On The Massacre in Afghanistan

• The Associated Press story, appearing in San Francisco Chronicle.

• The way he told me of his experiences, though, hinted at a reality that few soldiers like to discuss: that sometimes they kill because the opportunity is there, and because, at the time, for some of them, it seems fun. Seven years later, that same soldier got it touch with me in a letter to say, ruefully, that he was a different person than the young man I had met. I had the sense that he sought some kind of atonement for the things he had done, but also wanted my understanding. He expressed a stark sense of self-awareness, and I wondered where it would lead him.

  Jon Lee Anderson at The New Yorker.

• Again: we're there because...we're there. We don't want to look weak. We want to complete the mission. The U.S. military, for all it's professionalism, does not do a good job of admitting when it is losing. I think it is easier for those of us with less intimate knowledge of events, with less of a dog in the fight, to state the obvious. We can win a counter-terrorism war. But we cannot win a nation building war.

  Jesse Curtis at Walk On.
  

Did someone say something about being condemned to repeat Vietnam?  Because obviously no one learned anything from that.