The Plan: To Kill People
Give military training and lethal weapons to individuals who love the idea of violence and the taking of lives and you prepare the world for the entrance of murder on the scene of orderly and compelling discipline. Since any society is comprised of a majority of normal people for whom doing harm to others is completely out of their sphere of thought and belief, we seldom think of those others who subliminally celebrate the idea of violence and bloodshed.These are society's psychopaths, and although it makes sense to vet the personalities of those who apply for military duty, in a world that is hungry for recruits perhaps less time and due attention is given to ensure that the mentally unstable and the societal cast-offs and the borderline psychopaths do not apply. Or, if they do, their eagerness to go into active combat and prove to themselves that they have the fortitude to kill and enjoy it, is refused out of hand.
This is the kind of due diligence we would like to believe occurs, but obviously does not. As too many instances of battlefield dissonance coming to the light of revelation through one scandal after another is revealed. And so, yet again, there are soldiers, this time American personnel, who have been taken into custody when one of their own, witnessing or hearing about their 'rogue' pact to murder civilians, revealed their murderous assaults.
A self-appointed kill-squad, these men were deployed to fight with the NATO alliance in Afghanistan. Members of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st division's Stryker Brigade. To make things far more interesting for themselves, and to enable themselves to acquire fond memories and mementos of their time in a war-torn and socially primitive society which they must obviously have scorned, they hatched a plot to kill civilians.
This, in the process of winning the 'hearts and minds' of the people whom they were dispatched to protect from the viciously murderous predations of the Taliban. An innocent Afghan civilian would never anticipate that the two foreign soldiers that faced him, for example, had every intention of murdering him, and leaving him with a purloined Afghan firearm to 'prove' that he had instigated the attack.
The ring-leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, was identified and his and the group's exploits described by Corporal Jeremy Morlock, who himself took part in the execution-style murders of Afghan civilians. Corporal Morlock has chosen to testify against his four co-accused, presumably for a lighter sentence. Perhaps, for all we know, to relieve his conscience.
"The plan was to kill people", Corporal Morlock stated baldly. And they did.
Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Corruption, United States
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 24, 2011
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