double consciousness?

A good piece about the most recent atrocity, rogue soldier, "bad apple" in The Guardian by veteran and student, Ross Caputi.

the baddest apple

It's hard to fathom this horror: a U.S. Army staff sergeant leaves his base in the middle of the night and goes door-to-door murdering 16 people in Afghanistan, including 9 children.  (He set fire to some of the bodies -- because? so no one would notice?)  Dave Grossman begins On Killing, his book about training soldiers to kill, with the assumption that people have an innate resistance to killing other people.  He estimates that only about 2% of soldiers are "natural killers" -- those who kill willingly and without remorse or regret --  which he says is about the same as in the general population.  I'm assuming this guy went nuts because this is nuts, aberrant, bad apple to the max.  I don't believe he's representative of soldiers in Afghanistan, except perhaps in seeing Afghans as less than human, which is one of the factors Grossman cites in getting soldiers over their reluctance to pull the trigger.  Wars dehumanize -- the killers, as well as the killed -- which brings me back to where I always begin: What is this sergeant and all the other soldiers who obey rules of engagement doing in Afghanistan in the first place?