This is an extremely disturbing article from Rolling Stone. It’s about a platoon of renegade soldiers who committed some heinous crimes against innocent civilians. Was some of this known to officers? Could it have been stopped? Please keep in mind that a few bad seeds do not make the entire military corrupt and criminal. In fact, as we’ve discussed, the “professionalization” of the U.S. military has led to extraordinary successes in stopping the sorts of crimes highlighted in this article. But this is the type of thing that inevitably happens in war, just like accidentally killing civilians, and so should probably be considered when we make decisions to attack and invade another land.
ARTICLE: “The Kill Team”
Those pictures have to be some of the most disturbing photos I have ever seen. War is really dangerous. It really messes with you psychologically. Its one thing to take pictures of dead bodies for documentation but to take pictures with them. That is sick. Those soldiers where sick. Know wonder why the people in Iraq are afraid of us. I do not think those soldiers know the shame they have brought to their country. Things like this is what fuels the nations that hate us and want to see us fall. We need to lead by example. Those soldiers should get the death penalty for what they did or be locked in padding rooms. Where did they find the time to do this? If they had time to do this that means that the soldiers must all not be doing anything and they need to come home.
I do not know how any of them can call themselves American soldiers and do the things they performed. We are there to protect and serve. They are supposed to follow the mission at hand. The only other mission is to make sure that they all come home. Where did killing innocent people come into play? I cannot believe they wanted to harm and kill children. They really completely lost their minds. They killed a fifteen-year-old boy though?
This should not be taken lightly by the United States. They themselves should be charged as terrorist. I understand that those are just a few soldiers but one cannot help to think if given the opportunity how many soldiers would part take in that. They are in war, far away from family and everything they have ever knew. These soldiers are vulnerable. I honestly believe they need more training. I know one will never know what war is like until in it but they have to be better prepared. The have to know when to make the tough and RIGHT decisions. One crazy soldier that wants to go on a killing rampage or even a group of soldiers cannot easily sway them.
As horrible as this is, I guess it’s sort of inevitable. And I’m sure there are more occurrences like this that we just don’t know about. I could look at this from two perspectives. The first sort of rationalizes it. Imagine being in Afghanistan for six hard months and all you feel like you’ve been doing is killing people. I think maybe I’d go a little crazy too- I definitely wouldn’t feel the need to kill civilians, but I sort of get it. Maybe they got some sort of rush out of it, knowing they’ve been fighting armed soldiers this entire time, wouldn’t it be nice to kill just one civilian. I kind of see it as going to the shooting range to fire a few shots, except in this case, you’re shooting a live person. Completely immoral, but I can put myself in their shoes and see maybe why they did it. Then I could look at it from another perspective. This perspective does not rationalize it alt all, it actually does the opposite. What I can’t understand is why you would want to kill innocent civilians if all you’ve been doing is killing people for the past six months. We hear all these stories back in the US that soldiers are suffering from PTSD because they were forced to kill a young child for instance because he was holding a machine gun. If the idea of killing someone is so traumatic, why would you want to go out and kill civilians just for the fun of it? After exploring some different perspectives that I may not fully understand, I’ve come to a conclusion myself. I see these people as murderers, people who should be locked away in jail for life. Some may argue that they did not kill a US citizen and they’re soldiers so it’s what they’re trained to do. I would argue back that US citizen or not, they’re a human being and no innocent human should be killed. Secondly, yes they are soldiers, but they were not trained to kill innocent civilians- they were trained to kill opposing soldiers to protect us. That poor boy was doing absolutely nothing wrong and he was killed for it. How could anyone trust US soldiers if this is what they’re capable of? It almost makes me sick to my stomach to say that I am proud of our military. Of course of proud, and I respect every US soldier, however it’s the corrupt ones like these who give us a bad name. As Americans we see all the good things our military does, but from the outside, others may only see the bad, like killing innocent civilians. You think since we have such a great military, there would be a way to weed out these bad seeds.