The Washington
Post reports that the Pentagon has acknowledged that members of a
U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan have killed civilians in Afghanistan
for the sport of it.
According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.
The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed.
This is one of the reasons I absolutely hate it when people in this country call U.S. combat soldiers "heroes" when they return from war. People have no clue what these troops did while in Iraq or Afghanistan. At one point in the article it says one of the accused soldiers, "confided to his new mates that it had been easy for him to get away with 'stuff' when he served in Iraq in 2004."
We know that this kind of random "sport" killing has been going on for years. Seldom is anyone caught and prosecuted.
This is what happens when you put soldiers in a war zone and dehumanize the "enemy". This is what happens when soldiers are trained to kill, kill, kill - some of them begin to like doing it and make a game out of it. This is what happens when the Army repeatedly ignores the pleas of a father, who tried to report the killings, after being told by his son that this was going on in the platoon.
The Army knows it is "business as usual". Indirectly they encourage it in their training and in their supervision of the soldiers in the war zone. They always try to ignore it.
The only way this will ever stop is to end the wars now.
When will Obama and the Democrats do so?
posted by Bruce Gagnon
According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.
The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed.
This is one of the reasons I absolutely hate it when people in this country call U.S. combat soldiers "heroes" when they return from war. People have no clue what these troops did while in Iraq or Afghanistan. At one point in the article it says one of the accused soldiers, "confided to his new mates that it had been easy for him to get away with 'stuff' when he served in Iraq in 2004."
We know that this kind of random "sport" killing has been going on for years. Seldom is anyone caught and prosecuted.
This is what happens when you put soldiers in a war zone and dehumanize the "enemy". This is what happens when soldiers are trained to kill, kill, kill - some of them begin to like doing it and make a game out of it. This is what happens when the Army repeatedly ignores the pleas of a father, who tried to report the killings, after being told by his son that this was going on in the platoon.
The Army knows it is "business as usual". Indirectly they encourage it in their training and in their supervision of the soldiers in the war zone. They always try to ignore it.
The only way this will ever stop is to end the wars now.
When will Obama and the Democrats do so?
posted by Bruce Gagnon
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