U.S. Soldier Loses it.....

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/11/world/asia/afghanistan-us-service-member/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Bonus points if he played Doom or quoted the Doom Comic when performing the massacres.

Seems like a dishonorable discharge would be in order, WITH his rank and medals removed as well. He should be paid to sit at home and think about what he's done.

...paid? And at home? How about unpaid, unarmed and left on his own in the middle of Kandahar?

Sigh.

AndrewB said:

Seems like a dishonorable discharge would be in order, WITH his rank and medals removed as well. He should be paid to sit at home and think about what he's done.

poe. seriously, i can't tell if you're kidding or not.

Sigh...

Geez! What was wrong with him? Those poor people did not deserve to get killed/wounded!

NitroactiveStudios said:

Those poor people did not deserve to get killed/wounded!

They existed and they were muslim Afghans, thus certain potential future terrorists. He thought "better be proactive about it". One day you will thank him for still being able to enjoy your Freedoms!

Maes said:

They existed and they were muslim Afghans, thus certain potential future terrorists. He thought "better be proactive about it". One day you will thank him for still being able to enjoy your Freedoms!

OK, sure there are some terroists there in Afghanistan, but not all of them would becoome future terroists, right?

NitroactiveStudios said:

OK, sure there are some terroists there in Afghanistan, but not all of them would becoome future terroists, right?

Pretty sure Maes was joking.

NitroactiveStudios said:

OK, sure there are some terroists there in Afghanistan, but not all of them would becoome future terroists, right?

Are you serious?

NitroactiveStudios said:

but not all of them would becoome future terroists, right?

Well yeah, he should have asked them one by one first "Are you planning on becoming a terrorist? Are you attending a Muslim school? Are you Muslim? Are you parents muslin? Guilty as charged! *bang*. NEXT!"

NitroactiveStudios said:

OK, sure there are some terroists there in Afghanistan, but not all of them would becoome future terroists, right?

At this point, I don't know how America is dumb enough to expect that all the Muslims they are "fighting for" don't want their blood.

At times like this I want to denounce my US citizenship. I wish that I could somehow speak directly to somebody in the middle east and tell them that many Americans hate this war and are actually on their side, myself included.

Meh, I wouldn't read too much into it until we know more. Maybe he was waging his own perverted war against terror, or maybe he was just insane and had he been home he would have taken part in a school shooting instead. As far as we know, so far the incident has little to do with the actual war itself.

Jodwin said:

so far the incident has little to do with the actual war itself.

A united states soldier murders civilians in a warzone they have been fighting in for near 11 years, and it has nothing to do with the war?

Or maybe he wanted to prove a point:

"We Americans, even when we lose it, take a manly rifle and KILL the innocent women and children BY OUR OWN HAND, FACE TO FACE!!! Totally unlike those damn terrorist suicide bombers that did 9/11 and killed everybody indiscriminately and blew themselves up, too! With us, War becomes personal, not just mere terror, and we get to return to base alive to tell the tale! Such is the Superiority of American Culture and the Values of Freedom that it represents! McDonalds and shootings? Fuck Yeah! Quran and suicide bombings? Hell No!"

(Audio, I'm sure that would get me a few votes if I was American)

There goes winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

Darkman 4 said:

There goes winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

What makes you think the USA or NATO ever "had them" or that they were particularly welcome?

Maes said:

What makes you think the USA or NATO ever "had them" or that they were particularly welcome?

I didn't say they were actually doing a good job with it. I was describing their general strategy. :P

Darkman 4 said:

I didn't say they were actually doing a good job with it. I was describing their general strategy. :P

It's not though, that was terrible propaganda aimed at the huge anti-war croud. The strategy is and has been occupation and domination. Military forces don't go to war with the intent on making friends with the people they shoot at.

Quast said:

A united states soldier murders civilians in a warzone they have been fighting in for near 11 years, and it has nothing to do with the war?

As much as a school shooting has to do with the poor state of education. Sometimes, some people just snap and go around killing people. It's tragic, but you can't know the real reasons until investigations have been done. Thus, it doesn't have anything to do with the war per se, until otherwise proven.

Meh, he is doing what he is trained to do. Punishing him is only fixing the symptoms, not the disease.

Unfortunately it only takes a handful of rogue soldiers to undo years of bridge building and push what's currently a tense situation closer to open conflict.

Sodaholic said:

I wish that I could somehow speak directly to somebody in the middle east and tell them that many Americans hate this war and are actually on their side, myself included.

Nice idea, though Afghanistan isn't in the middle east.

Darkman 4 said:

There goes winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

I thought the goals in Afghanistan were kicking terrorist butt, installing a puppet government and constructing an oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean.

"If I've got 'em by the short and curlies, the hearts and minds will follow." - attributed to Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War.

The soldier in question is a trained professional killer. As far as I'm concerned, this kind of event will happen again and the ISAF commanders can call these kinds of actions "deplorable" and what not, it won't matter.

You don't need to make a journey into another dimension to find Hell when you have it on your own planet.

Hell on Earth?

I say: Earth has become Hell.

[PROTOTYPE] said:
This reminds me of the Columbine High School Massacre. You know what, I think I'm gonna go play those Harris levels right fucking now.

By the way, does anyone have UZIs for sale around here?...

Not for you, you student killer.

Jodwin said:
As much as a school shooting has to do with the poor state of education. Sometimes, some people just snap and go around killing people. It's tragic, but you can't know the real reasons until investigations have been done. Thus, it doesn't have anything to do with the war per se, until otherwise proven.

That assumes there's nothing wrong with the military occupation in the first place. You can count three potential levels of responsibility here: personal, hierarchical and national. The first seems evident unless it can be shown he's insane or has been forced to do it, the second is less certain but suspect due to many other incidents, and the last seems part of the problem or else this person wouldn't even be in Afghanistan.

This is just something that became evident, exceptionally. Just like those US military corpses dumped in a landfill to save money or hide frags and crimes, many other atrocities are passed off as confrontations or simply made to not have happened.

Mr. T said:
Meh, he is doing what he is trained to do. Punishing him is only fixing the symptoms, not the disease.

But of course, anything the soldiers do is fine because they're just poor guys who needed a job and somebody else is surely responsible, like the president or the liberal media... we don't want to be against the troops!

The symptom is the dead Afghans and he is part of the disease.

Even if you do train your troops to do that, they are still responsible along with the government and anyone above in the chain of command who had anything to do with the incident. That's how it is anywhere half civilized.

MRB_Doom said:
As far as I'm concerned, this kind of event will happen again and the ISAF commanders can call these kinds of actions "deplorable" and what not, it won't matter.

Predicting an incident is one thing, condoning it another. You're mixing them. This event is a symptom of this sort of invasion, so it matters because killing in self defense is one thing, murder while robbing a victim is another. Events like this do change things, possibly even accelerating or deepening a US pull-out from the area.

STFU Myk. I wasn't saying that, I was saying that they are trained to KILL, which is why rates of PTSD are so high. Read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316330116/warcatslair

Can't blame me unless you think your post above was equivalent to reading that book. As you can see above, I'm not against looking for broader responsibilities or factoring insanity, after all.

Most military are "trained to kill" in different ways, some of which, associated with the types of campaigns they're involved in, lead more to atrocities and disorders than others. I'm sure post-traumatic stress disorder is much more common if you're being pushed to attack with more distant and abstract reasons than if you're fighting against an immediate threat to your land. That is, motivated people don't need to be "broken" like those who are required to fight for others. People are more resilient to stress they're "into" than from situations which aren't part of their personal drives.