Project: American Security

"They were all drunk and shooting all over the place. Their (the victims') bodies were riddled with bullets."
"They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them."
" I saw that all 11 of my relatives were killed, including my children and grandchildren."

A sole American soldier, or a group of American servicemen decided at two in the morning to leave their base and enter a number of small villages in southern Afghanistan. These just happened to be villages where Canadian soldiers had previously established good working relations with the people in an effort to gain trust and to aid the Afghans in acquiring civic accoutrements to ease their lives.

Going from one house to another, testing locked doors, finally breaking into the first of three homes, a U.S. Army sergeant killed an estimated sixteen civilians, nine of them children, three of them women. Residents of three villages in the Panjwaii District of Kandahar province rendered their shocked reports of what had occurred when this soldier walked a mile from his base to kill. They are convinced he was not alone.

Eleven bodies in the first house he entered which included four little girls under the age of six were set afire, according to villagers. In Canada's model villages, which incoming American troops were proud to take responsibility for. "I condemn such violence and am shocked and saddened that a U.S. service member is alleged to be involved, clearly acting outside his chain of command", said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Americans have a staff sergeant in custody. Locals, apart from being aghast and outraged, cannot believe that one single individual could possibly be responsible for the deaths of so many, and the wounding of many others. ISAF, NATO are also in shock. This is most definitely not what should have occurred.

The burning of Korans might have appeared to Afghans as the most flagrantly abusive crime possible, but that was as nothing in comparison to this affront to humanity. And there will be hell - more hell, to pay. The incidents of Afghan soldiers and police turning their weapons on Americans will surely accelerate.

Once again, the actions of a single (or perhaps more) individual has demonstrated what the sacrifice of a hundred thousand others committed themselves to, to be destroyed in a single act of atrocious hatred. That proverbial genie cannot be talked back into his bottle after having been liberated from endless years of anguished confinement. The dead will not walk again; time cannot be turned back.

The suspicion and simmering resentment of an entire population has now been elevated to volcanic eruption heat, ready to deliver the destructive hot lava of condemnation and undying enmity against a foreign enemy that camouflaged its intentions to destroy the culture, the faith and the heritage of a people. Nothing will suffice now to convince Afghans otherwise.

"These killings only serve to reinforce the mindset that the whole war is broken and that there's little we can do about it beyond trying to cut our losses and leave", according to Joshua Foust, a secretary expert with the American Security Project. Is that the new best-case scenario?