I read the Daily Mail article on this, and based on that, it sounds like he snapped. It was just one soldier, right? If it was a mission to get a terrorist, multiple soldiers would have been there. The article said he went back to the base after and turned himself in.
This really is terrible. Nine children and three women lost their lives in addition to three men. I think we can surmise that at least the women and children were innocent, probably the men too. One man lost his entire family. He was gone and came back to all eleven of his family members dead. That’s horrific. I just can’t fathom it.
The whole goal of this nation building is to get the locals to trust us, and things like this do not help at all. I forsee protests at least as bad, if not worse, than the Koran burnings. The Taliban has already declared they will avenge, and angry locals could get behind them. With attitudes over there, they could very well take it out on the U.S. military as a whole instead of realizing that it was one soldier gone rogue.
Most Americans no longer trust their own government, which has been looted and bankrupt, lawless violent chaos at it's own borders, yet were 9,000 miles away spending hundreds of billions, spilling our blood, hoping to gain the trust of some Muslim foreigners?
Do you have any idea how crazy this is?
Heard elsewhere on the net:
He attacked the house of a tribal elder in a village that is a Taliban stronghold. This looks more like a targeted act of revenge than a random, anti-Afghan shooting spree.
Bottom line is that it's not our style, but probably worked pretty well for Muslims who were trying to impress upon infidels that rebellion/resistance meant physical extermination of family members back when the Islamic hordes were running wild through the Roman-ruled (and Christian) Mid East and North Africa as well as pre-Islamic Persia.