Interesting take on Afghanistan shootings

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself  

The Folly of Soldier Worship

John Glaser, March 22, 2012

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State doctrine holds that soldiers are intrinsically honorable. It is a conviction held by most of the public that those who wear a military uniform are to receive automatic society-wide praise for their service, irrespective of who they are or what they�ve done. If one dissents from the blind nationalist approval for America�s wars, it is fine to criticize the politicians, but soldiers generally can�t be at fault.

There has been plenty of commentary on the political and media treatment afforded to Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the U.S. soldier who massacred 17 Afghan men, women, and children in cold blood. As far as criminal acts by military men, Bales is among the worst. But even for him there has been an excited effort to rationalize his unprovoked slaughter of innocents and to paint him as the victim. This is really just an illustration of the sickly dogma of this country to valorize its soldiers: merely by virtue of their military service, soldiers are held to be courageous, noble, heroic.

Like most aspects of state doctrine, this precept contradicts basic truisms and abundant facts. For example, numerous studies have concluded that violent sexual assault is rampant in the U.S. military. In 2008, an estimated 41 percent of all the women serving in the military were victims of sexual assault, a problem Rep. Jane Harman called �an epidemic.� In a January 2012 Pentagon report on �rape, sexual assault, and forcible sodomy� in the military, it was found that these crimes have increased 64 percent since 2006. The vast majority of cases go unreported though, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta estimated the number of cases was close to 19,000 in 2011. Rape and other forms of sexual assault are among the most derided and abhorred crimes in society, but their high occurrence within the military is ignored so that anyone in a uniform can be indiscriminately praised for their �service.�

Similarly, there is apparently a significant street gang representation in the U.S. military. Recent FBI investigations found that �Gang members have been reported in every branch of the U.S. military,� constituting �a significant criminal threat.� As of April 2011, the FBI has �identified members of at least 53 gangs whose members have served in or are affiliated with U.S. military,� including the Asian Boyz, Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings, MS-13, Sure�os, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Hells Angels, and many more. Hard statistics were not released in the FBI report, and this is not to say that all or even most of the U.S. military are or were a part of street gangs � of course not. But these findings are curiously absent in the public dialogue because people serving in the military lose their individuality to be arbitrarily elevated to hero-status regardless of their actual behavior.

But the society-wide inclination towards soldier-worship is a rot that runs much deeper than that. What does it say about a culture that idolizes and fetishizes a commitment to kill on the orders of politicians in Washington? Even setting aside what soldiers actually do throughout the American empire, that is an odd thing to admire. Politics is often ridiculed by the public as a fickle, foolish enterprise, but that criticism vanishes once the issue is war and those paid to carry it out. Then, state policy is the divine manifestation of goodness and freedom and honor. Nationalist themes uphold this system of belief, as I�ve written.

It is even more striking, like in the case of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, when soldiers commit plainly savage atrocities and still receive the benefit of esteemed status resulting from the fact that they wear fatigues. The fate of Bales remains to be seen, but as I wrote immediately following the news of his crimes, U.S. soldiers have got off easy in the recent past for comparable acts.

To take just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples, soldier worship breaks down on the most cursory analysis. Every single Bush administration justification for invading Iraq in 2003 has been discredited and very few people, civilian or military, can articulate why we�re waging a war and occupying Afghanistan. Together, these two wars caused the death of many hundreds of thousands of civilians in addition to all the unspoken horror and suffering for which there are no statistics. How can it be that politicians are the only ones to blame for this and not those who actually carried it out?

In the famous funeral oration delivered around 490 BCE for fallen soldiers in the Peloponnesian War, the ancient Greek politician Pericles unwittingly revealed how completely senseless is the uncritical glorification of the military. He said, �even those who come short in other ways may justly plead the valor with which they have fought for their country; they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited the state more by their public services than they have injured her by their private actions.�

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+9

JLS � 2 days ago


The public actually do that even worse with cops.


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+8

Strider55 73p � 2 days ago


Actually I've found that most people now have a lot of distrust, if now outright contempt, for cops. Usually as the result of one or more encounters with a badge-toting bully looking to fill his ticket quota. Cops are a lot closer to the people, so run-ins with those bad apples are a lot more common than with their military counterparts, especially if there's no base nearby. When Camden, NJ recently laid off half of its police force due to budget cuts, local wags supposedly commented that crime would drop substantially as a result, since the cops were the town's #1 criminal element.


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Villagers: Deaths were retaliation for bombing




By Deb Riechmann and Mirwais Khan - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Mar 21, 2012 8:35:46 EDT



KANDAHAR, Afghanistan � Several Afghans near the villages where an American soldier is alleged to have killed 16 civilians say U.S. troops lined them up against a wall after a roadside bombing and told them that they, and even their children, would pay a price for the attack.

Residents have given similar accounts to both The Associated Press and to Afghan government officials about an alleged bombing in the vicinity, which they said occurred March 7 or 8, and left U.S. troops injured. The residents also said they are convinced that the slayings of the 16 villagers just days later was in retaliation for that bomb.

Although the villagers' accounts could not be independently confirmed, their claim that the shootings by a U.S. soldier may have been payback for a roadside bombing has gained wide currency in the area and has been repeated by politicians testifying about the incident to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.


Related reading

Soldier�s lawyer plans trip to Afghanistan (March 20)

Accused soldier had shaky business dealings (March 20)

Lawyer: Bales recalls little of shooting spree (March 19)

Money, job strife dogged accused Afghan shooter (March 18)

Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 38, is suspected of leaving a U.S. base in Panjwai district, entering homes and gunning down nine children, four men and three women before dawn on March 11 in the villages of Balandi and Alkozai. Villagers said the earlier bombing occurred in Mokhoyan, a village about 500 yards east of the base.

A lawyer for Bales in the United States also suggested that Bales was motivated by a bombing in the area.

However, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan declined to give any information on the bombing or even confirm that it occurred, citing the ongoing investigation into the shootings. He also declined to comment on the suggestions that U.S. troops had threatened villagers with retaliation.

"The shooting incident as well as any possibilities that led up to it or might be associated with it will be investigated," Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, the spokesman, said Tuesday.

One Mokhoyan resident, Ahmad Shah Khan, told The Associated Press that after the bombing, U.S. soldiers and their Afghan army counterparts arrived in his village and made many of the male villagers stand against a wall.

"It looked like they were going to shoot us, and I was very afraid," Khan said. "Then a NATO soldier said through his translator that even our children will pay for this. Now they have done it and taken their revenge."

Neighbors of Khan gave similar accounts to the AP, and several Afghan officials, including Kandahar lawmaker Abdul Rahim Ayubi, said people in the two villages that were attacked told them the same story.

Mohammad Sarwar Usmani, one of several lawmakers who went to the area, said the Afghan National Army had confirmed to him that an explosion occurred near Mokhoyan on March 8.

On March 13, Afghan soldier Abdul Salam showed an AP reporter the site of a blast that made a large crater in the road in Panjwai district of Kandahar province, where the shootings occurred. The soldier said the explosion occurred March 8. Salam said he helped gather men in the village, and that troops spoke to them, but he was not close enough to hear what they said.

Ghulam Rasool, a tribal elder from Panjwai district of Kandahar province, where the shootings occurred, gave an account of the bombing at a March 16 meeting in Kabul with President Hamid Karzai.

"After the incident, they took the wreckage of their destroyed tank and their wounded people from the area," Rasool said. "After that, they came back to the village nearby the explosion site.

"The soldiers called all the people to come out of their houses and from the mosque," he said.

"The Americans told the villagers, 'A bomb exploded on our vehicle. ... We will get revenge for this incident by killing at least 20 of your people,'" Rasool said. "These are the reasons why we say they took their revenge by killing women and children in the villages."

Bales' lawyer, John Henry Browne, has said that his client was upset because a buddy had lost a leg in an explosion on March 9. It's unclear if the bombing cited by Browne was the same as the one described by the villagers. After a meeting at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Browne said Bales told him a roadside bomb blew off the leg of one of his friends two days before the shootings occurred.

Karzai's investigative team is not convinced that one soldier could have single-handedly left his base, walked to the two villages, and carried out the killings and set fire to some of the victims' bodies. The U.S. military has said that even though its investigation is continuing, everything currently points to one shooter.

Villagers in Mokhoyan, meanwhile, are convinced that the shootings were a case of revenge.

Naek Mohammad, who lives in Mokhoyan, told the AP that he heard an explosion March 8 and went outside. As he and a neighbor talked about what happened, he said, two Afghan soldiers ordered them to join other men from the village who had been told to stand against a wall.

"One of the villagers asked what was happening," he said. "The Afghan army soldier told him, 's*****p and stand there.'"

Mohammad said a U.S. soldier, speaking through a translator, then said: "I know you are all involved and you support the insurgents. So now, you will pay for it � you and your children will pay for this.'"

None of the villagers could identify the soldier who they said issued the threat.

Riechmann reported from Kabul.

Shouldn't this garbage be in the conspiracy theory section.  At least there I know what crap not to read.