Friday, September 10, 2010

"There Are No More Good Men Left Here"

A predictable result of an endless and winless war:

A dozen US soldiers are facing trail accused of being part of a 'kill team' that allegedly killed Afghan civilians in an arbitrary fashion - and they even collected their victims' fingers as trophies of war.

Five soldiers have been charged with the killing three Afghan men 'for sport'. And seven more are accused of covering up the murders.

Our troops are not fighting an identifiable army in either Iraq or Afghanistan. They are fighting civilians whose only effective methods of combat are blowing up convoys or sniping from cover.

It is inevitable that soldiers under those conditions will start to see all civilians as the enemy and start treating them as such.

This kind of conduct marks the the point where an army starts to disintegrate.

I will not be at all surprised if incidents such as this continue to rise in number. I will not be at all surprised to learn that this sort of thing is already far more common than admitted by anyone in the military or the government.

Those soldiers that have lost whatever moral footing they had because of these wars? The ones that now kill for fun?

How do we handle them when they return home?

1 comment:

TheWayfarer said...

When a country is occupied - unless they're made content with the occupation, like Americans have been - patriotic citizens will do whatever they have to to resist and repel the invaders.
That's what happened in Vietnam, and probably what will happen in the U.S. if the people ever realize how badly they're getting fucked by the bipartisan Kakostocracy monopolizing power in Washington.
Just like all of them going back to WW1, this cannon-fodder "war" will end once all the elements have been set in place for causing the next one!