This morning the top story in the news is that there was a 'Kill Team' in Afghanistan. It shouldn't be shocking that there are soldiers committing atrocities on their civilians. It happened in Veitnam and it happened in World War II and it'll happen in Libya if we send ground forces there.
This is the result of several problems that politicians and the military keep hoping will go away on their own.
PTSD
For the vast majority of people suffering from PTSD it will just make them a little out of synch with the rest of us. It's something I've observed my whole life but don't entirely understand since I've never experienced it personally. The military, for most of it's history, has hoped the problem would go away without blowing up in their face. They should not be surprised that it hasn't.
You know the expression, 'going postal'? It came from the fact that there were postal workers snapping and shooting up their work from THE STRESS OF WORKING AT THE POST OFFICE. It doesn't take a futurist or a psychic to have predicted what THE STRESS OF THE BATTLEFIELD could lead to.
Politicians and top brass don't think about this stuff when they are busy pounding their chests and the war drums.
FORGETTING THE HEARTS AND MINDS
That twat Giuliani used to taunt liberals for not being willing to say "Islamic Extremist". What was forgotten in Afghanistan is that we were supposed to be "winning the hearts and minds" of the people. This is why we bombed them with food and propaganda instead of with bombs before we invaded. Bush had promised to send the peace corps in after the Taliban were ran out. What happened to that? Either Bush forgot about it or his understanding of war was too naive to realize it wouldn't work until it was too late.
I would go into more ways Bush screwed it up but I don't want those criticisms to be taken as props for Obama. The current administration is so afraid of making a political mistake they continue the inertia of what the previous administration begun.
Back to the point: You can not talk about the people you are trying to kill, while lumping them in with the people you are trying to protect. Especially if winning over the people you are trying to protect is the cornerstone of your strategy.
PRETENDING WE ARE BETTER
I find it funny that Americans can be so suspicious of their neighbors ("that guy was talking to my kid, he's probably a pervert") but if you send him to another country in uniform he is only suspected of sainthood ("look at that soldier giving those afghan kids candy on the news"). Many people in the military are there because they are trying to fulfill a calling. There is nothing I can think of more noble than that. But that does not mean that they are not human or can not fall.
Nor can we pretend that the people who grew up in countries other than ours are lesser. Yes because of our constitution and it's evolution Americans are exposed to a wonderful philosophy of liberty. But that does not mean that the people of other countries do not aspire to many of the same values.
Not every American is morally superior to other people in the world even if those people come from a country were they have many terrible aspects of their culture. This is especially true of the politicians who send our soldiers to war.
IGNORING HISTORY
As I said before. This kind of thing has happened before. Pretending it didn't happen in previous campaigns not only stops us from preventing future atrocities but it makes us opposed to war imagine it probably happens far more that it does and those who support war to imagine it happens far less.
There is another problem that is tied in with this issue, but I will present it as a solution. We tend to treat other countries as lesser. We tend to treat their sovereignty as less than ours. I propose that these twelve soldiers that killed random Afghans be available for extradition if the military finds that they are guilty. We didn't let the Japanese or Germans try their own soldiers after WWII. There is no reason why these guys should get that privilege.
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