From the New York Post: (h/t – Instapundit)
For our part, we’re withholding judgment. There have been too many such seemingly shocking episodes that, upon investigation, turn out to be less than that.
The high-profile case of Marine Lt. Ilario Pantano — accused of murdering Iraqis, but exonerated late last year — certainly illustrates the point. But maybe they did do it. Marine Corps Commandant James Amos says he’ll get to the bottom of it all.
Still, as wartime atrocities go, this is pretty mild stuff. My Lai, for sure, it ain’t.
And, again, the Taliban sure ain’t — excuse the metaphor — choirboys.
Maybe somebody should ask Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl about it.
Oh, wait: The Islamists beheaded him — on videotape.
Perspective, folks. Perspective.
Don’t forget, the American Left thinks feces on the Virgin Mary is a work of art. What hypocrites.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
Some NCO should smack these doofuses up beside the head & point out the total stupidity of videoing this at all & the even greater stupidity of putting it on the internet.
The main reason it was irresponsible for the media to show this is that it places our troops in greater danger. Who knows how many nutballs may try to retaliate?
The Taliban castrates corpses, strips them naked then pulls the bodies throughout the town; in contrast, United States marines piss on Taliban corpses. I really don’t see the outrage here.
If real the numb-nutz should be punished for being stupid…and indiscreet.
But, what if the photo was staged here in the US?
Once again, an activity that is celebrated when it happens on Folsom Street causes lefties to clutch the pearls and succumb to the vapors when it happens in the heat and stress of war.
I agree with, Allen West, an article 15 is the punishment that fits this crime. (If this is something that really happened.) As a veteran, I’m not happy about this but I know it’s nothing compared to what happens in theatre.
http://tinyurl.com/7p2yosd
And the liberal media will do their damndest to make it into the Abu Ghraib kerfuffle that they created.
#7 – “And the liberal media will do their damndest to make it into the Abu Ghraib kerfuffle that they created.”
For sure if Bush was POTUS but maybe not while Obama is POTUS.
Leaders of the military have denounced this behavior as contrary to policy. It was widely criticized by members of Congress — from both sides of the aisle, with some of the most emphatic criticism coming from those who themselves had served in the military.
I know it’s your wont to find a partisan angle to most everything, but what the Left thinks about art is beside the point that this behavior was contrary to the values our military seeks to uphold.
My uncle was pushing in from D-Day when he encountered a German tank roaring down the road. He jumped into ditch, hoping he was unseen. He wasn’t. The tank rode over the ditch and then began spinning around trying to bury him alive. Suddenly, a tread locked up and the tank stopped. The hatch came open and a German came out with a pistol drawn. Across the way, a GI shot the German with a bazooka which also took the turret top off the tank. Suddenly, more Germans tried to pour out, but by that time, my uncle had crawled out from under the tank and shot the Germans as they tried to exit.
The long and the short of the story is that the Geneva Convention was shot to Hell in the incident. A troop (German) was shot with a bazooka and probable surrendering troops were mowed down. After the adrenaline rush of the Omaha landing and the hedgerow combat that followed, the general consensus at the command was something along the lines of “occasionally soldiers respond in ways that are not entirely consistent with the diplomat’s view of good behavior.”
I don’t have any idea what preceded this photo (if this a valid photo) but I am not about to get my dander up until I know the details. Having been spit on by fellow citizens who fervently disagree with my political views, I know what it is to summon up restraint. Sometimes, “piss on you” presents itself as an opportunity too “relieving” to be passed up.
Oh, I know, we must be above such things. After all, it is not exactly like having someone under the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office performing oral sex on the Commander in Chief while he talks on the phone to a foreign dignitary.
If this actually happened then it certainly won’t be the Marine’s finest hour but really… peeing on the corpses is certainly low class but hardly worth another orgy of western self-flagellation (not to mention that the Taliban had just been shot dead – getting peed on isn’t my cup of tea but it beats getting my brains blown out).
Diana West wonders where the outrage is over the 43 (in the last two years) soldiers murdered “inside the wire” in A-stan.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2000/Get-Set-for-a-Wallow.aspx
If this was a war where we were going balls out to absolutely defeat the enemy, you know, like the Romans did with Carthage, this wouldn’t be a problem.
But it’s not.
The mission has always been in part to win the hearts and minds of the populace in those countries to help nurture a more democratic society more to our liking. This is a step back and undoes some of the fragile goodwill we have earned. But, seeing that the Afghan cause is pretty much lost anyway, I agree, this really doesn’t matter much.
I think Bruce hit on the Marines’ best line of defense.
“We were making art!”
I might be more upset with this if Karzi had expressed as much concern for all the little Pashtun boys being buggered everyday by brave Muslim men. Or concern for the women of his nation, forced into burqas and denied even basic education, to say nothing of basic human rights. Compare and contrast: pissing on a dead body vs. decapitating living breathing humans (RIP Daniel Pearl).
#14: John – Karzai is a gangster being propped up with our money and our troops (A-stan an American client state!) He’s yet one more reason to get out. Left to his fate, Karzai may well find himself starring in a Taliban snuff video.
Daniel Pearl (2002), Nick Berg (2004), Kenneth Bigley (2004), Kim Sun-il (2004), Paul Johnson (2004), and Eugene Armstrong (2004) were all beheaded on video by Islamic militants.
And “Piss Christ” is contrary to the values of most people in our entire country. Almost everything liberals do is contrary to the values of the American people.
I think the “partisan angle” is very appropriate. The despicable bastards want to investigate these Marines. If they had called themselves #OccupyWallStreet and pissed on an American flag, took a shit on a police car, raped, murdered, spread disease, harassed children, hindered businesses, caused people to lose their jobs etc. etc. etc., they’d have the full throated support of the colossal pussies you voted into office.
Damn the whiney little bitches who’re clutching their pearls over this manufactured kerfuffle. These Taliban fighters have been treated a damn sight better than they treat their own people and nearly 3,000 people in the American northeast.
You owe me a new keyboard. I may never stop laughing.
They should really look into getting an NEA grant.
TGC wrote “The despicable bastards want to investigate these Marines.”
John McCain: “Here is a handful of, obviously, undisciplined young people of the 100,000 and some thousand Marines that we have. It makes me so sad. There should be a complete investigation and those young people should be punished. It does great damage. It is so saddening to me.”
Is McCain also a despicable bastard for speaking in support of decency in the military?
This is Gay Patriot, yes? What is unpatriotic about being proud of the commitment to professionalism in the US military, and deploring those times when it falls short?
Do we have post traumatic stress or not?
If it is “understandable” how a human being comes home from being a highly trained soldier and he can’t shake off how the war burrowed its way into his psyche, how can we get all up in arms over a highly trained soldier taking a whiz on the dead enemy?
I am not “justifying” what may have occurred here. (We really have no information.) But to take the posture that every properly trained military person is going to continuously pay proper heed to every rule of decorum under every circumstance is bizarre. Why not investigate the weakness of the military people who can’t just internalize their stress and carry on as usual? After all, when people like McCain set such high standards for others, why should we accept any discrepancy from the ideal? If there is an instance of “friendly fire” shouldn’t everyone doing the firing be dragooned for not double checking the target and getting it right?
Heliotrope wrote: “After all, when people like McCain set such high standards for others, why should we accept any discrepancy from the ideal?”
If you’re down to saying “why have high standards”, I can only say I’m glad the people actually running the military care more about professionalism than you do.
You make it sound like McCain is some fringe element. It wasn’t just McCain who spoke out that way, it was Secretary Panetta, General Dempsey (chairman of the Joint Chiefs), General Amos (Marine Corps commandant), … . You know, people actually involved in the military. When they all see fit to speak out and are unanimous about saying this was illegal, works to the disadvantage of the US abroad, and so on, they might just know what they are talking about.
The loudest outrage for these type incidents usually come from those who never served in a war zone.
I’d ask those that haven’t, to refrain from commenting, as you don’t have any idea what it’s like.
There are plenty of Americans who have served in a war zone to comment and to act appropriately toward these soldiers.
Having said that
I think we all learned from the liberal outrage at AbuGrab
that this probably goes all the way to the top….to SECDEF and POTUS.
Frog march anyone?
Oh yeah. They care so much about professionalism that our soldiers don’t even know why we’re in Afghanistan anymore. They care so much about professionalism that our soldiers have been serving as human targets for the Taliban since The Won took over. And it’s that same care for professionalism that renders ObaMarx terrified of the word victory.
TGC wrote: ‘And “Piss Christ” is contrary to the values of most people in our entire country. Almost everything liberals do is contrary to the values of the American people.’
Difference is, artistic expression is protected under the First Amendment. I don’t want the government in the business of outlawing blasphemy; do you?
Desecration of corpses in wartime is illegal. It’s not some new PC creation; the USA prosecuted enemy soldiers for it in WWII.
Bush said a lot about justice after 9/11. He said we were going to Afghanistan to bring the people who hurt us to justice. If we did not investigate the acts in this video, that would send the message that justice doesn’t apply to ourselves. It would send the message that we don’t mean what we say when we sign treaties.
Love it!!!!
And then Tom1729 proceeds on a rant based on his decision that I have in fact blown this off with nothing more intelligent than “why have high standards.”
Typical liberal anal speak. The Marines will investigate this thing and if somebody needs to pay, somebody will pay. Standards will be held. That bothers me not a bit. That is all wrapped up in the code of conduct and it doesn’t matter what the barbarians do to us. It is when we pee on a barbarian that we get all roused up and see the collapse of civilization and world respect and blah, blah, blah.
Oh, wait…….
That may well be a bit over the top, Tom1729. Perhaps you have lived such a precious and pure life of the highest courtesy and deference to the law and assumed propriety that you see a soldier under the stress of staying alive who takes a whiz on some dead Taliban guy (who may have been engaged in trying to blow him apart) as an outrage.
As I said before, no one, including me, knows the circumstances of all of this. But if you are free to assume that these men are worse than jerks going out of their way to desecrate the wondrous Taliban, then I am free to assume that they were controlling their urge to take a scalp or drag the bodies through the streets Taliban style.
Perhaps if you haven’t had the wonderfully character building experience of confronting people desperate to kill you before you kill them. You might be missing a bit of the annealing process that puts this type of whining in perspective.
John F’n Kerry blew out of Nam in record time on three magic purple hearts and showed up before Congress slandering men he had in his command of crimes “reminiscent of Genghis Khan.” If he knew of this as an officer, he made zero attempt to do anything about it. There is no official military paperwork whatsoever proving that his pissing on his own brothers in arms was ever reported by him to any authority in an effort to hold to the highest standards.
This is not about any delicate sensitibility you may imagine me to have.
The video went public. It is being discussed worldwide. The military knows that one incident like this can undo lots of work the USA has done to promote goodwill internationally. Yes, people blow things like this way out of proportion but that is the world we live in and which the military operates in. That is why, without exception, military leaders have denounced this kind of behavior.
Rationally speaking, war in general is not a goodwill effort.
If the US military is concerned with international goodwill above the reality that “war is Hell” then I guess we might consider rubber bullets and lobbing marshmallows.
Kindly take your pinching halo down the hall to the church lady and see if she will break out in a piety dance with you.
Actually, Tom, the fact that we are not systematically killing people based on their religious beliefs, forcing women into burqas at gunpoint, and teaching children to hate Jews as part of the official curriculum demonstrates quite nicely that we are far better than the Taliban.
But you don’t care about any of that because yours is not a principled opposition to breaking treaties or desecrating corpses; it is about using any excuse necessary to attack the US military.
When you and your fellow pissing, screaming liberals can find it in your heart to condemn the Taliban and their tactics instead of praising and endorsing them, then we will give a damn.
But for now, we see this as what it is, which is your attempt to crap on US soldiers for that to which you turn a blind eye when far worse is done by the Taliban.
You want us to tie our own hands and accept punishment when you refuse to even criticize or accept punishment for people doing far worse.
That is not “justice”. It is blind, hateful bigotry on your part.
You can set your own bar or allow someone else to lower it. The choice is yours. Free country.
You win a war by killing people and breaking things. We sure as shit didn’t win WWII with professionalism. If we have folks running the military caring more about professionalism, we’re fcked.
OK, I slept on it.
The Marines in the picture had to have known that if they got caught that they would be punished.
We do not actually know any of the details.
Like “good Marines” they will take what is coming to them.
Part of the world knows that making a mountain out of a molehill is a great way to compromise The Great Satan and such actions as these Marines are supposed to have taken feeds the Liberals at home and the anti-U.S. people abroad.
I fully realized that before I slept on it.
Now I have come to the conclusion that each military person should have a high tech recording device on him 24/7 which monitors his every action and permits the Military Public Relations Sector to blown him up the instant he begins to cross one of their sacred cow lines. And they should leave the body in situ so that the other side may have their way with it.
The military trains killers. No killer should ever, ever, ever act like a fallen angel. That is the lowest, meanest, scummiest sort of professional killer there is. And taking a whiz on corpse is pure, unadulterated desecration. It is worse than the Taliban booby trapping a corpse. (Which, of course, they would never do.)
In fact, the killer should kill the target and then lovingly scoop up the body and deliver it to its family for a proper and immediate burial. He should help in the ritual cleansing, chop the dirt in preparing the grave and provide a coffin. Sort like we did for Osama bin Landen.
We are saints and we must, for God’s sake, act like saints. Anything less and people will start objecting to our professional killers doing their job.
Please read the beginning of this comment again. What jerks my chain is the piety strutting going on about this. Tempest in a teapot. Taking a sledge hammer to a mosquito. Going ballistic over a hangnail. Convening the World Court to issue a jay-walking summons.
I sure hope that the high dudgeon, the righteous anger, the nuclear indignation that has welled up in those fine and honorable professional politicians gives them the good public relations points they so fervently desire. We all know politicians are the highest form of ethical humanity.
I would hate to see Panetta and McCain and others ever be questioned on their very purest of motives and deeply held belief systems.
Good on Tom1729 for seeing this crucial collapse of military dignity for what it is. This is the very core at the very crux of the Geneva codes. They were really worried that some soldier might gas someone and then pee on him. Can you imagine anything more disgusting? We should think carefully about shooting the enemy in any manner which disfigures him or even slows him down. That is at the core at the very crux of desecration. I kind of like thinking like a saint. You can pick nits all day long and be worshipped for it.
Yup.
And the hilarity comes when those who are the loudest about abstract principles when it comes to our soldiers are both lowering their bar and blaming others for making them do it.
I kinda like Rep. West’s response.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71417.html
We all know if liberals could they’d hang every military person out to dry… you don’t see it in the MSM but I know vets who get shit on campuses today about being baby-killers.
The men and women in the military aren’t perfect as much as we might like them to be.
If this is the extent of their bad behavior, God Bless them.
And btw, it is my experience that the Americans who whine the most about this kind of stuff,
have standing a post, farthest from their own minds.
@Kevin,
Amen to Rep West. Of course it’s funny, the libs screamed about the ‘Chicken Hawk’ argument for 8 years. Hey Barry, you’ve not served so you don’t get to talk about it!