The latest reported incident in Afghanistan about a lone American soldier casually taking a stroll out from his base, to wander off in the dark of night towards two nearby villages, and there, apparently, methodically slaughtering some sixteen sleeping villagers in their homes, and then calmly returning to base to turn himself in, is one more example of how the policy of multiple deployments may be driving some of our service personnel ….off the rails.

Much like the previous incident at Fort Hood, TX, and other incidents, such as fragging assaults against some of their own, and suicides, this one suggest that there’s a definite correlation between such a policy….and such incidents.

While we don’t yet know all the details about what led up to this terrible and tragic event, the fact that this particular soldier, reportedly is a staff sergeant with eleven years service, makes it difficult to comprehend such an atrocious act. If he were just a raw recruit, with little experience, rattled by the stresses of a hostile environment, it might be understood but, with someone with this amount of service time and experience, it’s not easy to do.

While in no way excusing this soldier’s action there appear to be several causative factors at the root of his going berserk that way. For one thing, he’s a family man, thus, after three deployments to Iraq (no less stressful than being in Afghanistan), he was sent on a fourth deployment to Afghanistan where, on top of whatever stress incidents he might have gone through in Iraq, to find himself in the middle of another whirlpool of American soldiers being killed for no good reason…igniting a long smoldering fuse of enduring long separations from family, despair over dead fellow soldiers, setting off an explosive rage of misdirected revenge.

Perhaps we’ll never really know the answers to it all. The only thing we do know is that 16 innocent men, women, and children, are dead, a soldier’s life has been derailed, and another military family may be destroyed because of it.

The question is: Are multiple deployments really worth that kind of cost? In my view, they are not, particularly for a place like Afghanistan where, after ten years of hard effort, none of its people, its government, or any of its military and security forces have done much to help themselves. It’s a lost, if not worthless cause. It’s time we packed up, brought our troops home, and let them settle their own created chaos.

The generally good name, reputation, and honor of our military can’t afford to risk being sullied by any more of such incidents because of a wrong-headed depolyment policy.

CENTURION