One of five U.S. soldiers accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport and posing for photographs with their mutilated bodies has confessed to investigators, according to video of the confession obtained by ABC News and CNN.
They are accused of crimes that are awful in their own right and endanger their fellow soldiers in the field by making it more difficult to win the trust of Afghans to defeat the Taliban.
Our troops fight amazingly clean given the historical record of troops fighting insurgents, and actual crimes are rare. It is good that we investigate and punish the guilty.
I'm also relieved that I am not reading about terrible generalizations about our military based on the actions of a few. Our anti-war people were pretty strident on that point when the Iraq War raged. Today, that linkage seems to be unclaimed. I'll take progress where I can.
