Speaker 1: The devisions to as your opinion about America changed because
Speaker 1: of this massacre, we.
Speaker 2: Have a different opinion about America because Allah Almighty prophesies
Speaker 2: that you cannot satisfy Jews and the Christians until you
Speaker 2: obey him to follow his path. Our opinion about every
Speaker 2: disbeliever is different.
Speaker 3: This is because of Isla.
Speaker 2: Because Allah Almighty says to unite, but for my sake,
Speaker 2: if and separate for my sake, be friends with the
Speaker 2: one who is my friend, that which is my enemy,
Speaker 2: separate from it.
Speaker 4: In the spring of twenty twenty two, the Afghan survivors
Speaker 4: from Alakosai Najbien offered us their poignant reflections on the
Speaker 4: Kanahar massacre. They come from villages without internet or infrastructure.
Speaker 4: In all likelihood they'll never hear this podcast. Still, they
Speaker 4: hope to share their perspective on this tragedy to the world.
Speaker 4: For them, what happened on March eleventh, twenty twelve was
Speaker 4: intensely personal.
Speaker 5: Here's Mulla Baran is.
Speaker 2: My brother was my right hand and now my right hand.
Speaker 5: Is cut off.
Speaker 2: Although eleven years have passed since that sadness and I
Speaker 2: have some distance from my brother. For me, it feels
Speaker 2: the same as that first night. I used to have
Speaker 2: five brothers. Now we are left with four. Every time
Speaker 2: we meet, I talk about the sadness of that first night.
Speaker 2: It's a sadness that has not forgotten in life until death.
Speaker 5: Previously, on the war within, I.
Speaker 6: Think the situation in Afghanist remained so complicated, and Robert
Speaker 6: Bales is a depiction of the complexities of this conflict Afghanistan.
Speaker 7: It got demonstrably worse after Bales was gone.
Speaker 8: This whole thing became shrouded in mystery and secrecy.
Speaker 7: It is my belief that Baals was helped in some
Speaker 7: way to commit these crimes.
Speaker 9: But.
Speaker 10: Didn't they.
Speaker 5: Believe It just seemed fundamentally unfair to me that someone.
Speaker 10: Who we created should be treated the way it was
Speaker 10: being treated.
Speaker 11: We already know the dangers of PTSD. You cannot see
Speaker 11: a person get blown up into chunks and be okay.
Speaker 12: You're going to get a excepensive, very bored in recessed suse.
Speaker 13: The Arab is so plain and prejudicial.
Speaker 14: You know, it's a heinous act that is very difficult
Speaker 14: to judge with American eyes. But I understand how I
Speaker 14: got where I was.
Speaker 5: I'm Mike McGinnis.
Speaker 4: This is the war within the Robert Bailes story. The
Speaker 4: Taliban took control over Afghanistan in the late summer of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, but they had been gaining ground for
Speaker 4: a long time before the formal transfer of power. Hick
Speaker 4: Matula da Wu, who lost his dad to Robert Bales,
Speaker 4: was born during wartime. At age nineteen, He's now old
Speaker 4: enough to fight himself.
Speaker 2: I want to say that if I had an axe,
Speaker 2: I would fight against these Americans, and if I can,
Speaker 2: I will go to America and take my revenge on
Speaker 2: Robert Bayals. He killed my father, he threatened my brother
Speaker 2: who was four months old. All of this is so
Speaker 2: painful for me. This is the life I lead in
Speaker 2: the situation I've been telled. Sometimes I have a dream
Speaker 2: that Robert Fales will come to Afghanistan once again and
Speaker 2: I can finally give him what he deserves.
Speaker 4: The villagers of Panzwe are a complex group, and each
Speaker 4: one has processed this devastation of family and of country
Speaker 4: in different ways, somewhat retribution. Others like Haji Wazir, simply
Speaker 4: ask for peace after decades of conflict.
Speaker 2: I want the Almighty God to settle our country and calm.
Speaker 2: My Afghanistans that there will be no more killing and
Speaker 2: war here. Our dream is that our country can be prosperous.
Speaker 2: May God keep us away from more calamities and not
Speaker 2: bring disaster and war to our homeland. This is our government,
Speaker 2: this is our life, and it is acceptable to us.
Speaker 2: We neither need nor want anybody else.
Speaker 4: Just as the massacre change the lives of these individuals forever,
Speaker 4: it also significantly impacted the tenor of the Afghan war.
Speaker 4: Even before the Bail shooting, a sense of unease around
Speaker 4: the conduct of US soldiers had been building for some time.
Speaker 4: As Private James Alexander recalls, I.
Speaker 7: Think it was a few weeks earlier that some Marines
Speaker 7: had piss on the Quran, right, and so the Taliban
Speaker 7: and the Afghans were all, I mean, understandably, it's their
Speaker 7: secret texts, and they're you know, up at arms about it.
Speaker 15: Right.
Speaker 4: This incident from January of twenty twelve, where a group
Speaker 4: of soldiers were caught on video urinating on a Quran,
Speaker 4: sparked protests around Afghanistan. With the Bales killing coming two
Speaker 4: months later, there seemed to be a growing sentiment of
Speaker 4: negativity towards American troops. Here's journalist Yealda Hakim who was
Speaker 4: in country at the time.
Speaker 16: This was a very dramatic moment.
Speaker 17: The Telabama gave the ground, the wall was intensifying, and
Speaker 17: then when incidents lacked, the Quran burning and then the.
Speaker 18: Roulb of Bales thing, it was like a series of
Speaker 18: incidents took place that I think at a.
Speaker 16: Very critical time in the country.
Speaker 17: And the war shaped how the next almost decade would look.
Speaker 17: This lack of trust, security spiraling out of control, Afghan's
Speaker 17: increasingly becoming frustrated in the angry Obama was trying to
Speaker 17: find a solution with a partner that then President Hamid
Speaker 17: Karzai was increasingly being backed into a corner and description
Speaker 17: for Karzi, it's all.
Speaker 19: About the relationships.
Speaker 20: It just felt like.
Speaker 8: The Obama administration didn't manage that relationship with him, and
Speaker 8: it went darker and darker and darker to the point where.
Speaker 15: It hit rock quorder.
Speaker 4: Amid stories of American wrongdoing making headlines during an election year,
Speaker 4: President Barack Obama took action, traveling to Afghanistan to sign
Speaker 4: an agreement with Hamad Karzai.
Speaker 8: It was the talking point of all of our conversations
Speaker 8: will the afghanstign this security agreement? I think kars I
Speaker 8: at that point had so many grievances that he used
Speaker 8: the agreement as leverage and a bargaining chip.
Speaker 21: There was a powerplay being played where Karzi was sort
Speaker 21: of really trying to show Obama that he doesn't hold
Speaker 21: all the cards, and oh, really you want this deal,
Speaker 21: do you? Well, we're not quite sure if I'm going
Speaker 21: to sign it, And given what had taken place in
Speaker 21: Iraq and the withdrawal, it was kind of like, let's
Speaker 21: not make the same sort of mistakes.
Speaker 8: That's have a proper agreement in place.
Speaker 22: I've come to Afghanistan to mark a historic moment for
Speaker 22: our two nations, and to do so on Afghan soil.
Speaker 12: I'm here to affirm the.
Speaker 22: Bonds between our countries and to look forward to a
Speaker 22: future peace and security and greater prosperity for our nations.
Speaker 22: And today we're agreeing to be long term partners in
Speaker 22: combating terrorism and training after and security forces, in strengthening
Speaker 22: democratic institutions, and supporting development and protecting human rights of
Speaker 22: all Afghans.
Speaker 4: Obama and Karzai ended up signing their strategic partnership agreement
Speaker 4: on May first, twenty twelve, the one year anniversary of
Speaker 4: Osama Binlin's death, in less than two months after the massacre.
Speaker 4: The deal promised to quote strengthen Afghan sovereignty, stability, and prosperity,
Speaker 4: and contribute to our shared goal of defeating al Qaeda
Speaker 4: and its extremist affiliates. So what did that mean for
Speaker 4: the region of banshwek my.
Speaker 14: Situation created a good opportunity for the Taliban to use
Speaker 14: my situation here to try to recruit other people and
Speaker 14: try to force American policy in the area to a
Speaker 14: certain degree. He provided the offensive information opportunity for the
Speaker 14: Taliban to say, look at American soldiers and what they're
Speaker 14: doing to our people.
Speaker 4: This is actually where my personal experience comes into play.
Speaker 4: I've mentioned that I was in Afghanistan in twenty twelve,
Speaker 4: deployed only thirty miles or so from Robert bales I
Speaker 4: woulness the change that took place in the aftermath. My
Speaker 4: platoon learned about the massacre from the army newspaper Stars
Speaker 4: and Stripes.
Speaker 5: Once we read what happened and.
Speaker 4: Got together to talk about it, we knew that this
Speaker 4: would make our jobs much harder. Panjwai podcast host Curtis
Speaker 4: Grace also has some expertise on the province during this era.
Speaker 23: In March of twenty twelve, the Panjoy massacre weakened the
Speaker 23: central government's power in the area. They appeared weak because
Speaker 23: Bobby Bils never went on trial in Afghanistan. And then
Speaker 23: from twenty fourteen, and this is no shit for real,
Speaker 23: from twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen, there was no violence
Speaker 23: in Panjway. There was nothing like. The Afghan army didn't
Speaker 23: get hit, the Afghan local police didn't get hit. They
Speaker 23: weren't bombings. I flew over Pandway all time, never had
Speaker 23: an engagement, never I had a mission in Pandway. It
Speaker 23: was weird and I just never bought it. Our theory
Speaker 23: is there was a deal, you know, basically the Afghan
Speaker 23: government I think lost some of their bargaining power and
Speaker 23: they made a deal with the Taliban said hey, we
Speaker 23: will let you do your thing in Pandua. So I
Speaker 23: think the Pandoi massacre was kind of the nail in
Speaker 23: the coffin for any chance to really control Pandway.
Speaker 4: Just two years after Bales walked off as VSP, the
Speaker 4: American presence in the birthplace of the Taliban was either
Speaker 4: vastly diminished or gone completely. In that context, it's worth
Speaker 4: considering whether the staff sergeant's actions were seen as a
Speaker 4: referendum on the United States's policy of counterinsurgency.
Speaker 7: I like to say the Kandahart massacre was the day
Speaker 7: that we lost the war. I know it sounds really
Speaker 7: crazy to say that, but when your strategy is we're
Speaker 7: going to put good hearted Americans in these villages and
Speaker 7: sort of sway that people with their good heartedness, and
Speaker 7: they're going to see that we're helping, and in fact,
Speaker 7: one guy goes crazy and kills a bunch of people,
Speaker 7: like that's the end of that strategy. The VSP strategy
Speaker 7: is not going to be successful after that.
Speaker 23: Right, Panjwai was always a Talban powerhouse. You're not going
Speaker 23: to change it. And we got really close. We showed
Speaker 23: the patch show people what it could be like to
Speaker 23: live in a modern society, for women to be able
Speaker 23: to vote, for women to able to go to school,
Speaker 23: for people to be educated, to have modern infrastructure. But
Speaker 23: now that everything's falling apart, we're not going back anytime soon.
Speaker 4: Robert Bales made the following comments in twenty nineteen, long
Speaker 4: before the official end of America's longest war.
Speaker 14: It's going to take a generation to change things, and
Speaker 14: we're not, as Americans at this point in the history,
Speaker 14: willing to do that. So why put more Americans in
Speaker 14: an arm's way for something that we're not going to
Speaker 14: see through. We're not going to finish this, you know.
Speaker 14: I think the Taliban, we're just waiting. I don't think
Speaker 14: that it was a conversion of philosophies. I don't think
Speaker 14: one day they were like, Hey, we like the Americans,
Speaker 14: now we want to live like them. I think the
Speaker 14: idea was, Oh, they're going to leave, let's accumulate all
Speaker 14: the assets we can. Let's grab as much stuff as
Speaker 14: we can before they leave, and once they're gone, we'll
Speaker 14: take back over.
Speaker 4: Bales would basically be proven right. As the last American
Speaker 4: soldiers fled Afghanistan. On August thirtieth of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: the Taliban flag was raised in the capital city of Kabu.
Speaker 4: Western occupation was over and Islamist extremism ruled again. Journalist
Speaker 4: Kathy Gannon braced out why, in hindsight, this was always
Speaker 4: going to be the most likely result of an invasion
Speaker 4: that had begun two decades prior.
Speaker 20: I don't know what the strategy was, Okay, America was
Speaker 20: attacked by Kaida, but I think from the beginning America
Speaker 20: wanted to.
Speaker 19: Go to Iraq.
Speaker 20: Two thousand and three, you went to Iraq. You began
Speaker 20: twenty year old long before then, Afghanistan was what what
Speaker 20: was the strategy? From day one, the level of corruption started,
Speaker 20: and the Americans were actively involved in that as well,
Speaker 20: because it was expedient. You partnered with people who had
Speaker 20: a history of corruption and lawlessness. You partnered with them willingly,
Speaker 20: and you gave them a free rate and did nothing
Speaker 20: to control that. So it wasn't in twenty twenty one
Speaker 20: that this happened. This was twenty years of mismanagement.
Speaker 1: That led to it.
Speaker 4: The hope was always that a regime could be established,
Speaker 4: supported by the civilians that could stand up to the Taliban.
Speaker 4: But when the US started to withdraw its troops, it
Speaker 4: became clear that their Afghanalyzed did stand a chance.
Speaker 5: As Yalda Hakim explains.
Speaker 16: Had become so dependent on the US military for even
Speaker 16: the most basic.
Speaker 19: Of decision making.
Speaker 5: There was a reliance there.
Speaker 19: And when you take that.
Speaker 21: Rug away from under their feet.
Speaker 8: And kind of essentially handicap them and tie their hands
Speaker 8: behind their backs, and tie their feet and blindfold them
Speaker 8: and gag.
Speaker 18: Them and then just say here's a weapon, try and
Speaker 18: use it.
Speaker 8: That is essentially what happened.
Speaker 18: There wasn't really, in the end, a fight that was
Speaker 18: put up, because when you feel handicapped and this corruption,
Speaker 18: you're not quite sure what the aim of the purpose
Speaker 18: of all of this is, and your partner, the people
Speaker 18: offering you air support, all that disappears.
Speaker 8: You know, you realize that.
Speaker 16: Okay, well, if all that didn't mean anything, what matters?
Speaker 21: You know what ultimately matters?
Speaker 19: Do I want to lose my life?
Speaker 8: Do I want my wife to be a widow?
Speaker 4: The Taliban, it would seem, will be in power for
Speaker 4: the foreseeable future. Here's what Bob Bales had to say
Speaker 4: about the current state of affairs in Afghanistan speaking to
Speaker 4: US in December of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 10: You know, I'm going to sit in prison for the
Speaker 10: rest of my life, never have the opportunity to go
Speaker 10: out there and do anything. And the talent banner sitting
Speaker 10: there running their country. I don't understand. I guess I'm
Speaker 10: confused and it makes you frustrated every day while I've
Speaker 10: been in prison, I've earned my college degree, I'm six
Speaker 10: classes away from having my master's degree. I've taken rehabilitation classes.
Speaker 10: I've done everything I can do to be a better person.
Speaker 10: Then let's compare that to the Taliban. What have they done?
Speaker 10: What did they do to oppress women? Children? Move their
Speaker 10: country back twenty years? I guess America has decided the
Speaker 10: talent ban deserves a second chance. Not me.
Speaker 23: I knew that Coooble would fall eventually. It was really surprising,
Speaker 23: but it does kind of force you to reflect to like,
Speaker 23: what was the fucking point?
Speaker 10: Man?
Speaker 23: Why did we spend twenty years here for it to
Speaker 23: fall apart in two weeks.
Speaker 4: Most of the other veterans interviewed for this podcast seem
Speaker 4: to have mixed feelings about the war and the role
Speaker 4: they played. Like Curtis Grace.
Speaker 23: I think you frame your service in the proper perspective.
Speaker 23: We got orders, we went out and we did what
Speaker 23: we were supposed to do, and we came home. That's
Speaker 23: a success. And we showed and basically a generation and
Speaker 23: a half of Afghan's what freedom was like, you know,
Speaker 23: and they're not going to forget that overnight. It's not
Speaker 23: like now the talle band's in charge are just going
Speaker 23: to completely forget about it.
Speaker 4: Special Forces Captain Danny Fields tries to see the good
Speaker 4: that came from his service along with the bad.
Speaker 9: It's hard to kind of come to terms with the
Speaker 9: fact that you know, you deployed multiple times to a location,
Speaker 9: You've lost friends, You've got friends who are still alive
Speaker 9: but are permanently disabled as a result of it.
Speaker 19: It's hard to.
Speaker 9: Come to terms with that and know that, you know,
Speaker 9: there's this kind of very quick and immediate failure that
Speaker 9: occurred in the course of just a few weeks after
Speaker 9: we pulled out. But what I focus on is what
Speaker 9: good did I do while.
Speaker 19: I was there?
Speaker 9: Did I impact something while I was there? And certainly
Speaker 9: the bail situation changes the calculus a lot.
Speaker 4: It's customary in the States that think a veteran for
Speaker 4: their service, but when your time in the military is
Speaker 4: linked with an incident like the Canahar massacre, it puts
Speaker 4: the idea of fighting for your country in a different line.
Speaker 4: James Alexander recalls the tense atmosphere around their squad after
Speaker 4: they had left BSB Bellumby and returned to the US.
Speaker 19: We're all just drinking to kind of cope with it.
Speaker 7: I'm surprised not more happened to us, Like I mean,
Speaker 7: we were honestly reckless, just completely just acting out because
Speaker 7: we were just like so enraged with like all of
Speaker 7: these feelings and emotions that like we just didn't know
Speaker 7: what to do with it. We pretty much destroyed the barracks,
Speaker 7: you know. It's like we're breaking stuff and beer bottles everywhere.
Speaker 7: It just didn't didn't care, which is angry, angry young men.
Speaker 19: With no outlet.
Speaker 4: Many of the soldiers, such as Gavin Jones, directed their
Speaker 4: frustrations inward.
Speaker 5: I couldn't live with myself.
Speaker 24: I felt like such a fraud, you know, knowing that
Speaker 24: there's parents that are gonna live out the rest of
Speaker 24: their like shitty lives, doing shitty afghan any things without
Speaker 24: their kids. Just the sight of halfway burned carcasses being
Speaker 24: paraded in front of you from someone that is your
Speaker 24: leadership really soured my view of authority backed up by violence.
Speaker 4: Gavin was so affected by the killings that he opted
Speaker 4: to distance himself from his service completely.
Speaker 24: After everything went down, I was able to get out
Speaker 24: under the conscientious objector cause because after everything that I
Speaker 24: witnessed firsthand, I really didn't really want to serve a
Speaker 24: military that I'm not going to say propped up that
Speaker 24: kind of behavior, but certainly was negligent. You know, running
Speaker 24: into enemy fire, helping out your buddy, you know, that's
Speaker 24: what I like, but not when really vulnerable people and
Speaker 24: a lot of children get caught up in the mix.
Speaker 4: After a talk with one of his squad mates, Alexander
Speaker 4: started putting in the work to heal his psyche from
Speaker 4: this traumatic experience.
Speaker 19: When we talk about like PTSD and all of these issues, like.
Speaker 7: We were going through it, and that was probably my
Speaker 7: first recognition like, oh man, I'm just not gonna go
Speaker 7: to beat this myself. And that's when I started talking
Speaker 7: to like behavior health people and like therapists and being
Speaker 7: really authentic and honest with them and having a cathartic
Speaker 7: experience of talking with them about the situation, how I
Speaker 7: well and getting it off my chest. And that's what
Speaker 7: saved my career in my life. Honestly, the reason why
Speaker 7: I was so able to do this is because of
Speaker 7: past trauma. I was involved in a school shooting much
Speaker 7: like Columbine back in nineteen ninety six, this guy named
Speaker 7: Thomas Hamilton, who was my boy scout troop leader and coach,
Speaker 7: went into a school and.
Speaker 4: Yep, for Alexander, one of the most scarring events one
Speaker 4: might ever witness, felt like it.
Speaker 5: Had repeated itself. It begs the question.
Speaker 4: Of whether Robert Bales can be classified as yet another
Speaker 4: assailant in the American epidemic of mass shootings. In the
Speaker 4: eyes of Bob's wife, the answer is clear.
Speaker 25: They're trying to liken it to Sandy Hook. That is
Speaker 25: completely not true. From his person. He was doing what
Speaker 25: had to be done, and that was protecting his men.
Speaker 25: He didn't go out to kill innocent civilians.
Speaker 19: That was not what he was to do.
Speaker 25: Both of the places they had been to previously and
Speaker 25: had searched, and they were, you know, known Taliban.
Speaker 3: Had found sniper rifles, they'd found IID making material, So
Speaker 3: I believe it was a very scary place to be.
Speaker 5: Brendan Vaughan, who wrote the.
Speaker 4: GQ piece on Bails, also draws a distinction between something
Speaker 4: like Ceeney Hook and the Kanahar massacre, but only up
Speaker 4: to a point.
Speaker 5: The context is certainly different. Is it any less bad. No,
Speaker 5: is it different?
Speaker 26: Yes, the setting is completely different.
Speaker 5: What he was out doing.
Speaker 12: On control on a regular basis.
Speaker 26: The difference between that and what the Aurora shooter and
Speaker 26: other school shooters are doing in their daily lives. But
Speaker 26: I don't think that makes what Bails did any less
Speaker 26: of a murder that's worthy of the exact same punishment
Speaker 26: as a school shooter.
Speaker 4: When faced with this comparison, Bob's friend David Wesley focused
Speaker 4: more on the public response to racially motivated shooting some
Speaker 4: places like South Carolina in Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 11: So Bob went out and he killed some Afghani people.
Speaker 11: This man in Buffalo, legit, went and did a recon
Speaker 11: talked to a guy video teamed, then came back and
Speaker 11: killed those people solely because they were black.
Speaker 5: I haven't heard the local.
Speaker 12: Media called for his death. Yet.
Speaker 11: What I did hear was they say that he was sick.
Speaker 11: What I did hear about Dylan Ruth when he killed
Speaker 11: nine black individuals, that he had mental problems, that he.
Speaker 12: Was a lo This isn't Buffalo.
Speaker 11: This is not one rogue man that just couldn't fit
Speaker 11: in a society that business.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 11: This was a well trained soldier that had gotten broken.
Speaker 11: I don't know the circumstances of what made Bob duty did.
Speaker 11: I just know that the Bob that did that was
Speaker 11: broken by its system.
Speaker 8: I think that the American people are good people, and
Speaker 8: they have a set of values, and they believe that
Speaker 8: when their military goes out to defend those set of values, it.
Speaker 19: Is for a purpose.
Speaker 16: But I think the situation in Afghanistan was and remains
Speaker 16: so complicated, and Robert Bales is a depiction of the
Speaker 16: complexities of this conflict, of the misunderstandings of this conflict,
Speaker 16: all the murkiness of what was happening that I'm frankly
Speaker 16: surprised that we didn't have more cases like the Robert
Speaker 16: Bayles case.
Speaker 4: Yolda Hakim raises an important question, why was it only Baales?
Speaker 4: Why didn't this kind of attack on Afghan civilians happen
Speaker 4: more often? But journalist Kathy Gannon has a counter question,
Speaker 4: are you sure that it wasn't only Bailes who committed
Speaker 4: unauthorized attacks?
Speaker 20: Bales was not an aberration.
Speaker 19: This did happen often.
Speaker 5: How much was reported this is another thing.
Speaker 19: But it didn't happen often, and of.
Speaker 20: At one point the UN report. They put out a
Speaker 20: report and there were more civilians killed in bombing rates
Speaker 20: than they were by the Tatabut, So I think that
Speaker 20: should have been looked into there. I wasn't anybody look
Speaker 20: the inter it, you know, I wasn't important.
Speaker 12: In the.
Speaker 4: Incidents like the Kanahar massacre were toxic to the military
Speaker 4: from a public relations perspective. It wasn't long before the
Speaker 4: people in charge at BSP Bellum Buying, including Captain Danny Fields,
Speaker 4: were considered to be radioactive.
Speaker 9: Within the ranks, really loved what I did. But on
Speaker 9: the heels of the Bails incident, I was having a
Speaker 9: discussion with my battalion commander. You know, I asked him genuinely,
Speaker 9: I say, hey, what does this mean for my career?
Speaker 9: And you know, at the time, I wanted to stay
Speaker 9: in I wanted to do other things with special operations.
Speaker 9: He told me, hey, look, most likely this incident is
Speaker 9: going to follow you around for your career. I think
Speaker 9: there was a lot of resentment that I had towards
Speaker 9: Bails in the beginning, not for just sidetracking my career,
Speaker 9: but the careers of other people that I worked with,
Speaker 9: people who are just in of old people. So I
Speaker 9: had a lot of resentment, had a lot of anger.
Speaker 9: You know, A long time has passed, though, Do I
Speaker 9: still have resentment towards him?
Speaker 15: Sure?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I still think there's a part of me who
Speaker 9: probably hasn't it, probably will never forgive him for what
Speaker 9: he did.
Speaker 4: Soldier X was another guy whose career, whose outlook on
Speaker 4: life would never be the same.
Speaker 15: I was furious. I was still infurious. So I'm a
Speaker 15: lot of anger what that man did, not just to me,
Speaker 15: but to all those dudes who I was there time
Speaker 15: to show their country that there there to be patriots,
Speaker 15: and he took that away from ever seeing one of
Speaker 15: those guys. And I felt a lot of shame. My
Speaker 15: family had to feel that shame. My kid, my premier kid.
Speaker 15: I came. I'm know, I was just gone. My wife's
Speaker 15: all the time. I be physically present, just to be
Speaker 15: somewhere else, you know, just angry, angry, ang bails, angry
Speaker 15: at myself. There was Charlenger in so the.
Speaker 4: East men like Soldier EX and Danny Fields, James Alexander
Speaker 4: and Gavin Jones who deployed to VESP Belling Buy, They've
Speaker 4: expressed a fair amount of animosity toward the former staff sergeant.
Speaker 4: But zoom out a little further and other vets who've
Speaker 4: known Robert Bales have found more room to empathize with
Speaker 4: his plan. Take Executive Officer Nick Beasley, who first linked
Speaker 4: up with Bales during their days in Iraq.
Speaker 27: People know Bales and knew the story, but for me,
Speaker 27: he was a great friend. The frustrating thing for me
Speaker 27: is that there's been nobody that's really looked at Bails
Speaker 27: the person, and there hasn't been any deep dive in
Speaker 27: what he is because everyone wants him to be that
Speaker 27: lightning rod monster that they can keep in a cage.
Speaker 27: That's the thing that kills me. We really abandoned somebody
Speaker 27: that spent four years deployed servant country, being a tremendous NCO,
Speaker 27: making a difference in a lot of people's lives that
Speaker 27: were soldiers, and made a horrible, horrible mistake. I want
Speaker 27: some record out there that he was a good dude.
Speaker 4: He is a good dude, having spent time in the
Speaker 4: most kinetic situations in Iraq. David Wesley can't help but
Speaker 4: see things from the point of view of an American
Speaker 4: veteran scarred by war.
Speaker 11: I don't think we ask a person if you're capable
Speaker 11: of murder?
Speaker 12: Right?
Speaker 11: I don't think that's a fair question, but I think
Speaker 11: the best way to answer it is, what would you
Speaker 11: be capable of if you spent three years of your
Speaker 11: life looking at death, sending your friends home in refrigerated coffins,
Speaker 11: being bombed routine, not knowing whether just going to take
Speaker 11: a shit, whether a mortar would impact and you would
Speaker 11: die on the shitter.
Speaker 12: What would you be capable of?
Speaker 2: Have you been in contact with him over the best
Speaker 2: in years.
Speaker 12: I haven't.
Speaker 11: Because I don't know what to say, because a part
Speaker 11: of me wants to say, how the fuck dare you?
Speaker 5: And how did you let them break you?
Speaker 11: I want to yell at him, I want to screaming,
Speaker 11: but I don't think he needs it, you know, I
Speaker 11: think he does that to himself enough.
Speaker 14: Even if I'm sitting on the couch watching TV, or
Speaker 14: whether I'm in a prison cell, you know, it comes back.
Speaker 14: There's not a day that I don't relive seeing that
Speaker 14: little girl. Nobody joins the infantry to be the bad guy.
Speaker 14: Nobody joins the army after September eleventh, be the bad guy.
Speaker 14: I sit back and I ask, you know, why, how
Speaker 14: did I get to where I'm at, Like, how did
Speaker 14: I get from, you know, being the good guy, being
Speaker 14: the leader of my group, to being what I think
Speaker 14: I was a very good soldier to being in prison
Speaker 14: for the rest of my life?
Speaker 12: How did I go from one to the other?
Speaker 14: And what purpose was this in God's grand design or
Speaker 14: God's grand scheme of things.
Speaker 4: A life sentence in Fort Lennworth has given Bails plenty
Speaker 4: of time to examine his life, frequently through the lens
Speaker 4: of religion.
Speaker 12: In prison, I've.
Speaker 14: Had a lot of time to reflect on it, you know,
Speaker 14: and I remember hating you know, this is all in
Speaker 14: retrospect and reflecting back on it and thinking about God.
Speaker 12: My view on religion.
Speaker 14: As of all over time from if you you know,
Speaker 14: if you do the wrong thing, you're going to burn
Speaker 14: into hell. My favorite aunt uncle, they had a different
Speaker 14: perspective of religion other than this yelling and screaming and
Speaker 14: you're going to die and go to hell. Hey, there's
Speaker 14: this God of love over here. And it was very,
Speaker 14: very much more into the compassion side of things. And
Speaker 14: so I was really attracted that I think.
Speaker 9: You live and you learn.
Speaker 3: Bob learns things that he goes forward and he learns things,
Speaker 3: and he goes forward, and he has strong ideas of God,
Speaker 3: family and friends, and those things are the most important.
Speaker 4: Thing for all of Robert Bales's self actualization. There will
Speaker 4: always be people that feel a life sentence in prison
Speaker 4: is a punishment that fits the crime.
Speaker 7: They can't walk him away long enough, like this man
Speaker 7: cannot get out like ever just can't. Why have jails
Speaker 7: if you're not going to put people on him in
Speaker 7: you know, I think if he gets out, it's a
Speaker 7: I mean, the legal system already has issues, but that
Speaker 7: in it's health.
Speaker 19: I think. I just like, on its face of it,
Speaker 19: it's a non start.
Speaker 15: I think the more this gets drived on and the
Speaker 15: more he tries to appeal and Mike, I'm thing about yourself, dude,
Speaker 15: not thinking about every single families that you destroyed.
Speaker 4: At the same time, and his corner remains a small cadre,
Speaker 4: including as always John Mayer.
Speaker 13: I've accepted the case. I take honor in it. I
Speaker 13: believe it's my duty. I don't feel pressure. I feel
Speaker 13: that this is a case. There's monumental impacts potentially here
Speaker 13: for the law, for the Army, for the Bugan Drug Administration,
Speaker 13: for pharmaceutical manufacturers and for any other coalition trooper. Democracy
Speaker 13: abhors a secret and prefers sunshine. We're trying to put
Speaker 13: some sunshine on it.
Speaker 5: A lot of.
Speaker 28: People think that the Bob Bails case is really open
Speaker 28: and shut, black and white, good versus evil. However, as
Speaker 28: with most things in life, it's much more complicated than that.
Speaker 4: Lieutenant Colonel bulgerfind is the CEO of United American Patriots,
Speaker 4: an organization dedicated to helping warriors convicted of crimes in
Speaker 4: the military Arena. UAP bank rolls Bails' defense.
Speaker 29: People in general tend to be emotionally driven, and so
Speaker 29: I tend to address things rationally with the facts.
Speaker 30: First, Bob Bales was not given a presumption of innocence.
Speaker 30: I mean, you can imagine if the President of the
Speaker 30: United States here's this and said, hold on a second,
Speaker 30: let's find out exactly what happened. Might we have come
Speaker 30: to the same conclusion. Perhaps, But we don't know. We
Speaker 30: never will know who the high ranking Taliban enemy combatants
Speaker 30: are that Bob claims he killed. We just have the
Speaker 30: evidence that the Taliban provided to the United States. I
Speaker 30: believe that.
Speaker 29: Our country is coming to a perspective of we've been
Speaker 29: misled by our emotions. I'd like to believe our society
Speaker 29: is getting tired of this polarization and it's going to
Speaker 29: start being more rational first and saying, all right, I
Speaker 29: just saw a headline. Let me read the article, let
Speaker 29: me get into the facts.
Speaker 4: While the legal battle plays out, Carrie Bales continues to
Speaker 4: raise her two kids in the hopes that someday her
Speaker 4: husband will return home to share their lives.
Speaker 5: She can't see this story ending any other way.
Speaker 25: I remember the first time, you know, you sit down
Speaker 25: and you have to.
Speaker 3: Pro and columns.
Speaker 25: Of yourself, and I thought about it, like, what would
Speaker 25: have you like to not be married and to get
Speaker 25: divorced and not be a home's life and not take
Speaker 25: the kings to see their.
Speaker 19: Dad, not be and have another life.
Speaker 31: And I just couldn't imagine. I couldn't imagine my life
Speaker 31: like that, and how sad it would be. He is
Speaker 31: not just my husband, it's more like my best friend.
Speaker 31: And we've been through tough times before and got through it.
Speaker 31: And not a lot of military people are still married.
Speaker 25: We hit seventeen years this last March, and I think
Speaker 25: we're even more closer than a lot of people.
Speaker 19: That do live together.
Speaker 3: This is the right path, this is this is where
Speaker 3: I want to be.
Speaker 4: Quincy Bales, Bob's oldest child, shares the worldview that was
Speaker 4: instilled by her mom and dad.
Speaker 32: My parents as a whole have always taught us to
Speaker 32: be positive. My dad always says that we're never down,
Speaker 32: either up or getting up. And I think that that's
Speaker 32: definitely taken a big toll on helping us because our
Speaker 32: situation does suck, but it leaves room for like feeling
Speaker 32: sorry for ourselves, but we always keep a positive outlook
Speaker 32: on things, and we're also very hopeful.
Speaker 4: Even so, Bails is well aware of the myriad ways
Speaker 4: that his actions in Afghanistan changed everything for his two children.
Speaker 14: Looking at where I'm at today, you know, I don't
Speaker 14: know that I want my kid going in the army.
Speaker 12: It's just kind of the way it is.
Speaker 14: But you're asking someone to do something that isn't natural.
Speaker 14: You're asking someone to take away everything they've been taught.
Speaker 5: You don't kill people.
Speaker 12: You know, it's not okay to kill someone, and now.
Speaker 14: You're giving them a weapon, and you're saying, not only
Speaker 14: is it okay to do it, it's honorable to do it,
Speaker 14: and it is the right thing to do. I don't
Speaker 14: want my kid going in the military. Yes it's very honorable,
Speaker 14: Yes it's needed. Yes it's a service. I don't want
Speaker 14: my kids doing it, you know what I mean, I
Speaker 14: just don't.
Speaker 12: I want them to live a good life, you know,
Speaker 12: better life.
Speaker 4: After all this time, Carrie doesn't blame her husband or
Speaker 4: even the military for the fracturing of their family unit.
Speaker 4: She understands the struggle that Bob Bails was facing.
Speaker 25: It was just the perfect storm of events. I mean,
Speaker 25: I'm a very god fearing person, and yeah, I'll say
Speaker 25: there's no coincidences. Obviously, I believe it could have been prevented.
Speaker 25: I don't know how at this point, right this many
Speaker 25: years later, it could have should.
Speaker 3: Have wound us all of those things.
Speaker 25: I just think that he was backed into a corner
Speaker 25: where he did it.
Speaker 24: I think, I don't think.
Speaker 29: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Is that's probably the hardest question.
Speaker 14: My intent was not the killed children. I wrote a
Speaker 14: letter for Bobby and Quincy while we were bell and By.
Speaker 14: One of the things I wrote to them is that
Speaker 14: the kids in Afghanistan are a different than the kids
Speaker 14: in America.
Speaker 12: You know, I'd sit there and I juggle rocks form.
Speaker 12: You know, we didn't have toys. We juggle rocks.
Speaker 15: You know.
Speaker 12: I tried to build those relationships with the kids.
Speaker 14: So to have someone think that I'm such a cold
Speaker 14: heart advassard that I just go in there and kill
Speaker 14: those kids without any thought or any There's more to
Speaker 14: the story than just a guy that lost his shit
Speaker 14: and went out there and just blew up a bunch
Speaker 14: of kids and women.
Speaker 4: On March eleventh, twenty twelve, in the dead of night,
Speaker 4: Robert Baal snuck outside the wire of his village stability
Speaker 4: platform and walked to the villages of Ala Kosai in Najabien.
Speaker 4: What happened that night was an unequivocal tragedy that will
Speaker 4: echo for eternity. A thousand talking points on a thousand
Speaker 4: topical issue stem from the idea of the Canahearm massacre,
Speaker 4: and this series has endeavored to cover many of them.
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, for Robert Bayles,
Speaker 4: leaving out his years in his cell in the middle
Speaker 4: of Kansas, it all boils down to one decision. In
Speaker 4: the midst of what seems like an existential threat. Do
Speaker 4: you take action or do you just go back to sleep.
Speaker 4: This was and continues to be Robert Bayles' is war within.
Speaker 14: One of the things that helps me as I sit
Speaker 14: in the USD be on a daily basis is still
Speaker 14: the belief that there's no way I walk out of
Speaker 14: there alive.
Speaker 12: Had I not done what I did.
Speaker 14: And moreover, there's no way that the people they were
Speaker 14: with me walk out of there alive with all their
Speaker 14: body parts had I not done something that day, If
Speaker 14: we would have continued on doing the status quo, at
Speaker 14: least more of us would have been dead, injured, killed.
Speaker 10: Or maine.
Speaker 14: I believe that wholeheartedly. I said that at the time,
Speaker 14: and I still believe it today. You know, whether the
Speaker 14: rest of the world bell leave that or not, that's
Speaker 14: up for them to decide. I said back, and I
Speaker 14: think about it, and I'm like, you know, they drew
Speaker 14: down the Afghan War after I did what I did.
Speaker 14: You know, we're talking about a troop surge prior to that,
Speaker 14: and they kind of stopped that conversation, and they maybe
Speaker 14: held back some dudes from going over and maybe all
Speaker 14: those dudes that VSP had I not down what I did,
Speaker 14: maybe they would all be dead.
Speaker 12: Maybe they would have sent.
Speaker 14: More people in Afghanistan, maybe more Afghanistan people would be dead,
Speaker 14: and so maybe you know, and I know this is
Speaker 14: all speculation obviously, but in my mind I come to that,
Speaker 14: and you know, I trust God.
Speaker 12: I trust that there is a plan.
Speaker 14: And maybe there's something there that we can take and
Speaker 14: make good right, like won't be overcome by evil or
Speaker 14: overcome evil with good. And I think that as I'm
Speaker 14: sitting alone in my cell at night, it's the only
Speaker 14: thing that allows me to keep going.
Speaker 12: Sometimes, does that make sense?
Speaker 4: The War Within the Robert Bailes Story is production of
Speaker 4: Bungalow Media and Entertainment, Checkpoint Productions and Mosquito Park Pictures
Speaker 4: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The series was created by
Speaker 4: executive producers Paul Polowski and David check Executive producers for
Speaker 4: Bungalow Media and Entertainment are Robert Friedman and Mike Powers.
Speaker 4: The podcast was written and produced by Max Nelson and
Speaker 4: hosted by me Mike McGinnis. Editing was done by Anna Hoverman,
Speaker 4: sound design and mix by John Gardner. Teddy Gannon was
Speaker 4: an archival producer. Leila Ahmadzai was an associate producer. And
Speaker 4: Peter Solataroff was production assistant. Special thanks to Liz Yelle Marsh,
Speaker 4: Nicole Reuben, Marcy Barkain, Zach Burpie, and Meerwi Satal, as
Speaker 4: well as all of the people who are interviewed for
Speaker 4: the podcast. Listen and subscribe to The War Within on
Speaker 4: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.