The news is full of it. There is really little to stay. Most of us became convinced awhile back we should not be in Afghanistan anymore. The President has announced we will be slowly drawing down, and a number of folks on the news are just saying this might prompt an acceleration.

The President is up for election, however, complicating his decision making and reluctance to look weak on this issue.

Thank you for that @Imadethisupwithnoforethought.

Right now, there are too few details to really form much of an opinion on beyond the obvious, “Wow, what the fuck?”. There definitely are not enough to do any in-depth reporting yet, so media coverage has been rather sparse thus far.

Expect more discussion and news coverage as the story develops beyond a mere headline.

“The President has announced we will be slowly drawing down, and a number of folks on the news are just saying this might prompt an acceleration.”
I figure the relatives of the people in these three villages that were killed are happy that their deaths were not for nothing then.

Yeah, it’s all over here.

This morning I brought up Aljazeera [English language version] to see what they were saying about it. They are leading with the massacre in Homs, and I can’t find this story on the first page.

@rebbel Well, just for clarity, because I have been watching the news and procrastinating all day, is that there are many who feel there will be a blood bath if we leave too quickly of people who collaborated with us, and that the Taliban will be very hard on women especially.

On the other hand, our soldiers have been in the field for 10 years straight. The soldier under discussion had done four years of combat service, then apparently cracked up. So there is also a lot of talk that we have been pushing our soldiers too hard.

In addition, I am watching our ambassador to Great Britain right now stating that the British have signaled they will follow our lead whatever we decide.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Yeah, we’re good like that. :/

This is a horrible case but it is getting a lot of coverage. It undoes any good we may have thought we were accomplishing in Afghanistan. They will blame it on one soldier going crazy but it runs deeper than that.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Of course I was not being sarcastic to you (at least, it wasn’t my intention), you merely reported what you heard on the news I could be wrong but I didn’t even hear a thing about it on the Dutch news, which upsets me even more, but I was angry when I first read this eye witness report:

“Another eyewitness, 20-year-old Jan Agha, told Reuters he had been woken by gunfire along with his father, who peeped nervously outside through a curtain.
Suddenly more shots were fired and his father fell dead, hit in the throat and face. Also killed were Mr Agha’s mother, brother and sister.
The young man said he had survived by lying on the floor, pretending to be dead.”

And right after that your report about what those people were discussing (“this might prompt an acceleration”).
Those two things, I guess, made me react the way I reacted.

^nope. I think you are right to be upset, and I am not taking it personally. I am just reporting that we don’t really know what the hell to do at this point.

How much coverage was there of this story from last month and many other similar cases?

The reporter on the station I am watching just mentioned that and a few other items @flutherother and said “We are acting like we want people to join the Taliban.”

I just heard a lengthy report on it on National Public Radio. It was a horrible and very disturbing story.

Lack of questions on fluther doesn’t seem to me to be an indication of anything but lack of questions. I can’t see any point myself in calling for opinions (who could be in favor of it?), and lack of comprehensive facts is not remedied by speculation.

On the Public Broadcasting System this evening, a reporter in Iran said that some Iranians were saying it was one soldier who was obviously out of his mind or on drugs, but the common man thought it was part of a plot by the U.S. and they would take revenge.

It is all over the news here. The timing, in the wake of the burning of the Korans, is horrible.

It’s so sad.

Sounds like a mass murder, not any kind of military action. I suspect the soldier was mentally unstable. This is not a sign of American policy, nor should it be construed to represent how Americans feel about the Afghans. It is an aberration and it should be investigated, and we should not rush to judge until we know more of the story.

This story can be spun 4 ways to Sunday especially with the “plot theories”. The fact remains it is an unthinkable horror for those innocent citizens there and we now have an even bigger Bulls-Eye on our backs.

Keep an eye on our Presidents response to this tragedy especially in how he is cautioning against a “Rush for the Exits”. There is a BIG reason he doesn’t want to leave just yet as he has an election to win and to have the black mark of leaving Karzai in a lurch and the likelihood of getting overrun now by really pissed off Taliban inspired Citizens. It would be a blood bath over there if we leave now and this blood would be on Obama, so best to hold off doing anything until after the election.

I wonder, did it have anything to do with the killing of american soldiers by Afghans for the burning of the korans? Have not heard anything like this but just wondered.

@harple I’m having trouble getting your link to load, would you mind telling me what story this is?

@Aethelflaed It is the massacre in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Here’s a summary from the link:

“In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, a US soldier stationed at a base in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province allegedly launched a single-handed gun attack on nearby Afghan villagers.

The soldier, who has not been named, is said to have broken into three homes in three different locations in Panjwai district…

…But by the end of the attack, 16 people, nine of them children, were dead and five wounded. Some of the bodies had been set on fire.”

@Jeruba Astonishing, shocking, out-of-character, worrying events, tipping a balance, often bring out reaction in good people. I can recall questions on here asking about school shootings for example. And year on year the horror of 9/11 is discussed. Even if there is nothing to actually question, good people are often compelled to question around it, to try and better understand it, or to at least share the incomprehensible.

@harple Ooooohhhhh. Yeah, my Twitter feed exploded with this news. Honestly, I don’t really know what to do with it; I’d kind of assumed that this kind of rogue horror story was actually a bit common. But, I’ve been of the opinion that we should have pulled out of Afghanistan a long time ago…

The latest I had heard was that it was going to be hard to prosecute this man due to the lack of autopsies on the bodies, and the lack of a crime scene/forensic team.