In the early morning hours of March 11, a US soldier assigned to “special ops” in Afghanistan, stationed near Kandahar, went into a local village and gunned down 16 people – including nine women and three children. At least three others were wounded. He went from house to house, in the predawn darkness, systematically murdering people while they slept in their beds: he then doused them with a flammable liquid and set them ablaze.
What is it about American troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan? From Abu Ghraib [.pdf] to the Mahmudiyah killings to the Hamdania murder of a crippled old man to the horrors of the Haditha massacre, it’s been one atrocity after another (see here, here, and here). More recently it was the “rogue” team of killers that murdered Afghan civilians in the Maywand district for sport. Then it was US troops urinating on corpses, followed shortly afterward by the Koran-burning incident, the second such example of American contempt for the people they are supposed to be “liberating.” Now we have this, which – we’re told – is the result of a US soldier having a “breakdown.”
Was it a breakdown, or merely the logical extension of the soldier’s training and inclination, that caused him to go on a murderous rampage? That hardly a month goes by without some kind of atrocity being committed should tell us something.
What it tells me is that America is a depraved nation, a country where the very worst-of-the-worst flock to join the military, free to kill and maim and rape to their heart’s content.
And Rachel Maddow wants to give these guys a “welcome home” “victory” parade?
