The Pentagon announced Wednesday that it is investigating newly published photographs from 2010 that show U.S. soldiers posing with the dismembered body parts of Afghan insurgents.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ”œstrongly rejects the conduct depicted in these two-year-old photographs,” spokesman George Little said in a statement after the pictures and an accompanying article were published by the Los Angeles Times. ”œAnyone found responsible for this inhuman conduct will be held accountable in accordance with our military justice system.”
In Kabul, U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker called the soldiers’ actions ”œmorally repugnant.” Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, said the soldiers’ behavior was ”œentirely inconsistent with the values” of the U.S.-led international coalition in Afghanistan.
The photographs were allegedly taken on two different occasions, the Times reported: once when soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were sent to try to identify the remains of a suicide bomber, and a second time when soldiers from the same unit were dispatched to inspect the remains of three insurgents who accidentally blew themselves up.
The Times said it was given 18 extremely graphic photographs by a soldier from the 82nd Airborne who wanted to expose ”œa breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.”
U.S. troops posed with body parts of Afghan bombers
An American soldier says he released the photos to the Los Angeles Times to draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline. The Army has started a criminal investigation.
Los Angeles Times, By David Zucchino, April 18
The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification.
The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan’s Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held ”” and others squatted beside ”” the corpse’s severed legs.
A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.
We should not be surprised when troops act according to their training.
The mindset necessary to successfully survive/triumph in combat is most easily produced by reducing the enemy to the status of non-humans.
The kill them all & let God sort them out philosophy is deliberately inculcated by some ‘leaders’.
It takes a good deal of personal discipline and integrity to resist or overcome this deliberate training.
Leaders are presumed to have such discipline and integrity.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t and sometimes they aren’t as involved and in-command as they should be.
As the informant noted, this is breakdown of leadership – and it starts at the top. We all take our cue from upstairs.
It is worth remembering that the Founding Fathers were all traitors.
Modern military small arms training conditions soldiers to react to particular visual and auditory stimuli without being over-concious of the fact that they are shooting at a person, but that’s a long way from reducing the enemy to non-humans. I rather suspect that were one to poke at these guys in an intelligent, organized way one would find not that they thought their enemy wasn’t human, but rather that they thought their enemy was a group of assholes (rather too human).
One of the conclusions that I have drawn over the years is that this sort of thing is usually a lot less “look what they’ve sunk to or been induced to do” than it is a reflection of what pretty much anyone would do in that circumstance unless well led. No need at all to specifically train them to do it – rather it’s something that one has to be conscientiously and consistently led to avoid.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs