American Goes on Afghan Killing Spree and it Actually Makes the News!

Last Sunday before dawn, and American sergeant deployed in Kandahar province officially lost it and went on a massive killing spree. When he was done, 16 innocent civilians were left dead (including several women and young children) and their surviving family and friends are now utterly traumatized. According to The Telegraph, the killer could face the death penalty under military law.

To many of us this news is hardly surprising. Although there are certainly many caring, hardworking soldiers serving overseas, the military seems like the ideal job for a sadistic sociopath. Why are people so surprised when professional killers suddenly go off the beaten path and start murdering people without consent from above? Take Russel Williams for example: Everyone thought he was "so normal" and a "great soldier" until we all found out that he was running around Orleans in little girls underwear, raping and murdering colleagues and stalking and killing young women near his cottage.

 In this weeks case of the killing spree in Afghanistan, this soldier had already completed three tours of duty in Iraq and was in his first tour of Afghanistan. The latest estimates from Human Rights Watch, The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) indicate that upwards of 17,000-37,000 civilians have been killed directly or indirectly by the war in Afghanistan. In Iraq, civilian deaths from violence in the US war reached a staggering 114,725 according to IraqBodyCount.org. Unfortunately, most of those deaths did not become national news. So my question is: why is this new case of civilian deaths in Kandahar province so different? Could it be that soldiers who are trained (ahem... brainwashed) into a hyper-testosterone driven detachment of the value of human life might get hooked on "taking out terrorists" and truly go off the deep end? I sense there might be some correlation here.

And people wonder what motivates suicide bombers to hate the United States and its allies.