Not Even Sure Where to Begin with This

I can't imagine how anyone would know where to start on this particular thing.

At this point this is fairly old news. It's been well reported on by a variety of sources. And it's important to extend the innocent until proven guilty rule to this. Especially in this case. Because Lord, this is really, really bad.

I mean, what the hell happened here? Were American soldiers involved in thrill killings of Afghani citizens? Was there a culture (blessedly only within a single unit, one hopes), that can only be described as "Lord of the Flies"?

I'm just throwing this out here and it doesn't help my position that I've been drinking fairly heavily but if this actually happened, might it be because we live in a society that reveres soldiers, that gives them the benefit of the doubt always, that assumes that they are de facto heroes whether they squeezed a trigger or drove a truck?

I'm sure that's going to offend some people. But still, we afford our soldiers an enormous amount of moral leeway. Should we?