The actions of a U.S. army staff sergeant who went door-to-door in a village in the district of Panjwai outside Kandahar, killing nine children and seven adults, are heinous, horrific, and inexplicable–as many expressions of pure evil often are. If the facts are as reported, he will no doubt be dealt with by the efficient U.S. military justice system; he will be lucky to avoid the death penalty. It is hard to say anything else about this terrible event with any certainty. It is likely to impair the U.S. mission in Afghanistan–and will certainly make it harder to win the trust of the villagers whose friends and neighbors were just massacred–but how much damage it will do remains unclear. So far, the expression of outrage in Afghanistan has been muted–more so than after the Koran burnings. It should count for something that the sergeant’s actions were in no way sanctioned by the high command; in fact it was a U.S. unit that captured him and American prosecutors and judges who will bring him to justice. Even Seymour Hersh will have a hard time depicting these abhorrent acts as expressions of official American policy.
It would be a tragedy if some of the collateral damage from this rampage were to fall on the Village Stability Platform of which the sergeant was a part. This is a program run by the Special Forces, with help from some conventional soldiers (such as the sergeant), to stand up an auxiliary security force known as the Afghan Local Police in various locations around Afghanistan where there is not a major presence of U.S. troops. I have visited a couple of these sites duringthe past couple of years and have found them making real progress though also facing real challenges, primarily having to do with the need to understand local dynamics and not inadvertently empower the wrong actors when security forces are set up.
But done right, the Village Stability Platform and the associated Afghan Local Police program have the potential to be major “force multipliers” by creating a lot of problems for the Taliban for relatively little expenditure of U.S. resources. Indeed, this is potentially a model program as U.S. conventional units draw down–although, in dangerous and unstable areas, there is no substitute for the presence of substantial ground-combat forces.
One of the characteristics that makes this program so effective is that it puts small groups of U.S. soldiers in close proximity to Afghan civilians. That allows them to build bonds of trust–bonds which, in at least one place, have just been done grave damage by the actions of an apparent psychotic in uniform. His crimes should not, however, lead to a condemnation of the large program or of the broader counterinsurgency effort. It is only by taking risks–including the risk which no one had considered: of unleashing an American psychopath on innocent villagers–that U.S. troops can drive the Taliban out of their strongholds.
I no longer support the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. The United States needs to leave ASAP! nA marine from a Mississippi town not far from here was killed in Afghanistan in early February by an Afghan soldier with whom he was doing guard duty. The killing was supposedly accidental, but I don't buy it. nHow can you expect to do any good for people who will riot and murder over the burning of a book? I don't intend to justify what that soldier did, but my guess is that the soldier killed those Afghans in revenge for their killing Americans in that rioting.
nI would say it is a virtual certainty that this individual will NOT receive the death penalty in court martial, and that he will never be executed. He may serve a life sentence, however, if an insanity defense works, he will be out in ten years. n nI think it's too bad, because in a case like this, for political reasons as well as reasons of justice, he should be summarily executed — there is after all no question that he committed the murders because he surrendered to custody after committing them — preferably with the involvement of the local community he slaughtered. Anything less than this frankly guarantees the failure of our mission. n nSince this is NOT going to happen, we might as well roll up and leave.
spm1968 – “summarily executed” really?r nwhat if the american soldier who shot the 16 afghansr nsuffered a temporary mental break down?r nbtw, did you reccomend similar punishment foe ther narmy doctor who killed his colleagues at r nfort hood last year?
Leave that Godforsaken dump. Whtaever the original rationale for staying after we defeated the Taliban, it has long been overtaken by events and driting strategic goals. George Will was correct three years ago when he said to bail and conduct anti-terror activities via drone warfare and special forces. The only difference between Afghanistan of today and the same "country" that existed there 1200 years ago is the weaponry the savages use. Since we won't get serious and it is dubious that we could accomplish much even if we were serious, let's get out.
Max, nobody has dished out civilian Pentagon bureaucratese like this since the glory days of Robert McNamara touting the successes of the Strategic Hamlets. n nSmells like…. n nPowerPoints.