Louisville Courier Journal Decries "Kill Team" Atrocity. We Join Them.
Editorial | 'Kill team' atrocity
Two weeks ago, Army Cpl. Jeremy Morlock was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his part in the murder of Afghan civilians in 2010. He was part of a “kill team” that wore the American uniform in that country, as they served in the 5th Stryker Brigade. He agreed to testify against his fellow “kill team” members in exchange for a shorter prison sentence. “I lost my moral compass,” he told the judge.
That understatement is punctuated by the grisly proof of how much more was lost, too, as soldiers apparently became hunters and innocent people their prey. The photographic proof of their atrocities was shared among some troops “like electronic trading cards,” the Associated Press reported, before Army investigators began seizing them as evidence for the trials of a dozen soldiers for the murder of civilians, or for conspiracy to cover up those murders.
But news outlets such as Der Spiegel and Rolling Stone obtained some of the photos and videos and did their jobs as journalists by making them public. The Army apologized for actions that are “repugnant to us as human beings,” and high-level diplomatic maneuvers were undertaken to forestall outrage among the countrymen of the pictured dead. Speaking for Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said, “If there is any conscience left in the West, it should be awakened.”
The pictures are profoundly disturbing, as awful and as emblematic of human corruption in war as any from the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. But whether they made any impact at all among the people whose uniform the confessed and accused killers wore, and in whose name they “fought,” is a bigger question.
Did anybody look? Did anybody care?
Two weeks ago, Army Cpl. Jeremy Morlock was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his part in the murder of Afghan civilians in 2010. He was part of a “kill team” that wore the American uniform in that country, as they served in the 5th Stryker Brigade. He agreed to testify against his fellow “kill team” members in exchange for a shorter prison sentence. “I lost my moral compass,” he told the judge.
That understatement is punctuated by the grisly proof of how much more was lost, too, as soldiers apparently became hunters and innocent people their prey. The photographic proof of their atrocities was shared among some troops “like electronic trading cards,” the Associated Press reported, before Army investigators began seizing them as evidence for the trials of a dozen soldiers for the murder of civilians, or for conspiracy to cover up those murders.
But news outlets such as Der Spiegel and Rolling Stone obtained some of the photos and videos and did their jobs as journalists by making them public. The Army apologized for actions that are “repugnant to us as human beings,” and high-level diplomatic maneuvers were undertaken to forestall outrage among the countrymen of the pictured dead. Speaking for Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said, “If there is any conscience left in the West, it should be awakened.”
The pictures are profoundly disturbing, as awful and as emblematic of human corruption in war as any from the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. But whether they made any impact at all among the people whose uniform the confessed and accused killers wore, and in whose name they “fought,” is a bigger question.
Did anybody look? Did anybody care?
Labels: News reporting
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 7:57 AM
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