What goals do we really have? Bin Laden is dead and there are only a handful of Al Queda lingering. At this point we're just creating more anti american sentiment. We need to pull out immediately, faster than a guy on welfare with 5 kids who's about to shoot his and make a 6th one. <- analogy for added affect.
The goals seem to be changing all the time, initially which most people agreed with was to root out Al-Queada and other militant fanatics who were hiding out in Afghanistan and training and planning attacks, they are pretty much gone and now we seem to be fighting the Taliban which is a whole different issue, they're Afghans and supported by many of the people (who want a shitty backwards society) within Afghanistan. Not only is there loads of Afghan Taliban there's also loads of Pakistani Taliban who they can't touch as they are over the border and the more civilian deaths we cause the more people that will either join the Taliban or support them. We got Bin Laden and Al-Qeada with their training camps so let's leave them alone, as backwards as the Taliban are I doubt they're interested in carrying out terrorist attacks in foreign counties so we have nothing to fear from them, in time the people will get sick of them and despose of them themselves but until them we only make them look like a acceptable alternative when these 'incidents' happen.
This is a delicate situation. There would be outrage if the US tried and punished him themselves but it would make the US government look very bad to disavow and hand over one of their soldiers, murderer or not, to the lion's den just to appease the Afghani's. The government should take accountability for their military men, especially since they keep deploying them to fight their long wars until eventually they're bound to either die, become crippled mentally/physically and therefore "useless" or something like this happens. IMO it's best for the US to handle his conviction and punishment, although this whole affair is sad. I think him objecting to his last deployment should have been a cue but of course his superiors probably didn't care.
