Rolling Stone’s Grisly “Kill Team” Photos: The Tip of the Iceberg?

How much of this is W’s fault and how much is BO’s?
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Don’t play that game.
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Gutless wonders with soldiers’ uniforms did it.
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Thank you for your service. Now enjoy your jail cell.

I wonder how much the all-volunteer Military has to do with these kinds of things. I know there are tremendous young men and women who joined, but the military, I think, must be accepting applicants that they probably wouldn’t otherwise accept.

Tiny amount of priests are pedophiles – same thing.

We shouldn’t be surprised — disappointed, yes — when people trained to kill sometimes step over the line.
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To the credit of our military, these perps are being prosecuted. I am sure they are far from alone, and I hope that they are an aberration, but even in the mostly highly disciplined force, things like this are going to happen, as they do in every conflict. Behavior like this is never acceptable, but always predictable.

Or, allthings, they assume like some here do that, because it is an “all-volunteer” force, the people are by definition “professionals” and do not need the oversight they would have needed previously.
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There’s a moral component that seems to be missing. I didn’t need a superior to tell me that certain things were just “wrong”.
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And I can’t believe that something like this would have gone “unnoticed” by those above.
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Has the thresh-hold of “acceptability” changed somewhat during this hellishly-long war, without anyone really noticing?

It’ll stop with Gibbs. Abu Ghraib ended with an E6 taking the hit for the Bush/Cheney torture doctrine. The guy who covered up and lied about Pat Tillman’s tragic death ended up getting command of Afghanistan for awhile (McChrystal). Accountability for senior military leaders just doesn’t exist right now.

libssd, if it’s predictable, it’s also preventable if the officers and senior NCO’s of the organization are a) doing their job, b) care, and c) aren’t involved in it themselves. At some point there has to be some senior person held responsible before acts such as these will stop.

Jim,
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Career-wise, one can NEVER admit one knew about it, because, once you do, you know what the next question would be…
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WHY didn’t you do something about it?
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I’ve even run into senior NCO’s and officers who, when you tried to tell them about something that was NOT right, just threw up their hands and said “I don’t wanna hear about it”.
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Stuff like that happens more when the events are still not publicly known and the machinery of the unit is otherwise running smoothly.
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No one wants to upset any organizational “apple carts”, especially their own.

Isolated or not, of course it is predictable, and that predictability is derived from actual experience in every war. The greatest failure is insufficient emphasis on the issue in training. Same with Abu Ghraib. In every case, even though isolated, it just takes a spark and there’s serious problems. Any commander in war who isn’t aware of it is either a fool, or morally bankrupt.

Jim, much as I would like to, I can’t agree that this sort of thing is preventable. Institutions can minimize, but can not eliminate barbaric behavior by rogue soldiers. All it takes is for the enemy to be dehumanized; once you cross that line, anything is possible. This is a very deep-seated behavior in our species, and the military can inculcate ethical behavior through frequent instruction or repetition, but with some people it’s just not going to stick. The best that I can hope for is that when atrocities occur, they will not be swept under the rug — which is the natural reaction of any institutional bureaucracy (e.g., McChrystal/Tillman).

My father was an infantry private in North Africa and Italy during WWII, and had similar stories of fellow soldiers collecting “souvenirs,” usually, but not limited to ears. And, compared with what both sides did to dehumanize each other in the Pacific theater, our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq have been, overall, amazingly well behaved while trying to survive in cultures that are very alien to them.

Jim:

There is also the problem with senior leadership not wanting anything to come to light that might reflect poorly on the unit. Not saying that is what happen here, because there is always incompetence. I think these are some of the same problems police forces go through when the leadership is almost afraid to punish bad behavior by officers.

Vietnam was composed of a non-volunteer and volunteer army. We had Mai Lai.

What does war mean but cruelty and a loss of civilized behavior? We create a war machine and are shocked when it has nasty reprucussions.

apr,
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THIS is what worries me when young people have spent nearly ALL of their adult lives around death. Either killing or trying to keep from being killed.
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We are in uncharted territory here due to the length of the war and the repeated deployments. I think libssd’s comment about the “dehumanization” of the enemy is spot on, and THAT’s partially to blame for this (as well as the recurring cases of accidental civilian deaths). They’re just not THAT important to us.
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Vietnam was a “one tour and done” conflict as a rule. And we still had a William Calley.

Agreed afguy.