Posted on 04/19/2012 12:36:26 AM PDT by lbryce
A new revelation of young American soldiers caught on camera while defiling insurgents’ remains in Afghanistan has intensified questions within the military community about whether fundamental discipline is breaking down given the nature and length of the war.
The photographs, published by The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, show more than a dozen soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team, along with some Afghan security forces, posing with the severed hands and legs of Taliban attackers in Zabul Province in 2010. They seemed likely to further bruise an American-Afghan relationship that has been battered by crisis after crisis over the past year, even as the two governments are in the midst of negotiations over a long-term strategic agreement.
The images also add to a troubling list of cases — including Marines videotaped urinating on Taliban bodies, the burning of Korans, and the massacre of villagers attributed to a lone Army sergeant — that have cast American soldiers in the harshest possible light before the Afghan public. Accordingly, combat veterans and military analysts are beginning to look inside the catchall phrase “stress on the force” to identify factors that could be contributing to the breaches.
One potential explanation put forth by these analysts is the exhaustion felt by the class of non-commissioned officers that forms the backbone of the all-volunteer force: the sergeants responsible for training, mentoring and disciplining small groups of 18- and 19-year-old soldiers at the small-unit level, hour by hour, patrol by patrol.
Another factor, they say, may be the demands of a counterinsurgency strategy that has distributed small units across vast distances to serve at primitive combat outposts. Self-reliance required in isolation may promote heroic camaraderie.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“defiling insurgent remains”, “Taliban attackers”. Why not “freedom fighters”? IT’S THE HANDS AND LEGS OF A COWARDLY SUICIDE BOMBER. WTFC! If you haven’t been in their shoes, STFU.
These pictures are two years old; they are coming out now because it’s an election year. Time to degrade and divert attention. There should be more of this. P*$$ on the bodies and bury them in pig manure.
They will tell it the way they want it and MORE AMERICAN soldiers will die. That is this admin’s goal and has been from the jump.
How many individuals in the New York Time’s employ do you suppose have ever served in the military? I expect you could count them on two hands and have fingers left over.
Isn't that your goal NYT? I detect a marketing program.
Jan Urinating
Feb Koran Burning
Mar Massacre
Apr Dead Bodies
May Prostitutes (was supposed to be May)
Jun ?
Jul ?
Aug ?
One critical question about this: Those pictures of books being burned, enemy bodies getting pissed on, and etc. - do they come in poster size?
The Left Wing press in an effort prove they are still relevant (and can change the world by weakening America) ripped a page out of the ole 1970’s Vietnam Playbook. The thought being, by publishing grotesque images of the war dead or “American atrocities” they will rally the liberal left and quickly end this “unjust war” just like they turned the tide so many years ago.
Old Hippies never die. They just occupy a corner and stink the whole place up. The same generation that burned their bras, fried their brains on acid, brought you STD’s have found a new cause to sink their false teeth and triple chins into.
Four incidents in eleven years of war?
Here is something the the NYT will not report.
“Pentagon Social Policies Increase Military Sexual Assaults
Army, Defense Department and Navy Reports Downplay Record of Failure
The Center for Military Readiness has released a new CMR Policy Analysis that shines a bright light on disturbing findings about persistent and accelerating sexual assaults in the military.
The analysis cites data buried in a recent Army “Gold Book” report on wartime personnel stress, the most recent annual report of the Defense Department Sexual Assault Prevention & Response Office (SAPRO), and a 2010 report on ship captain firings that the Navy tried to suppress.”
“A ‘chilling trend’ of violent sex crime is growing at an average rate of 14.6 percent per year, and the rate is accelerating. (Army Gold Book, p. 122)”
Quoted from CMR report.
They want to go back to the old school type of discipline but it may be too late for that.
They want to go back to the old school type of discipline but it may be too late for that. ............................................. Nope, not yet, just re-call us brown boot, steel pot guys, we’ll fix things. I’m ready, lets see now, where did I put my walker?
That’s the truth in a nut shell. The press could publish the story on page 23 or not publish it like they do the stories that hurt their agenda, but instead they choose to put out the pictures and the story (no matter the age) on page 1.
Regardless, I couldn’t care less if the soldiers had a good time posing dead suicide bombers. It seems insane to those of us not in a war zone, but then we don’t realize that war is essentially insanity in action.
One other thing that leads to this stuff is that bad ROE sometimes get a wink and a nod from the command and that in turn creates an atmosphere of “don’t worry about the official rules, you know what is right.” That atmosphere is always going to be misinterpreted by a certain % of people.
I have heard of some ways that soldiers are prepared to defend their unROE actions should a JAG person ask. The fact is, if the ROE is counter to protecting yourself or your brothers, then soldiers will violate the ROE but do or say otherwise. One one hand, I say great, but on the other, it is creating a slipperly slope that isn’t defined and will lead to discipline problems.
Ultimately, it’s up to the upper brass and the President to establish workable realistic ROEs or they set the table for this stuff to go on.
This is from the poem “Tommy” written by Rudyard Kipling. One hundred years ago. Times don’t change. I pray for our military. All of them. Imperfections and all, they are much better people than any military in the world.
We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.
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