Badlands

Steven Green served for a few months in the terrible "Triangle of Death", south of Baghdad. Foot patrols. House raids. Roadside bombs. An Apocalypse Now in a Humvee. There is no way that we can yet know the particular horror of that one evening, but a US Army report states that Green and four other members of his company got drunk, went out into the town of Mahmudiya, camouflaged in dark clothing, kicked down a door, burst into a home, went to the bedroom, killed a mother, a father, a young girl, and then raped another child at gunpoint. Afterwards they tried to burn the girl's body to destroy evidence. They went back to their barracks under a code of silence, the stars still out over Mahmudiya.

It's a tale of pure savagery, but so often what we forget is that what makes us savage is that which allows us to be savage.

Steven Green had the sort of sad American childhood that you can find in virtually every bus station of America. His parents divorced. He bounced around between homes. He got new stepdads in every new town to which he went. So much of it must have been like trying on new coats – fathers wore out at the elbows, the zip broke, the dark pockets split at the seams. He got in trouble at school. He was charged with a couple of misdemeanour crimes – one for having drug paraphernalia, one for buying tobacco.

In early 2005, he got caught in possession of alcohol and instead of paying his $300 fine, he took the option of four days behind bars. When he got out, he went straight to the US Army Recruiting Centre. For Green, it must have been like finding another father. The 32 shining white teeth. The crisp haircut. The exotic promises. Have we got an exciting life for you, son. The US Army waived Green's three misdemeanours and his educational requirements, signed him up, baptised him – literally and figuratively in Fort Benning, Georgia, where he became a born-again Christian – and then packaged him up in a uniform and sent him to Iraq.

Steven Green was, at the time, 19 years old.

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The overwhelming majority of young men and women who serve in the US Armed Forces do so with an air of pride and decency, often against all the odds. All one has to do is watch the faces of those who come home through Shannon Airport – they are shocked and saddened by what their uniform has come to represent, or has asked them to become. They seem to say: "Don't ask me, I can't explain." They understand that the worst of what we are is what we all have now become. They did not ask for this. They want to be home with their families. They do not want to be tainted with Steven Green's story. The murders are not their portrait.

These soldiers are well aware that for evil to exist it need only happen once, but for goodness to survive it must be constant. You can give out sweets all day long, but one bullet will have children wailing in the streets.

George Bush claims that the US army is able to police itself. The supposed triumph of democracy is that it can bring attention to the horrors perpetrated by the likes of Steven Green, that there is a form of perverse justice at the end. This may well be so, but it is not all. In the end there is an accountability.

Lest we forget, the Commander-in-Chief of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infrantry, 101st Division, of the United States Army, brought us many memorable phrases, such as: 'Bring it on'. 'Mission Accomplished'. 'The Axis of Evil'. 'We will seek out those who hate freedom'. At the fulcrum of hatred lies language.

So, whose fault is it that the Steven Greens of the world slip through the cracks? Is it just an aberration? Who allows a young man with virtually no education into an area of the world where survival depends on a deep intelligence? Who knocked his criminal records off the books and waived him into the army? Who needed fresh meat? Who was it that stepped up to the line and said it was okay that 19-year-old Steven Green should serve his country and the theoretical cause of democracy? Who policed themselves under the broken streetlights of Mahmudiya? Whose desk holds the memory of the phrase that the buck stops here?