Thread: US officials say Army soldier suspected of shooting more than a dozen Afghans

Originally Posted by Doktor

You sound like British colonialist.

How many times did wide a wide scale insurgency like what we see today break out in British India after the Black Wind reprisals among the self same peoples we now call Pakistani?

Just how fast where the Muhajids and pashtuns of Afghanistan willing to treat with the British after Jellabad?

After Stalin got done with the Ukraine and the Baltic States after WWII how often did they see wide scale rebellion?

Why wouldn't the Latin and Greek city states rise up against Rome during the Punic wars?

Seen any Cathars, Prussians or Neanderthals lately< or any of the missing tribes of Israel or the thousand other displaced and eradicated peoples of the ancient world?

Why was the interior of the Mongol Empire so peaceful among non-mongol captive populations?

At the end of the day, after few centuries they are back on their island.

which has what exactly to do with winning?

In few years, decades top, they wont rule the whole of it as well, because of their brutal past.

Who is they? The Welsh, Scots, Irish, Saxons, Britons, Romans, Danes, Africans, Asians.... Modern day England is a polygot nation like the US which means the whole idea of beign an Englishman transcends old loyalties. If they can get their head out of their ass as far as wobbly kneed liberals go they will do just fine. If they fall it wont be an act of retribution but of internal rot- ditto for the US.

Originally Posted by dave lukins

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
Winston Churchill

The man who brought us such other great things as Gallipolli...

As compared to US Grant who refused to let up, who sent subordinate armies on civil war era thunder runs through the enemies heartland, who was willing to lose any amount of lives to win the war, but who when the fighting ended was willing to forgive any person willing to adopt the new way of life imposed by the victor.

Highlighted a couple of interesting items.

U.S. soldier flown out as Afghan anger mars Panetta visit
By Phil Stewart

KABUL | Wed Mar 14, 2012 11:49pm EDT

(Reuters) - A U.S. soldier accused of shooting dead 16 Afghan civilians has been flown out of Afghanistan, officials said, as Washington attempted to calm seething anger over a massacre that raised serious questions about the West's war strategy.

Underscoring the instability in Afghanistan, an Afghan man in a stolen pickup truck sped onto the tarmac as a plane carrying U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was about to land on Wednesday, an extraordinary security breach in a southern province next to where Sunday's massacre took place.

No one on board the military plane carrying Panetta was hurt when it landed at a British base in Helmand province. Defence officials played down the incident, saying the Pentagon chief was never in danger.

The pickup truck crashed into a ditch after it sped across the runway ramp and the driver, whose motives were unclear, emerged from the vehicle in flames.

He was being treated for burns, a Pentagon spokesman said, and a member of the NATO-led coalition was also hurt when the vehicle was stolen.

Panetta arrived for his unannounced visit three days after the massacre in neighboring Kandahar province. Although Panetta's trip was planned before the shooting, it comes as Afghan civilians and lawmakers alike demand answers.

Foremost among those demands is that the soldier responsible be tried in Afghanistan over the shooting, one of the worst of its kind since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 for harboring the al Qaeda masterminds of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Despite those calls, the U.S. staff sergeant who gave himself up after the villagers, including nine children and three women, were killed has been flown out of Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

The New York Times, citing an unidentified senior U.S. official, said the soldier had been flown to Kuwait. CNN also reported the sergeant had been taken there.

The commander of U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, made the decision based on a legal recommendation, a U.S. official said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office was understood to have accepted that the soldier be tried in a U.S. court, provided the process was transparent and open to media.

Panetta, the most senior U.S. official to visit Afghanistan since the massacre, told U.S. troops it must not deter them from their mission to secure the country ahead of the 2014 NATO deadline for the withdrawal of foreign combat troops.

"We'll be challenged by our enemy. We'll be challenged by ourselves. We'll be challenged by the hell of war itself. But none of that, none of that, must ever deter us from the mission that we must achieve," Panetta told soldiers at Camp Leatherneck, the main U.S. Marine base in Helmand.

U.S. and other foreign soldiers listening to Panetta had been asked to leave their weapons outside, a highly unusual move that was downplayed as a gesture to Afghan troops who were unarmed during the address.

Tensions have risen sharply across Afghanistan since the attack and the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at the main NATO base last month, adding urgency to Panetta's visit. Panetta was to hold talks with Karzai and other Afghan leaders.

The Afghan Taliban threatened to retaliate for Sunday's shooting by beheading U.S. personnel, while insurgents also attacked investigating Afghan officials on Tuesday.

BOMB ATTACKS, PROTEST

U.S. soldiers are likely to be among those targeted, although other Westerners have also been attacked after similar incidents and Afghan civilians invariably bear the brunt of any upsurge in violence.

Earlier on Wednesday, a motorcycle bomb blast in Kandahar city -- the capital of Kandahar province, where the Panjwai village shootings happened -- killed an Afghan intelligence soldier.

A roadside bomb also killed eight civilians in Helmand. [comment added: Protests unlikely]

On Tuesday, some 2,000 demonstrators chanting "Death to America" demanded Karzai reject a planned strategic pact that would allow U.S. advisers and possibly special forces to remain beyond 2014.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron he did not anticipate any sudden change in plans for the pace of withdrawing troops.

Obama described the Kandahar massacre as tragic but emphasized at a briefing with Cameron that both nations remained committed to completing the Afghan mission "responsibly".

"In terms of pace, I don't anticipate at this stage that we're going to be making any sudden additional changes to the plan that we currently have," Obama said.

NATO leaders gathering in Obama's home city of Chicago on May 20-21 will decide the next phase of the planned transition to Afghan forces, which is already under way.

The United States and Britain have the largest contingents of foreign troops in Afghanistan, but domestic support for the war has flagged, posing a challenge to Obama as he campaigns for re-election on November 6.

Obama acknowledged that people wanted the war over, but argued they still back the reason for troops being there.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 40 percent of Americans said the shooting had weakened their support for the war.

Sixty-one percent of Americans surveyed in the March 12-13 poll said remaining U.S. troops should be brought home immediately, down slightly from the 66 percent with that opinion in an earlier March poll. Seventeen percent disagreed.

The U.S. military hopes to withdraw about 23,000 soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of the coming summer fighting season, leaving about 68,000.

In the two Panjwai district villages where the massacre took place, U.S. troops remain confined to the compound where the accused soldier was based.

With its mission facing growing protests, NATO said on Wednesday it planned to boost security measures for its troops, measures reached in part after the January killing of four French soldiers by a rogue Afghan soldier.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Nadem in KANDAHAR, Mirwais Harooni in KABUL and David Alexander in WASHINGTON; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Mark Bendeich

U.S. soldier flown out as Afghan anger mars Panetta visit | Reuters

Zraver you are wrong about India. There was a major uprising not only in 1857 but in the aftermath of WWII. Witness the Indian Navy Mutiny. It was the sign that British had lost control of India and had to get out fast. It is a common myth that British ruled India by force. False. They only ruled India with the consent of Indians. When the Indians no longer consent as a whole, the British lost. In 1857, the British won and only by the skin of the teeth because some of the princely states chose to side with the British and lent aid and troops which the British desperately needed.

The unity of India was the genius of Gandhi and others. He was able to rally the unity of India and destroy the "Divide and conquer strategy". One could argue that it wasn't Gandhi, but Netaji Bose who made it possible with the formation of INA.

You need to re evaluate your partake of Indian history.

Originally Posted by DonBelt

I think it was touched on lightly, but they should review how they handle soldiers with mild TBI. Studies have been done on soldiers and athletes with concussions and other mild to serious brain injury and the results are showing long term changes in the brain that result in cognitive deficiencies, aggression and depression. It's not a psychological issue, it's physiological. B.U. in particular did a long term study examining brains willed to them from ex-NFL players, pro-wrestlers and others that showed this. These injuries may be very mild concussive injuries with no bleeding or swelling shown on xrays or cat scans, but because they may be repeated or not properly recovered from they result in long term chemical and metabolic changes to the brain. After a period of time (1 - 2 weeks for the typical college athlete) of recovery time with no stress or further injury the metabolic processes of the brain return to normal and normal activities can be resumed. There's been several cases of ex-NFL players or wrestlers committing murder or suicide and the researchers think this is the cause. There is currently a lawsuit being filed by ex-NFL players against the NFL because of this. The military might consider pulling a soldier out of an operational area to somewhere quiet for a period of time to recover and screen him before returning him to service. This guy was known to have had a brain injury- they should really think hard about returning someone with brain injury back to combat. Does anyone know if they do cognitive testing before or after head injuries?

Don,
Yes - everyone undergoes cognitive testing prior to deployment to develop a baseline of comparison for evaluation in the event of any suspected TBI. I don't know exact percentages, but I wouldn't be surprised if 1/2 to 3/4 of soldiers in units that have to leave the wire have experienced some form of brain trauma from IEDs. As for pulling someone "off the line" if they receive a brain injury, yes, that happens.

The cost of U.S. soldiers fighting battles endlessly - The Washington Post

Too many wars, too few U.S. soldiers
By Robert H. Scales, Published: March 13
I guess I knew it would eventually come down to this: Blame the Army’s institutions in some way for the horrific and senseless slaughter of 16 innocent Afghan civilians in Kandahar, allegedly by a U.S. infantry non-commissioned officer (NCO). In their search for a villain, the media seems to be focusing now on Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, where the accused soldier was stationed before his fourth deployment to a combat zone.

Before we get too involved in attacking institutions, perhaps it might be right and proper to suggest that the underlying issue here is not about failure of our Army. Perhaps the issue might be that no institutional effort can make up for trying over the past 10 years to fight too many wars with too few soldiers?

The accused NCO is an infantryman. Two weeks ago I talked with infantry soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., and I couldn’t help contrasting them with those of my generation of Vietnam veterans. What caught my attention were the soldiers’ amazing stories of patient, selfless, introversive commitment. First I took to heart the enormous disparity in stressful, extreme experiences between the infantry and other branches and services that have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The senior NCOs I spoke to all had at least three, and in some cases five, tours, virtually all in close combat units. Contrast this with returning Vietnam NCOs and junior officers, most of whom in that era had only one tour in Vietnam.

Of course infantry combat in Vietnam was perhaps more intense, but close fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was more pervasive and lasting, thus more likely to cause personal trauma in my mind. The infantrymen I spoke to at Fort Benning were different from those in my generation. They were more emotionally exhausted and drained, less spontaneous and humorless. My generation of professionals spent a great deal of time on Friday nights at the officer’s club, talking over a beer about the Catch-22 nature of Vietnam and many of the stupid and hilarious experiences we endured. None of this at Benning today. No clubs, no public displays of hilarity and certainly no beer. These guys seemed to view their time in combat as endless and repetitive. My sense is that their collective, intimate exposure to the horrors of close combat was far more debilitating than what we experienced.

This of course in no way justifies what happened in Kandahar. But I think if someone wants to place blame, it should be on a succession of national leaders who fail to recognize that combat units, particularly infantry, just wear out. Lord Moran concluded in his classic about combat stress in World War I, “Anatomy of Courage,” that the reservoir of courage begins to empty after the first shot is fired. The horrors of intimate killing, along with other factors such as fatigue, thirst, hunger, isolation, fear of the unknown and the sight of dead and maimed comrades, all start a process of moral atrophy that cannot be reversed. Lord Moran rightfully concludes that nothing short of permanent withdrawal from the line will bring soldiers back to normalcy.

The media is trying to make some association between the terrible crime of this sergeant and the Army’s inability to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. Perhaps the Army could have done more. But I think Lord Moran had it more right; the real institutional culprit is the decade-long exploitation and cynical overuse of one of our most precious and irreplaceable national assets: our close combat soldiers and Marines.

If someone just after 9/11 would have told me that a very small Army and Marine Corps would fight a 10-year-long set of close combat engagements in two wars and still remain intact, I would have called them crazy. Well, we’ve done just that, haven’t we? But at what cost to the few who have borne an enormously disproportionate share of emotional stress?


© The Washington Post Company

MG Scales seems to have hit an important point squarely on the head.

I believe elsewhere someone asked me if I thought the Army was overwhelmed right now...this sums it up very well.

Kind of makes all of those magnetic yellow ribbons on the backs of those soccer mom SUVs seem pretty meaningless.

Zraver you are wrong about India. There was a major uprising not only in 1857 but in the aftermath of WWII. Witness the Indian Navy Mutiny. It was the sign that British had lost control of India and had to get out fast.

A bit of revisionism - the major parties sat back and condemned them, other historians have put the causes on the mutiny to naval matters not a heroic moment of nationalism. People have a habit of grabbing onto events and giving them a magical meaning.

It is a common myth that British ruled India by force. False. They only ruled India with the consent of Indians. When the Indians no longer consent as a whole, the British lost. In 1857, the British won and only by the skin of the teeth because some of the princely states chose to side with the British and lent aid and troops which the British desperately needed.

They kicked out plenty of teeth to gain that consent. Just because Indian elites rolled over and learned to smile and the British learned to fluff egos doesn't mean the British didn't shell and pillage kingdom after kingdom to take power. I guess rule by consent sounds nicer then military elites folding on the battlefield.

Originally Posted by troung

A bit of revisionism - the major parties sat back and condemned them, other historians have put the causes on the mutiny to naval matters not a heroic moment of nationalism. People have a habit of grabbing onto events and giving them a magical meaning.



They kicked out plenty of teeth to gain that consent. Just because Indian elites rolled over and learned to smile and the British learned to fluff egos doesn't mean the British didn't shell and pillage kingdom after kingdom to take power. I guess rule by consent sounds nicer then military elites folding on the battlefield.

How did they gain the force to obtain the consent? Look at the breakdown of the forces from 1750s to 1945. You will see an overwhelming number of Indians to British ratio.

A story in a similar vein just at home...

Iraq vet kills sister, self in Gilroy; mom missing

Originally Posted by Blademaster

How did they gain the force to obtain the consent? Look at the breakdown of the forces from 1750s to 1945. You will see an overwhelming number of Indians to British ratio.

Thats what i'm wondering too.

Some time ago i read that there were no more than 100,000 Brits controlling a country of 250 million+.

How is that possible without consent.

The Brits were excellent at playing their opponents off each other. Divide and reduce the opposition. Divide and rule.

They allowed the princely kingdoms to remain as they were and this defnitely played to their advantage. They contorolled border crossings & choke points within so any unrest could be contained.

Derailed thread , i got taken to task for it with tanker , aint that right S2 ??

Fair point Tankie. I'm sure that if we want to argue of ther the finer details of Indian history there are more appropriate places.

Update


SEATTLE (Reuters) - The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians was upset at having to do a fourth tour of duty in a war zone and was likely suffering from stress after seeing colleagues wounded, his defence lawyer said on Thursday.
Seattle defence attorney John Henry Browne said the 38-year-old staff sergeant accused of gunning down children and families on Sunday had already been wounded twice in three tours in Iraq and had been told he would not be sent back to a war zone.
"He and his family were told that his tours in the Middle East were over. His family was counting on him not being redeployed," said Browne at a news conference in Seattle. "Literally overnight that changed. So I think it would be fair to say that he and the family we're not happy that he was going back."
An unnamed U.S. official told The New York Times the killings were a result of "a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues — he just snapped."
Asked about the Times report, Browne said he did not know about alcohol and acknowledged that stress was a factor, but he dismissed the domestic issue as "nonsense."
Browne said he had not discussed details of the incident with his client but added that the man's unit had sustained casualties about the time of the civilian killings.
"I don't know if I'd call them friends, but other people deployed in that base were seriously injured and/or killed shortly before these allegations," he said.
Browne would not go into specifics about the identity or well-being of his client. He said only that he was originally from the U.S. Midwest and was at the moment "more shocked than anything."
The death penalty had been discussed with Army lawyers, said Browne, and was still on the table as a possible sentence.
Lieutenant Colonel Gary Dangerfield, a spokesman at the Lewis-McChord base, declined to comment on the case.
Details have dribbled out about the sergeant in the 2-3 Infantry, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which is housed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Seattle.
HEAD WOUND
The soldier served three tours in Iraq, where he received a head wound and lost part of one foot. He was not sure if he was ready for Afghanistan, the lawyer said. "He wasn't certain he was healthy enough. Physically, mostly," Browne said.
Browne, who represented U.S. serial killer Ted Bundy, described his client as an "exemplary" soldier and said the charges against him - and the man's name - may not be known for weeks.
He had joined the Army after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
"He enlisted within a week of 9/11. He felt it was his duty to stand up for the United States," Browne said. The soldier met his wife online and they have a "very healthy marriage" and two children. The wife and the children, ages 3 and 4, have been moved to the Seattle-area military base for protection.
The unnamed U.S. staff sergeant is accused of killing the civilians in what witnesses described as a night-time massacre near a U.S. base in Afghanistan's violent Kandahar province.
He arrived in Afghanistan in December and had been at the Belambai base since February 1.
Browne said that charges against his client would be filed "probably not sooner than a few weeks" and that his name would not be released before the charges.
The soldier is being held at a U.S. base in Kuwait, and it is not clear where or when a trial would be held, Browne said, but it would be under military rules.
The Times reported the military was preparing to move the soldier to a prison in the United States as early as Friday, most likely to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
There has been broad speculation that the sergeant could have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Browne did not rule that out.
Browne, known for a flamboyant courtroom manner and inventive legal mind, attempted to defend a local thief known as the "Barefoot Bandit" on the grounds that he was suffering from PTSD from an unsettled childhood.
"Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore, 20, was sentenced to 6-1/2 years in prison in January for a two-year crime spree.
(Additional reporting by Bill Rigby. Editing by Christopher Wilson and Eric Beech)

IF he is found to be suffering from a brain injury and/or PDSD will the charges of murder be reduced and if so what will the Afghanistan reaction be? Will the American Government be able to reduce the charge without a fierce back-lash from an already volatile Country?