Nearly every combat outpost in Afghanistan is automatically part of a volatile mix: a hardened enemy, increasingly sophisticated and deadly land mines, nervous young soldiers, powerful weapons and machinery, suicide bombers, the stress of multiple deployments, searing heat, unfriendly locals, unfamiliar languages.
The U.S. Army has concluded that adding alcohol to that mix is unwise.
But now, with the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, alcohol has been suggested as a possible causal factor in the killings, along with other stressors. Inquiries into the tragedy are ongoing; the facts remain unclear.
The banning of alcohol in war zones became an issue when the United States military entered combat situations in Muslim countries that frown on drinking, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. (Still, alcohol was easy to get in the Green Zone in Baghdad, for example, or in the more tolerant Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.) > > > > Read More
