There was an interesting article in the NYTimes magazine a few weeks ago that talked about the United States military and a few incidents in Afghanistan in which locals were essentially murdered. The separate incidents were all set up to look like the local had attacked peaceful patrols and as a result were killed. The three incidents discussed in the article were undertaken by a small group of men under questionable leadership. There was one soldier who was a constant in all three killings, the mastermind if you will, who planned and recruited fellow soldiers to assist in the killings. The five men who at one point or another took part in killings are now being tried for murder. These are not the first "murders" reported in Afghanistan. There are a slew of other incidents that went unreported, were not investigated, and thus slipped through the cracks. The same holds true for the war in Iraq. Parts of the article sickened me to read what our soldiers had done to local families completely unprovoked. In case you don't read the whole article in the magazine, I will relate just one incident (abbreviated) so you can understand a little of where I am coming from.
One of the incidents occurred during a peaceful patrol. Some soldiers were meeting with elders from a village and the rest were sent out to set up a perimeter and ensure safety for those that were meeting. The were all spread out and few were by a field being farmed by a local. The "mastermind" behind all the killings called this man over, indicating he wanted to talk to him. The man came, and when he got close, he was ordered to stand there. In short, the soldier who called him over also called out to the closest soldier saying there might be an issue. Before the other soldier got there, the one who called him over ducked behind a wall, prepped a grenade, and threw it at the feet of the farmer yelling out, "He's got a grenade, duck." There were some shots fired, the grenade went off, and the farmer was murdered. To ensure that the farmer was dead, he was shot in the head and the "mastermind" then cut off a finger as a trophy. The farmer was never armed and exhibited no aggression towards the soldiers. He just happened to be the closest available target for a planned, premeditated murder.
There are a lot of questions raised when something like this happens. Is it the fault of the leadership of the platoon? Is it just one renegade brigade that is undertaking these acts? How can this be allowed to happen. Before I begin to lambaste the military, let me state that this is not an assault on all soldiers. But lets look at the basics of the situation. Soldiers are trained to kill people. We put guns in there hands, powerful ones at that, and teach them how to kill people. Most of the time, they kill the people they are supposed to, the ones attacking them, but there seems to be an increase in incidents where non-combatants are being murdered or killed for no reason. Some claim that it is because the soldiers in question are not seeing enough "action" or because they are fighting an unconventional war and the enemy is not always visible, they feel the need to lash out at anyone near them. Many soldiers now deal with the unexpected like IED's and other unconventional warfare techniques making their tours of duty more stressful and depressing. Despite all of this, it should not give anyone the right to kill others just for the sake of seeing some action. When people are trained to kill, they will seek to kill, period. Most may be able to contain the urge and tame it, but it is still there. How can we expect otherwise.
When you hear stories like this one, you can understand why locals in countries our military is fighting in want us out of there. Who in their right mind would want to have soldiers around whom they increasingly can not trust because of the few who abuse their power and murder locals because it is convenient or "necessary" in their minds? A military in any country, as I have stated before, should be there for one reason and one reason only, to protect the country from invasions or attacks by other countries. At no point should a military be used to invade other countries simply because they have oil we want or a dictator with anti-American policies. When you look at the whole, any country with anti-American policies usually has a reason for them. Usually, those policies date back to military actions overt or covert in the past that were directed either against those countries or against a culture. If we go by our current actions in Iraq, then our military should also be invading Syria and Libya to "protect" the innocent and rid the world of the leaders who feel the need to kill protesters to keep order in their countries. It is ludicrous and we have overstepped our bounds one to many times. When we keep soldiers, especially in Afghanistan for 10 years with no real tangible effect, then frustration will build and people will be killed. We need to confine our military to our country and let people figure out their own issues. The families of the three men murdered lost a loved one due to reckless abandon by our military, a few "bad apples" who needed stories to tell when they got home. You want to know how we compensated those families? We gave them each a little over a $11,000 dollars. As if that will make up for our transgressions in taking away their loved ones.
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