This latest atrocity committed by a single American soldier against a village of innocent civilians is but another step in a long path of endless errors. It is time for us to leave Afghanistan.
We remember our own war dead with respect and honor here at DailyKos but we rarely honor those civilians that die in the name of our war. We don't have the connections to publish biographies, pictures, or stories of these people. I can't even list their names because the media often doesn't even tell us who they are. But I know that they have names; I know that they have stories, funny ones, happy ones, and sad as well. They had hopes and dreams and know all is lost. Had, not have. How hard that is to write.
The best I can do is apologize and share my tears with them.
To the families of those civilians who have died at the hands of American soldiers,
I am so very sorry for what my country has done to yours.
In the beginning, as with most beginnings, we thought we were doing what was best for both countries. We thought that by ridding you of the influence of Osama Bin Ladin and his Al Queda brethren, we were making a world safer for your children and for ours. But somewhere along the way, we lost our path. Maybe we never knew our true path in the first place. We trusted our leaders to know it instead and our trust was greatly misplaced.
Our nation is still learning and we had the hubris to believe that we knew how you could best conduct your affairs. We believed that our system of government, that honors freedom of religion, would send military personnel who could see past their own culture and find ways to honor yours. We hoped to share our love of democracy with you and, with it, our own long struggle for civil rights for all our citizens.
It is a battle we are still fighting ourselves in these United States. We are an imperfect country, by far. And we sent imperfect men and women to do an impossible job.
I know many military officers and NCO's and their families and they are good and honorable people. Unfortunately, not all of them are. Whether it is their upbringing or their repeated deployments or something else that has caused them to close off the part of their mind that allows them to accept difference, doesn't really matter. We can find excuses but it won't bring back your family or your friends.
Our inability to train our military service members to wage diplomacy is a battle that our own government needs to face, head on. We have placed an occupying force in a country that was not sure about wanting us in the first place and, after time, regrets the decision more and more. You have learned that enough of our military is at the very least, callous towards your culture, and, at the very worst, hateful. It only takes a little bit of hate to make huge ripples in the pond and a great deal of love to calm things once again. We don't train our military to love and it makes the task of repairing your country impossible. Only those who love your country can make a true difference at the end of the day.
We have attacked from the air, with faceless drones and we have attacked head on. No, that soldier did not act under orders but he was in your country as a delegate of our own. We will place him on trial for his actions but I am not sure that will be enough. I imagine the situation in reverse, your army in our country and one of your soldiers killing unarmed civilians. We would be in revolt. I hope that your people are stronger than our own and will find a path to peace from this horrific action. I am not sure we could do the same in your stead.
I want peace for your country and I am not sure the best way to accomplish it but I do know this. It is not with American Military Forces within your borders. We make more problems than we ourselves can ever solve. The little good we do in those parts of your country where we were once welcome is more than erased by the horrors we cause through our mistakes.
I am sorry. I wish we could do more. And I wish we had done so much less at the same time. I shed tears for all of us and I pray for a better world for our children, those dead and those alive.
These pictures are not from the village that was so wrongly attacked but they might have been. I want people to see faces when they hear that an American soldier killed children in the middle of the night in their own homes.
Originally posted to A Progressive Military Wife Perspective on Sun Mar 11, 2012 at 06:49 AM PDT.
Also republished by Team DFH and Military Community Members of Daily Kos.
One of the survivors from the attacks, Abdul Hadi, 40, said he was at home when a soldier broke down the door.
“My father went out to find out what was happening, and he was killed,” he said. “I was trying to go out and find out about the shooting, but someone told me not to move, and I was covered by the women in my family in my room, so that is why I survived.”
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Adding to the sense of concern, the killings occurred two days after an episode in Kapisa Province, in eastern Afghanistan, in which NATO helicopters apparently hunting Taliban insurgents instead fired on civilians, killing four and wounding another three, Afghan officials said. About 1,200 demonstrators marched in protest in Kapisa on Saturday.
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