I didn’t comment on these instances individually, but based on the latest one, I feel compelled to. Marines pissing on their kills, burning Korans out of negligence, and now a killing spree by a US Army sergeant all serve to reinforce a point I have made verbally over a number of years, but now will put into writing: It is a large mistake to use a military force to serve as “peacekeepers” or policemen in the role they have been forced into by NATO and other Commonwealth forces in the past 20 years.

Whether or not we have a role in the next 2 years (or 20) in Afganistan is a separate issue, but there is no legitimate role for the military there, even the military police with some training in the area of how a civilian police force is meant to work. Having spent time in the US Army myself (also as a military policeman), I have great respect for what the troops can do, and I am proud of their work as a military force, despite the occasional situations which are appalling, or even those that seem appalling if you are not in the field with them.

See, most of the people doing the work in the military are pretty young, typically in their early 20s. They are very highly trained in their roles (all of which are related to warfare) and each and every one of them is trained in basic combat arms, and (hopefully) conditioned well to do their job in a time of warfare. But primarily, they are young, trained to kill efficiently and controlled more by their hormones than their wisdom. And while we may want to have “surgical” airstrikes, precision special ops and excellent intelligence that allows us to avoid all civilian deaths, the truth is, that isn’t what is going to happen in practice, nor is it really planned for by the bulk of the forces. War is still primarily about killing your enemies and taking and occupying their land until the shooting stops from their side, and when the shooting starts, every battle is about yourself and your comrades closest to you. Based on this, the circumstances are so absurd and out of the ordinary from normal experience that we honestly should expect situations to match.

That doesn’t mean that we should not attempt to avoid war crimes, or that we should cover them up when they occur. I would council in every way I thought effective all troops that reported to me to follow the rules of war and would support full prosecution and punishment of those guilty of crimes during wartime. But I would not to expect them to not occur, especially when the troops are exposed to years of stressful situations, in an environment where they seemingly have no friends, and atrocities (from their perspective) are committed upon them. Honestly, try to put yourself in the situation of the troops in Afganistan, or even Iraq. The use of roadside bombs (IEDs) and suicide bombers on what are essentially sitting targets is a significant part of the modus operandi of the opposition in these wars. I don’t condone it, but I certainly understand how these situations happen.

Every situation is different, and there isn’t enough information available to fully judge this latest occurrence, but each time a new atrocity occurs, I find myself first thinking these days that we have to get our boys the fuck out of there. They cannot do enough man-days of good to overcome the bad (and the bad that will be done in a PR and political sense) that can be done by one guy with a gun, regardless of how he got there.