Spiegel's must-read on U.S. military's Afghan kill teams

I hadn't gotten myself fully up to speed on the issue, but, Der Spiegel is all over the issue that American media are still (with the exception, overall, of McClatchy) slow to address. That issue is the "kill teams" ... the issue that at least in some military units, soldiers are not just heartless toward but ready to brutally kill Afghan civilians.

First, per one soldier, Adam Wingfield, who was concerned about it, the "kill, kill, kill" attitude sounds kind of common:

There are people in my platoon that can get away with 'murder.' They planned and went through with it. ... Pretty much the whole platoon knows about it. It's OK with all of them pretty much, except me. I want to do something about it, the only problem is I don't feel safe here telling anyone.

Meanwhile, despite Gen. Petraeus' allegedly having concern for Afghan civilians as part of his counterinsurgency, how well is he working to INSIST that message percolates down? Maybe not totally?

Winfield again:

I have to make up my mind. Should I do the right thing and put myself in danger, or should I just shut up and deal with it? The army really let me down out here. When I thought I would come here to do any good, maybe make some change in this country, I find out it is all a lie. There are no good men left here.

What brought this attitude on?

Can we, like FiredogLake, say it's all a "hate industry" at home?

No. To the degree this is hate-based, racial and ethnic hatred have never needed an "industry" to fuel them. If anything, any causal correlation is the other way.

Second, the military trains people to kill. After actual stories (whether close to true or not) that in World War I, very few riflemen actually fired to kill, armies around the world ever since have worked on molding soldiers into psychologically "better" killers. There's not necessarily any ethnic hatred involved. That said, it makes it harder to have uniformed soldiers be the lead on counterinsurgency, especially when their mission is hugely undermanned, putting them on edge in an uncertain countryside all the time.

Adam's mom, Emma, and another military mom talks about that:

For the soldiers of the 5th Stryker Brigade, the new COIN strategy was a non-starter, says Audrey Morlock, Jeremy's mother. The Army didn't provide her son with training for this strategy, she says. "For three years, my boy was only trained (to do) one thing -- kill, kill, kill." The Winfields also have the impression that the requirements for the soldiers which came with the new COIN strategy overburdened them. "How were they supposed to protect the population?" asks his mother Emma.

Bingo. Oh, this is yet another reason to note that the British counterinsurgency in Malaysia was far different than what Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal proposed.

So, instead of blaming a "hate machine," let's blame politicians from President Obama on down who still want to believe, and want to have the American public believe, a ground war can be fought on the cheap. Let's blame generals like Petraeus who refuse to counteract many Americans' video game version of war and won't tell the politicians the truth, as Spiegel notes in discussing the Pentagon's fear of war atrocities photos coming to light. And, let's blame Americans who want to believe all this and who, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, aren't being asked to "feel" the cost of war.

Here's the reality, as Spiegel describes it:

Adam Winfield rarely saw the enemy. He and his comrades only saw the Talibans' helpers through their night-vision devices when the enemy was burying landmines -- they hid during the day. For days, the Americans did nothing but carry out senseless patrols. The soldiers became frustrated and bored.

The enemy, says Adam's father, is invisible until somebody gets blown up. "They are fighting against ghosts."

Of course they're going to be skittish, and not do well on counterinsurgency work.

That said, again, let's remember these facts:
1. Americans want to hear lies about the painless, techie nature of modern war.
2. Politicians don't want to upset citizens, nor appear "weak on war"; in Bush's case, it includes continuing to tell lies about what his administration achieved in Afghanistan.
3. The military brass will "sell" whatever it can, while doing another thing in reality, for a number of reasons.

So, you're going to get a clusterfuck.

That's why good liberals who write blank checks of support for the Army aren't such good liberals. That's especially true when a "professional" army, versus draftees, is more likely to produce incidents such as these, in my opinion.

As for Adam Winfield? Does his finally giving into pressure to join the kill team make him murderer or victim of psychological bullying? Or a bit of both?

While glad I've never been in a situation such as his and presuming I never will be, we can't consider him 100 percent innocent. I'm not going to lay down exact percentages, but, we can't totally excuse him.