Outraged Afghans have vowed vengeance after an American soldier murdered at least 16 civilians, including nine children, in a killing spree over the weekend that President Hamid Karzai said “cannot be forgiven.”
Nazim Shah was traveling to Kandahar when the massacre happened, but returned to find his entire family killed. Crying into the phone, he told The Independent: “All my family is dead … We will get revenge on those who killed my family. We won’t let this rest easily.”
U.S. and Afghan officials have braced themselves for revenge attacks from insurgents and possibly another breakout of widespread protests after those that erupted in response to the burning of Muslim holy books last month.
The shooter, now in NATO custody and as yet unnamed, entered civilian homes in Panjwai district unprovoked and killed women, elderly men, and children, one of whom was just two years old. Some of the children’s’ bodies he took and burned before the eyes of family members.
U.S. officials have claimed that the soldier “had a traumatic brain injury at one point” and “had problems at home after his last deployment.” Such sympathetic inquiries are rarely afforded to insurgents who kill NATO soldiers, though it is known that many Afghans have taken up arms in response to their families being slaughtered in the aimless U.S. war.
The massacre would be little more than a public relations mishap for the Obama administration, but it comes at an especially sensitive time. The Taliban had begun to show signs of cooperating with the desperate Obama administration by engaging in peace talks, mapping out power-sharing agreements for after the U.S. draws down occupation forces, and agreeing to prisoner swap deal in which Taliban detainees would be transferred to a Qatari prison and given a chance to have a trial. But this ugly incident may have spoiled those overtures.
A long string of failures and war crimes in Afghanistan has led the Obama administration to an apparent dead-end, as even Republican presidential candidates tried to capitalize on the public discontent for the war by hinting at giving up. Wars typically start for the wrong reasons, so perhaps it’s no surprise they might end for the wrong reasons as well.
So we're to have some sort of "sympathy" for the killer because he suffered a brain injury earlier? Who the hell cares! Nobody put a gun to his head and demanded he put on his costume and travel to the other side of the globe to kill unnamed strangers. That he did willingly and with forethought when he signed the dotted line. There are no excuses. And I dare say if this puke were ever to fall in Afghan hands he'd get the death he deserves.
Not to relieve the Sergeant from his responsibility, but if he did suffer a brain injury during one of his 3 Iraqi deployments, then he most definitely should not have been deployed to Afghanistan. The Army's rampant disregard for the trauma the troops suffer in combat zones doesn't make dealing with multiple and continuous deployments easy.
I'm actually surprised there haven't been more incidents like this before – maybe they've just been successfully unreported – our 4th estate is so overworked in the war zones these days…
does anyone ever point out what a hard life some psycho killer had before he chopped up several women and put the parts in the frig? this guy is a child killer, a murderer pure and simple. You know, we used to hang soldiers who committed crimes far less heinous than this overseas. Sent a message out. now we coddle them, explain away their actions and ultimately let them off. how morally low this society has sunk.
I'm sure there have been more incidents but conveniently kept out of the press, by the very same organs. And our benevolent generals don't keep count of the bodies as they've said. Notice also how all the Wikileaks noise about releasing video and other damning "evidence" in Afghanistan and how that has magically vaporized.
If the thinking of our generals about what their troops are going to experience in such a grossly imperial, uncomprehending occupation is as banal, rose-lensed and uncritical as their hometeam cheerful commentary always is, then you can regard the current berserker more as a symptom bearer than as a particularly unusual freak. Not to excuse, but to identify the wider and deeper causes of the pathology.
Early eye witness accounts claimed several American soldiers were involved. Now that narrative has completely disappeared from all news sources.
On a completely unrelated but important matter the Washington Post AP story concerning the Falklands, reprinted at Anti War tonight, failed to once mention the vast Falkland oil reserves that Britain intends to steal for itself. And then of course there are the lucrative fishing rights for only 3,000 islanders and their British masters. A Washington Post article on the Falklands situation without mention of the most important facts concerning the case is simply beyond belief.
Indeed. It is rather too convenient that not only was there only one soldier but he had an unspecified "brain injury." I doubt it was just one solider involved, otherwise why wasn't he overpowered by the Afghans as he paused to burn the bodies, or taken down on his mile walk back to the base?
Since Americans are too cowed to vote for Ron Paul or too cowardly to press their own government for an immediate withdrawal I hope the Afghans put the appropriate pressure on iSAF forces and their own government to remove foreign troops from their country.
Interesting how we consider a soldier shooting civilians to death is murder, but when our planes kill entire families with errant "smart bombs,' those same dead families, children and civilians are mere "collateral damage." One thing is for certain, we have killed ratio of 1,000 Afghan civilians via our bombings, vs. one civlilian murdered in cold blood by a US Soldier.
Indeed. For that matter, why is someone like Charles Manson universally condemned as the epitome of evil for murdering a few people but people like Harry Truman and Barack Obama are treated with reverence and respect? Why is little Caylee Anthony mourned by all of America, but the hundreds of thousands of children killed by our wars over the last two decades not?
Because our moral compass is broken.
Because Charles Manson's murders didn't result in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit to the MIC.
These latest killings are but the latest in a long series of killings. How many more collateral murders must take place, before the United States military no longer excuses itself, and realizes there is something fundamentally wrong.
Just as there is collateral damage on the battlefield, there is also collateral damage within the ranks of the soldiers – PTSD and other poorly diagnosed trauma, home-life destroyed due to multiple long-term deployments, etc. And as the battlefield collateral damage is chalked up to "stuff happens", the collateral damage done to the troops thru poor planning, poor execution of the poor plan, and then the utter disregard for the welfare of the troops over the years will ultimately lead to what we have now. I do not expect the military leadership to EVER admit that there is something fundamentally wrong – as that would be self incriminatory and that would not be career enhancing.
"How many more collateral murders must take place, before …"
Somewhere around seven billion.
ofcourse such wanton carnage is daily fare in israels occupation but nothing changes
however let me ask this rhetorical question. Are the pentagon generals and the security freaks answerable to smiley literati from our Ivies. Or is that phase of our civilization over and done with and we are just harping libertarian shop talk in a nonsensical repug mancave. Because after one phony nobel laureate we may get another cocky whore like an LDS revival on pennsylvania ave. The uniforms dont care, the era of accountability is over, we are all serfs, the uniforms rule. Get it
Join the Army, travel to exotic places, meet exotic people, then kill them.
Like it or not, religious faith often intensifies moral outrage. Opposition to the war in Vietnam was led by christian protests against the maiming and killing of innocents for purely political ends, inevitable in modern warfare as policy. After fifty years of conservative takeovers of religious groups, most thoughtful people have abandoned religion. We care, but the passion is wimpy compared to religious fervor. You wouldn't die for the victims of war. Once upon a time, religious people would have. Crazy, I guess.
SOP in US military Campaigns and occupations….. General Crocker (Former US military Commander in Afghanistan, and current US Ambassador to there) was right when he said, "There is no military solution for Afghanistan."
Time to get rid of this guy , Claridge…(Creep in charge of US counterinsurgency in Afghanistan).
Truth — Stranger then fiction
As evidenced by most everyone enriching themselves upon the misery of anyone less educated, we all have a freewill, the freedom to do both good and evil. Therefore, the purpose of this world is to reach the ultimate conclusion of such misery, whereupon all things will turn toward the good.
Whereupon, everyone will no longer have a freewill, as we will be given a desire to do only good which will make it impossible for anyone to do evil.
For if we had never endured all this misery, some devil could come along and say that a desire to do only good, this makes us all slaves to good and destroys our freedom to “self actualize, to be all we can be.”
This has to be the most self-incriminating excuse ever made: "U.S. officials have claimed that the soldier had a traumatic brain injury at one point and “had problems at home after his last deployment.”"
And after all that, the generals sent him back. There are some sick mf's in the government for sure.
David, you forgot to mention that this scumbag also had an "unhappy schildhood"…