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The only way to prevent the revenge and more KIA ISAF soldiers is to bring this dude to Afghan court. Not American.
He should be tried by Afghan courts according to Afghan law... This will show that he is judged for his personal crimes that have nothing to do with ISAF.
That would be wise move on coalition part, and it will let ISAF to save at least some local support for their mission...
I'm sure revenge is already being planned, and I don't think Taliban would care if he ended up in Afghan court. They'd still carry out revenge.Originally Posted by [64]Lynx
What kind of message would they send if they abandoned one of their own to the Afghans?
He is a murderer that you give to a court in allied country for crimes that he commited there...
Other nations abandon suspected criminals to America, why shouldn't this person be tried in the host nations legal system. I understand that it would be an abhorrent act, but as stated above, this was murder, not collateral damage, or a mistaken identity during a contact. This was the murder of civillians and children. If it was on the other foot, and an Afghani did this in America, you would be baying for blood and vengence. I do understand that alot of people will think that he should be tried in military court, but for this, i dont think that the Afghani people will be stayed by the cry of "We'll try him, and if guilty we will deal with him". Trust in America at this stage is nigh non existant.
Exactly ...
If the soldier(s) involved in these killings had just spent the evening having supper and reading a good book, that would have been deemed outrageous enough for the Talibans to justify horrible reprisals against whatever targets they could find. Who cares what the Talibans think? To them any foreign soldier in Afghanistan is an enemy, as is any Afghan who doesn't kiss their feet.
Here the problem is the Afghan population. It doesn't take a Taliban to feel there's something wrong if living next to a ISAF/US base is dangerous, because the soldiers over there could get drunk and decide to do a little shooting in your village. And it doesn't take a rabid religious extremist to want to kill people who sneak into villages to kill children for fun.
As for the court-martials which will take place, of course they're the only viable option. But I'm not sure it will impress the Afghans much. Due process wouldn't impress me much if some soldiers decided to chop some branches of my family tree for fun, or to turn my neighborhood into a shooting range to vent their frustration.
That he's not of their own. Which may be the right message to send, if the shootings happened as reported.What kind of message would they send if they abandoned one of their own to the Afghans?
Im thinking perhaps both - it was his rage with them that he couldn't keep bottled up anymore
The hooplah over the Koran burnings confirmed to him that these were people worse than savages.
But Im just speculating.
@Lynx, so Soviet soliders were sent to Afghan courts when they committed their purposeful henious atrocities (emphasis on the plural), were they? Then again, Afghanistan was a real deal puppet government, so the verdict would have been the same regardless. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
SOFA's exist to prevent exactly this "THROW HIM TO THE DOGS" demand
If the radical Muslims from my country are any indication, the only thing ISAF could just about do right now is harden up those bunkers and stock up on a lot of ammo. This will die down as soon as enough of those "who will seek revenge" gets put in the dirt. Giving that guy to the Afghans will do nothing. And what's wrong with some of you guys? Why would you give one of your own to the enemy? He killed civilians? Do we know the reason? if its psychological, then treat him.
"I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified as the same, and that's the classification that we dealt with over there, just as the enemy. I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and I carried out the order that I was given and I do not feel wrong in doing so."Calley was tried by the US. And even when these crimes became public knowledge, South Vietnam had a much better functioning government that Afghanistan currently has.South Korean Vietnam Expeditionary Forces Commanding Officer Chae Myung Shin remarks "Calley tried to get revenge for the deaths of his troops. In a war, this is natural."
From Michael Yon's Facebook page:
Very Dangerous Waters for US Military
Now more than ever the US military needs voices balancing out that the great majority of our forces are not murderers or unhinged. A shift is occurring in how significant numbers of people view our military. The currents are growing; the massive goodwill has drifted to net-neutral and toward net-negative. At this rate, we are going towards Vietnam-esque negativity. We are heading there quickly.
Need to get our main battle force home equally quickly. I've written on occasions that I expected these murders to happen. I also expected murders by US troops to be far bigger than those by Afghans (because our guys are better killers). I also believe that the probability of more events is increasing.
Get our main battle force home.
ISAF soldiers who will get some more IEDs and attacks than usually. And their relatives.
Well, do you know the same cases when some soviet guy went to the nearest village and killed 16 unarmed civilians just because he was tired of being at the war?
I suggest you read into the treatment of contractors and other non-Afghans in the legal system. Justice as you know it does not exist. Everyone is guilty, or why would they have been arrested? and the judges often make decisions based on things like, in the case of Robert Langdon, the crucial evidence was a note from a Gurkha working for the company who said he saw Langdon shoot a LN Contractor. The author was not present at the trial - which Langdon though was a pre-trial, as they didnt get to counter any of the evidence before he was sentenced to death.
You lot might be on your high horse about justice and the right thing to do, but it will never happen. The US at least takes care of its citizens here, criminal or not, other countries do a reasonable to pathetic job. I highly doubt a service member will be turned over. That would undermine the faith of the rest of the military.
http://securitycontractorsrecovery.w...-legal-system/
http://www.usp.com.au/fpss/news-midd...nistan104.html
Heres a bit of light reading for those that actually are interested and not part of the "outrage" crowd.
And if he was an Afghan who did this in the US I would do two things - one is wait to know the full story (as with this) before calling for the rope, isnt that part and parcel with the way we want to live? Innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt? The circumstances of the crime are important and hardly anyone knows them but yet we jump to condemn him. The second thing I would do is figure out if the US has juristiction over the Afghan, which in the current situation, the military member is immune from prosecution in the area he is deployed. He will be trialed by a military court and punished accordingly. If you start turning military members to civilian courts for offences while deployed, you will lose the faith of the soldiers. At least in the current legal system of the military they will be held to account by the people who put them in that situation, if you were sent by the military to do things that werent natural to a human (aggressively seek out and close with the enemy and kill the ****er) and were then held to account on the local justice system, which is corrupt and backwards, you would go spare.
Thank you Blue Thor for writing something sensible.
Always welcome mate. For all the hot air on this thread, the bloke will go home and be tried in a military courts martial. He is US Government property and will not be handed over to a bloodthirsty mob. That is fairness, He was sent there by the military, something occurred and he snapped and did something horrible for a yet to be determined reason, If he wasnt sent there by the military I doubt he would have walked down the road in the US and slotted some families. He is in a combat zone under intense pressure. Sometimes people break. Not that the majority of you desk jockey SF know **** all about that. Obviously there are some of you I know are in the same place and know what you are talking about. I understand your anger as I am angry about this too, but you hand him over you lose the trust from the Military, no government with sensible leadership will do that to appease a country run by a bloke who makes bold statements against you and your men but never once says sorry for the ANP/ANA and their turncoat killings of ISAF soldiers.
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