Now you are going too far and exaggerating.

The US arms and trains millions of soldiers, not millions of soldiers who chop off ears of corpses they just murdered under false pretenses. These idiot war-criminals are being tried, are they not? What more do you want?

That's the problem with debating how great a "force for good America is" is.

It's like the multi-millionaire rich father who gave his kid everything he's ever needed in life, and is now set for life, but daddy never hugged him, said he loved him, or took time out of his own life to be a father to him. It is what it is.

Of course the government has no responsibility. It is ridiculous to suggest it does.

Soldiers from all armies commit war crimes, just as civilians from all countries commit murders. It's not news in and of itself that this happens. The only interesting policy question is how the government reacts to its soldiers committing war crimes. If the government fails to prosecute credible allegations of a war crime, then it can appear to have a policy of condoning war crimes. The **** balls who often run countries in the suburbs of civilization (say, Chile, for example, not too long ago), very often DO have official policies of encouraging their soldiers to murder people.

Here, these Americans were caught and tried and one has already been convicted by the U.S. government. Government policy, therefore, is obviously to respect the rules of warfare, and to punish its soldiers who do not.

This is moral and correct policy. It is insane to suggest the government bears responsibility for the actions of the murders it prosecutes.

I think this is a little simplistic, and I'm not going to have an easy time articulating why.

imo the government has to bear some responsibility for this kind of stuff. Anytime you subject people to extremely stressful circumstances (wars), you have to expect some of them to crack under the pressure. If you ask young men and women to kill people then there are going to be severe consequences for that. Many will suffer from PTSD/depression, but a few will end up reveling in the carnage of warfare.

^ this

^ and an extra helping of this.

Then you're doing the whole dating thing wrong.

Considering the first premise which you (and for the most part I) consider a ubiquitous feature of war, I'm really struggling to see how you can remove government responsibility from such crimes - even in the case of retrospective punishment.

War in general is akin to releasing a prison full of armed nutcases on a civilian population, and regardless of how they treat the individuals before, during or after war, the ultimate responsibility always lies on the government releasing them than the individual soldiers - just as we hung the Nazi government and not simply every german soldier in WW2.

in before "we keep you safe at night, so STFU" and "we're why you don't speak Russian/Chinese, so STFU" sentiment...

Yes you are.

Please stop talking about things you have no clue about. Armed nutcases? Seriously this is your explanation of what war is like? Do you have any idea how much restraint is used in Afghanistan?

Not enough.

I forgot that soldiers are generally very stable young men drawn from the finest areas of society with very high rates of education with extensive murderous and violent moral behaviour drilled into them all day who usually handle foreign races and civilians well when unleashed upon them. I stand corrected.

Also, go find an Afghan citizen praising the 'restraint' of the US/British army. Even the corrupt puppet president cannot bring himself to actually say that.

Dude, we could have obliterated twice as many wedding parties as we have. Appreciate the restraint.

Most popular gang of armed ex-convict nutcases loosed on a civilian population in the history of the world?

6 in 10 Afghans have a favourable opinion of the US military presence in their country overall.

I wonder what the poll results look like for the other gangs of criminals and rapists which controlled the country before 2001 and would like to conquer it again (and quite possibly could and would without western troops being there). Thankfully, I don't have to wonder, it's almost always in the single digits.

But of course, people here know better than the majority of Afghans about what is good for their country.

(all which isn't to say Borodog isn't right. I agree, we should do more to safeguard innocent Afghan civilians. The Afghans themselves agree, consistently wanting to see less reliance on airstrikes, less civilian casualties and so on, even while still supporting by a big majority the presence of foreign troops.)

lol in a country of nearly 30 million, where over 60 per cent support the international forces, you really think you can't find anyone saying that?

You'll probably find quite a large number (though obviously I'm not saying a majority or whatever), especially outside of the Pashtun areas, and in the cities to an extent, who think the international forces are too restrained, and should take the gloves off in order to absolutely crush the Taliban (living under Taliban rule tends to make a lot of people pretty virulently anti-Taliban I imagine).

International forces should definitely be taking as much care as is humanly possible to protect civilian lives, but acting like this is wanton slaughter of a population is not grounded in reality.

Errr I can't seem to find the methodology or sampling method behind this (nor can I think of an accurate way to do such a survey), so it might as well be a fictional number as far as I can see, and I would trust statistics taken from Afghanistan and published in Time about as much as I would trust their elections.

Even if it was the case that a majority supported the US presence, it still does not make the style and system of occupation implemented by the US/UK even close to morally right or successful, for relatively obvious reasons.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...er_of_peop.php

Quote General Stanley McChrystal on our restraint:

There's probably some middle ground somewhere between complete, total war slaughter of civilians (which I agree isn't happening) and "amazing restraint" when the Generals on the ground are admitting we're batting ~0.000 on the escalation of force:genuine threat ratio at checkpoints over 9 months.

I admitted that no one is defending these actions, so they've moved into more creative apologetics like "we fought Nazis" and "that's war, move along." That was the point of my post. And by creative, I mean 'mostly complete red herrings and non-sequiturs.'

The civilians McChrystal is talking about in this quote are idiots who don't stop at checkpoints or bus drivers who are high on drugs and come speeding up behind a convoy and get themselves shot. If you act like a suicide bomber you get treated like a threat.

McChrystal: "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."

2/325Falcon: "They had it coming anyway!"

Must be cool to be an occupying force and just shrug that kind of stuff off I guess, though. #theyhateusforourfreedoms

Way to miss the point Dvaut. Try this on New Year's Eve: Stay completely sober but get in your car and blow through a DUI checkpoint in your town. Surprisingly, not being drunk won't get you off the hook.

Will I get gunned down?

Also: must be cool to drive around Afghanistan like every moment is New Year's Eve, the cops are heavily armed, you're presumed to be drunk, and the cops shoot first and ask questions later if they think you look drunk. #theyhateusforourfreedoms

Can't wait for you to produce the methodology or sampling method behind this little gem.

Pretty likely a yes. "But I'm not drunk" doesn't make it OK for you to blow through a dui checkpoint.

Look, son, if you're going to go full Nielsio and call us all murderers I would appreciate it if you'd just come out and say it instead of dicking around like this.