Unfair blame has come down on the heads of American soldiers and allied Afghan forces over an attack on a civilian hospital in Kunduz last year, while the general in charge of the mission, Major General Sean P. Swindell, faced no consequences, according to an Army officer who spoke exclusively to Mondoweiss.

“This thing was his fucking fault. That general right there avoided all blame,” said “Frank,” — not his real name — of Swindell.

“It sets a really, really bad precedent,” but falls into a broad pattern in the Army: Generals can get away with almost anything.

“I wish the general in charge was prosecuted for this, but that’s my personal opinion. He should be taking ultimate responsibility for it, since he set up the conditions that something like this would happen.”

More disturbing, Frank said he sees the same pattern of self-serving lies and statistics rigging (even inventing targets) to please the chain of command. It’s what happened in Vietnam, with privates, sergeants, captains, majors all reporting body counts as a sign of success, instead of making any meaningful evaluation of whether the United States was winning or losing (because we weren’t). Now, in Afghanistan, it’s number of “targets actioned,” drone hits or false arrests made in raids, that officers try to inflate. It’s the reason we’re losing, Frank feels. He was fed up.

Frank contacted me after reading a New York Times Magazine story, sincerely and skillfully reported from Afghanistan, that said the Afghan army might bear some responsibility for calling in an attack that killed 42 people, burning some alive in their hospital beds. More than that, the story alleges that Afghan security forces harbor suspicion of the charity organization that runs the hospital, Doctors Without Borders, and that might have lead them to “deliberately” target the building.

The army’s own report, according to the Times, includes indicators that the Afghans were partially to blame. Frank fears that the U.S. government is trying to pin blame not just on middle level officers, but also on the Afghan special forces, the Kta Khas (KKA), whose lives were at stake in the firefight.

Frank says that he doesn’t believe the allegation, nor does he believe the motive the Times offers — Afghan army hated MSF because it treated the Taliban — is valid, and neither do his colleagues. He’d blame the Afghans for corruption and desertion, but not premeditated murder.

“I knew the company commanders, I knew all of them, and there’s no way that somebody’s going to have a personal grudge against that hospital that said ‘You know, while we’re here, lets take this place out,'” he said.

Two months before the nightmare at Kunduz, a new general, Swindell, had yet again changed the relationship between the U.S. Army and their Afghan counterparts. A series of generals and colonels come through Kabul, and never develop a relationship with the place. Swindell was no different, taking a ‘my way or the highway’ approach, Frank recalls.

The Times talks about the Army being stretched thin and contorted as they became both comrades-in-arms and instructors in warfare for the Afghans. But The Times never says who was making those decisions that set the scene for the tragedy. That was Swindell, according to Frank.

“He wanted to push the Afghans into situations that their advisors, who’d been working with them for months, didn’t think they were ready for,” Frank said.

“He said he didn’t care,” he said. “His thing was getting all these targeting forces under his control, like trying to get all these targeting assets for SOJTF (Special Operations Joint Task Force), so he himself could make decisions as to which targets to strike.”

Swindell was transferred back to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida in February, after serving a six month stint in Afghanistan. Frank, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, remembers Swindell as being arrogant and overbearing.

“He was a fucking asshole,” he said.

Frank requested anonymity, fearing using his real name would end his career. He chose to take a risk and speak out because “the toxic leadership environment in the army is something that will not fix itself” and because he cares about Afghans who are being thrown under the bus.

“I made real connections there,” over the year he spent as a special operations officer, working with Afghans in order to train them to take over when all Americans forces, hypothetically, leave the country. There are people that I care about there,” he said.

He feels that blaming the Afghans fits into the Pentagon’s culture of pushing away blame whenever possible and bureaucratizing deadly violence. The culture resembles a typical police department, just one with many more guns.

It’s also a bit like the mafia, but with more Powerpoint presentations and fewer vicious beatings. Generals are “made” members of the organization, they can do no wrong. Or like tenured professors, who are right no matter what.

“Even as a Colonel, you’re pretty much bulletproof,” Frank said. “I guess a Lt. Col. is still expendable,” he said.The Pentagon did not contradict any part of the Times investigation, which examines MSF’s role as a neutral provider of medical aid amid constant war. It supplied the Times comment after the publication of the story. “The comprehensive investigation that followed the Kunduz tragedy determined that all members of both the ground force and the AC-130 aircrew were unaware that the aircraft was firing on a medical facility throughout the engagement,” Pentagon Spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement tacked to the bottom of the Times story. “The investigation ultimately concluded that this tragic incident was caused by a combination of human errors, compounded by process and equipment failures,” he adds. Frank doesn’t buy that. “You can literally say that about anything that ever happens on any operation: human error, process failures and equipment failures. There are equipment failures on every mission and people mistakes on every mission,” he said. “That is such a bullshit non-answer.” Swindell did get a little muddy, with his name appearing in a 2009 Foreign Policy article. “Now the U.S. Defense Department is launching a politically charged probe into whether three American officers, Maj. Gen. Sean Swindell, Maj. Gen. Scott West, and Lt. Col. Jason Johnston will suffer the same fate,” the article states.