Eight U.S. soldiers have been charged in the death of a fellow GI, a Chinese-American who apparently shot himself in Afghanistan after being subjected to what a community activist said were assaults and ethnic taunts from his comrades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My RADAR goes off any time I hear about accusations from a “community activist” especially those who peddle in identity politics. Nevertheless the Post goes on to detail the hazing the Army is asserting caused Chen to kill himself:<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Army said Wednesday that eight soldiers in his company were charged with crimes ranging from dereliction of duty to negligent homicide and manslaughter.<\/p>\n
Military officials gave no details on exactly what role the soldiers are alleged to have played in Chen\u2019s death. But a community activist raised the possibility that their bullying drove him to suicide.<\/p>\n
Chen\u2019s fellow soldiers dragged him across the floor, threw stones at the back of his head, forced him to hold liquid in his mouth while upside down as part of an apparent hazing, and called him \u201cJackie Chen\u201d in a mocking accent in a reference to the action star Jackie Chan, according to Elizabeth OuYang, president of the New York chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Stories like this remind me of my own time in the barracks or overseas and all of the horrible things we did to each other, sometimes as an initiation of sorts but often times for no other reason than we were bored. I wonder if we always knew when it was in good fun and when it was going too far. Despite what the PR machine says hazing has a place in military culture and to remove it entirely will be to change that culture, for good or ill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the heels of my complaining about the need to hold leadership accountable for the Manning … Eight soldiers charged in suicide of Army Pvt.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}