The Power of One

On a dark night, near dawn, a single soldier, drunk perhaps, walked into an Afghan village and singlehandedly brought about an international crisis eerily reminiscent of a another single-handed assassination in Sarajevo that plunged the globe into World War I.

We don't know yet what price will be paid for the sergeant's murder of sixteen civilians...mostly women and children. The reactions in Afghanistan, and in the rest of the Muslim world, can be expected to grow, as the US further exacerbates the situation by removing the offender from Afghanistan and bringing him back to the United States and the prison at Fort Leavenworth. That was, in truth, their only recourse; his presence only fanned the flames of revenge, and it would probably have been impossible to keep him alive, even on a US base, in Afghanistan.

Apparently the Afghans, to date, are lumping these deaths together with all the other civilian deaths that have transpired from drone attacks and such. The earlier Koran-burning struck more deeply at their culture. Still the efforts of the thousands of men and women in our military and foreign service, over a period of ten years, have just been put in further jeopardy. And it matters not a whit whether he was drunk, brain-damaged or lucid. The deed is done, and we will all have to live with the growing consequences.