Dear Bill,
Of course I would not like my kids being tried anywhere in which the laws were not applied justly - regardless of whether they were in the service. But, say a foreign citizen were charged with a crime in this country, and some other country insisted that we didn't have jurisdiction over alleged crimes - in our own country (e.g. the Sheinbein base).
OTOH, I guess I could see this if there is reciprocation. If a Korean soldier is accused in the U.S., is he then tried in ROK?
My point isn't necessarily that we should change things, btw, only that the status quo is bound to engender bad feelings.
It's very easy for even an adult soldier to make a mistake and get killed by a tank. (According to my dad who was a tanker, it used to happen all the time.) It's absurd, I think, to insinuate that the soldiers were necessarily doing anything wrong to cause the deaths. But without knowing the details it's also wrong for me to conclude that the girls could have or even should have known they were in any danger.
Addenda
I was thinking the girls were 5 years old, but I musta confused them with something else I was reading, because the article cited above refers to them as teenagers. Still, as I said, even an adult can mistakenly get a little too close to one of these things when it's moving.
It was a 'tank' with a mine-sweeper mounted on the chassis.
No idea what the actual details were in the case - would be nice if someone could track down what was discovered.
It's true that many will use any pretext whatever to criticize the US, but that that doesn't mean that all criticisms are wrong.
The Army said it accepts full responsibility for the tragedy. It would not seem fair to prosecute a soldier for carrying out a lawful order that happened to kill a civilian - even in the U.S. If they accept responsbility, I wonder if they are looking into changing policy - whether it's changing their own SOP or educating locals about the hazards of playing or walking too closely to one of these behemoths.
k
