The nighttime killing of 16 civilians including a majority of children by the U.S. soldier has changed the political situation to such an extent that Hamid Karzai, long accused of being placed in chair by Western interests, has officially asked NATO to leave Afghan villages and the Afghan Taliban has also come out suspending the ongoing peace talks that were aimed to end the war.
The suspension of talks with the Taliban comes as a serious blow to international peace efforts and the chances to create negotiated settlement to a war that has so far cost the United States more than $510 billion and the lives of over 1,900 soldiers.
Only in 2011, more than 3000 civilians have been killed in the Afghan war following the increasing trends of civilian deaths over the last five years in a war where both objectives and solutions have lost definition.
However, with the entry of a meticulous defense attorney on behalf of the U.S. soldier who committed the killings, certain other things have become known, which though insufficient in any manner to justify the actions of the accused, do bring to light what might be considered as inconsiderate actions of the army or partially mitigating circumstances.
The veteran defense lawyer claims that the soldier ostensibly ‘snapped’ under circumstances not wholly attributable to him. According to the information tabled by him:
Let’s have a picture of the personal situation of the soldier before he snapped:
The soldier was on his fourth tour of a war zone; he had already been wounded twice in Iraq; he had a head injury and had lost part of one foot in Iraq; he had been told by the authorities that he wouldn’t be sent back to a war zone; despite a head injury and maimed foot he was redeployed to Afghanistan against commitments made to him and his family by the authorities; other people deployed in the same base in Afghanistan as the soldier had been seriously injured and/or killed shortly before the incident.
Let’s now have a picture of the soldier as a person:
Highly emotional and patriotic; enlisted within a week of 9/11 feeling it was his duty to stand up for the United States; met his wife online and had a healthy marriage with two children aged 3 and 4; separated from his little children and young wife in service of the nation, wounded twice, served three tours and sent back again, but he did not desert the army or his duty until he ‘snapped.’
The defense lawyer, Browne, said death penalty for the accused was being discussed between Army lawyers and is being considered as a possible sentence.