OT - US Soldier kills 16 Civilians in Afghanistan

[Fusilier]

Originally Posted by TicToc

Well posted, you sure got me. Gee willickers, you sure got straight to the point and intent of the message I had. Your great internet wit and intellect has subdued my request for reason and fairness. You are absolutely right I had a problem with direct quotation rather than the quoting of inflammatory speech regardless of its origin. Well won better man.

Says the guy who's first post to the forum is to accuse the OP of making an inflammatory post when all he did was copy and paste the very same thing everyone is already reading in the news.

[TicToc]

Ok troll, you win. This beyond a waste of time for me to spend on you. Simply said I prefer that facts rather than emotion is presented. That being I am done.

[Fusilier]

Originally Posted by TicToc

I prefer that facts rather than emotion is presented.

What emotion? The OP simply cut and pasted from the news. He didn't add anything from his own thoughts on the matter so there is absolutely no emotion included in the post.

[ArmySGT.]

All aboard!

Now seating First Class Passengers foooooooooooooorrrrrrrr the

" I hate Americans train" now seating "I hate Americans"!

Boarding passes please! Form a queue Canadians! Britons! Australians! New Zealanders!

No pushing! Thank you!

[Webstral]

We should bear in mind that this latest horrible incident carries with it a significant emotional content. Rightly or wrongly, anyone who is serving or who has served in Afghanistan is likely to have a strong response to having this kind of event spread on a non-media website. I won’t say whether this response is reasonable, but I will say that it is completely understandable. With that in mind, I’m going to ask everyone to let these sorts of things go and not engage in the sort of one-upmanship that characterizes so much of the Internet.

I haven’t been to Afghanistan. What I’ve seen in video and heard from other vets suggests that there are certain physical similarities between a compound in rural Afghanistan and a compound in rural Iraq. I can see how the press might not make distinctions. Even if the reporter knew the difference between a house and a qualat, an editor Stateside is unlikely to let a Afghan word describing something outside the experience of the average American make it into print or onto a screen. From the standpoint of media management, news has to sell, not confuse.

Nine children… This is one of those moments during which I lose my articulation. Nothing short of profanity seems adequate to express my reaction. Nine. Children. Yes, American soldiers will die. I have a morbid curiosity regarding the soldier’s background. How many tours has he served? Did he just get served with divorce papers? What else is going on in his home life? Has his unit been hard-hit of late? Did his best friend just die? What motivated him to sign the death warrant for 16 Afghans and a yet-to-be-determined number of American troops?

[Badbru]

I must admit I was pretty sadened by this when I heard about it. My initial reaction was oh christ what next, why don't we just start air striking mosques. Burning Korans, now shooting up the civvies, it seems to me the
hearts and minds campaign has just been set back to zero.

Australian forces lost several troops in a string of incidents late last year. It seemed you couldn't turn the news on without hearing of another. This naturally reignited the debate about pulling out but I believed some of the things I'd been reading about successes on the ground and that we should stay the course. Now however, I'm really discouraged by the effects these few incidents have, and will likely have, on the course of the continuing effort.

It just feels like a massive setback.

[Targan]

Holy crap. We have more posts today than for most of the previous week but the first thread I open up to read is this one and BAM! Where to begin?

For starters, welcome to the forums, TicToc. An unfortunate start to your time with us here but let's make a fresh start, eh? How about you go to the "Introducing myself" thread (http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=2698) and tell us a bit about yourself. I take it you've spent some time in Afghanistan? We value combat experience here, I for one would be interested in your input on military matters.

The moderators here prefer to keep only a light hand on conversations and generally that's fine as posters here tend to show respect for one another. If you have a serious problem with something someone has posted perhaps you might consider contacting the poster personally in a private message? Or contact a moderator and we'll take a look at the situation. Jumping feet-first into verbal combat mode in open forum isn't generally very constructive.

Just a reminder, if you post something here that has been cut and pasted from another published source it really needs attribution. In this case Fusilier seems to have found the source of the OP's post. So the original author is the person you probably should be upset with, TT, not the OP. Really the OP's only mistake was not to cite the source of his posted quote. Off-topic threads are welcome and old hands here usually put OT at the start of the thread title to make it clear that it isn't part of the general T2K and gaming discussion.

I'm a bit confused by your "I hate Americans train" comment, ArmySGT. I'm hoping it was intended as tongue-in-cheek. The comments in this thread preceding that weren't particularly anti-American IMO. I'm guessing most or all of the members here would be anti-shooting civilians though. I gotta tell you man, for me personally, if I hated Americans in general I wouldn't be a moderator here.

Other than that, I agree with the posts by Webstral and Badbru. The mass shooting of women and children anywhere in the world is a very sad event.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Targan

I'm a bit confused by your "I hate Americans train" comment, ArmySGT. I'm hoping it was intended as tongue-in-cheek. The comments in this thread preceding that weren't particularly anti-American IMO. I'm guessing most or all of the members here would be anti-shooting civilians though. I gotta tell you man, for me personally, if I hated Americans in general I wouldn't be a moderator here.

Come around for what should be something fun............ Nah. I get threads like this usually started by the same handful of people. Ones that seldom participate in the game discussions. Usually with the same recurring theme.

Americans, you did this wrong.
Americans, you can't do that right.
Americans, look what you did today!

Once again we won all the battles in Afghanistan, and we are losing the War on the floor of Congress.

Are the Politicians that are manipulating the Rules of Engagement on a day to day basis going to accept some responsibility? Not a chance.

Are Soldiers Angry. The sure as hell are..........

To go through the all that, for your fellow Soldiers to get killed, and then everything becomes for nothing as a matter of political expediency.

Then some sanctimonious ass wants to remind you; how it all could have been done better, if the ones running things were not American.

Right now, I am asking myself what I am doing here.

[kota1342000]

Originally Posted by Badbru

Burning Korans, now shooting up the civvies, it seems to me the
hearts and minds campaign has just been set back to zero.

Agreed Bad.
So....how do we fix this mess? Personally I think we have run out of military options, and Id prefer that we see how fast we can get ISAF the hell out of country. We don't need to see ow many more of our troops we can get wounded and killed for a country that doesn't want us around.

[Raellus]

I am not sure how decrying an unlawful killing (i.e. war crime) equates to hating America/Americans. I am an American. Should I be defending or justifying this obvious war crime? Would that be the right, proper, patriotic thing to do? I don't think so. I think the patriotic thing to do here is to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. That requires an intellectually honest assessment of what happened. You can't solve a problem unless you acknowledge that it exists. It's not easy. I don't want to believe that a fellow American did something like this but it's pretty darn clear that one did. That said, I think that 99% of our service men and women are good, decent, brave, hard working individuals and I am not going to let this relatively isolated incident color my perception of our armed forces in general.

I really don't understand why some of my fellow Americans are, at best, minimizing the heinousness of this incident, or, at worst, defending it. This behavior certainly doesn't help others' perception of what Americans are like. Defending an act like this makes us look like the barbarians.

I don't like where this discussion is going. It's unfortunate that most of our forum's traffic is dedicated to these sorts of "debates". I'm considering discussing with my fellow moderators the possibility of banning these types of controversial OT threads. As an American, I value my freedom of speech. On the other hand, the raison de etre of this forum is discussing T2K and that does not appear to be happening in threads like these. If anything, we're chasing off current and potential members.

Please don't make us lock this thread.

[Medic]

Originally Posted by Badbru

I must admit I was pretty sadened by this when I heard about it. My initial reaction was oh christ what next, why don't we just start air striking mosques. Burning Korans, now shooting up the civvies, it seems to me the hearts and minds campaign has just been set back to zero.

I don't think it has gone to zero. It has gone beyond that on to the negative side and rather far at that.

Airstriking mosques wouldn't really be much of an upgrade from some earlier FUBARs, there has been like airstriking a wedding and so on. The problem is, there is more harm than good that the U.S. troops can do in the country. I'd rather compare the situation to that at Vietnam - young men under pressure but still with enough time on their hands to get bored occasionally and with both booze and narcotic substances available to them if they really want them. Add automatic weapons and we have a pickle you don't want to swallow. Nationality of the troops doesn't matter, nor the 'main religion' of the troops as long as it is different from the local 'main religion' or the troops and locals don't have a mutual political agenda.

The problem is, ISAF is trying to change things that have been there for centuries already, bringing modern age to a place that feels it has no use for it. I am not saying the Talibans are right, not even from this/my point of view, but you can not force a society with completely different norms to adopt your own just by saying they should. There is no changing a person who doesn't want to change - even the Finnish history proves that as most Finns baptised during the Northern Crusade took the baptism at swordpoint, then washed it off at the nearby pond. And as with the Finns by that time, the people were baptised more than once, as the first ones to baptise them moved on, then next lot baptised them again or killed them as heathens even if they had accepted Christian religion.

If nothing else, this whole thing combined with the other recent happenings is more than enough evidence, the ISAF troops are really coming to the end of the road and though there could be a lot of things to do to stabilize the country, the possibilities to do so are slipping between the fingers.

And before someone comes to shoot me down, no, I have not served in Afghanistan but I come from a nation that has a force in there - I happen to know a number of those who have actually served there (and some are serving there at the moment). I am not a professional soldier, but I have served in the military and still continue to serve as an active reservist. Do I fully understand the things that are happening to the servicemen and women in Afghanistan? No, I can not claim that. Can I say, I understand the psychological intricacies that affect the troops there and that affect the local population in relation to the ISAF troops? I think, I have the general idea.

And no, this is not an anti-U.S. rant. The thing is, U.S. is the largest single participant in the operation, so most of this has to do with them. The psychological problems of the servicemen, who have served in ISAF or similar operations are nothing new in Finland either and the FDF (Finnish Defence Forces) have stepped up to actually do something about the matter, albeit still rather slowly. Also, if I criticize the U.S. actions, were they the product of one person (in which case I do not actually criticize the nation but the person who committed them), a group of people (servicemen or not) or the general policy, it is only my opinion and deductions from what I have gathered from various sources. And, a recent hot topic in Finland - if a politician is criticized in public, he can not really complain because it was him/herself who took up the public podium in the first place. From there we can deduce that if U.S. takes the podium, then it must also accept the criticism from others. Is the criticism always constructive? No, but you can not expect that - there's too many pinheads running around the internet and in public.

[simonmark6]

I'm British and I love Americans...though I couldn't eat a whole one.

Well maybe if I was really hungry.

That was facile but my sympathies go out to both the dead of the tragedy and the soldier involved. If he was driven to this by stress or a breakdown of some sort he is a victim too.

[Mahatatain]

Originally Posted by Webstral

I have a morbid curiosity regarding the soldier’s background. How many tours has he served? Did he just get served with divorce papers? What else is going on in his home life? Has his unit been hard-hit of late? Did his best friend just die? What motivated him to sign the death warrant for 16 Afghans and a yet-to-be-determined number of American troops?

From reading things on the BBC website (which is quoting the AP news agency for much of this) and watching news reports on the BBC I believe that the soldier:
- is a 38yr old staff sergeant
- is a married father of "at least" two
- was working alongside special forces as force protection ("where part of his role was to guard the base for special forces, which would have enabled him to come and go more easily")
- had not had special forces training
- had served three tours of duty in Iraq
- was deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December
- has served in the army for 11 years

There are also what the BBC calls "some reports" saying that some time before the killings, the soldier suffered a nervous breakdown. That sounds like a much poorer source of information though.

BTW I'm British and I don't hate Americans. I'm not overly keen on soldiers (of any nationality) who indiscriminately kill civilians (or on insurgents who kill our soldiers and their own civilians) but if it subsequently turns out that this soldier has had some form of nervous breakdown then you have to question the decision to send him to Afghanistan.