U.S. officials were scrambling Sunday to contain the damage caused when an American soldier in Afghanistan wandered off base and allegedly gunned down more than a dozen villagers.
President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta both called Afghan President Hamid Karzai to express their condolences and vowed to hold those responsible accountable. Afghan officials reported that 16 people were killed including nine children and three women.
I think Obama and Panetta’s comments go past hypocritical and land in the despicable category. Anyone want to bet that the soldier responsible for this rampage will be tried, convicted, sentenced and punished well before our own Major Hasan ever gets to trial? Has anybody even heard anything about Hasan lately? I Googled him and found out the trial was supposed to begin last Monday, but it has been postponed.
Wow #1 … so if they “express their condolences and vow to hold those responsible accountable” they’re in the “despicable category”? Seriously … think about what you’re saying.
Why is the sequencing of these two murder cases so important? How could the President or his Secretary of Defense be anything other than abjectly apologetic for a murderous attack on civilians in a country that we are occupying?
More here than meets the eye. How is it that US military personnel can just wander off-base, alone, at 3am? Curious to find out more about the perp.
NoVA – the sequencing of the cases is significant in that they will do anything to avoid offending the Muslims; i.e., quickly prosecute and punish the alleged murderer in Afghanistan, and do anything to delay prosecuting Major Hasan. Lady Justice no longer wears a blindfold, in the Obama regime she has slipped into a hijab.
Actually Yebonoma, I believe the “hijab” was added early in the Bush administration.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm
Of course this is absurd. Delays in the trial of criminals are almost always at the request of prosecutors. Unlike other countries, we have to produce evidence sufficient to convict someone. If a prosecutor is concerned about winning his case he will ask for a delay as he builds is case. Also, maybe the military has not finished questioning him. Once his trial is over and he is in prison, their options for further interrogation are limited.
To believe the Obama Administration is delaying the trial of this guy because he is a Muslim, is Faux News conspiracy crap.
The trial calendar is not controlled by the President. It is controlled by the Judge and the Prosecutor.
Mitchell,
Actually, it was the defense that asked for the delay. Does the Military Code of Justice not guarantee a right to a speedy trial? Also, I am assuming if he is convicted he will be shot or hung instead of going to prison (don’t know if the military allows lethal injection). After all, if he is convicted of mass murder in the first degree, prison is not the appropriate punishment.
When you have an AG that will only prosecute civil rights cases when they involve non-whites as the victims, I think you have gone beyond the Faux News conspiracy stage.
Yebonoma
I think you have some rather serious misconceptions about how the military justice system works. I spent more than a year working for JAG in the early 90’s in Newport RI and have seen the military criminal justice system at work up close. Servicemen accused of serious crimes generally enjoy even more rights than civilians. There are a large number of procedural hurdles that have to be gone through before a courts martial can be convened. In capital cases (like the Ft. Hood case and probably like this one will eventually be) the pace can be positively glacial.
If you are expecting a summary courts martial followed shortly after by the offer of a blindfold and cigarette I am afraid you are going to be deeply disappointed. Yes this is a very serious crime (Art 118 UCMJ is a capital offense) but I can all but guarantee that this case is going to be litigated for decades. It’s been a while since I have checked but back in the early 90’s when I was working for JAG there were a half dozen men on the military death row at Ft. Leavenworth KS. All but a two had been there for more than a decade. I don’t know how many there are there now, but I do know that the last time the military executed someone was in 1961.
As for the modus operandi of military executions the tradition is that for crimes capital under the common law (i.e. murder rape etc.) the method is hanging. For offenses of a purely military nature (spying, desertion, cowardice etc.) the method is firing squad. Tradition however was set aside in the early 1980’s when then President Reagan issued a revised Manual for Courts Martial which specified that the responsible service secretaries could set the method of execution. It has since been declared by executive order to be lethal injection for all branches of the service and all offenses.
Ad Orientem,
Thank you for the information. Do you think the soldier accused of the murders in Afghanistan will be treated similarly to Major Hasan, or is there a possibility that he could be handed over to NATO forces or even the Afghans for trial and punishment, to try and placate the Taliban, et. al., who of course are threatening all sorts of dire revenge?
Yebonoma
NATO has no military justice system of its own. It is simply an alliance of sovereign states. There is virtually no possibility of handing him over to the Afghans First we have no Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Afghanistan. That means there is no agreement outlining under what circumstances US Servicemen are handled over to other countries when suspected of local crimes. Secondly Afghanistan is a war zone largely under military occupation. Third the accused would almost certainly be denied anything resembling “due process” under Afghan law which would make handing him over an illegal alienation of his constitutional rights. It is inconceivable that any military court would permit such a thing. And politically it would be suicide for Obama to do that. Forget re-election he would probably face a serious movement to have him impeached just for suggesting it. And fourth the US Military has primary jurisdiction over this case and all war time offenses committed by or suspected of US Servicemen under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
I can virtually guarantee that this man already has an attorney assigned to him and his rights under Article 31B of the UCMJ (roughly the same as the famous Miranda rights for civilians) have been reserved.
Sorry for the typos. Failure to proofread is fatal.
AO’s inputs are very helpful and informative. Many thanks. As for No. 9, I suspect that there are many cultures (perhaps including our own) that would be vengeful if a member of an occupying military force went from house-to-house murdering civilians, including women and children. There are many peculiar things about Afghan society in the 21st Century. A strong and hostile reaction to this event is not one of them.
NoVA Scout,
You are right about Afghan society, but many would opine that they are still living in somewhere around the 15th century.