Daily News Brief from CFR: U.S. Soldier to Be Charged Over Afghan Killings

Daily News Brief March 23, 2012

Top of the Agenda: U.S. Soldier to Be Charged Over Afghan Killings

U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with seventeen counts of murder (NYT) today over an attack on Afghan civilians in southern Kandahar province on March 11, U.S. officials said. The attack came on the heels of public protests and killings over the burning of Qurans at a U.S.-run NATO air base, further compounding a troubled U.S-Afghan partnership and U.S. efforts to negotiate an exit from the decade-old war. Bales's attorney has claimed his client suffers from "mental problems" and does not remember many of the details of the March 11 incident.

Analysis

"The rapid exclusion of Afghans from the process of trying the accused shooter has, predictably and understandably, exacerbated the growing anti-American anger in that country. It is hard to imagine any nation on the planet reacting any other way to being denied the ability to try suspects over crimes that take place on its soil," writes Glenn Greenwald for the Guardian.

"In a sense, none of these facts matter. It shouldn't be hard to see the bright line between war fatigue, or P.T.S.D., or whatever name you give it, and hunting down, shooting, and stabbing little children in their homes, and women and men, burning their bodies, and then returning to base and demanding a lawyer," writes the New Yorker's George Packer.

"Forget about President Obama expediting U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this year. It matters not that some American soldiers are coming apart at the seams, killing innocent Afghans, and burning Qurans, or that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan screams to restrict U.S. operations," writes CFR's Leslie H. Gelb for the Daily Beast.