But I'm not.
It's politically incorrect to say so, but I actually just feel bad for him. Not because he has to suffer the consequences of his actions - that is appropriate, and it's being handled in a legal way - but because his actions were the logical consequence of his situation.
Most people aren't going to be put in a set of circumstances like the US Army in Afghanistan and become methodical killers. But that's who we've trained him (and his cohort) to be!
And then we send him to Afghanistan, where - from all military accounts - he is under constant threat of death or dismemberment , he can't speak the language (and even if he did, it wouldn't necessarily clarify the complex local politics), he can't parse the mixed emotional and cultural realities of the people that he's supposedly there to protect, and all that training, all that dehumanizing of the enemy, all the frustration and futility and the deaths of his friends, and the distance from a country that doesn't act like it cares about his welfare...
I just look at that situation and think to myself... Man! I sure would want to kill someone with the massively powerful weapons I'm strapped to at all times! Because at least then, I could feel like there's a fraking point to all this.
This isn't an excuse, or a rationalization. And I think he should be put on trial, along with his compatriots in this debacle, and I think he absolutely should go to jail.
But I also think he needs extremely close psychological supervision. And he needs at least one person to believe that he can come back to society in one piece. A whole human being.
And even better, WE THE PEOPLE need to take a moment and reassess exactly what it is we've asked our soldiers to do for the past ten years. Because they're coming home. And for those that have managed to handle an impossible situation and NOT go on a crazy killing spree...THEY need to come back with honor and unflagging respect from the ones who didn't have to go.
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