In the early hours of March 11, Sunday, a U.S. soldier went on a rampage in a village in Panjway, southwest of Kandahar, Afghanistan. He went from one mud house to another, shot, stabbed, and burned 16 villagers. Or so it has been reported.
No, I don't want to talk about whether Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the "happy" and "gentle" 38-year-old father of two, committed a "war crime" or not. War crimes are the prerogative of those in charge: the policymakers who start and continue a war through a "surge" and such, and the armchair warmongers who fan them by talking portentously about national interests, "plans" in the region, and such.
Furthermore, since December 2001, "from the air and on the ground, Americans have been profligate with Afghan lives," as Tom Engelhardt, of the Nation Institute, has written. Why fuss about what one of the soldiers tasked to murder and destroy did?