No sensible person condones the behaviour of the Talibs In mistreating prisoners and conducting summary executions, we know them (The Taliban) for the barbaric savages that they are...even so,there is no justification for our troops descending, even part way to their level. To me, the urinating on the dead, be they the Taliban, is an understandable but still inexcusible lapse of military discipline. A cavalier attitude to the LOAC and the uniform code of military justice, may lead to a cavalier attitude to other disciplinary issues. Best to stop the rot early than later. We claim to be better than the Taliban....best we show it by our exemplary conduct. Edit: In my searching for resources on military ethics and morality...I chanced upon the following book: 'A Moral Military', by Sydney Axinn - published by Temple University Press. If you open the Amazon site web page, and place your cursor on the image of the 'A Military Morality' book, by clicking the image you can open the contents and selected pages from several selections of the book. Well worth a look. Amazon.com: A Moral Military (9781592139583): Sidney Axinn: Books Sidney Axinn: A Moral Military, The Revised and Expanded Edition My own feelings on the matter is that to deny your enemy human dignity is to, in large measure, surrender one's own human dignity...to be no different to nor better than a pack of ravening hyenas.
.. I would have better received a video of the dismemberment of a dead taliban fighter, with the pieces being tossed into a pen of ravinous hogs, and being eaten and further tore assunder before disappearing completely. . I may be just a little bit nuts, but that's the way it is. . My battle flag is the Jolly Roger. . I guess I will conceed, that for the actions of USA uniform troops, it probably was unacceptable on a minor level.
Wrong is wrong... no amout of rhetoric or excuses will change that... what the did was wrong and damages the creditabality of the US military and it's veterans .... in my day their top kick would take them behind the barracks and read to them from the good book...
I am sure that I and most of us will agree that this brought discredit upon US Military forces. That said, I will also say I believe most Americans could give a rats azz what happens to taliban fighters dead or alive. Further more I agree with you that this should be handled at the lowest level possible. I do not agree that these Marines should be persecuted, imprisoned or drummed out of the service. PC 24/7 of stressed Military members is never going to happen. Each instance of non PC that brings discredit upon the Military should be dealt with. But, no way am I advocating serious punishment against these brave young veterans for a minor indiscretion. jmho of course.
Hey ain't it one of them Asian cultures that use salt to ward off evil spirits ,so they did the best they could with what they had !!
Do that first, then kill them. AND, for crying out loud, do NOT film it. Frankly, I'd rather send them back wet and wounded (say a missing right hand) it'll tie up more of them in the care wards.
I doubt they care much for their wounded - not the way we Westerners do. They don't value Human life as we do. We care for our enemy wounded, if we capture them. Would they do the same for US....? I echo SC's sentiment.
NAHHH!!! NAHHHHHOW!!! thats funny. tacmotsun I agree and as an American citzen I don't give a rats azzz about them, their honor or how the feel about going to meet Alah with a little smell of American tawng running down their back.
That is a specious defence of what was a peurile act of petty revenge and pretty dumb team bonding. A tu quoque argument doesn't make the act any more defensible nor excusable As I have said before...we ought hold ourselves to a higher standard than they, else we are no different than they, just that we delude ourselves that we are not also wearing the kind of black hat that they are wearing. I find it strange, but perhaps unsurprising, that a number of folk here feel that the greater offence was recording the acts of indiscipline, and placing it in the plain view of the world, such that evidence was created so that the offenders were brought to book, and the USA's image of being "the good guys" was besmirched. Keeping atrocities in the dark, and out of sight and mind of the nation in general, probably best suits the perps, and those who exercise command responsibility, either by acts of commission or ommision. However, few dark deeds remain hidden for ever, and eventually the truth will out. Concealing the truth, merely aggravates the offence. Desecrating enemy combatant bodies by p!ssing on them is, on the scale of war crimes fairly small potatoes, and I guess, when the soldiers are dealt with, will, if convicted, most probably expect not much more than a token punishment, more for the embarrasment that they have created than for the offence itself. US troops have committed far more egregious breaches of the LOAC than this gang of incontinent "soldiers", and have only earned quite token slaps on the wrists. The kind of punishment that a soldier might perhaps get for low end drug posession in barracks. Marine accused of killing 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians reaches plea bargain that could see him serve only three months prison | Mail Online Perhaps we don't value human life as much as we think we do. I do not doubt that values accorded to life, and the lives of outsiders to the referrant culture are different between cultures, but it does not absolve us of the value that we place on life and the duty that our soldiers have according to the law to maintain those standards of conduct. To do less is to abandon our own standards as merely being "optional". When soldiers make their own minds up as to what rules they keep and apply, and what rules they choose to discard and disobey, then you have the kind of moral deterioration that saw the disintigration of the soldiery's will to fight in Vietnam, with all the concommitent ill effects on the returning veterans, and on the psyche of the nation as a whole. Perhaps this incident is but a small incident in itself, but it strengthens the Taliban's will and justification to keep fighting, and just complicates any kind of a negotiated disengagement, which may indirectly result in yet more and uneccesary coalition lives. Is the benefit of some bladder relief for some yahoo soldiers worth the grief of some families back home greeting the coffins of their kin, because withdrawal negotiations were more complicated and protracted than they might otherwise have been. Yes in some ways we do value life differently than they do...but not in ways that are necessarily morally superior.
I think my Priest and Friend Father Marc said it best about what the muslims believe about going to see Allah. "They think they will have the 72 virgins...but there wrong, its going to be us Priests who get em!!!"
You look at most of your great warriors who were leaders most of who desecrated the enemy for the world to see and to send a messeage to others. Vlad impaled them alive to inflict pain on the enemy then left them for the others to see, American Indians buried them in the dirt just exposing their heads for animals and insects to inflict pain also worked for the next passer by, some in china would hang them over starving hogs just high enough for the hogs to eat up to the knees and would leave them there for others to see. For a warrior to win he has to be as aggresive and cold as the enemy. When you send gentlemen to fight a barbarian war and if they fight with the morals of gentlemen they will die the death of a victim. An act of violence must be met with a worse violence, these guys are in a war zone their job is to kill the enemy. Why should we show honor to a warrior with no honor? Why should our guy's be forced to extend a honorable death to one's who don't give them one in return? Why should our guys have to clean up the dead of the enemy and rebuild their homes afte we just lost our guys blowing them up and clearing them? The Art of War has many tactics that has been used for 100's of year and still used in other countries that our country would claim to be inhumane or a crime. When you are in another land and sent there to take the lives of other men how can anyone judge what is right or wrong. Taking a pi$$ on the dead enemy is no worse than looking down range and seeing rounds cut them in half or watching your buddy bleed out in the sand next to you or seeing friends come home with a missng arms or legs. You look at other countries when at war and their soldier's do the same thing desecrate the enemy they would be cheering in the streets burning the flag they know that was the enemy and don't deserve the rights of their country.
I begin to wonder if it is your obviously different 'life experience' or your unfortunately over-reaching 'education' that makes you totally MISS the point. We see daily evidence of both on our side of the Big Pond as well. We call them "Liberals"......
Never let it be said that political correctness rules Never let it be said that political correctness rules this site. I have no particular love or affection for Islam, I find it an extremely oppressive and perniciously damaging ideology, and I find its egregiously irrational tenets beyond reasonable, sensible comprehension. Having said that, I don't find the ideologies of Judaism and Christianity all that remarkably more benign in their ill effects upon humanity over the ages. I find it rather depressing that the devotees of one iron age ideology, in what seems to be an interminably unrelenting conflict with a marginally different iron age ideology, both descended from the same bronze age ideology, can't seem to get beyond the evils that they all did to each other centuries ago. But as Forrest Gump may say..."stupid is as stupid does". The only beneficiaries of this kind of unsubtle rhetoric (the "See your Jihad and raise you one Crusade") is only to provide the mad mullahs with propaganda material to confirm and reinforce their own prejudices, and to exploit by exhorting their own gullible adherents to see your crusade, and raise it with an even more intensified jihad....and so the cycle of mutually assured stupidity continues. . Oh....it was a humourous joke....not to be taken too seriously....well....my comments above still stand.
