OT - US Soldier kills 16 Civilians in Afghanistan

[95th Rifleman]

Originally Posted by Medic

Yes, having a soldier stand trial at Hague for warcrimes is not good for the national image, but I wonder if they realize, it's not pretty good for the image either not to hand the guy over to Hague, when the case is pretty clear?

There are allot of factors in this, many of them poltical. The president that allows a US soldier to stand before the Hague tribunal is the president that loses his next election. The "good guy" idea has been ingrained in the American national consciousness since WW2 and was reinforced during the cold war when America was considered the bastion of the free world defending good against the evils of communism.

This is the heart of the reason why many Americans react so extremely to percieved "anti-Americanism", the concept that America may not be the good guys goes against everything the average American has been taught from a very early age.

In Europe we long ago lost any pretence that we are somehow better than everyone else. During the colonial era we Europeans had a similar self-rightous, self image. We where the civilised world freeing priitive peoples from the shackles of their barbaric cultures and religions, we belived that we where genuinely doing these people a favour by taking over their country.

The horrors of two world wars and the realisation that we can be so easily sink to the worst depths of human nature rather destroyed this self-image and gave rise to the fall of colonialism in the decades following WW2.

So we have this situation where a minority of American soldiers prove that yes, they are actualy human and suffer from the same human failings everyone else is prone to. Non-Americans, some who feel umbrage at the high moral and ethical horse America has rode since the end of WW2 point to these events, often going over the top to make their example using offensive and patronising language. In response Americans react in a sometimes extreme fashion to defend what they see as their rightful position as the god guys, feeling that the rest of the world owes them a debt of gratitude. Any fellow Brit who has had to sit through an arrogant, often ignorant, lecture from an American about how "they saved our arse in two world wars" can sympathise with this point.

It's a cultural issue one that stems from the cold war and will take many, many years to resolve itself.