This morning as I drove in the suddenly bitter KC weather to my dental appointment, I heard the "breaking news" of, apparently, a recently surfaced youtube vid showing uniformed US Marines, urinating on the corpses of dead Afghan soldiers... or at least I assumed soldiers.
Needless to say the dead were described as "Taliban," which I suspect personally is a catch-all term used by our military to describe anyone they happen to kill in Afghanistan.
"The Taliban" are, of course, a vile lot, practicing that godless Sharia Law, and as such are worthy of death, right. Who better than Marines to send them to their beloved paradise? Their just reward... but then, to piss all over them, and film it?
" Funny, it's apparently ok for US Marines to shoot and kill "Taliban" but to piss on them afterwards, not so much. OK, not so funny.."
That's what I posted on my facebook page when I walked in the door today. The only comments I received were from an 18 year old friend of my son, a genius of a kid, half black, one quarter Mexican, and one quarter "white." The last comment there is mine.
" .. I can get thirty or forty facebook comments on the silly crap I post but hardly any (besides you Chris) on a serious subject."
No one there besides Chris and I has, as of this moment, a thing to say, so I expect pretty much the same here at OS. It's not, afterall, a fluffy feel good subject is it. Not nearly as interesting as the "slut" whose photograph was rejected by her yearbook committee.
For months, I've avoided the news. The only "news" I get is from NPR, in my truck. You know, wish I hadn't heard this one too.
Why are we in Afghanistan? I won't go into my feelings on that. I will ask however, why... why the prevalent mentality, the one that makes light of killing, then desecrating the lifeless shells of the freshly killed?
Those "Taliban" were people, in their own country doing what they have done since time immemorial. We may find some of their practices repugnant, but do we, the enlightened of the west, hold any moral high ground? I think not.
As an American, I am once again ashamed today.
As this video goes viral, new "terrorist" are born. Many, I'm supposing.
The Ugly American, once again, as if it could actually be so, has just gotten another degree more... ugly.
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Pandora S. Bach
Ande Bliss
Beth Ingalls
jmac1949
Ben Sen
Dr William Lee
Salon.com
Comments
But of course. It's OK for us to wage war and to train our young people to mercilessly slaughter their opponents, but peeing on dead insurgents is just wrong...
Saying Jeff, bad enough to kill there for whatever we justify as good enough reason. On that, I'll give the on the ground Marines slack, as they are following orders. But, they have no code, no sense of respect for the vanquished? The Marine Corp. needless to say, stands behind their recruits as a whole, but I'm betting this kind of "activity" is fairly common...
The inmates are in charge at the asylum.
There was also a story about Homeland Security trolling social media sights. Regardless, no one should desecrate a corpse. It's one thing to kill an enemy but abusing a dead body isn't honorable.
I do think it's OK to hate the taliban. After all, the Afghans hate them too. But it would really be ironic if the furor over pissing is what turns the tide against our unjust waging of this war.
Hard to imagine a President, though, ever having the balls to pull out. A person of conviction will never hold high office ever again this country. We are as Rome after Caesar.
?
Now THAT is some news I have not heard.
There's a reason that four and five stripe sergeants are lead NCOs in many platoons and squads and an even better reason that most butter bar lieutenants accede to the NCO's wisdom in matters of command and control of their troops -- it's that professionalism isn't learned or even instilled in 17-21 year old children who've never been in such situations where they literally have the power of life and death over their opponents -- and their comrades in arms.
To fight with honor doesn't include pissing on your enemy. It doesn't include killing non-combatants or firing on someone you *think* might have a gun in a foreign country.
These young men are wrong to do what they did, but I would also get rid of their immediate NCO and CO, reminding all others who still serve that honor in combat is honoring your country and countrymen. Winning a battle is not winning the war.
As Carl von Clausewitz elegantly states (and it's used in combat command training today as the underpinning of what warfare's intent is) the use of military force has, as it's prime objective, to destroy the enemy's ability and will to fight back.
These kinds of things do not serve that purpose. If anything, they increase the resolve of those who still fight and inculcate in them a desire for vengeance. Do you want our soldiers fighting ever more hardened and defiant Taliban? I certainly don't.
What a shame that someone didn't slap them across their faces in full view of the locals and castigate them for doing such a fucked up thing. That could have gone a long way to reducing tensions as well as preventing a repeat of such ignorant and dishonorable action.
There is no condoning the act, no matter your views on religion, death, dead bodies or warfare. American forces are supposed to be the best trained and most professional forces out there -- pissing on dead enemies doesn't fall into either of those categories.
Robert Crook, from his post linked here by Harry's Ghost..
Robert does in fact cut to the quick. The black unmarked Chevy Suburban dudes will probably get Robert before they get me, if they go in order of who lays it on the line better...
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/pentagon-condemns-alleged-marine-misconduct-graphic-video-170756596.html
Phyll, thought you meant ALL soldiers. You weren't clear. Thx
What did you think that crass, uncivilized invaders DO? It's what they're TAUGHT to do. It's how they're taught to think of "them others." Is this really any less honourable than killing their wives and children? Any less honourable than imprisoning anyone the come across when on a 'mission', and torturing them later?
I'm sure that all you folks who are feeling such outrage over this unlovely incident know perfectly well what your government and its military have been doing, still are doing, and will continue doing into the future...... don't you? Or do you just close your eyes to it?
That is war. Real war. Not the heroic, clean-cut, 'Merikan boys "doing a tough job" that you see on the late, late movie. Google "injured in Afghanistan" some time to make this stupidity fade into you mind under the horror of reality. Don't eat before watching.
.
Everything said in my comment above applies to Canada and our military too.
.
That was last March. Everyone gave it a big American yawn.
.
No comment on Facebook. No one wants to hear my diatribe.
Gypsies were killed.
Merchant died too.
Homosexuals too.
Today? Teens`
Snow-borders`
Banker/Thief`
Yiddish\Rabbi`
Baskin Robbin`
Ice Cream\gal`
Lawyers/guys`
chimpanzees,
Fake politicos`
Who knows?
Be honest`
Never steal`
Practice `
compassion.
`
I no what?
Speak.
Be heart.
Be real.
No kill.
“freedom,” some say erroneously, ‘is a
Privilege ya gotta earn, and freedom, she aint free”
Nonsense.
Privilege:an advantage, right, or benefit that is not available to everyone.
Usa a crazy melting pot, some damn cook left the burner on
& went to bed. I suspect it was either Rockefeller or
A Bush.
We in Afghanistan cuzza meta-historical necessity.
We in the Fertile cresent of Iraq, cuzza same.
Ancient ghosts.
Israel our good
Nutso
Buddy.
Got our back! Got their kids in mandatory service!
Ready to go, to blow up nuclear scientific nerds.
Nuclear science is interesting,
But silly repercussions from it.
Einstein is ashamed too.
Piss on enemy is boy stuff. Where are the men?
Are they not supposed to instill dignity in their charges?
Or are we an army of dog soldiers?
Watch more star trek, marines.
Kirk needed.
Spock too.
Ted Sumrall
via RS Comments
So this is how we "get Bin Laden?" No --this is how we make two, three...many Bin Ladens. Time to get out of Afghanistan. We've inflicted enough revenge 9-11's on innocent people. This is how American moral stature in the world is destroyed. This is a national disgrace.
Time Machinist
via RS Comments
The U.S. Military has these soldiers on 2-4 tours of duty. We have turned [them] into killing machines without remorse. Many have become psychotic. Up to 33%... are on painkillers, antidepressants and more. Up to 35% are returning with PTSD and/or TBI. Our military has been broken and command and control is falling apart.
Mark O'Brien
via email
I don't know what's more disgusting -- what this rogue band of murderers did, or all the people defending their actions. What they did is so barbaric and wrong, that to defend it is to give up one's humanity.
Vivek Saxena
via RS Comments
the above, comments at the Rolling Stone article I just read, linked here by H'sG above in comments..
So, after reading THAT, I surmise that the poor dead being pissed upon might have been far from being "Taliban" (as I suspected to begin with)
WIth that said, I agree with dunnitowl that we must continue to fight with honor, and sadly this is just pathetic behavior.
Furthermore, our service men and women are just plain WORN out. Pretty soon (and already), people will start snapping when you work them to the bone. This made obvious by news stories like this. Is this an excuse? No.
We didn't like it did we? We were outraged at their barbarity.
There is no defense to desecratng the dead. Not even when we do it.
Disgusting.
I've worked for and married a lot of assholes and assholes do whatever they can get away with. Our personal standards of honor get lower every year and the Marines are just American men and women. I'm not in the least bit surprised, I'm just saddened that I'm not.
Tho, considering the prevalence of sexting and sex-tapes, etc., perhaps not...
On the third hand, people's penchant for videotaping and photographing themselves in criminal activities is helping in getting charges laid and convictions.
ON THE FOURTH HAND...the ease and availability of video and photos, and dissemination on the internet, has produced the explosion of child porn and probably lot of other stuff...
On the fifth hand, I'm fixing myself a nice drinky-poo... Cheers.
I have a killer headache and have to lay down.. sorry folks.
The comment thread is yours to do with what you will
I think this is it in a nutshell. I have two generations of Marine Corps men in my family. One fought in Vietnam. His son fought in the Persian Gulf and Panama (I think). If you know anything about their training, you know they come out as trained killers. Think about that. My relatives both came back more than a little crazy. Killing people messes with your mind, one way or the other. The only reason the Corps is embarrassed by this behavior, IMHO, is because they were stupid enough to film it. These men are not operating with the same set of sensitivities we are. Those dead enemy are little more than road kill to them. THAT'S what is deplorable.
Lezlie
I'm kind of surprised by the comments on this post. There's nothing new about this sort of thing, and we shouldn't be surprised by it. It happens in every war, and the only difference is that through most of history there weren't any video cameras around to record the event.
One of our earliest war stories includes the scandal of Achilles dragging the dead body of Hector outside the walls of Troy. In the book "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character," author Jonathan Shay calls this kind of behavior "dishonoring the enemy." This behavior is actually toxic to those involved. Shay puts it this way:
"Restoring honor to the enemy is an essential step in recovery from combat PTSD. While other things are obviously needed as well, the veteran’s self respect never fully recovers so long as he is unable to see the enemy as worthy. In the words of one of our patients, a war against subhuman vermin 'has no honor'."
No, we're not. Look, if we replaced the entire U.S. military with a million copies of the Dalai Lama, a few of them would be pissing on dead Taliban before the end of the year. It's the nature of warfare, and you can do everything in your power to prevent such incidents, but you'll never eliminate them.
At least in the U.S., when our soldiers and Marines do things like that, we think it's wrong. Over in Afghanistan, if our dead troops were being pissed on by the Taliban, it would be high-fives and thanks to Allah by members of "the religion of peace."
This may seem off point, but I went through a similar dilemma -- at least in my mind -- back when religious nutjobs among the Taliban -- apparently there's no other kind among the Taliban (and I'm tempted to say among the base of the Republican Party) -- when religious nutjobs among the Taliban blew up the 15oo year-old giant Buddhas.
Okay, Talibani, so you don't agree with the religion, can you at least appreciate them as art? All too apparently not.
My quandary was that I was more angry and revolted by that act than by the atrocities these nutjobs committed against humans. Why? Humans, pathetic sonsabitches that we are, are all too obviously expendable -- at least in the view of the Taliban, the Marines, the Neocons and Bain Capital. We're all gonna die anyway, and we're all fairly easy to replace -- two drunks in the back seat can do it in a few seconds.
To my mind, the Buddha statues somehow more sacred than human life, not because I'm a Buddhist, but because they were symbols of human's potential to create rather than destroy. And unlike a human life, those symbols are irreplaceable.
Those statues outlasted 75 generations of humans, and thus they transcended human life. And now they are gone, victims of little men whose god is so small he needs the protection of little men.
The difference is in what I said. At one time, the American Military Forces, hated and despised they might have been by their enemies and political opposites, all respected them, because they followed the Geneva Convention in combat, treated prisoners of war with a modicum of respect and dignity, and followed certain conduct codes as embodied in the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) and other articles.
Sure, warfare is brutal, horrendous, savage, from the time we were only using rocks and pointy sticks to where people shoot hundreds of bullets per minute to kill or maim two or three opponents in an hour long firefight.
It's not what happens during battle that distinguishes honor (most times) from dishonor, or respect for your enemy. It's generally what happens after.
I have been a very vocal opponent from the get go, regarding putting our troops in harm's way in both Afghanistan and Iraq. No matter how "good" the reason for invading Afghanistan, it was done with only vengeance in mind and I think the CIA, combined with some SOGs could have managed that much more effectively in a guerilla environment in a country that had no legitimate government. What did we really do in Afghanistan?
Fought for control of the 1/3 of all the poppy production on the planet (not to stop it, but to trade it for money to trade for guns, to trade for oil, to trade for money...) and to shiv into the deal a gas pipeline from Uzbekistan, running through Afghanistan to Pakistan thence to tankers lined up to take away to the US.
Iraq? If it wasn't about control of oil, then I don't know anything.
In the meantime, our soldiers have been used as pawns to sow ever greater ill will against the US in other countries, fomenting hatred of us (as if we needed more reasons to have people in other countries hate us for being American) and for what?
No bid contracts, Halliburton (Cheney's Financial Alma Mater), Blackwater Security (I believe Rumsfeld has a stake in that) and letting the American (with a nod to a couple of European) oil companies get an unfettered grip on oil production and exploitation of proven reserves for decades without contest.
Sure, war sucks. Sure it's a hard thing. But just because it is and just because it's always been is ALL THAT MORE A REASON TO DEPLORE IT AND AVOID IT! We all remember the big things from far away. In a country like Afghanistan, which has known basically nothing but warfare, strife, warfare, strife, warefare strife for something going on three thousand years, it's the little things during warfare that spark a thirst for vengeance.
I don't doubt that killing innocent civilians is a bad thing and happens with all too alarming regularity there. I spoke of it in my first post here. I don't doubt that commonly held notions of Rules of Engagement have radically shifted to shoot first, no matter the backlash, and then sort it out. I don't doubt that soldiers are regularly going out hunting 'ragheads' for no other reason than that they are frustrated and want to burn off that tension. I get it.
None of that excuses it, makes it okay, or should provide a response that minimizes it, accedes it's "inevitability" or marginalizes it's importance to how our military acts in the eyes of our enemy combatants, their citizenry or in the eyes of other nations watching from afar.
I don't think it's okay to kill others unless you truly are having to defend yourself. These soldiers don't belong 8,400 miles from home, fighting a war that has no honor to begin with and no reason other than to line a few people's pockets.
Worse still, or at least as bad, is the appalling lack of care, treatment and counseling they recieve when they do come home. Because they typically don't shoot and kill if they came from wealthy homes (where if they serve at all, it's never in the front lines and always in an officer's uniform) and so the tools of direct conflict are merely discarded and cast out, left to drift and fend for themselves in this, our *meritocratic* society where their efforts mean nothing.
And what of the cost to the people who's lands we have invaded, despoiled and ruined? When we leave there, for mostly good, will we completely abandon them, doing nothing to rebuild their infrastructure, generate some good will?
I highly doubt it. In a country where the government doesn't give a fuck for it's own military casualties, inclusive of the hundreds upon hundreds of traumatically injured walking the streets, committing suicides, murders, being unemployed (*remember the promises about those soldiers leaving jobs having them when they came back? I do. One more Big Lie swallowed hook, line and sinker) why in the hell would they give a flying crap about what they're leaving behind?
None of that is okay. None of that is right. None of that should be scoffed away with, "That's just the way it is, baby, deal with it."
I thought we, as Americans with honor, ideals and integrity, were supposed to be better than that.
The whole situation is shameful. In that light, perhaps the desecration of the dead is a small insult comparitively. But its the kind of insult that children see after the fact. It's the kind of insult that shames, humiliates and degrades not just the dead, but the very people from which they come.
You want to increase resistance? You want to make more "terrorists?" You want to sow the seeds of hatred for generations to come? Then those are the perfectly designed methods to do so.
In the olden days when that was "just the way it was" they also left no one alive to exact vengeance. They did that because they knew that the way they fought would invite retribution if they left any survivors.
So if you think minimizing the insult is okay with, "That's always been that way," then what the hell are we waiting for? Let's just nuke or firebomb the whole fucking country and have done with it. At least then there'd be no-one left to want to track us down and seek vengeance. And other countries might just step back and say, "Whoa, let's not piss them off."
I mean, if you want to dismiss it as, "It's always been like that," then don't you think we should do it correctly and Biblically, leaving no stone upon stone, salting the earth and killing the men, women, children and all their livestock, too?
I mean, if we're going to not get outraged by the inhumanity in the first place, we should just push our chips into the middle and say, "I'm all in, let's nuke the place."
Or is that going too far?
Now though ?
Don't get me wrong, its wrong but who knows how many friends they have seen blown apart by the 'enemy' and their mental states could be called into question too? Or they could just be arseholes by training - who knows.
The US is pumping itself to continue the same activities against Iran on the mere unconfirmed suspicion Iran may be developing the same capabilities as Pakistan and North Korea. Where are the protests? Where is the opposition?
@ Tom Cordle
As an artist I have great respect for all cultural artifacts and it prompts me to ask an outrageously unfair question. Given the choice to destroy the Mona Lisa or, to save it, blow the brains out of an innocent random child, what would you do?
I'm with you 99.9999% of the way. I diverge at your last paragraph where you say......
"" I mean, if we're going to not get outraged by the inhumanity in the first place, we should just push our chips into the middle and say, "I'm all in, let's nuke the place." ""
I'd change that to read, "We're fucked up, let's nuke ourselves out of existence." THAT would be the honourable thing to do. Those people did absolutely NOTHING to us. Not ever.
The Taliban was our creature when it fought the Russians. After the Russians left we thought we could give them orders. We couldn't. They want to do things their own way. I don't give a flying fuck whether WE consider their ways "right" or "wrong". We have no right to ANY opinion about it. It's simply NONE of our business.
As you said, "It's all about the $$$ (and other valuable considerations) man; it's the $$$$!!
.
In answer to your outrageously unfair question, I suspect I would try to save the innocent random child. And in my defense, as if one is needed, I give you the immortal art-words of Walt Whitman, "if I contradict myself, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
And then's the horrific question posed in Sophie's Choice. In any case, the Buddha statues did not present such a dilemma. In my view, that was simply a crime against humanity, a crime perpetrated by ignorant religious nutjobs.
The question you posed is akin to that used to justify the despicable torture practices employed by the Bush administration, tho in that case, the danger was far less obvious and imminent than that posed in your scenario.
As others have mentioned, the dehumanizing aspects of war is another reason we should be far more reluctant to go to war. Too bad chickenhawks like Bush the Lesser and Cheney cared so little about those they sent off to do their dirty work.
Pissing on a corpse is a symbolic act and actually there is no suffering involved. Killing them in the first place is the terrible thing, whether or not it was necessitated by survival. But the shouting raised seems to be all about the pissing.
When symbols become more important than people awful things can happen.
I am prone to typos - I try my best.
And if said right, it sounds like "go now, in piss!" ~nodding~
Why are we fighting in Afghanistan, because we can!!! ~nodding even more~
Now turn to Love 109.5 and listen to some Air Supply!!! :D
When the Marines, and the military as a whole, understands that this kind of activity undermines our efforts worldwide than maybe, from the top down (and we all know the leadership there is just as prone to childish b.s. as the least sophisticated foot soldier), this will change. It will change when the military builds both maturity and human dignity and into its bootcamp curricula as much as they teach riflery.
Those nice US Soldiers were trying to help the poor Arab who had been stung by Jelly Fish and urine reduces the pain.
Simple innit.
"Press FRed(tm) please send......"
Thanks Tom for reminding me of the (former) giant Buddhas. I would have preferred to not be reminded though. Yes, it was a terrible small minded fundamentalist thing to do, destroying those ancient artifacts. Yes (to all), the Taliban represents the worse of humanity, but don't exceed in their closed-minded brutality the right wing nuts of this very country...
We, we.. were supposed to be better. We were better way back at the beginning. Somehow all the fine words of Jefferson (and the "founding fathers" in general) have been forgotten, at least by most. Not only forgotten but insulted and trampled upon.
Homeland Security was the call of the third reich... remember? Anyone?
Hell, I could type here for an hour but it makes no difference. I want to make a difference. It's like pissing in the wind, or on a dead 'haji,' simply meaningless, apparently.
Fuck, yeah my kid is in the HOORA military--- too..
Thanks for the lengthy commentary. A lot of thought and time went into this comment thread. At least I know I'm not alone.
Their superiors that promoted that culture will get
promoted forward. "Investigations" need to go on up the line.
But they won't.
And..
That war should have been over the day
we let Bin Laden slip into Pakistan.
And the Iraq war... THAT is when I gave up all hope..
As far as I'm concerned Bush-Cheney et-al should be
guillotined. OK, maybe that's harsh. They should at least
be sent to a nice prison, like say GITMO, and waterboarded
two or three times a day til they die.
i'm with you. i think the blowback from the urination thing is going to continue to escalate. this is probably worse than dumping osama bin laden's body in the ocean, where the fish urinate.
we're in afghanistan because president obama promised - in 2008 - that he would take troops out of iraq, and increase them in afghanistan. i asked the same question in 2008 - why?
aghanistan has no claim to fame, other than as the setting for the movie "the man who would be king". the karzai regime has been both corrupt and unpopular since day 1, and this another of those infamous situations where we're backing an evil guy just to have military bases in a convenient location.
i thought this time it was supposed to be different? hope and change?
Chivalry is dying-out among many in the armed forces. We should strive hard to bring it back.
It will be hard, though, because many of our politicians and electorate are completely lacking in it.
Character and virtue. Our country is suffering from a deficit in these things
It gets down to another point: would you die for me? This from one woman's dead Uncle's voice who served proudly and died much too young. Semper Fi. He was also a Native American and at no time would he ever desecrate a dead person's body, regardless of said person's origin or religious beliefs.
Every single life lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, and VietNam was lost for nothing besides MIC profit. Meaning, your native friend or relative laid down his life in vain. Every American killed or maimed.. for nothing honorable. Needless to say, our guys killed a lot more of theirs... all, murders in the name of 'merikan greed for the few, the few who never stepped in harms way... not them, or their sons and daughters.
War is not a fact of life nor a natural event we are helpless to stop. It's a choice. "First do no harm." We're not making America safer, we are eroding our foundation in the name of making it safer. See? Thou Shall Not Lie means something after all: our goddam survival.
Thx T- Yes, George W. Dick Bush Cheney, you evangelical fruitcake, Jesus was against waterboarding. You can't read? Oh... yeah, right. Shame upon you (and for that matter Barack Obomba.. whore).
What happens next? What happens when this war ends and another begins? Can't you see how the cyclical nature of mankind is and always will be.
When will war end? Never. Not so long as humans or other living organisms continue to thrive upon what amounts to human nature.
Trying to rationalize the macabre is never going to solve anything. Sensualizating it like this story will, in my humble opinion, cause more harm than good. To us Americans and other peaceful people who've realized the pros and cons of coexistence requires keeping our enemies close to our hearts...
I don't mean to offend you or your family. Where did Uncle die, and for what... again? Do you think war is unavoidable, that WE couldn't have NOT invaded, at least Iraq?
I'll assume you have no justifications besides those obtuse generalizations above. Sorry about Uncle Frank. Damned shame.
I feel for the mothers, especially..