U.S. Soldiers Open Fire On Civilians In Afghanistan

[rjdaae]

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 11 (Reuters) - Western forces shot dead 16 civilians including nine children in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, Afghan officials said, in a rampage that witnesses said was carried out by American soldiers who were laughing and appeared drunk.

One Afghan father who said his children were killed in the shooting spree

Comments

[milleniumrex]

Goddamnit. Awful.

There really need to be better psych screenings for the military.

[theguindo]

"Better" implies they even have any.

At least, I don't recall a psych screening at MEPS. The most I got was security clearance interviews.

[hourglasscreate]

Exactly.

[rex_dart]

and what exactly are we supposed to be ~psych screening for?

[hourglasscreate]

Sociopathy? or psychopathy? Either one would be a start.

[rex_dart]

Assuming you could even reliably screen for those things, it wouldn't really help since even one sociopath is nowhere near necessary for something like this to happen, and you certainly don't have to be a sociopath to commit these acts. It's most likely that the people involved in this were completely ~sane and attempting to pathologize an unfortunately rather unsurprising human act enabled by military organization and mentality is just a way to stick your head in the sand and does not help.

[hinoema]

Exactly. It's not aberrant psychology when people to exactly what they are trained and tacitly encouraged to do.

[jugglingeggs]

Everything you've said x infinity!

[magus_69]

If I had that Applause gif, I'd put it right here.

[kira_snugz]

anger issues and alcohol issues.
any sort of outbursting emotional issues especially related to how they deal with stress.

people who are liekly to cry a little or withdraw due to stress tend to react better to being deployed and battle situations than people who want to smash things when they get upset. the people who want to smash things seem (in my experience anyways) to get from "i don't wanna hurt other people if i don't have to" to "fuck it lets kill them all" a lot faster.

and people who rely on alochol to deal with emotional issues will always always always have a much harder time with deployment. and once they do get alcohol they can fall apart pretty fast and loose control.

[mollywobbles867]

The problem is that they look for people who follow orders and are easy to manipulate. Being in the military develops this sense that the enemy, even civilians, are not real people. The problem isn't screening, but the military itself.

[ms_maree]

I agree with this so hard. And it's not hard for the American military (or any military) to have any more of a bad reputation than it does. Quite simply, nobody thinks they are awesome except redneck patriots.

[kitschaster]

Lots of able-bodied people go into the military perfectly fine, end up in places like this for years, and develop their own sense of what is right and wrong from their service...and then things like this happen. I'd actually say there needs to me more therapy available for those coming out than those going in.