US soldier kills Afghan civilians in Kandahar

Originally posted by Neocrusader

I have SEEN children lead a patrol onto an IED
I have SEEN children USED as suicide bombers
I have SEEN children as lookouts and centuries
I have SEEN children in IED factories
I have SEEN children used as messengers and delivery boys

It matters not, there is no justification for slaughtering non-combatant children while in their private homes.

If they are in a factory making IED's or engaged in combat or its direct support they become targets no different than any other, but outside of that it matters not. Using that as justification is just meaningless political rhetoric here. In other words - there is no application in your complaint in regards to this particular incident.

They were unarmed human beings in their private homes at the time. We all have a moral code to uphold, lest we all become the demons that create more chaos on the Earth.

reply to post by milkyway12


The problem is you all can't be unleashed
The guy with the leash doesn't know what he's doing !
The troops have the equipment and the skills to do it and do it very cleanly
The top of the food chain know this too
It's the middle management - when they joined and served front line they didn't have the capabilities we have now, dont know or understand them thus don't trust or use them
As I said the top of the chain knows as they have the same toys just bigger and better
It's this middle management that's the problem

And politicians getting involved
War is a result in the break down of politics - you had your chance now we have to fix your mess

reply to post by milkyway12


you sicken me....

www.reuters.com...

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


Are you serious? We slaughtered 22 terrorist in 2 days and had 0 losses. They arent hard to kill , the only thing hard about the terrorist is they use women and children to hide. Thats it.

We would be shot at and be told to hold fire civilians , no air , arty , or mortar support. Move in on foot. Blah blah blah. They constantly get away , they come in shoot at us , hide in populated houses and then go back to their houses and put their guns down and go along with their day and there isnt anything we can do.

We end up having to shoot at the houses they are in because they sometimes entrench and they die and so does the family they thought they were going to use as a human shield , now they got everyone killed.

ROE changes daily it seems , constantly told dont shoot dont shoot , shoot at the house , dont shoot at the house. Blah blah blah , they dont know what they are doing , they are trying to Micromanage the battlefield. Give the soldiers the decision , kill them or dont. Hell we sit outside an entrenched house for 8 hours waiting for them to run out of ammo. We did this twice and they killed the family at the end of each time and we killed them because they finally tried to escape. Everyone losses over there.

I much rather everyone lose in Afghanistan than everyone lose in America regarding the killing of civilians. I know thats not a good way to look at it , but i choose American's over any other nation , sorry , just the way it is. Its called reality.

reply to post by OccultScience


Your sickness isnt getting you any where.

reply to post by milkyway12

Their home land? I dont think you know what Afghanistan is. They dont look at it as "their home land". They are a villiage nation. They have property , and its theirs , you come on it , you die.

Its probably a community thing...They may be a "village nation", but they basically number in the millions and have been calling the mountaineous terrain between Afghanistan and Pakistan their home for quite some time. They don't seem to like foriegners running things on their soil.

reply to post by verylowfrequency


Sorry if you took me wrong
But as you can appreciate when discussing matters such as this ' there's a lot going on up there' so don't always come across as intended
What he did was wrong
I just wanted to let a few of the - when it's children it's always wrong crowd see it from another perspective
If just one person realises that we can't keep applying our sociological ideals and ethics on everything
( Because not everyone out there shares them )
I'm happy
I saw an opportunity to make a point, and took it

Thank goodness this nut was taken into custody. Too bad the guys in his unit or his superiors could not catch his homicidal tendencies before acting them out on Afghan civilians. It is one guy who lost it and went postal in Afghanistan and not US forces as a whole. I have seen a few references in this thread about US forces this and US forces that. This is an act of one man who may have had a nervous breakdown?

Perhaps, the stresses of continuous deployments are wearing heavy on the soldiers in the field? Many of the guys have done multiple tours over the course of 11 years in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I think mandatory and periodic psyche evaluations should be administered to troops who have had to endure significant combat experiences. Furthermore, there should be an open door policy for those who want to seek help on their own, and it should be confidential between the patient and the medical professional.

Lets face it, there is a stigma associated with those who seek psychological counseling in the civilian world as well as in the military. No one wants to be looked upon by their peers as being crazy. Therefore because of the stigma associated with it, a lot of veterans and active duty military avoid treatment. Some think it will have an unfavorable affect on their career in the military, and some probably think when word gets back to their unit they will be looked upon in a negative light compared to others. To put it simply, I think more should be done to address this ever growing issue. In the meantime, the act of this one man is going to endanger the lives of others and security should be beefed-up at all US installations. This could get ugly like the Quran burning incident?

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


We arent running things we bend over backwards trying to meet their cultural needs. In the villages , we would say "Afghanistan" and they would look at us like we were idiots. They had tribal (ancient) names for their land they lived on generally. Only the more modern villages with paved roads and a radio station knew much about what was going on. Most Afghanistan knows what is going on now because we give the villages radios and speak to their elders. They didnt like us referring to their village as "part" of Afghanistan ever generally , this was land of so and so.

The old Afghanistan leaders , who believed in peace believe it or not , are either murdered or dying out. We let this happen by supporting Iran for their oil in the 70s and 80s , now we have to deal with it. The Cold War caused more problems than people realise. So many problems in the middle east come up because of either Russia or America / NATO's actions during the cold war.

There are SO MANY reasons why the middle east is in the state its in. So many. We cant blame it on one thing and the war in the middle east was inevitable.

So, America is on the verge of war with Iran and then a soldier goes and kills 16 people (possibly muslims.) Sounds like the drums of war to me.

reply to post by milkyway12

Are you serious? We slaughtered 22 terrorist in 2 days and had 0 losses. They arent hard to kill , the only thing hard about the terrorist is they use women and children to hide. Thats it.

you are blinded by patriotism other wise known as the sheep effect ...woman and children ..one child was 2 years old ... nothing can justify it ...

22 terrorists ..were they the ones the USA troops were pictured urinating on

keep flying the flag bro... the rest of the world really do think the american army are not all that

i agree the american army should be pulled out

they are clearly not up to the job

reply to post by nakiel


And how do you assess that as being more probable than a single gunman?

We have police forces here cloaked in ballistic armors with access to assault weapons and single gunmen are able to kill 20+ people.

What makes you think, in an area where there is virtually no organized police force, that an trained individual with military hardware would be unable to inflict similar casualties?

Of course - since this is ATS, I will go ahead and give you a possible scenario as proposed by an intelligent person:

There is a terrorist/rebel/warlord considered a high-value target. A covert team dispatches to take this target into custody. The mission is compromised when civilian militia under the target's influence engage the team. Through a convoluted sequence of events detailed on Top Secret documents, this man ends up missing the extraction. He is apprehended by conventional response teams (not part of the operation) and processed on criminal charges.

Makes a lot more sense than "they just spent a million taxpayer dollars to take a helicopter out and jeopardize the relationship between a government that took trillions of dollars to establish."

Originally posted by Xcathdra
Who knows.. Maybe he will get the same as the Afghan soldiers who murdered American military personnel over the idiotic over reaction to the Quran burning? Or maybe they will suffer the same fate as the Muslims who desecrated the Quran by writing in them?

The guy is in custody, which is more than we can say for the Afghan / Taliban murderers. He, like the people involved in Haditha, will face an article 32 and possible court martial based on the rule of law and not the whim of 9th century sharia jurisprudence.

edit on 11-3-2012 by Xcathdra because: (no reason given)

Soliders on soliders doesn't count! They are there to fight.

Since when do children deserve to be massacred? This scumbag got drunk and shot the innocent. No breakdown, just damn right evilness.

Forgive me if I have taken your post the wrong way but it's almost as if your defending him.

ALS

reply to post by beezzer

We are at war. People die. People lose it.

It's not a war, crusade is a better word. It worries me to see you generalize a trained killing machine who's occupying a foreign land "lose it". This is not normal. The fact that it happens doesn't make it right or acceptable. If ind it very scary when people get desensitized to this type of event.

Here's real neat idea!

Surrender. Have all the people who are trying to kill us, stop. Raise the white flag.
Quit.

That's not a very bright idea. First off, they weren't trying to kill you until you dropped bombs on them then invaded their country. The occupiers are doing just as much if not more killing as the "insurgents".

Do you really expect them to "waive the white flag"? Russia couldn't beat them and neither can the current occupying force. We all know that the plan isn't for rebuilding democracy in Afghanistan, all they want is the opium and mineral deposits.

Once you do that, we leave, have a parade, give a few speeches, and it's done.

It's not that simple and you know it. In fact, I would be terrified if you started throwing parades in celebration of your successes in Afghanistan and Iraq...

Do you believe that your occupations in the Middle East are worthy of a parade?

reply to post by OccultScience

Thanx; saved me the search! )

Anyhow; since when were invaders supposed to be nice...?

reply to post by sitchin

you are blinded by patriotism other wise known as the sheep effect

Zeal is preferable to a complete lack of intelligence.

...woman and children ..one child was 2 years old ... nothing can justify it ...

Bullets are equal opportunity. Further - was it our bullet, or theirs that caused the death of a child? Did they use that child as a shield?

I already know what I will do if presented with that situation. I will pull the trigger and see that the child receives medical care (and the person using that child as a shield is tagged as the lowest priority - # that douche). But I'm not about to play naive or idealistic.

22 terrorists ..were they the ones the USA troops were pictured urinating on

Unacceptable behavior, to be certain.

Though it seems you are not above pissing on people you have deep-rooted conflicts with.

keep flying the flag bro... the rest of the world really do think the american army are not all that

Stupidity seeks to justify itself on the basis of popularity. Something known as "sheep syndrome," I believe.

All of the military powers strong enough to be relevant to the U.S. share pretty deep political and economic ties with us.

Whether you think we are "all that" or not has little relevance to the reality of our capabilities.

i agree the american army should be pulled out

they are clearly not up to the job

And the Taliban are?

Originally posted by Bakatono
reply to post by torsion

 

We shouldn't be there anyway. What else can we expect from multiple deployments over the last 10 years. Who knows how many warzones this soldier has been in. I was only in Iraq but I knew many guys who had multiple tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that was in 06.

And that should justify his actions??? Most of u people see this incidents as holywood movie,but let imagine for one second that an afghanian comes in your neighbourhood and kill children in front of your eyes,and u cant do # about it??? And than Afghan president goes on CNN and say sorry.... i mean....WTF!!??

And this isnt first time american cowards-soldiers did something like this....

Originally posted by SGTSECRET

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
I wonder how many of these psychos will be going berserk once they head back home.
What goes around comes around.

...those 'psychos' are the same ones that you would be praising and begging for if our own nation was ever invaded. so easy to talk trash now, but if these 'psychos' didn't fight for our country while it was being invaded you would be calling them cowards and wondering what to do to save your a**. now they are psychos, when you need them they are heroes. support the troops is a joke...

This wasn't fighting, this was slaughter. A country that relies on 'psychos' like this to defend them is a country not worth defending.

ALS

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


What you are mistaking is that we are not there to "beat" Afghanistan. We aren't there to beat Afghanistan , we are there to kill terrorist and we are doing it well and very efficiently , however , they use civilians if you havent noticed for cover , and we eventually are forced to shoot at the house and kill them and possibly kill the family or surround the house.Generally before we get inside the village , they will run. Sometimes they will entrench in a house , if they have 4 or 5 terrorist in it , we would generally light it up. If it was 1 or 2 (depending on their fire power and current situation) we would try to save the family by surrounding it and wait it out , however , every time we surrounded the house .. they killed the family before they ran out of ammo and then tried a break for it.

Also , you dont realise , obviously , how hard the stress is. Depending on how many friends this guy lost and how long he has been over there , i could see how he snapped. I just can't believe he killed the women and children. Where i was , they treated us like kings (the children and the women would come at night sometimes , widows usually). Most men hated us every where we went.

Well. The soldier had any number of things cause him to do what he did. He's human. What he did was wrong. Im sure a 15-6 is being conducted. My prayers go out to both families.

what capabilities ..yes id admit your very good at killing ally soldiers in friendly fire incidents

killing woman and children ..hell yea you guys are the best

every thing else leave to the professionals ie the British army