१२ जानेवारी, २०१२
"This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms."
"We expressly ask the US government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime." — Hamid Karzai.
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१२३ टिप्पण्या:
I'm shocked! I'm outraged. OUTRAGED!!!! No, wait. I'm over it. Carry on.
Marines being Marines. Gotta love em.
Sometimes you just gotta go.
Still, why create propaganda?
And yet, no comments about acid on young women, the bombing of children, the torture of innocents. Ya gotta wonder what kind of deal he has worked out with the Taliban when we pull out. I suspect this will add to the din and work in favor of Obama's desire to withdraw before the election this year.
As for the act itself, if actually true - the Taliban reap what the sow.
War.
Don't make a recording (any type). If you don't know that you deserve what ever comes.
US to Karzai -- piss off.
Lots of careers of lots of Marine leaders from Lance Corporal to perhaps Captain just ended.
Not apologizing for it, but troops of any branch are prone to do stupid things in groups. That is why they have sergeants -- to stop such things.
Very tasteless but the Taliban aren't an honorable enemy so I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about it.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the media would blame our President for these kinds of incidents.
My, how times have changed.
Not so bad as hanging the charred remains of body part from a bridge, but no Muslim will ever make that comparison.....I don't know how vile the act is, but the act of recording and uploading it is extremely stupid.
We, too, have lost our humanity.
More fodder for the BBC's anti-war, anti-aggression Leftist worldview.
I can't say I'm that surprised, just try not to film it, guys.
If this involved civilians or noncombatants, I would be pissed, and have plenty to say about it, but not being a warrior myself, I will not tell them how to treat the bodies of their vanquished in combat, who moments earlier were trying to kill them. This is between warriors. I wish they didn't do it, but I won't judge such men in that situation. I'm not worthy of that. I'm fine with whatever the Marine do about it,including nothing or the most sever punishment available. I hope people like me have no say in it.
I believe they did this sort of thing on Guadalcanal.
And, yeah, Tosa's right. Tons of heads will roll over this one.
PS IIRC, in the Middle East, maintaining the body after death is a very sensitive issue for religions other than Islam, too.
The only thing we should be doing with respect to Karzai is arresting him for corruption.
Every Taliban member caught should be immediately fed bacon. and found dead, or almost dead, should have pig fat rubbed over them. They are scum of their Earth, and do not deserve respect.
Or, rather, they deserve the exact amount of respect that they show to those who are at their mercy. Which is none.
Well, it's the flip side of the sword that is ubiquitous video/photo capture, isn't it? On one side you get great coverage of the Capitol protests and the other, you get something that will be highly inflamatory in an already difficult part of the world. It is what it is. I'm just surprised that the military command has been so blind to the presence of video and photo equipment in places where these kind of images can be captured. Young people have a totally different sense of privacy and propriety in terms of what they share via the Internet, and the armed forces are made up of, largely,...young people. So, this is something that should have been anticpated and prevented by the commanders.
Mind you, I'm not complaining about pissing on the bodies. I'm complaining about the photography and the disemination of the photographs, and the fact that no one with responsibility prevented this.
Like a lot of people, Karzai has to say what he has to say, regardless of how he feels about it. We all swim in bullshit, and get short gulps of the truth, enough to stay alive.
Wait 'till they find out that
we only use Marines that have been on an exclusive diet of pork products to provide the golden "salute."
Yes, this was stupid, and it doesn't help us win hearts and minds.
But consider how few such incidents there have been over the many years of these two wars. Whenever you take a group of hundreds of thousands of people, there will be a few knuckleheads in there.
Overall, the people who have prosecuted this war have been the best, most honorable, most effective representatives we've ever sent overseas.
.
With no latrine handy it was certainly better than polluting the ground and drowning innocent insects. Hats off to their good judgment.
.
"There was a time, not so long ago, when the media would blame our President for these kinds of incidents.
My, how times have changed."
Nothing's changed.
It's still Bush's fault.
BagOH2 -
Not Warrior to Warrior, Warrior to SCUM. Had the Taliban been Warriors, they would not have been treated this way.
They hide behind women and children. They deliberately target medical personnel. The use women, children, and the handicapped to deliver bombs and as bait. They use protected structures (e.g. hospitals, schools, mosques) as firing points. etc.
When they start fighting as respectable Warriors, the Marines will no doubt treat them as such.
However, as has been pointed out, this is a complete violation of what is expected of our Marines and Soldiers and a lot of careers just came to a shattering halt.
Orion
(I *AM* in the US Military, although the opinions I'm stating here are mine and mine alone. I do not speak for the US in any way, shape, or form)
Funny how it's the active duty Marines who massacred the families in Haditha, who killed two men in my battalion with a drone strike in Helmand and who urinate on terrorists and are stupid enough to make a video of it.
Yet they don't trust the reserve Marines.
I hope they get tossed in the brig, for their stupidity if nothing else. Whether they like the methods used in this war or not, the fact is that we are not fighting the armed enemy as much as we're fighting the perceptions of the war from home. They just lost a major battle. Idiots.
These ragheads can pound sand. I don't want to see one American hero get his career trashed because of this. Normal rules of war do not apply to these camel humpers because they are fanatical terrorists. Screw them and let them drink piss.
Don't care. Wish we would leave so they can go back to butchering each other like they were before we thought they could be civilized.
Hang around savages long enough and you become one.
I bet Assad is happy for this nice diversion so he can continue slaughtering more of his own people without getting a strongly worded condemnation from the international community.
This incident reminds me of the Camille Paglia passage from an early chapter of Sexual Personae where she writes: "To piss on is to criticize.... Women will never master this form of self-expression."
wv:nuakedan
Wow, Althouse, your commentors are truly depraved. Glad you all enjoyed the war porn, you sick f'ers.
"Overall, the people who have prosecuted this war have been the best, most honorable, most effective representatives we've ever sent overseas."
And the best anyone has ever sent to fight anywhere, anytime. That's one of the reason there is a thing called American Exceptionalism. It's not just a phrase - it's a fact.
Sad, as it only gives our enemies ammo in the public relations war, which, like it or not, we have to win as well.
That said, who knows what led up to this moment. Had the little more than animal Taliban just killed or wounded one of their fellow Marines?
We don't know and therefore should not jump to judgement.
Frankly, the men doing this deserve a kick in the butt and perhaps reassignment to other units. Past that, nothing. It's fucking war, after all.
Unfortunately politics will mandate more which is a shame.
Highly recommended reading:
The Korean War: An Oral History: Pusan to Chosin by Donald Knox.
Real war isn't anything like you see in the movies.
Eiaftinfo notes it: an enemy that tortures to death captured soldiers, teaches their kids to cut peoples' heads off, blinds girls for going to school... hear damn little about that. A few troops do this? OUTRAGE!! etc.
As to Karzai, well, not piss off: piss on him.
You want to know some part of what's behind this? Finding out the President is 'negotiating' with a Taliban bigshot to basically hand the place back over to them. You think that helps morale?
He's Gumby Dammit said:
"Glad you all enjoyed the war porn, you sick f'ers."
Oh I do, but I prefer the videos of A-10s and JDAMs wiping out Taliban strongholds.
Those rock.
The most shockingly ironic quote on this story so far was the Taliban spokesman calling it "barbaric", followed in a close second by the spokesman from CAIR saying it breaks the laws of war.
If it indeed turns out to be true that members of our armed service were treating deceased enemy in this manner, their NCO should be prosecuted to the full extent of the UCMJ, with lessor sentences/penalties handed out to the men in question. Any officer on hand should receive double or triple whatever the NCO does.
None of which takes one atom of irony away from the Taliban and CAIR comments.
Let me know when and where your service will be, Gumby, and I'll put together a golden honor guard for you too. It's kept Carter alive and kicking all these years.
WV? liguid
Finally, leaks I can support.
"Finally, leaks I can support."
We have a winner for Best of Thread!
"...in the Middle East, maintaining the body after death is a very sensitive issue for religions other than Islam, too."
Oh, you mean the way that they set the severed head back on top of the corpse for picture taking, like that?
This is the sort of thing that will happen more often now that our leaders have declared it is perfectly okay to have avowed sodomizers of all stripes in the military. These actions quite reasonably will cause ordinary Afghans to doubt our motives--much more so than elitists clueless about the depths of natural defenses against sodomy will realize.
The Marines promised to be the Taliban's best friend or their worst enemy.
They chose wrong and are being treated as enemies.
Maybe Allah can help them. No, he has no mercy either.
"This is the sort of thing that will happen more often now that our leaders have declared it is perfectly okay to have avowed sodomizers of all stripes in the military. These actions quite reasonably will cause ordinary Afghans to doubt our motives--much more so than elitists clueless about the depths of natural defenses against sodomy will realize."
I smell a troll . . .
NYTNewYorker said...
"...in the Middle East, maintaining the body after death is a very sensitive issue for religions other than Islam, too."
Oh, you mean the way that they set the severed head back on top of the corpse for picture taking, like that?
That's for the other side.
If you want to get people to think you're doing this partly for them, you don't do stuff like this.
I'm thinking more of "hearts and minds" and General Petraeus' COIN manual and all kinda stuff like that there.
Remember, it's against the law to do autopsies in Israel for similar reasons.
PS Wanna bet this will be another excuse for GodZero to pull us out before it's prudent?
"PS Wanna bet this will be another excuse for GodZero to pull us out before it's prudent?"
He's already doing that. Still, I'm for getting all of them out as soon a possible. They've bleed enough for what is historically always a losing venture.
That should read "bled" by the way.
they shoulda pissed on them, then killed them. and it still would have been to kind of a fate.
"This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms."
Really? This act requires the "strongest possible terms"? Wow, I wonder what's left if we really get angry and start destroying cities wholesale (out of character for the US but par for the course for armies throughout history and the world.)
If people pay too much attention to this, that's telling me that our soldiers are doing an astonishing job. Because it's nonsense like this that tells us that the sheep are worried less about the threat of the wolf and more about the manners of the sheepdog. When the wolves are among the flock, the sheep don't care about where the sheepdogs piss.
Karzai, CAIR, the Taliban criticize this dishonorable act by US military.
That's tactic pioneered by leftist Saul Alinsky, no?
Hold your enemy to the highest standards while using any despicable tactic in your own efforts.
There seems to be less and less daylight between Islamofacism and Liberal Facism (as practiced/demonstrated on the Western Left) all the time.
Love is greatly oversold in the affairs of nations and peoples.
"Let them hate us as long as they fear us more"
- a Roman Emperor
"Wow, Althouse, your commenters are truly depraved."
No, the truly depraved are the sick fucks who sawed off Nick Berg's head. These Marines deserve a hearty "oo-rah!" and a free round of drinks.
edutcher said...
I believe they did this sort of thing on Guadalcanal.
Could have been worse. These were snipers. The classic Guadalcanal photo would have been a pile of bodies and a "big game hunter" pose
Gumby said...
Wow, Althouse, your commentors are truly depraved. Glad you all enjoyed the war porn, you sick f'ers.
The Marines were twice dumb. Once for doing it, which I understand and carries on a tradition that is 10,000 years old and ingrained in the alpha male DNA. I'm serious here.
Secondly, and the greater dumbness was taking a picture these days.
I regret it, but fully understand it. In my day, troops got hung out to dry for tacking our unit patch to corpses "to encourage the others"
getting in the enemy's head is half the battle.
Fear is the mind-killer
- Dune
"Secondly, and the greater dumbness was taking a picture these days."
And who allows themselves to be videoed?
If we do stuff like this they will one day start trying to kill us. It's so bad that the BBC will have to run this 24/7/365 just to appeal to the Afghan community to keep calm.
"This is utterly unacceptable and should be thoroughly investigated by the appropriate authorities. If these were in fact US soldiers committing these acts, throw the book at them. I’d even go so far as to echo what the late Christopher Hitchens said post-Abu-Gharib about the perpetrators and treat it as an act of deliberate sabotage/mutiny/treason during a time of war and send them before a firing squad."
Whoa there fella, slow down. These guys will be punished but seriously, Treason? Mutiny? Give us a break.
Hitchens should too, but he's up there arguing with Saint Pete about not having a reservation.
It's true. Only uncircumsized men, and circumcized women should piss on a muslim corpse.
Sad, as it only gives our enemies ammo in the public relations war, which, like it or not, we have to win as well.
If by “public relations war,” the commentor means hoping that they would please stop hating us and killing us – THAT is a war we will never win. They hate us because we are free, democratic and are infidels(not Islamic). The lack of a bit of pissing will never change that. I gave up long ago worrying about what Islam thinks about the Free World.
"Let them hate us as long as they fear us more"
Wisdom.
Agree with TWM.
This was on the Abu Graib scale of dumb, but somebody needs to seriously look up the meanings of treason and mutiny or be accused of the same level of stupidity.
Or, at least, ignorance.
Train men to kill and destroy. Then send them halfway around the world to kill people and destroy stuff.
Then.
Bad things happen.
It's a good idea not to send men to kill and destroy unless you want a lot of bad things to happen. Nitpicking about what soldiers do on the battlefield is getting it ass backwards.
It is best to be very circumspect before sending men to kill and destroy. Before. Not after.
If this involved civilians or noncombatants, I would be pissed, and have plenty to say about it, but not being a warrior myself, I will not tell them how to treat the bodies of their vanquished in combat, who moments earlier were trying to kill them. This is between warriors. I wish they didn't do it, but I won't judge such men in that situation. I'm not worthy of that. I'm fine with whatever the Marine do about it, including nothing or the most sever punishment available. I hope people like me have no say in it.
I can’t go along with that, it sounds too much like equally invalid “chickenhawk” non-sequitor that is used selectively by some during elections. We have civilian control of our military for a reason and the men and women we send into harm’s way deserve our support because of the great responsibility that they have assumed. If and when some of them violate the trust they have been given, as appears to be the case here, we have our own responsibility to hold them accountable.
Giving the enemy a propaganda coup like this is utterly unacceptable just like it was with Abu-Gharib. The fact that the people we’re fighting have done and will likely continue to do far worse and with less outrage from the “international community” and the professional grievance mongers doesn’t change that at all. I think that most of the members of our military – particularly those who have served in combat – realize that this inequity doesn’t alter their responsibility and the increased danger created both to themselves and those they are charged to protect by idiocy like this.
I state unequivocally that the appropriate legal authorities need to thoroughly investigate this and if it was in fact US military personnel (and not a faked video which seems unlikely) who did this, throw the book at them.
"If by “public relations war,” the commentor means hoping that they would please stop hating us and killing us – THAT is a war we will never win. They hate us because we are free, democratic and are infidels(not Islamic). The lack of a bit of pissing will never change that. I gave up long ago worrying about what Islam thinks about the Free World."
No, that is not what I meant. Winning the hearts and minds of radical Muslims is impossible. And until moderate Muslims are willing to stand up to that radicalism, we can never change what they think, save through kicking their asses again and again.
But the support of our allies - weak though it is much of the time - is something we need to always consider. Not to mention the support of our own people, some of who may turn away from supporting our troops upon seeing things like this.
grackle said...
"Let them hate us as long as they fear us more"
Timeless Wisdom.
fixed :)
Tank said...
Train men to kill and destroy. Then send them halfway around the world to kill people and destroy stuff.
The icon says it all
"When it absolutely, positively must be destroyed overnight"
- USMC
The Taliban complained this was barbaric. They should know.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta says a video which appears to show US Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghans is "utterly deplorable".
If the BBC is writing about our Secretary of Defense shouldn't they spell "defense" the way we spell it? This is an international affront and a failure of the British to recognize our independence and the lives of those soldiers who died in the Revolutiionary War. Disgusting.
If it indeed turns out to be true that members of our armed service were treating deceased enemy in this manner, their NCO should be prosecuted to the full extent of the UCMJ, with lessor sentences/penalties handed out to the men in question. Any officer on hand should receive double or triple whatever the NCO does.
And yet you sleep warm in your bed because rough men and women are willing to do violence on your behalf.
Strange.
If we were fighting a real war, the way a real war is supposed to be fought, this would not matter in the least. That is does matter proves that we are not using our military in the way that it ought to be used. Nation building is bullshit. Hearts and minds is a waste. We pay alot of money for our great commanders, great soldiers and great weapons, and we should expect that they be used to destroy our enemies ... and nothing else.
I'm thinking more of "hearts and minds" and General Petraeus' COIN manual and all kinda stuff like that there.
Old Marine saying; Grab em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow.
"Thank God for the United States Marines."
Anonymous American medical student on the island of Granada.
And yet you sleep warm in your bed because rough men and women are willing to do violence on your behalf.
You betcha and should one of those “rough men and women” decide to violate the trust that they’ve been given and voluntarily accepted, they can and should be held accountable. This kind of juvenile garbage makes it more difficult and dangerous for the other “rough men and women” who take that trust seriously to do their job.
If US soldiers did this, throw the book at them.
And yet you sleep warm in your bed because rough men and women are willing to do violence on your behalf. Strange.
I once did violence on your behalf. My entire family has and continues to (I have relatives in-theater, in fact). The next generation is already looking forward to it. I feel completely comfortable voicing my opinion on the matter in exactly the way I did.
Strange that you didn't consider that a possibility.
I think it is kind of hot.
tits.
True--they should have had a pig or a dog piss on their bodies...
While I fully agree with Thorley Winston, I'm enough of a materialist to propose that, for the corpses, the worst insult isn't the pissing but the deadness.
Short response to Roger Zimmerman -- What exactly is a "real" war? Was WWI real enough?
Rusty said...
I'm thinking more of "hearts and minds" and General Petraeus' COIN manual and all kinda stuff like that there.
Old Marine saying; Grab em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow.
Didn't work so well in 'Nam, did it?
"Thank God for the United States Marines."
Anonymous American medical student on the island of Granada.
No, he said, "God bless America, man."
Because it was the Rangers who rescued them.
Look, there is a need to distinguish between our own anger, sorrow and shame over the fact of this egregious breakdown in discipline, and the outrage expressed by the Taliban and their supporters.
The Taliban are an organization that, through its embrace of terrorism as a strategy, has forfeited any right to express outrage over ANYTHING we do. Their opinions on this issue can't have merit -- how could they? They're no more worth paying attention to than those of a child, or an axe murderer.
There are good reasons to pursue the culprits in this case, and take whatever corrective actions are required, but none of them have anything to do with what the vile Taliban may or may not think.
Order the offenders to be struck five or six times by the bottoms of the shoes of a subordinate, then have dogs lick their faces, then make them eat pork with their left hands.
That will count as severe punishment in the neighborhood, won't it?
We'll see how this shakes out.
Anonymous American medical student on the island of Granada.
No, he said, "God bless America, man."
Because it was the Rangers who rescued them.
LOL, you mean it wasn't Gunny Highway and his misfits? That the Marine were on the opposite side of the island and it was 1/75 Rangers :)
The Rangers need a better press agent...
PS: There is a snarky comment about the Marines that applies to this photo incident. goes something like:
Ever since Iwo, the Marine rifle squad has been 10 shooters and a combat photographer, and every Marine as a flag in his pack...
While I fully agree with Thorley Winston, I'm enough of a materialist to propose that, for the corpses, the worst insult isn't the pissing but the deadness.
From a purely materialistic perspective, I agree that it’s worse to be dead than to be urinated on. However the relevant perspective isn’t that of the dead who are past caring, it’s the people who are still living and observing who haven’t had either done to them.
As irrational as it may seem, many people get more upset over an injury or insult done to a third person than they do seeing them dead. Some people for example were more upset over whether people were being tortured or humiliated than they were over collateral damage. I remember seeing the photos of Abu Gharib repeated ad nauseum but I can’t think of the last image that I saw (if any) in a major news outset showing the body of an innocent person who was accidentally killed in a crossfire or in an airstrike.
It isn’t just people in the Arab world who feel this way, I remember frequent conversations with classmates in Crim Pro and Torts when reading a case in which a victim had suffered a horrific accident or assault and hearing someone say “I’d rather be dead” even when the physical injuries weren’t permanent. Logically you’d think it’s always worse to be dead but for some reason when people learn about bad stuff that happens to others, they often focus more on the injury or humiliation than they do contemplating how much worse it would be to be dead. I’m not sure why that is but it’s something that affects a lot of people in a powerful way and rational or not, it’s there.
"Macho bullshite."
You're not macho? You should be. Chicks did it.
You're not macho? You should be. Chicks did it.
I hate it when chicks do macho. In fact, it's my least favorite trend in action/sci-fi fare.
Sarge, the reason I remember the quote is because he put it on the tape recorder he used for class lectures and, after all the yoot "culture" of the Vietnam era, I never thought I'd hear an American under 40 say, "God bless America".
@Thorley -- Wholly agree. That is the psychological framework that struck me rather strongly in this story. The fact that we are turning Taliban into corpses is accepted; once dead, the relation changes. They are no longer an enemy. In a religious or even a humanistic sense, the enemy becomes human again in death.
And this is fitting for our ethos. Respect for corpses, just as for prisoners, distinguishes between killing and murder; between killing and desecration.
Eff Karzai, the taliban, and CAIR.
The only reason they care is so they can score points with Liberals. Get enough points and you can do whatever the hell you want. Just ask Fidel, Hugo, and Obama.
What these marines did was wrong. But I'm not going to get my panties in a wad about it. As some have stated, a lot of careers just ended. Sounds about right to me. Careers. That's it. Discharge 'em. Period.
Some young men, all alpha-male types, in a group made entirely of alpha-males, did something stupid. Who'da thunk it.
As far as using the military as it's supposed to be used...you're right. The US military is made to battle other "traditional" armies. This is not that fight. The taliban is just one head of the Islamo-facist network.
You fight a pig in a wallow the pigs gonna win every time, and enjoy getting dirty. Fight unconventionally. Spec-ops and drone flights with hellfire missiles. Assassination is a Islamic concept. And instead of DHS checking paraplegic underwear at airports, undercover agents in mosques across America.
Or use the conventional military and wipe out every muslim in the world. That'll work, right?
They shouldn't have done it. It doesn't reflect American values. But I can't really get upset over it either.
What I want to know is: who's the doofus Marine who thought videotaping this was a good idea?
If US soldiers did this, throw the book at them.
They're not soldiers. They're Marines.
They don't like being referred to as "soldiers"
And if you don't want your rotting corpse pissed on, don't pick a fight with the Marines.
War sucks.
"And yet you sleep warm in your bed because rough men and women are willing to do violence on your behalf."
I keep hearing this self-congratulatory admonishment to those who rightly protest our various and many wars and I keep wondering: just what violence done by rough men and women has protected me or my loved ones and fellow Americans or kept anyone safe...and from whom?
There hasn't been a war we've fought since WWII that has been in self-defense, or been necessary for our safety or protection, or been anything other than America's assertion of political dominance or our striking a claim for access to and control over material resources in other parts of the world.
Oh, I have no doubt many men and women in combat believe they're fighting the good fight to protect America and Americans...but they're wrong. They've been lied to and they kill and die for lies.
Rusty said...
If US soldiers did this, throw the book at them.
They're not soldiers. They're Marines.
They don't like being referred to as "soldiers"
"Soldier" was good enough for George Washington, Robert E Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, and Douglas MacArthur.
Good enough for them, too.
Out of respect, marines should be called, "Marines", but there's no shame and a lot of pride and honor in "Soldier".
Robert Cook said...
"And yet you sleep warm in your bed because rough men and women are willing to do violence on your behalf."
I keep hearing this self-congratulatory admonishment to those who rightly protest our various and many wars and I keep wondering: just what violence done by rough men and women has protected me or my loved ones and fellow Americans or kept anyone safe...and from whom?
There hasn't been a war we've fought since WWII that has been in self-defense, or been necessary for our safety or protection, or been anything other than America's assertion of political dominance or our striking a claim for access to and control over material resources in other parts of the world.
WWII was the war fought to save Communism and the ones since have been fought to destroy it.
That's why Cook's mad.
So Cookie,
want to tell us how you really feel?
The righteous indignation over this is laughable - war is hell. By definition, it doesn't even meet the 'torture' standard.
Heck, living/breathing Americans get pissed on daily by our government. These jackals don't bother for us to be in our graves before it starts.
As for Karzai, well, piss on him too.
So to clarify:
These dead Afghans are dead for marauding throughout the country, bringing violence and misery everywhere they went, but what is actually " simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms" is that these corpses got urinated on? Seriously?
I guess we'll just chalk this up to Karzai being a standard politician and completely lacking any sort of, you know, a sense of proportion.
No word on the woman rescued from husband who wanted to force her to protistuion in .. Afgahnistan?
http://www.abc.es/20120108/internacional/abci-nina-afganistan-tortura-carcel-201201081722.html
Ken said...
These dead Afghans are dead for marauding throughout the country, bringing violence and misery everywhere they went
LOL,
Read Kipling, these Afghans were just doing what Afghans do do :)
Piss on them.
just what violence done by rough men and women has protected me or my loved ones and fellow Americans or kept anyone safe...and from whom?
The Taliban are primarily a threat to the people of Afghanistan, so in this case the people being kept safe are, for the most part, people in Afghanistan.
Such as Hamid Karzai, who -- were it not for the Marines -- would probably have been lying dead in a ditch somewhere circa 2003.
There hasn't been a war we've fought since WWII that has been in self-defense, or been necessary for our safety or protection, or been anything other than America's assertion of political dominance or our striking a claim for access to and control over material resources in other parts of the world.
Oh, I have no doubt many men and women in combat believe they're fighting the good fight to protect America and Americans...but they're wrong. They've been lied to and they kill and die for lies.
-------------
Hey, Robert, are you a truther?
You never seem to answer this question.
But the tone of your above comments seems to suggest that you do not think the Afghan war was a war of self defense, thus suggesting that you are a truther fuckstick.
There hasn't been a war we've fought since WWII that has been in self-defense
Depends on what "self-defense" means. If response to a declaration of war counts, the war against Al Qaeda is in self-defense. Of course, if it doesn't count, then the European theater of WW2 wasn't self-defense either.
That aside, while most of our wars haven't been fought in defense of American lives, most of them have qualified as "defensive" in the sense that we intervened on the side of the defending party against the invading or aggressor party. Examples include Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and the European theater of WW2.
Probably better than WWII in the Pacific when Americans would decapitate dead Japanese soldiers and boil the heads to remove the flesh. Then the skulls were bleached. Many such prizes of war were taken or sent back to the USA. One famous picture in Life shows a pretty young American woman contemplating such a skull.
War desensitizes all who are in combat to killing and death. That loss of sensibility is a necessary defense for the combat warrior but also a moral and tactical challenge for the combatants.
The actions of the Marines were a serious breach of the standards of the Corps and of discipline.
That this seems to be the worst "atrocity" committed (or at least publicized) in a 10 year war shows how strong the discipline and restraint of these amazing warriors actually is.
David,
Nice picture of St Phillips Church.
Hey, Hamid, yeah, these nasty Marines didn't first cut off the head of those heroic Talibad jerks, so these Marines must be punished. After all, the proper way to deal with your capture or killed enemy is to cut off their heads, hang their bodies from bridges, and burn their bodies beyond recognition. Yep, that's the Muslim way.
Ok, Hamid, I'll give you that point, but my real concern is why weren't our troops properly schooled on concepts like not advertising one's own idiotic acts.
I know Marines videoed dancing around their MRAPS got away with it, so maybe that's the first lesson, so don't let anyone get away with anything if it goes viral.
Ps: Those earlier Marines were lucky.
PPs: At least some Talibad's get turned in the POW cage; lucky stiffs.
This even is a political problem, but I think it's only made worse for us when our own government accepts and validates the cries of outrage. Doing so unruffles no feathers. It's a mistake not to push back with absolute moral clarity that we refuse to allow ourselves to be scolded. If our humanity requires higher standards it is only because WE are human. If THEY want to declare that THEY are not, then we need to say so. Turn the shame back where it belongs, to those who throw acid on little girls.
And slap the wrists of the idiot Marines involved. There is no doubt that they broke specific rules besides simply being stupid. But allow the double standard to stand? Who do we enable and what human horror do we enable when we refuse engaging in the moral level of this conflict? It's not just the hearts and minds part of it that we lose when we cede that battle.
Our enemy says, "Look! How evil you are!"
And our government and state department says, "Yes, look how evil we are!"
How does that win any moral argument? We're not at war with Lutherans, after all.
"Wow, Althouse, your commentors are truly depraved. Glad you all enjoyed the war porn, you sick f'ers."
It's about being human and who is accountable for minor offenses because they are human, and who is not accountable for horrific offenses because they are not human.
Progressives are the most gawd awful racists on the planet.
If it indeed turns out to be true that members of our armed service were treating deceased enemy in this manner, their NCO should be prosecuted to the full extent of the UCMJ, with lessor sentences/penalties handed out to the men in question. Any officer on hand should receive double or triple whatever the NCO does.
The stress of war takes its toll on the minds of men. Counseling for traumatic stress would be more appropriate. While socially unacceptable, urinating on a dead body isn't like what was done to Daniel Pearl or Leon Klinghoffer.
While we express our "disgust", we need to remember who the barbarians we are fighting are and have compassion for our own soldiers who are under great stress. This is far from Mai Lai or even Abu Graib.
We can't have our men and women peeing on the enemy.
"Hey, Robert, are you a truther?
"You never seem to answer this question."
How can I "never seem to answer" a question I'm never asked?
I'm not a truther.
All the same, our invasion of Afghanistan was not in defense of our country, and our decade long war there is not in defense of our country.
I have pissed on people and they have been pissed on me and it can be kind of hot.
No scat for me though.
"You betcha and should one of those “rough men and women” decide to violate the trust that they’ve been given and voluntarily accepted, they can and should be held accountable."
That trust goes both ways. We are not doing our part any better than these guys did. You may feel comfortable asking men to kill and die as well as act according to your standards while they do it, but I'll just say "Thank you, men." I would ASK them to think again about recording it though. That's a tactical mistake, for which they should be punished. It will simply encourage the populace to help the Taliban and resist us, while accomplishing nothing. That's the one and only outrage about it.
I draw the line on farting on a sexual partner though.
Friends, natch, but not someone I am going to splew with.
The one being pissed upon should be the Politician that sent 30,000 new Marines in so he could look tough and then he could surrender at the announced date.
The mountain valleys with their single road through tham serving as the Taliban's shooting range never went away even after 10 years of media stories assuring us that the Afghan terrain is like Iraq.
Fantasy is a big waste of life and treasure. And Bush started that before Obama tripled down to make our military, that Obama hates so much, really look like losers.
This whole argument, or perhaps the episode, is not over. I think it might have gotten a boost back when Fallujah was being terrorized, when our four contractors were brutally murdered and their bodies defamed. Or maybe when the first Iraqi walked into our lines wearing his, or perhaps, her, bomb vest and then went splat on everyone and everything nearby.
Or, maybe it was when an Afghani trooper decided he didn't want to be near these terrible Yankees so he kills those nearby; "Hey, we thought he was friendly, one of us, no!"
Hamid needs to figure out what he wants for a country, a nation, which Afghanistan is nowhere ready to be , and what consitutes an Afgani civil society; guess perhaps he needs more guns and vest and bomb sniffing dogs.
Meanwhile, our Pols go ape shit over some of our young and totally frustrated troopers acting out their feelings about being shot at.
OK, I buy Madame Hillary's cry some years ago: "They volunteered" for this. Doesn't make it better, does it.
These Marines, and Soldiers, and Airmen, and Coast Guardsmen are doing a great job, so bow slightly to the gods of "no," shake our fingers at our lovely miscreants, and let them go on doing what they can to stay alive and whole in body.
Edutcher wrote, "Soldier" was good enough for George Washington, Robert E Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, and Douglas MacArthur.
Good enough for them, too.
Out of respect, marines should be called, "Marines", but there's no shame and a lot of pride and honor in "Soldier".
I'm sorry but I don't agree. Nothing against Washington et al.. Washington is my number one hero and role model, but he'wasn't a Marine. It's not polite to object to the term "soldier" too strenuously, but we do prefer to be called Marines, not soldiers. Or you can get all formal and call us soldiers of the sea, but that's a bit obsolete nowadays.
@ Titus
No dutch ovens for you? Glad to no that there ARE lines :-)
I was having "relations" with a female friend once. to see if anything more was there (there wasn't) when something occurred down there that wasn't me. My wife insists that I got peed on. Being a somewhat naive fellow, I honestly can't say. So if you get peed on and you like it, more power to you. If you pee on your partner, let them know.
Yeah, Bob. It was all for oil. Oh wait....no oil/. Wha?
the earth cries out.
" We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights among which are , life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness...."
But only if you're American.
All the same, our invasion of Afghanistan was not in defense of our country, and our decade long war there is not in defense of our country.
To the Left anything other than response to a full scale invasion of US soil by a uniformed army from a recognized nation is unacceptable – and maybe not even then. All the Islamists and their client rogue states have to do is NOT do the above and the terrorists have the Left’s full approval to murder, plot to murder and otherwise terrorize any innocents they like.
And if a rogue state decides to invade an ally? Well … that’s just fine and dandy and the US should stand by and watch it happen. Serves ‘em right for being our ally, by golly.
Harboring and giving safe haven to terrorists, allowing the terrorists to plot, train for and carry out 9/11 ? No problem. Why? Because the Taliban didn’t actually invade the US with an army in uniform … so the Afghan war is illegitimate. Get it? Yeah, me too.
My wife insists that I got peed on.
Maybe not, although the liquid goes through the same plumbing as urine does.
No, it may have been merely a sign that the lady was enjoying herself very much. One those lesser known yet endearing(if you know what it is) things that can happen during straight sex.
http://tinyurl.com/779lm2w
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