Kandahar

There is nothing grand or significant in this crime, just the usual mixture of human frailty, poor leadership, and combat fatigue.  Oh, yes, let us not forget COIN, one of the dumbest ideas ever to infest the Washington think tankery.  Run the COINISTAS out of town.  First, take their money away from them.

BHO should "read the tea leaves' and dump the Afghanistan war and the Afghans before it destroys him. When we are gone the Afghans, if there is such a people, will be exactly the same as when we arrived. Ask the ghosts of Major Cavagnari and Lord Roberts.  pl 

Comments

[walrus]

With respect Col. Lang, I'm not too concerned with the Ghosts of Cavagnari and Roberts.

It's the Ghost of William Brydon that worries me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Remnants_of_an_army2.jpg

[CTuttle]

*sigh* "When you're wounded out on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Then just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And die like a good British soldier!" -Rudyard Kipling

[Paul Escobar]

The significance is in "our" reactions.

In the previous article you linked to (on Fox News), the first quote was by a self-declared opponent of the war. Couple of years ago, I doubt this would have been tolerated.

I suspect powerful people are giving up on this war. Their attitudes are dripping down to newsrooms. Incidents like these are being seized & magnified to send signals to the public.

[georgeg]

While experiencing a five hour delay at Norfolk International,
began reading Michael Hastings "The Operators" the wild and terrifying inside story of America's war in Afghanistan.
Explains a lot about failed leadership......

[William R. Cumming]

Agree completely with PL!

[turcopolier]

walrus

I would have brought up Brydon, but thought that would be taken as alarm ism. I see your point.

I have been reading the book you sent me. I think this must be scanned into a digital file and posted on the internet. We would be happy to do it here, but I have not the time to do the scan. pl

[Gravel]

Spinmeisters in Washington have gone to work again.Like the "mistake" in burning a pile of Holy Quran, this one is the handiowrk of a "mentally-unstable" soldier under stress. However, neighbors and relatives of the dead said they saw a group of US soldiers arrive at their village in Panjwayi district, about 35km from the provincial capital Kandahar City, about 2am. They said the soldiers entered homes and opened fire. Villager Haji Samad told the media that his children and grandchildren were among 11 relatives killed. “They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them,” a weeping Samad told Reuters at the scene, with blood splattered on the walls of his home.
Attempt to burn the bodies were ignored. Islam calls for burying of the dead. So, pouring chemicals to burn was yet another "mistake", or something else.

[stanleyhenning]

C Tuttle's quote from Rudyard Kipling describes the Afghan situation in a nutshell. As I remember I also used this quote quite a while back. We really have a hard time facing reality - and official apologies are sadly meaningless. This all started out as a response to 9/11, but then we got off track and went into Iraq based on dubious "intelligence". We then returned under the meaningless COIN concept, and here we are, no better off than that poor British soldier lying on the plains in Afghanistan in the 19th century. In the meantime our Democracy and Economy have been polluted by Crony Capitalism (witness the bail outs for the monied elites). Thank goodness Obama appears to be steering us away from a further debacle involving Iran but, as just described, we likely have quite a way to go before we get back on even keel as the "America" we once knew.

[samuelburke]

Justin Raimondo over at antiwar dot com writes this.

"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.”

And Rachel Maddow wants to give these guys a “welcome home” “victory” parade?

Of course she does: even the “liberals” in our country are corrupted by the ugliness that pervades the national consciousness and poisons everything we do. “Honor the troops” is a given on the left as well as the right, because the above-mentioned atrocities are just “isolated incidents,” examples of soldiers who had “breakdowns” and went “rogue.” Their actions have nothing to do with our mission [.pdf], our mentality, or our decadent culture, which glorifies violence and disdains foreigners – especially if they’re Muslims. Oh no: these are all anomalies, there’s nothing to see here so please move along …

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/03/11/who-are-the-terrorists/

[DCA]

Another reference to the British experience on both side of the Durand line, and a good read (book from 1977):

Khyber, British India's North West Frontier: The Story Of An Imperial Migraine
by Charles Miller

[Bill H.]

"BHO should 'read the tea leaves' and dump the Afghanistan war and the Afghans before it destroys him."

And yet he is still bleating about how we should leave in a manner "so that we don’t have to go back in and take down a resurgent Al Queda should they return and resume making attacks on us." He still has this fantasy that Al Queda is breathlessly awaiting an opportunity to return to Afghanistan because they can plan attacks there that they cannot plan anywhere else. That, notwithstanding the fact that 9/11 was actually planned in Hamburg, Germany.

[Bill H.]

Interestingly, CBS News changed that quote in its online version of their news for yesterday. That was the clip they showed on their news last night. What they now show him saying is "It's time, it's been a decade." and something to the effect that "now that we have gotten Bin Laden and weakened Al Queda we can transition effectively."