More on Colonel Westhusing

by Cliopatria

The story of Colonel Ted Westhusing is spreading through the web due to people like Ralph, and to others as well. To what long term effect? I do not know. I present here some links (an overview of sorts):

1. The initial story of his death in June from a more or less official source.

2. A fairly interesting blog entry from June.

3. A ”Guestbook” for the colonel from the Longview (Tex) News Journal. It spans the time the first announcment of his death to the publication of the L.A. Times story that Ralph linked below.

4 Naturally the story has been picked up by the foreign opponents of the United States in Iraq.

5. And by domestic opponents. (Scroll down). However, as with this site, they are simply posting parts of the story.

I will be interested to see reactions by supporters of the war. One honorable man’s suicide cannot, in itself, condemn a conflict. But it resonates with so much other evidence about the manner of our occupation that it cannot simply be dismissed as depression.

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More Comments:

Keith West - 9/17/2007

Colonel Westhusing attempted to get a military lawyer in Iraq to mediate his concerns/his charges/the corruption that were not being addressed by Maj Gen Fil and especially General Petraues when he brought it forward, as well as provide an avenue to pursue it through channels that weren't being corrupted or politicized by the Army process. He was refused by his commanding officers. He was willing to then bring it home, since his term of service was to end in 3 weeks. He had a very heated discussion the morning of his death with both Fil and Petraues.
The admin assistance connected to his office where he was found dead that morning, heard another huge argument,an hour before he was found DEAD NEXT DOOR. He was coming home to bring it to a forum where his credibility, his convictions, his charges and the ethics of them would go unquestioned, West Point, US. His body guard was released on leave the week he died and not replaced. All this is true, read the documents released by the Freedom of information act on web site, www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2440 - 49k . You tell me.

John H. Lederer - 11/29/2005

Well, yes. Resigning one's commission does have career implications for a professional officer.

I find myself very uncomfortable talking about Colonel Westhusing in this context. I don't know why he killed himself. I doubt that anyone does. I think casting it as fodder for the political grist mill is wrong.

I am not sure that I can defend that. It simply feels wrong to me, so I am going to duck out of this discussion.

Ralph E. Luker - 11/29/2005

One could do that, of course. It would make his return to West Point unlikely, if not impossible, and there are few positions for military ethicists on the "open" academic market.

John H. Lederer - 11/29/2005

In some Ways I agree with both of you-- while of course disagreeing in part (grin),

But Oscar Chamberlain's post did make me think less and less that the Colonel's suicide is a coinnected to moral issues about the way the war is conducted.

He was a field grade officer. Field grade officers have many ways to act if they think that army actions are immoral, not the least among them being to resign one's commission. .

Jonathan Dresner - 11/29/2005

One of the flaws of microhistory is the tendency to overgeneralize; but the strength of microhistory is the use of a case to draw on and examine the function of larger processes, and to suggest avenues of broader investigation.

I'd be prepared to declare his suicide irrelevant to understanding the war/reconstruction of Iraq (the tragic effects on his family and the loss of an obviously intelligent and virtuous individual are obvious, but that's not the point here) but point at the study of his activities in Iraq as worth noting.

His involvement as a US Army officer in the privatized side of the occupation/reconstruction, and the ethical and practical problems of profit/political interactions is fascinating.

The Army's institutional investigation process, the epistemology of suicide (as Lederer cites above) and the difficulty of interpretation of suicide as an act (and morale as a quantity) and as a caused event, are also issues which make it interesting.

To some extent I think that Mauboussin is right: context cannot be assumed; it must be investigated. (I also think that Oscar is right that the problems are real and substantial, possibly fundamental and inherent)

John H. Lederer - 11/29/2005

I do not think it is indicative of a broad problem. By all reports and indicators that I know of military morale is very high.

The 1995 -2004 rates per 100,000 FTE military for suicide as reported by the DOD are:
1994 13.3
1995 15.0
1996 11.7
1997 10.1
1998 10.5
1999 9.5
2000 9.9
2001 9.0
2002 9.8
2003 11.4
2004 7.4

From a separate piece of knowledge regarding medical statistics in civilian life, suicide statistics are likely always low -- there is a strong tendency to label a death a suicide only when the conclusion seems inescapable, both out of regard for the family and because of legal (insurance) consequences. I suspect that something similar is likely true in the military.

The source of the numbers is
http://www.dior.whs.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates1.pdf

It is worth noting that the overall military death rate in the last couple of years is approximately the same as it was in the early 80's. The increased rate of death from hostile action has roughly equalled the decreases due to lower accident rates (largely vehicular) and lower deaths from illness (presumably better medicine).

Oscar Chamberlain - 11/29/2005

Checked out Yon's site. Did not find anything on the colonel, though I might have missed it. I assume that you wanted to make the point that things are going well in Iraq.

There are positives. Saddam is on trial. There is the beginning of an economic recovery.

There is also a growing dislike of the manner of our occupation even among the Iraqis who have worked hard to make out intervention successful. Much of that growing dissatisfaction involves the Bush administration disdain for human rights that has led even some Iraqis in the government to question the current situation and American actions.

That the US government has redefined torture in order to make some torture techniques lawful is simply a matter of fact. That Westhusing found Americans working for contractors abusing Iraqis and then hiding the evidence is another indicator of that remarkable disdain for basic rights.

Oh, and trying to denounce my concerns by calling me "left wing" is rather pathetic. Look around you, sir. More and more the best and most powerful opponents of the manner of the occupation are conservatives. And I thank them.

Oscar Chamberlain - 11/29/2005

Good point. I was actually not thinking of his death as a conscious message on his part but as an indicator of "greater" problems.

Pierre Mauboussin - 11/29/2005

"But it resonates with so much other evidence about the manner of our occupation that it cannot simply be dismissed as depression."

Of course it does: would any reporting of this incident NOT correspond to other dulcet tones conatined within the left-wing echo-chamber of the MSM and the academy?

Your comments are simply inexcusably lazy: take a look at the milblogs and Michael Yon's reports for a quite different take.

And don't reply with the fatuous 'straw view' argument about individual soldiers as already featured in the WaPo.

When very many of those 'straws' see the same thing from many parts of Iraq, it makes it even more clear that most 'reporting' is simply a left-wing fanatasy.

John H. Lederer - 11/29/2005

I don't think there is enough information to conclude anything.

I knew three people who committed suicide, one a friend as a teenager, the second an Air Force officer, the third a terminally ill relative. In the first two cases, though one can come up with reasons, they seem so minor in proportion that the act in the end is inexplicable.

I know I have had times in my life when what now seem like relatively small problems were seemingly insurmountable and all consuming. I have always rather thought that many suicides are the result of something like that -- a temporary inability to say "This too shall pass".

I think there are rare times when a suicide is an intentional political act or moral protest, though that seems more commonly an Eastern propensity. Off hand, Gordon at Khartoum might possibly be a historical example, though certainly open to dispute. But in those cases, one would think that the person would be quite careful to make sure that the reason was known.