and testimony from colleagues and superiors — that they were too professional to have engaged in the criminal behavior of which they stood accused.

The 1998 court-martial of Sergeant Major of the Army Gene McKinney on charges of sexually harassing and assaulting six women, for example, featured 26 character witnesses, including a four-star general. They all testified to McKinney’s integrity, leadership and devotion to soldiers.

“In military law, character does count, and character alone may be enough to cause reasonable doubt,” McKinney’s defense lawyer, Charles Gittins, said in his closing argument to the jury. McKinney was acquitted of all but one charge — obstruction of justice — and reduced in rank to master sergeant.

Now that defense has gone the way of flogging as a tool in military justice.

As part of reforms to address sexual assault that were included in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, Congress restricted using military character evidence, bringing courtsmartial more in line with civilian courts’ rules of evidence.

“When I was prosecuting sex crimes in Kansas City courtrooms, defendants couldn’t use their good work record as proof they hadn’t committed a rape,” Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and one of the measure’s sponsors, said in an email.

“In the military, how good an airman, sailor, soldier, or Marine you are has absolutely nothing to do with whether a rape has occurred.”

The change came with overwhelming bipartisan congressional support and approval from legal scholars who said it was long overdue.

The defense was “the antithesis of criminal justice that prosecutes acts,

not character,” said Elizabeth Hillman, a law professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law and a former Air Force officer. “Who did it benefit? People of high rank and long service,” she said. “It exacerbated the perception that [they] were immune from prosecution.”

The defense was pernicious in sexual assault cases, in which there is often little forensic evidence and factfinders must weigh witness credibility especially carefully, experts said.

“It allowed people to put their thumb on the scale,” said Don Christensen, formerly the Air Force’s top prosecutor and now president of the victim advocacy group Protect Our Defenders. That was particularly true when commanders or high-ranking officers vouched for a defendant’s character, Christensen said.

“It can have a potentially huge impact even though it’s factually meaningless,” he said. “It’s like a priest accused of sexual misconduct, or a teacher. How many times have they been teacher of the year?

[The “good People who comsoldier” mit sexual defense] offenses are often model can have a citizens.” potentially But memhuge impact, bers of a military jury even though are likely to it’s factually give defermeaningless. ence to the Don Christensen testimony or formerly the Air Force’s statement of top prosecutor and a three-star now president of the general or a victim advocacy group defendant’s Protect Our Defenders commander, he said.

“They’re going to assume that the three-star knows more about the case than they do. They think, ‘He’s looked at the evidence; he wouldn’t be saying that if the defendant were guilty.’ ” A 2012 article in The Army Lawyer

by Marine Maj. Walter Wilkie explaining how to best use the defense called it “a powerful tool” in all phases of a criminal defense — from before charges are filed to after a guilty verdict.

‘

’

The “good soldier” defense largely worked for former Sergeant Major of the Army Gene McKinney, left, who faced charges of sexually harassing and assaulting six women but was convicted only of obstruction of justice. It also helped Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, right, when the commander of the 3rd Air Force used it to dismiss Wilkerson’s guilty verdict in a sexual assault case after reviewing letters vouching for Wilkerson’s sterling character. “[T]he defense can use it to influence the command in the accused’s favor before and after trial and to influence the factfinder in his favor during trial,” Wilkie wrote.

In the case of Aviano Air Base, Italy, fighter pilot Lt. Col. James Wilkerson that same year, character evidence was unsuccessful at court-martial. A jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting a sleeping houseguest, dismissed him from the service and sentenced him to a year in jail.

But it worked eventually. After reviewing scores of letters vouching for Wilkerson’s sterling character in his 2013 review of the case, now-retired Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, then commander of 3rd Air Force and convening authority in the case, decided Wilkerson would not have committed the crime. Franklin, as military law then allowed, dismissed the verdict and reinstated Wilkerson into the Air Force. Congress responded by changing the law to strip commanders of the long-held, unfettered discretion to dismiss verdicts and reduce sentences — despite opposition from military leaders, commanders and the defense bar.

There was little opposition from military leaders to the change. Even the reaction of military defense lawyers to the good soldier defense curtailment has been mostly muted.

“It is a step back for the defense,” said David Court, a Europe-based defense lawyer who retired last year.

“Anytime you lose a potential defense it’s a loss by definition. It also strengthens the [prosecution]. Is it right? Is it fair? There you get into your own

personal point of view.”

“I can understand that in the civilian world being a good Xerox repairman would not be a good defense,” said Kyle Fischer, a former Army lawyer now in practice near Fort Benning, Ga. “I would never argue that this soldier is a good soldier so he wouldn’t commit rape.”

But putting on good soldier evidence was beneficial in reminding jurors that a defendant was in fact a good soldier whose career and life were in their hands, Fischer said. “I think they’re more likely to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt for reasonable doubt,” he said.

Fischer said he expected more convictions as a result and lamented the recent changes to military law.

“It seems at every step of the way they’re chipping away at every protection put in place to assure that the defendant can get a fair trial,” he said.

The new law specifically prohibits the good character defense for sexual offenses, larceny, robbery and arson, and generally whenever it’s not “relevant.”

Character evidence may still be introduced before sentencing at courtsmartial, just as in the civilian system.

And it is still allowed during the factfinding portion of courts-martial for specifically military offenses such as desertion or disobeying orders.

That’s where its use began, Hillman said, before the military courts gained jurisdiction of nonmilitary crimes such as rape and murder. montgomery.nancy@stripes.com

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PACIFIC

T H E

A S I A - PA C I F I C

Where US military follows its nation’s money About a quarter of everything the U.S. sells goes to countries in the Pacific Rim. Security interests follow economic interests, making the Asia-Pacific region the top U.S. long-term priority.

The biggest unknown:

BY ERIK SLAVIN Stars and Stripes

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan iddle East turmoil and the Islamic State’s gains dominated the security headlines in 2014, yet it’s the Asia-Pacific region that remains the United States’ top long-term priority.

It is a case of security interests following economic interests — beyond North America’s shores, nowhere on Earth is the U.S. economy more dependent.

About a quarter of everything the U.S. sells goes to 15 countries on the Pacific Rim, according to Census Department data analyzed by Stars and Stripes.

More than 37 percent of all purchases come from those countries, or roughly the same as what Americans buy from Europe, Africa, most of the Middle East and South America combined. Total trade with those 15 countries is up 68 percent from 2004 through 2013.

Although the trade deficit with those countries remains large, export growth is actually outpacing import growth by 28 percent over that time period.

That U.S. growth trend in Asia is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, but security and economics analysts say there is one big unknown with the potential to unravel it: China’s ambitions.

The big question is whether China will turn out to be a nation that wields its increasing power in concert with other countries or it asserts that power with force to seize disputed territory and regulate the international spaces where trillions of dollars in global trade flows.

“It’s not about the China we see today,” said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think tank. “It’s about the China we’ll see 20 years from now.” The uncertainty surrounding China’s

M

China future direction is driving the U.S. “rebalance” of its forces to the Asia-Pacific.

By 2020, the Navy and Air Force will base 60 percent of their assets in the region under current plans. The rationale for the rebalance, stated without fail by U.S. leaders, includes freedom of movement through waters and airspace.

The only country in the region that actively disputes the American vision of that freedom is China.

China holds an ambiguous claim on about 90 percent of the South China Sea — a congested area where $1.2 trillion in U.S. trade transits annually by ship, Pacific Command chief Adm. Samuel Locklear noted during a June security summit in Singapore. Add

hundreds of billions of dollars in trade flowing to the U.S. through the East China Sea — where the U.S. guards Taiwan from a Chinese invasion and defends Japan amid rising tensions — and the stakes grow even higher. What level of security is necessary to protect U.S. interests, and how to go about it, is a matter of intense debate in Washington.

China’s point of view In the last few years, China has proclaimed jurisdiction over airspace that includes Japan-administered and South

Koreanclaimed territory; engaged in ship-ramming incidents with the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam near disputed territory; scrambled jets in response to the movements of U.S. allies; and, had a fighter plane fly a barrel roll maneuver within 30 feet of a much slower U.S. antisubmarine plane, according to Pentagon officials.

In nearly every case, China claims the uninhabited territories as its own by historical discovery, calls its neighbors

the true aggressors and refuses to bring its arguments to international court.

China also called for an end to U.S. surveillance flights within its Exclusive Economic Zone — a 200-mile extension from a nation’s shoreline into international waters. Such zones represent more than onethird of the world’s oceans, and all but a handful consider them open to surveillance.

The U.S. response to China’s assertiveness has been to increase military ties with its allies in the region, which Beijing officials view as an attempt to surround their country’s Pacific borders. To China’s south, the U.S. has new rotational troop agreements with the Philippines and Australia.

To its east are 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan and about 28,500 more in South Korea. In between, the U.S. Navy holds dozens of exercises and hundreds of port visits annually.

“We think about it as ‘projecting power,’ ” Smith said. “[China] talks about ‘pushing out.’ ” The air defense identification zone that China declared in 2013, to international consternation, can be viewed by China as a buffer zone for the concentration of wealth and trade lining their eastern coastal cities, Smith said.

Beijing’s economic interests in the South China Sea are vast and potentially vulnerable, in the eyes of China’s hawks.

About 83 percent of China’s oil imports flow through the Malacca Strait and into the South China Sea, according to the 2014 Defense Department report to Congress on China. Trade also accounts for a sizable chunk of global South China Sea trade, which a 2012 Center for Strategic and International Studies study pegged at $5.3 trillion annually.

Pierre Noel, senior fellow for economic and energy security at the International Institute for Security Studies, doesn’t believe that China’s access to trade and resources is vulnerable, barring a major war.

SEE PAGE 4

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PACIFIC FROM PAGE 3

Their markets are simply too lucrative to foreign merchants.

However, pro-military hawks in China view U.S. alliances as a security risk, Noel said.

“Clearly one of the things they emphasize is the security of sea lanes and communications in Asia, which are either directly or indirectly controlled by the U.S., or countries close to the U.S,” Noel said. “This gives those powers, potentially, veto power over the Chinese.”

Chinese pre-eminence The goal of the U.S. presence in the Pacific since WWII has been “stability,” which largely boils down to preventing major wars and protecting trade routes from terrorism, piracy and smaller wars.

The U.S. military rebalance seeks to continue that strategy by putting its best hardware in the region and by strengthening its alliances.

“The Asia-Pacific’s shifting security landscape makes America’s partnerships and alliances indispensable as anchors for regional stability,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said May 31 in Singapore during a speech that also condemned China’s use of “coercion and the threat of force” to advance its aims.

Even as Hagel, President Barack Obama and administration officials tout the rebalance at every turn, many in Asia remain skeptical that the U.S. will have the money to follow through.

Courtesy of the Vietnam Coast Guard

A Chinese ship, left, shoots a water cannon at a Vietnamese vessel, right, while a Chinese Coast Guard ship, center, sails alongside in the South China Sea, off Vietnam’s coast, on May 7.

The U.S. Future Years Defense Program exceeds federal budget caps by $116 billion over the next five years, according to a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments study released in September.

There are less costly alternatives to the present strategy.

All of them carry economic and strategic risk for the United States, according to analysts.

One option would be to roll back the U.S. role in the region over the next few decades and watch Beijing supplant Washington as the top power in the region.

The historical precedent for that is Great Britain’s

acceptance of U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere in 1890s, which ended more than a century of friction, said Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

“One of the things would be absolutely essential if the U.S. conceded pre-eminence in East Asia would be a firm guarantee of navigation rights,” Carpenter said. “We are a maritime power, and I don’t think we’re about to let that part of the world become a Chinese lake.”

However, it’s hard to see an authoritarian country like China and a democratic United States establishing enough trust to make such a deal, Carpenter said.

Chinese pre-eminence also creates the possibility of territorial battles that could turn into wars on the open seas, absent U.S. support. Analysts estimate that about 90 percent of U.S. trade in the region is seaborne.

Carpenter views the Obama administration’s rebalance as an unsustain-

ONLINE For a country-by-country breakdown of trade in the Asia-Pacific region, go to stripes.com/go/asiapacific

able mix of engagement and containment.

Instead, he advocates a “first among equals” arrangement for the U.S. by which it maintains a deterrent presence but doesn’t try to contain China or dominate the region.

The U.S. would cut spending just enough to get countries like South Korea, Japan and others to do more than they do now.

“The problem is that the U.S. is a victim of its own great success over the last seven decades,” Carpenter said. “It has fostered, somewhat deliberately, a dependent mentality on the part of friendly countries. I think without the overall reliance on the U.S., we would see these countries at least consider doing more in the security arena for their own interest.”

To some extent, U.S allies are already doing more than in the past, as are others.

Of 22 Asia-Pacific countries reviewed by Stars and Stripes, at least 20 increased defense spending last year. Japan, which U.S. officials often call their “cornerstone” ally in the region, is planning Marine Corps-like capabilities. South Korea is improving its surface and submarine fleet.

Those developments are welcome to Washington, but they are no replacement for U.S. spending, technology

and expertise in the region, analysts said. Japan, which has been criticized by China and South Korea for harboring supposedly militaristic sentiments, still spends only 1 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, according to the World Bank.

Supporters of the rebalancing strategy in the Obama administration and the Pentagon also want to see U.S. allies take larger roles. The difference is that they believe the way to reduce tensions with China is through a greater projection of allied strength, combined with diplomatic and economic overtures.

For now, the U.S. appears committed to its rebalancing strategy, Smith, of the Council on Foreign Relations, said.

The trade routes that the U.S. and much of world depend on appear generally secure.

However, the U.S. will become far more concerned in the future if China attempts to use its rapidly modernizing navy to manage the region’s trade routes.

“If people feel like China can interfere with commerce, they will adapt their behavior accordingly,” Smith said.

“Anything that threatens the basic stability of the region threatens economic behavior across the board.” slavin.erik@stripes.com Twitter:@eslavin_stripes

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MILITARY

Carter sworn in as the new defense secretary

BY JON H ARPER Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Ashton Carter was sworn in Tuesday as President Barack Obama’s fourth defense secretary, assuming the post at a time when the administration’s policy against Islamic extremists is being widely criticized and military brass are raising the alarm over the effects of budget cuts on America’s ability to cope with national security threats.

Vice President Joe Biden, who administered the oath of office at the White House, praised Carter as “a thinker and a doer” with a history of looking out for the troops and their families.

Carter previously served as deputy secretary of defense and the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

Biden noted Carter’s key role in getting thousands of Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles into the field to protect American servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan from improvised explosive devices, which were responsible for the majority of U.S. casualties.

“He worked like the devil to get our troops [MRAPs]. And they’ve saved lives and limbs in countless numbers,” Biden said.

Biden also noted Carter’s low-profile visits to meet with wounded troops and their families.

“Almost every Saturday, when no one was looking, Ash and [his wife] Stephanie were out at Walter Reed [with] no cameras, no publicity. … They just became regulars,” Biden said.

In a message sent out to all Defense Department personnel, Carter laid out three priorities for his tenure: Helping the president make the best possible national security decisions for protecting the nation: “I have pledged to provide the president my most candid strategic advice. … I will also ensure the president receives candid professional military advice.”

Ensuring the strength and health of the force: “I will do that by focusing on the well-being, safety, and dignity of each of you and your families. … And I pledge to make decisions about sending you into harm’s way with the greatest reflection and utmost care — because this is my highest responsibility as secretary of defense.”

Making wise budget decisions: “We must steer through the turmoil of sequestration, which imposes wasteful uncertainty and risk to our nation’s defense. We must balance all parts of our defense budget so that we continue to attract the best people — people like you; so that there are enough of you to defend our interests around the world; and so that you are always wellequipped and well-trained to

execute your critical mission.”

But analysts are skeptical that Carter will be able to have much of an impact on foreign policy or the long-term future of the Pentagon.

Obama’s other secretaries of defense have complained about White House micromanagement of military policy.

“I don’t see how Ash Carter can fix what Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta and Bob Gates couldn’t,” said Thomas Donnelly, a defense analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

On the war front, Obama’s policy toward the Islamic State group has been widely criticized as muddled and overly cautious. Obama has ruled out using American ground troops to fight the militants. Efforts to train and equip Iraqi forces and moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State group are moving slowly. And the administration has refrained from taking any action against President Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, which has been attacking the rebels that the U.S. is trying to help.

“The level of effort we’re putting out is minimal, to put it mildly,” Donnelly said. “We’re measuring out airstrikes in eye drop measures. The president is unwilling to commit any boots on the ground to include spotters and targeters and stuff like that. I mean, I don’t see how we’ll be able to retake [the Iraqi city of] Mosul, for example, without the kind of

Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Ashton Carter arrives at the Pentagon to assume duties as the newly appointed secretary of defense on Tuesday. forward air controllers that would be effective. … I also don’t think that Secretary Carter will be able to do much to influence the president.”

When it comes to getting the amount of money that Pentagon leaders believe they need to ex-ecute their missions and make needed investments for the future, analysts are skeptical that Carter will be able to deliver.

The Pentagon is asking for $534 billion for fiscal 2016, but unless Congress changes the law, massive budget cuts known as sequestration will cap base defense spending at $499 billion. Beyond fiscal 2016, tens of billions of dollars will also be taken out of the Pentagon’s coffers each year through 2021.

Obama has proposed raising some taxes and removing the caps on both defense and nondefense spending, but the GOP appears unwilling to accept major spending increases for domestic programs.

“I am somewhat pessimistic” that there will be a budget deal that eliminates sequestration,” Ryan Crotty, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told reporters during a media roundtable last month.

House Republicans are “going

to want to find money for defense in non-defense. And that is so clearly anathema to the president and what he sees as his priorities.”

Another obstacle for Carter is that he won’t have much time in the job to make lasting changes. At the swearing-in ceremony, Carter himself acknowledged that he is stepping into the position during the “fourth quarter” of Obama’s presidency.

Analysts noted that the Pentagon’s fiscal 2016 budget request was already submitted before Carter took office.

“His first budget is really going to be the [fiscal] ’17 budget. [And] we don’t know who the hell is going to be president then,” said Lawrence Korb, a defense a defense analyst at the Center for American Progress.

Experts say Carter has been dealt a bad hand.

“He doesn’t have enough money to fund his programs or his department, and we’re losing all the wars that were in. … It’s really a lousy situation to be in,” Donnelly said. “Under these circumstances, the best he can do is keep things from getting worse than they would be otherwise.” harper.jon@stripes.com Twitter: @JHarperStripes

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MILITARY Above: Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency workers has been excavating a site on Koh Tang, an island off the coast of Cambodia where officials believe they might find the remains of one of three Marines who were left behind following the last battle of the Vietnam War.

Dig site may hold Marine missing from Vietnam War

BY M ATTHEW M. BURKE Stars and Stripes

The newly established Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has dispatched a remains recovery team to the Cambodian island of Koh Tang, where three Marines were left behind following the final battle of the Vietnam War. The excavation site is believed to hold the remains of Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove, Pfc. Gary Hall or Pvt. Danny Marshall, according to official documents from DPMAA’s predecessor, the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command.

The three-man gun team was left behind in the confusion of a troop withdrawal following a brutal May 15, 1975, battle between about 200 U.S. Marines and entrenched Cambodian Khmer Rouge soldiers in what became known as the “Mayaguez Incident.”

The dig began Jan. 14 and is expected to run through the end of March.

The location of the excavation site has not been made public, but it’s likely to be

one of two areas where the heaviest fighting occurred. In 2013, a seven-member JPAC investigation team spent a week on the island’s East and West beaches.

Months later, JPAC told Stars and Stripes that the team did find enough evidence to bring one site before the administrative body that decides whether to allocate funds for a dig.

A recovery operation, such as the one ongoing on Koh Tang, means that the site was approved by the board, and the likelihood of finding remains is high.

Officials have declined numerous requests from Stars and Stripes for information related to the excavations.

“This is an ongoing mission and details can’t be discussed at this time,” DPMAA spokeswoman Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan said.

However, the Defense POW/ Missing Personnel Office has declassified some of the documents since the investigative dig occurred. Heavily redacted copies are housed in Texas Tech University’s Vietnam War archives.

According to a document dated November 2013, investigators found a water well where former Khmer Rouge soldiers claimed they killed and buried an American soldier after the battle.

Any American remains found there would likely belong to Hargrove, because most accounts say that Hall and Marshall were taken to the mainland and executed.

In additional to Hargrove, Hall and Marshall, two other servicemembers remain missing from the battle.

Lance Cpl. Ashton Loney’s body was left behind on West Beach in the haste of the withdrawal, and former accounts claimed he was buried on the beach. There is no public record of his body being recovered, or his remains identified.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Elwood Rumbaugh was lost at sea near a downed helicopter.

Although that site has been located, according to the Texas Tech documents, it has not been explored at the time due to inclement weather. No other recovery operations have been announced.

Left behind In May 1975, Khmer Rouge forces captured the SS Mayaguez, an American container ship, several nautical miles off the coast of the Cambodian island of Poulo Wai. It didn’t take long for President Gerald Ford to authorize a rescue operation.

In the battle that followed, 38 U.S. servicemembers were killed and approximately 50 were wounded. The ship and crew were released shortly

Left: The body of Marine Lance Cpl. Ashton Loney lies on West Beach covered by a poncho after Loney was killed during the battle of Koh Tang.

Stars and Stripes photos

after.

Immediately after the battle, when it became apparent that Hargrove, Hall and Marshall were unaccounted for, Navy SEALs and Marines asked to make a rescue attempt for the missing men but the request was denied. U.S. Navy ships were recalled from the area, closing the chapter on U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

While accounts of enemy combatants differ, most say that Hargrove was captured on Koh Tang and was executed. Hall and Marshall were taken to the mainland and executed there.

Since the early 1990s, documents show that JPAC investigators have excavated sites, both on the mainland and on Koh Tang, and have collected numerous fragments and sets of remains, including as recently as 2008.

During an excavation in 2008, a set of remains that was unearthed was determined to likely be Caucasian, according to Charles Ray, former ambassador to Cambodia and deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs.

JPAC documents state four samples were sent for analysis. It’s not made clear in the documents if the samples are something as small as bone

fragments or as large as full sets of remains.

No results from any of the excavations on Koh Tang and subsequent analysis have been made public.

Running out of time Members of Hargrove’s family hope his remains will soon be returned.

“By them being on the island, I hope it is a good sign that we will be receiving Joseph’s remains soon,” said Hargrove’s cousin, Cary Turner. “I’ll keep praying they will do the right thing and send Joseph home.”

But, the time to recover the remains is running short.

A Russian consortium leased the island from the Cambodian government in 2008, and construction has already begun on what will one day be a casino, resorts, a seven-hotel complex and luxury villas aimed at drawing 300,000 tourists annually from China, Korea and Japan.

“POW/MIA investigators will lose access to the island once the investment company moves in full-time to develop the resort,” an accounting document from March 2013 said. “A Cambodian POW/MIA committee member emphasized the urgency of conducting Tang Island investigations as soon as possible.” burke.matt@stripes.com

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Hunt Act a step NATO has no plans for Clay forward for veterans new intervention in Libya T BY AND

JOHN VANDIVER SLOBODAN LEKIC

Stars and Stripes

NATO is not currently considering another intervention in Libya, where the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians by Islamic State militants has prompted calls for a stronger international response.

“There is no discussion within NATO on taking military action in Libya,” a NATO official said Tuesday. “However, Allies consult regularly on security developments in North Africa and the Middle East and we follow events in the region closely.”

After the Islamic State posted video of the murder of the Egyptian Christians, Cairo announced on Monday that it had launched a series of airstrikes on militant targets. Top officials in Italy, just 200 miles across the Mediterranean Sea from Libya, have called for an international military response. Some have expressed concern that militants could mingle with the refugees fleeing to Italy via Libya.

The issue is a sensitive one for the Western military alliance, whose seven-month bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 is blamed by many for causing the current chaos.

Since that intervention, which led to the ouster and killing of strongman Moammar Gadhafi, the once-affluent oil-producing nation has collapsed into a virtually failed state. While the country has an internationally recognized

transitional government, it is not recognized by the population as a whole.

Heavily armed militias control large parts of the country, and Islamic militant groups such as Ansar al-Sharia hold sway in other areas. Recently, the Islamic State has also been making inroads, taking advantage of a power vacuum.

“Egypt’s desire to strike out militarily to solve the problem in Libya is understandable given the killing of its citizens,” said Jacqueline L. Hazelton, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. “And airstrikes can degrade the capabilities of various armed actors within Libya. But more military intervention in Libya isn’t going to solve the Libya problem.”

Since NATO’s air campaign over Libya — lauded by alliance leaders at the time as a new model for conducting humanitarian interventions — critics have said the West failed to take sufficient steps during the aftermath to help Libya rebuild itself.

Still, massive U.S.-led nationbuilding efforts in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan prove how fraught such rebuilding aid campaigns can be.

Hazelton said that by eliminating Gadhafi, a power vacuum was created that made the rise of multiple armed groups inevitable.

“The chaos in Libya was foreseeable before the West made its decision to militarily support the rebels (in 2011),” Hazelton said. “However well

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meant, that intervention did not help the West, and it did not help the Libyans suffering its aftereffects. Further military action is most likely to prolong their suffering.”

For now, the U.S. appears focused on efforts aimed at political reconciliation in Libya rather than spearheading a military response in the country.

“It is time for Libyans to realize that only they can build a new Libya; only they can save their country,” U.S. Ambassador to Libya Deborah K. Jones wrote in a Tuesday commentary in the Libya Herald marking the fourth anniversary of Libya’s 2011 revolution.

“Those who continue to fight, those who refuse to engage in dialogue, must be sanctioned by the international community — and we are prepared to do that.”

NATO, too, is focused on negotiated solutions.

“We also stand ready to support Libya with advice on defense and security institutions building, following the request made by the Libyan government in October 2013, once the security conditions allow,” the NATO official said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

NATO, along with U.S. Africa Command, had hopes of training Libyan military forces, but security conditions in the country have delayed those plans indefinitely. vandiver.john@stripes.com lekic.slobodan@stripes.com

This publication is a compilation of stories from Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper authorized by the Department of Defense for members of the military community. The contents of Stars and Stripes are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, including the Defense Department or the military services. The U.S. Edition of Stars and Stripes is published jointly by Stars and Stripes and this newspaper.

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© Stars and Stripes, 2015

he Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act passed both houses of Congress unanimously and was signed by President Barack Obama, all in four weeks. This uncharacteristic alacrity provides hope that veterans’ needs remain on the minds of those who make our laws. It’s been on the minds of military members and their families for a long time.

My friend Diana, a Marine spouse, has been to the edge of suicide and back. She says several factors — her husband, good therapy, a tenacious friend and the knowledge that her children needed a healthy mother — helped pull her back from the precipice. In Diana’s experience, as with others facing depression, effective medical treatment and a strong support system are the keys.

The Clay Hunt act, named for a veteran who died by suicide while waiting for long-delayed care from the VA, is designed to improve mental health treatment and strengthen community support for transitioning veterans.

The demands of more than a decade of war have escalated those needs, but they are not new.

A piece of my family’s history comes to mind, summed up in a black-and-white photograph from another wartime era. The photo shows my father standing in a cemetery in his dress blues. Next to him is a solemn-faced boy cradling the triangle of a folded flag.

The back of the snapshot says Bobby was 8 years old when it was taken at his father’s funeral in 1968.

My father was there as military escort for the body of his friend Bob, returned for burial in his home state. I don’t know who took the photo. I wasn’t there, but I was there the day Bob died.

Bob and his family lived next door to us in base housing, an Air Force family like ours.

They had four sons. Bobby was the oldest.

I was almost 5, close to the ages of Bobby’s two middle brothers. Bobby’s mom had been baby-sitting me that morning while my mom was at a doctor’s appointment, and my dad was working. When my mother returned, she stayed

awhile to chat over coffee. Bob was off work, and my mom remembers he seemed carefree, enjoying his wife’s homemade doughnuts.

Soon after my mom took me home, we heard sirens.

Someone pounded on our door warning us that shots had been fired nearby, telling us to lock the doors and stay low. Worse news would follow. We learned that Bob had taken his own life and the lives of his two middle sons.

After the danger was past, Mom let me play in our yard.

I saw a uniformed man walk into our house carrying an unconscious woman, and I hid behind a I knew SPOUSE CALLS tree. it was Bobby’s mom.

As a child I thought she might be dead, too.

“When she woke up it was horrible,” my mother said.

Terri Barnes “She would just hang on to me and say, ‘Why, why?’ ” But there was no note, no answer. No explanation could assuage her grief. Soon she moved away with her surviving sons, leaving behind the friends from her shattered past, including my mom. It was a time when suicide was discussed — if at all — in hushed tones.

Whether Bob’s tragedy was related to his service wasn’t considered as the war in Vietnam continued.

Diana’s story, unlike Bob’s, did not end in tragedy and silence. Since her recovery, she often speaks out about depression and reaches out to those walking through it.

“Suicide is dark,” she said.

“It’s been swept under the rug, and it’s dark under there,” she said. “Depression is an unforgiving weight few feel capable of carrying alone, and yet most feel obligated to do just that.”

Passage of the Clay Hunt act takes a step toward shouldering that burden and shedding more light, but the work didn’t end with passage of this bill.

It’s a signpost, showing how far we’ve progressed and how much further we have to go.

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