Attitude

How to get your fellow soldiers, all over the conflict theater, killed and maimed, play tough guy rambo's and create more hatreds!!!!!!

Strykers: Did attitude lead to Afghan killings?

10/14/10 - When a Stryker brigade from Joint Base Lewis-McChord arrived in Afghanistan last year, its leader, Col. Harry Tunnell, openly sneered at the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency strategy. The old-school commander barred his officers from even mentioning the term and told shocked U.S. and NATO officials that he was uninterested in winning the trust of the Afghan people.

Instead, he said, his soldiers from the 5th (Stryker) Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division would simply hunt and kill as many Taliban fighters as possible, as dictated by the brigade’s motto, “Strike and Destroy.”

What resulted was a year of tough fighting in territory fiercely defended by the Taliban. The brigade also carried home a dark legacy that threatens to overshadow its hard-won victories and sacrifices on the battlefield. In some of the gravest war-crime charges to arise from the Afghan conflict, five soldiers have been accused of killing unarmed Afghan men, apparently for sport, and desecrating their corpses.

Seven other platoon members have been charged with other crimes, including smoking hashish – which some soldiers said happened on a near-daily basis – and assaulting an informant. {read rest}