Emerging reports from Afghanistan are now contesting the official claim that a single 'rogue' US soldier carried out the massacre of over sixteen Afghan civilians in Kandahar.
Whatever evidence does eventually come to light, we can dispense with the easy notion that this and many other such atrocities can be put down to the actions of one errant individual, or that such killings are just 'highly-regrettable' incidents in an otherwise 'difficult-but-necessary' war.
As Seumas Milne so concisely puts it:
"Massacres are common in wars, but they flow from the very nature of foreign occupations. Brutalised soldiers, pumped up with racial and cultural superiority, sent on imperial missions to subdue people they don't understand, take revenge for resistance, real or imagined, with terror and savagery."
As established at Nuremberg, the highest guilt and complicity rests at the senior political and military levels.
The real 'lone crazy' here is Nato.
John
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