US soldier killed 16 Afghans on shooting rampage
According to Hamad Karzai, president of Afghanistan, an American soldier is being held on the suspicion of killing at least 16 Afghan civilians in a pre-dawn shooting rampage a few hundred meters outside of his base in the villages of Alkozai and Balandiin southern Afghanistan today, according to an AP report in the Washington Times.
“When it was happening in the middle of the night, we were inside our houses. I heard gunshots and then silence and then gunshots again,” Mr. Baqi said.
NATO spokesman Justin Brockhoff said a U.S. service member had been detained as the alleged shooter and that the coalition had reports of “multiple wounded” but none killed. The wounded were evacuated to NATO medical facilities, he said.
The service member was being held at a NATO base, and U.S. forces are investigating the shooting in cooperation with Afghan authorities, Mr. Brockhoff said. He said it was not clear if the alleged shooter knew the victims.
There’s no sense in equivocating these shootings with the countless American deaths committed by Afghan nationals in uniform in the last few years, neither does it make sense to accuse all Americans of being capable of committing the same act. This is one individual who acting on his own, otherwise there’d be hundreds more casualties. Yes, it’s a tragedy that this happened, but that doesn’t justify the violence that it will undoubtedly inspire.
Thanks to the dozen or so readers who sent me links to the story.
ADDED: War On Terror News reports that 15 Pakistanis were killed by a suicide bomber while they attended the funeral of an anti-jihadist politician. Let’s see which incident draws the larger protest in the region.
Category: Terror War
Only 16?
Its a start.
Eat shit, Nev.
That conduct is wholly unbecoming of our military and of us veterans. We don’t intentionally target civilians. We don’t commit murder. Those who do are tried and held accountable for their actions.
But yeah, I agree with Jonn. Context here between this action and that bombing in Pakistan will be interesting, though I suspect anyone who reads this blog will know how the responses from our “allies” in Pakistan, and the Afghanis will shake out.
This is terrible. It sounds like the guy just totally snapped.
I know the current info is sketchy at best ……ho did he manage to walk off his FOB?
If the reports are true, it’s sickening. And it was sickening when Afghan miilitary did it to our guys.
What else is sickening? People saying things like “It’s war. Shit happens.”
No, it wasn’t war. It was murder.
Not a lot confirmed details, but definitely sounds terrible. Some early reports said it was a Staff Sergeant who walked away from a checkpoint. Can only imagine what our troops will be subjected to next as propaganda ignites more riots.
Via Drudge, the Beeb reported “The soldier – who had reportedly suffered a breakdown before the attacks – is said to have handed himself over to the US military authorities after carrying out the killings.” (Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17330205)
This is f*cked up. Waiting for the rest of the story.
All those repeated Koran-burning apologies can sound pretty hollow when there is something to apologize for.
I sense that this will be another case where everyone knew this soldier had a problem, but politics or political correctness or some other artificiality prevented the command from taking action.
The first thing that the media will do is throw PTSD on the table, even if there is no evidence of it. I hope they don’t but they probably will.
The fact that they are witholding the name of the person is similar to the Army’s initial actions to keep the Arabic name of the Fort Hood shooter out of the news. If it turns out he is Islamic, however, I would be shocked.
I don’t know what happened, but experience has taught me that people who engage in irrational or dangerous behavior have exhibited plenty of indicators. Someone missed something.
Hey AW1 Tim- You know whats funny? This Soldier will get the death penalty for murder. You know what else is funny? Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad didn’t. We continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard that no one cares about. We are always in the wrong. We are always at fault. We will always be seen as the war mongers, the murderers the rapists and the thieves. We are expendable, exploitable — to be recruited, used up and discarded as the politicians and public sees fit to fulfill their own selfish goals. We look in the mirror each day and say we do this for duty, honor, country. We say we defend the Constitution and the American way of life and then act shocked when the Constitution is used against us to take away what was promised. We are surprised when the American public sees pictures of uncensored warfare and are shocked, SHOCKED that this is what American soldiers are doing over there? “They pissed on dead enemy fighters HAVE YOU NO HUMANITY!!” “They took pictures of dead enemy fighters and saved them on their laptops!! YOU FUCKING MONSTERS!!” “They shot at the enemy with their scary black guns… you fucking cowards!!” We tell ourselves that we are not ticking time bombs, that PTSD is mind over matter. That these Soldiers won’t snap because the system is in place to identify the problem and provide care for the individual and yet the system fails again and again and again. And then we have other Sodliers say “Fuck you, you pussy. You just couldn’t handle it.” We tell ourselves that COIN works. That the Officers appointed over us know how to win the war. That the politicians will always have our backs. That the people support the troops. But then we find out COIN doesn’t work in a 6th century culture of backwards barbarians. That Islam is not a religion of peace. That western values are in total conflict with 1,300 years of Submission to the words of some desert deity. We are being prosecuted for burning a fairy tale book… Read more »
Nev,
You sound like a member of Calley’s platoon trying desperately to justify My Lai.
If this represents your true beliefs, I hope the military identifies you and sends your ignorant ass packing back to civilian life posthaste. It’s your ilk that gave us My Lai – and gives the professionals in the ranks a bad name and a bad reputation to overcome.
A professional military indeed breaks things and kills people – on command, and for a purpose. It doesn’t freelance or lash out because someone or something hurt their feelings.
If any of his bullets hit a Koran, we will never hear the end of it.
Nev, preach on, brother!
Reuters is, of course, referring to this as a “US shooting spree” and a “US massacre”.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/11/us-afghanistan-civilians-idUSBRE82A02V20120311
Damn… I found myself nodding along while reading Nev #10 AND then being snapped back to reality by Hondo #11.
However, I will say that given the limited information about this current incident any direct comparison to My Lai is unsupportable as yet. A lone gunman vs the behavior of a unit?
This IS a profoundly sad turn of events by any standards and the fallout will be ugly.
Not looking forward to next few days and weeks!
Reuters is, of course, referring to this as a “US shooting spree” and a “US massacre”.
=========
Yeah, funny how that works. When Muslims go on shooting sprees and commit massacres, those situations are considered to be by lone gunmen and are said to have nothing to do with Islam.
But, when a lone gunman in the US military goes on a shooting spree, it represents the entire United States military and the United States as a whole.
Absolute bullshit.
Nev,
you can still eat shit and leave. Our military and our nation doesn’t need thew kind of psychopathic behaviour you represent.
We are a professional military. Our NCOs and Officers are there to provide the leadership and guidance that keeps us professional, so we don’t end up killing civilians intentionally.
Do non-combatants die? You betcha. Shit happens. It isn’t, however, what we intend nor what we look for. We can’t help it if the 6th century bastards we’re fighting use women and children for sheilds, then use their battered bodies for propaganda.
The difference is that we’re better than that.
Take your RonPaulish, psychopathic, trolling blathering stinking shit-mouthed carcass over to Daily Kos or maybe MSNBC, where the folks will nod respectfully and paternalistically support you as they do all the brain-damaged leftists who post and comment there.
Nev,
You know what’s not funny? That the actions of this fucktard have put the lives of my soldiers in danger. Preach all you like about the failure of COIN, strategy, leadership, the islamic religion, the people here, etc. Cite Cartago delenda est or what the Germans did to Lidice after Heydrich was killed, or Genghis Kahn making a desert and calling it peace,or Sherman’s March to the Sea. I could give a fuck.
Tomorrow, (actually later today, it is 0004 here) I will have to go out and interact with the Afghans. Tomorrow my soldiers will have the risks they normally take compounded because of this waste of sperm and egg. Tomorrow, you’ll read the comments on this thread and the biggest problem you’ll have is being inconvenienced by those who disagree with you. Our problems are now substantially greater because of the actions of this individual who is a disgrace to his uniform. He showed no honor. I could give a fuck about the code my enemies live by and how it conflicts with mine. I accepted this code when I put on the uniform. Just because my enemies choose to fight with methods some deem unfair doesn’t give me, the aforementioned homesick abortion, or anyone else in uniform the right to use the same tactics.
So, while you cite history and use those examples to support your ideas, remember that some of us are living it and right now, it sucks.
I wish we had “like” buttons for comments so I could tell Tim, Hondo and Nichevo how awesome they are while being super lazy about it.
Nev is correct, regardless of what the libtards say.
That said, I do disagree with the soldier’s decision to walk in the street and blast away with a rifle when bombs large enough to level the country are at the cowardly president’s disposal – the fact is the ammunition costs too much – a few large bombs would take care of most of the problems there, including the lying and two faced POS Karzai.
Unfortunately, if someone were to actually grow a set and make this scenario come to pass, someone else would then be deprived of shoving Karzai’s cocksucker hat up his ass not to mention the wanton killing of the poor camels.
If Matthis Chiroux had been forced to spend another week in that gulag on Bagram called Baskin Robbins after they ran out of chocolate sprinkles I am pretty sure this is what would have happened. On a more serious note I worry about the well being of my brothers downrange after yet another incident sure to incite the barbarians. The lib media already has a raging boner over this and will exploit it to no end trying to show everyone how evil U.S. soldiers are and Obama already has his best cronies scribbling out a detailed apology to Karzai and the wonderful people of Asscrackistan.
“Here Lies Nichevo.
He lived by a code of honor and duty.
He did what he thought right.
He was killed by a 7th century backwards Pashtun who cannot read or write for being an infidel and apostate to Islam. ”
I hope it does not happen Nichevo but eventually you have to realize that some cultures cannot… will not be changed. In the end you are fighting to defend THEIR way of life.
Murder women for trying to go to school.
To preach their hateful religion.
To torture and kill Christians, Jews and Hindus.
To stone gays and lesbians for being immoral.
To cover their women in cloth from head to toe and beat them.
To be barbarians.
I guess there are worse things to die for. Call it duty if you want.
I’ll say a prayer for the soldiers that are there now, and will have to deal with the fallout from this one.
Pack them up and have them home within 30 days. Leave crooked bastard Karzai to deal with the taliban on his own. There is nothing left in afghanistan that is worth the blood of one US service member.
Frankly, Nev, I pray to all that’s holy you never serve alongside anyone I love. The fact that you justify his killing the very people that man was there to protect speaks not only on your mentality, but more so on your complete lack of a moral compass.
Cute, thanks for the epitaph but, you don’t know me very well. It will be written in Latin and will involve some mention of good single malt.
I have no illusions as to the culture here. I also spend every day working with people who want to change it. I see huge crowds of girls as they go to school. I see adults who ask me for copies of our Constitution. The entire country is not Pashtun nor does the entire country embrace Pashtunwali. (See Massoud and Abdul Haq) I see ANA soldiers whose participation in literacy training has increased in the unit I advise by 280% in the past year alone. I see the beginnings of a professional NCO corps some of whom I would have no problem with having as squad leaders in my own company.
Yet some would advocate writing those people off or lumping them together with the same vermin who kill indiscriminately. (And for those vermin by all means hunt them down like rabid dogs and kill them.) Just as some have equated all Italians with the mafia, all Irish with being Fenians, or all Catholics as being baby making zombies loyal to the Pope and not their country. It’s easier to make generalizations than to deal with all of the different aspects of this country and these people.
I guess it’s easier to do it that way. Just say fuck em all and drop a few MOABs or good measure or perhaps a couple of nukes at 10,000 ft AGL.
There are absolutely some days I want to beat myself with a 2×4 full of rusty nails. There are some days I could walk away and be done with it. But,then what?
There are indeed worse things to die for than duty and honor. High at the top of that list is failing to live up to those things.
[…] More than anything it serves as a valuable counterpoint to other recent events. […]
Nichevo: If Afghanistan has any hope of a brighter tomorrow, it will come from the sacrifice of soldiers like you.
I am a civilian and can say nothing to ease your burden, except perhaps this: no matter what the news media puts out as spin, we DO know the truth. Don’t think that just because the news media paints a picture, that we’ll automatically call it art. We know you’re doing the best you can is an abysmal situation.
We are proud of you, and pray for you every day.
“…IN an abysmal…” Sorry for typo.
@4…You are 100% Correct! How did he just walk off the COP? Panjwaii is NOT a place where you just walk around!! And how did he manage to get into 3 houses in 2 villages? Where did the acid come from?
BTW, it is quiet there..nothing like the media is reporting…but that could change.
I’m not a big fan of that BBC article. Here is a quote: “The soldier – who had reportedly suffered a breakdown before the attacks – is said to have handed himself over to the US military authorities after carrying out the killings.”
Reported by whom? Said by whom?
I would completely disregard that assertion until someone cites sources.
Nev,
Your allegience to your own survival at any cost eliminates you from the Brother & Sisterhood of American Warriors. Sacrifice is an attribute, even when it is as minor as self restraint.
You may wear the uniform, though I have my doubts, but you are not an American Warrior. You’re nothing more than a coward.
I agree with AW1, Nichevo, and others.
This lunatic not only killed innocent women and children, but in fact his actions only further endangers the lives of other Americans there.
For anybody to excuse this nonsense as ‘war is hell,’ or any other sorry excuse, is a disgrace to our country. We’re not talking about a soldier, who in the fog of war and in the chaos of battle, inadvertantly shoots and kills civilians. We’re talking about an idiot that freely walks off base and kills civilians, among them women and children. That is hardly justifiable in any universe I live in.
The fact that acts of this nature are so incredibly rare, that makes it that much more deplorable. Because, contrary to the ‘war is hell’ crowd that seeks to minimize these depraved acts, the overwhelming majority or our troops have in fact conducted themselves with honor and integrity in accordance with the principles of the country they serve.
My allegiance to survival is to my culture not my self. However, what binds me to this slow destruction that our nation is headed for in an unending war against Islam? Specifically a war that no Westerner wishes to win because no Westerner has the will to actually defeat our enemies. Instead we succumb to the false belief that we can change their culture. We believe that we can convince them that their religion does not mean what it so plainly preaches. We believe that in the end our “moral high ground” our “brotherhood” our willingness to sacrifice and “selfless service” will carry the day. But at the end of the day what have you accomplished? Their Imams still preach we are the enemy. They still murder Westerners. They still murder their wives and daughters in honor killings. They slaughter Christians by the hundreds. They murder Jews everyday. They hunt down Hindus and burn their villages, convert their women or rape them and murder the men. But we hold the so-called moral high ground. We stand above a sea of blood and a tide of green banners proclaiming universal jihad. And we say… at least we are not them. And so it goes… Look at a map of Africa from 50 years ago and every decade since that shows religion by area. Notice Islam creeping forward. Notice Christians fleeing Southward or going extinct. And we hold the moral high ground. We wear this uniform and consider ourselves brave men and women who stand between the enemy and our beloved homes. Yet we do nothing to strike the ROOT of the problem. We simply strike the foot soldier here or there. An IED cell destroyed by Hellfire. An enemy patrol destroyed by mortars or CAS or even by a rifleman. We simply brush a few leaves off the tree but the trunk and roots remain. Until we realize that ISLAM is the problem we are simply delaying the inevitable. The inevitable being that one day the West wakes up and realizes that a few nations remain who remember what the common… Read more »
Thank you Nichevo, for interjecting reason and truth. Some people can’t wargame a situation two steps past their own emotions.
Well my fellow USACAPOC(A) Soldiers in theater just got fucked with a capitol F! I mean, how the fuck is Psyop gonna spin this one? How are we as CA, gonna be able to do any kind of condolence payments or CERP projects to make up for this wonton act of cranial rectal inversion, fuck, numbnuts, just fucked all of NATO, thanks! I got the news from the BDE JAG three hours ago at Drill, and our recently returned Afghan Vets were pretty pissed, don’t blame them, I am as well… The killing of children is not a natural act!!!!!!!!!
Nev, you may want to consider that you are calling other people barbarians (and rightfully so) while advocating for the murder of women and children in their beds in the middle of the night.
Nev,
I understand the stakes here, numbnuts. I understand quite well that there are radical elements within Islam that would like nothing better than to impose a worldwide Caliphate under Sharia – and are actively working towards that end.
Should it ever become necessary, I also have no scruples against waging a war of extermination against such enemies using methods similar to those used against Germany and Japan during World War II. But we’re not there yet. Only maybe 10% of Islam is radical and rabidly anti-West (and that’s likely a high estimate). The other 90+% isn’t.
But the rest can become radicalized by wanton, ignorant acts on our part, or by those acting in our name. Each such act provides propaganda for those who bastards would radicalize the rest of the Islamic world.
In Afghanistan, hope remains; it has not yet come to a war of mass annihilation. But actions like this latest by a God-damned fool (or a mentally ill one) may convert it to such a war of annihilation. And if that happens, we’ll have pissed away literally thousands of wasted lives, 10+ years of effort, and hundreds of billions of dollars – for nothing.
The strategic objective in Afghanistan isn’t making ourselves feel good through revenge involving indiscriminate slaughter. Rather, the strategic objective is to deny that area as a sanctuary to those such as al Qaeda and their like who would attack us. Acts like this damn well don’t help. In fact, as others have noted they only make our job harder.
Just like My Lai did in Vietnam.
Adam_S, Nev is pretty much the opposite of the Orwell quote
Angry children in men’s bodies, like Nev, is how genocide happens. It’s how war crimes, REAL war crimes, happen. All of that inflated pretentious bullshit hinges on the false premise of an inescapable and existential clash of civilizations, or “barbarians” if you feel the need to further dehumanize 1.5 billion people. It’s a fevered and delusional construct designed to whip up panic and fury in a complete vacuum of historical fact.
Islam’s festooned with problems. Many parts of the world it inhabits are backward and, yes, barbaric. It exports violence and hate and bigotry in an orgy of militant evangelism. Worse yet the crimes of it’s most problematic members are facilitated by the self loathing, intellectually bankrupt and distinctly anti-Western ideology of Progressive multi-culturalism.
But you know what? There are no Muslim babies. Just babies with Muslim parents. There are hundreds of millions of self identified Muslims who don’t view themselves in any sort of existential struggle with the West. They are real innocents and real people with real hopes and real dreams of living in peace and making bequeathing better lives to their children.
If you find the premeditated murder of these people to be an acceptable, or even worse a desirable, byproduct of some genocidal culture war fantasy then you’re a sick piece of shit.
Jesus Christ have mercy! Nev, you sound like Hitler and his Nazis, the end justifying the means. That kind of thinking NEVER takes into account an individuals requirement to give an account of their life before the Judgement Seat of God. If as a nation, we ever get to that place where the random slaughtering of women and children asleep in their beds, is seen as acceptable, the America you seem so ardent to preserve will have already perished, and deservedly so.
Our young people are in for it now, so if you’re the praying kind, for heaven sakes, HIT THE KNEES!!
Pretty soon, the phrase “Welcome to the Suck!” will have a whole new meaning!
Nev sounds to me like the sort of trolls that DKOS and other leftist sites send over to places like TAH, the Blaze, Fox News, etc, to post extremist shit so that they can then use them as quotes of the sort of commenters that conservative and military/veteran sites attract.
There are enough lunatics in the real world without having to deal with leftist, faux-conservative trolls like nev.
Yeah I wasn’t trying to invoke Orwell, though the link does fit.
And I should clarify, I wasn’t trying to say all Muslims are barbarians, but there are a fair number of them.
Jonn makes a good point: 15 Paki Muslims were murdered by an Islamist suicide bomber that didn’t like the politics of an elected official in attendance.
3 Christians were killed on their way to Church in Nigeria, by Islamists.
These are regular occurences. How much press do they get? How much outrage?
These things do not justify what has reportedly occured in Khandahar, but why does the MSM insist on publicizing the uncharacteristic instead of the routine?
Why does one have to go in search of the common occurences? The schools and clinics OUR Troops build and the stonings, tortures, and destruction the enemy inflicts.
Why has the media not reported the condemnation by Karzai when the Taliban murdered kids just a few days ago?
Yes, I’ve reported what is known on this incident, but I will withhold condemnation until I have enough facts. On the surface, there appears to be no defense of the person that committed this act, but when Haditha was reported, the information was pretty damning to, and that turned out to be an Al-Qaeda operation.
Oh, yeah, Our Headline on this:
“US Troop Arrested on Allegations of Unlawful Deaths of Afghan Civilians”
Those were the facts, as known this morning.
Aside from the discourse that Nev and Nichevo are working on…the shooter was at a VSP, which is much different than a FOB or even a COP…more like a COP Lite. Usually it’s a compound in a village where we’ve been invited to stay and the tribal chief in the area has promised (and usually delivers) security. Ink blot concept.
Read “One Tribe At A Time” by MAJ Jim Gant to understand.
It rained heavily in Kandahar here last night, which may have calmed the situation last night but the weather is good here today which may lead to a larger response today.
Shooter has reportedly been moved out-of-country by military authorities.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/03/14/us-shooting-suspect-flown-out-afghanistan/
Have to admit I’m conflicted here. On the one hand, the guy will now get a fair trial; if he’s guilty, he’ll get justice.
On the other hand, I fear the shit may really hit the fan in-country now. I can think of a bunch of different ways this could be “spun” – and from our perspective, most of them aren’t good.
49 above was me. Damn it, I have got to fix things so that this machine automatically inserts my ID info while commenting here.