Most of us are aware that last Sunday a US soldier walked off
his military base in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan and
began to cold-bloodedly shoot innocent Afghan civilians. When he eventually
stopped, he had wounded 5 Afghans and killed 9 children, 3 women and 4 men.
Yet, killing and wounding his victims was not enough for him.
He then piled up the bodies of 11 of the Afghans he had killed and set them alight.[i]
Only then did he casually return to his military base, where he was welcomed
him with open arms and given protection against the Afghanistan government.
The cold-blooded murderer has now been identified as Robert
Bales.[ii]
(I see no reason to mention his military rank because, as I will explain later,
he did not act as a soldier but as a murderous civilian.)
The US government has shown that it lacks any respect for the
rights of any person who is not a US citizen! The US dismissed the call that
this murderer should stand trial in Afghanistan, where he committed the crime.
Instead, the US has actually helped a cold-blooded murderer to escape from
Afghanistan and avoid justice, by flying him out of Afghanistan to Kansas City
in the US.
Can you imagine the US being satisfied with a foreigner, who
commits murder on US soil, being removed from the US? Can you imagine the US
accepting that the person should stand trial in his home country, instead of in
the US where he committed the crime? Absolutely no ways! In fact, there are many
recent examples of non-US citizens being extradited to the US for far less
serious crimes, in order to stand trial in the US: Anton Ivanov[iii]
of Estonia; Richard O'Dwyer[iv]
of Britain; Eric Bedard[v] of
Canada; Christopher Tappin[vi]
of Britain.
It really infuriates me that the US believes that it has the
right to ride rough shod over the rest of the world. While it preaches to the
world about what is needed to create a just society, it behaves in a way that
communicates to the world that US citizens are not subject to the same
standards as the rest of the world.
Bales did not act in his capacity as a soldier when he chose
freely to walk off the base and commit the murderous acts that he committed. He
therefore gave up his rights to be protected by the US military. He must be
returned to Afghanistan to face the justice of the country whose innocent
citizens he murdered in cold blood. Anything less is not justice! Alternatively,
he should be tried as a war criminal in an independent court of law. If not, the US sends a message to the world that the US condones and protects the lawless behavior
of its soldiers.
A further source of anger and frustration for me is the way
that the bulk of the media has made so little of the 16 innocent Afghans who
were murdered. On Tuesday 28 people were killed in a tragic bus accident in the
Swiss Alps. The news networks have since carried repeated news reports about
this event, focusing on the victims and their families, and rightly so. It is
extremely sad and tragic and deserves coverage.
Now consider the extent of coverage the 16 murdered Afghans
have received. Consider how the news of these murdered Afghans has failed to
focus nearly as much on the victims and their devastated families. Instead,
international news reports on big networks like Sky News and CNN have focused
far more on: the accused soldier instead of the victim; the safety of the
family of the accused, instead of the victims families; the state of the
relationship between the US and Afghanistan.
This is disgraceful. Are these 16 Afghans just ‘collateral’
damage, to be discarded and forgotten? I cannot help but feel enraged
at the fact that the international media, and the US, has treated the death of
these Afghans in much the same way as the old regime in South Africa used to
treat the death of black people in the apartheid days. The focus is on everything but the real victims - the 16 Afghans. It is shameful!
[i]
New York Daily News; American
service member goes on shooting rampage, killing at least 16 villagers in
Afghanistan; March 11, 2012
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