Posted on 01/13/2012 9:51:48 PM PST by Windflier
The last soldier I heard of urinating on the enemy was Gen. George S. Patton. Should the general, who, as much as any other, was responsible for defeating the Nazis, have been driven from the military for such an act? You’d think so from the hysteric response building in the mainstream and Left-leaning press to a video allegedly showing marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters. Presuming it’s authentic, such reaction is absurd.
We send these young men out to kill and maim their enemy. That means snuffing out their life, with all the heartbreak and tragedy involved. They usually do this with bullets that rip and tear; or larger projectiles like grenades, artillery shells, or air-dropped bombs which can shred or disintegrate a body. Often fire is involved. Is urinating on a dead body worse?
Yet as I write, I can feel the hope and purpose in a headline like AOL-Huffington Post’s, “Outrage over Purported Marine Video: A shocking video that allegedly shows American soldiers performing a ‘disgusting’ act sparks a US Marine Corps investigation.” It’s already tagged under “atrocities” and “war crimes.” What the headline writers are really saying is, “Oh please, please, another Mai Lai Massacre type scandal like in Vietnam. Well, we know it’s not going to be that big, but we can again throw bad light on the US military, which we basically hate and fear and are mad at for doing all the bad things they do.”
Of course they’ve gone to the Council on American-Islamic Relations for comment. As if they didn’t know they’d get a condemnation. But did they balance it with someone at war with the Taliban? Not a chance. And the statement says, “The video shows behavior…totally unbecoming of American military personnel and that would ultimately endanger other soldiers and civilians.”
It’s so predictable, petty, and blown out of proportion by a media that largely knows nothing of the battlefield and why a crude but ultimately innocuous act like this might happen. What do they expect in war? Tea and crumpets and the Marquess of Queensbury rules? War is hell. Most of those fighting it are young, usually 18 to 22. They are inexperienced. They are sent to deserts and other uninhabitable places with stinging insects, maddening heat and sanitary conditions the Left would be screaming was child abuse. They forge a bond with each other few peacetime friendships can ever hope to equal. They have to. It’s the only way to get through. And some of them, if not more, see that bonded friend killed or mutilated as only war can do it.
Hold on a minute...
I’m no expert on WWII, especially in the Pacific theatre but the incident of decent treatment by the Japs you cite is a rare one. The Japs routinely straffed (sp) survivors in the water after blowing up a ship or shooting down an aircraft. Their treatment of prisoners of war, including women and children, was indefensible.
If you wish to compare “human treatment” in a war setting, I think one could justifiably state that Americans have proven to be the most humane in the treatment of the enemy in all of world history...
All in all, we have nothing to be ashamed of or apologize for...
Nathan Fletcher, a retired Marine, is running for mayor of San Diego. He was on Fox & Friends this morning and was asked about the urinating-on-the-Taliban story. He said what they did was "wrong" and they should be disciplined by the Marine Corps, but he was very critical of those who are now condemning the Marines in the video who haven't experienced what they have experienced--people living in climate-controlled rooms whose worst hardship might be that their latte wasn't the right temperature. I think he served two tours of duty over there.
I don't accept your premise. I think those Marines' actions are entirely defensible. I don't condemn them for what they did.
I only fault them for filming it, and then letting the video get out.
And what’s so bad about the video getting out? You mean our enemies will hate us any less if the video hadn’t gotten out?
War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.
In war there is no substitute for victory.
There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.
"Why," my soldiers asked of me, "surrender military advantages to an enemy in the field?" I could not answer.
MacAuthur farewell address to congress, 1951
The traditions of naval warfare are vastly different then those of ground warfare. Sailors are sailors no matter from where they come. No sailor willing leaves another to die in the sea.
You're romanticizing the reality of war. It's an ugly business.
Sure, there have been instances of honor and respect shown across the battle lines of otherwise civilized men, but we're not fighting civilized men, who share common cultural standards with us. We're fighting degraded and debased barbarians who have no use for honor, compassion, and such lofty things.
Those bastards have done unspeakable things to our troops, both living and dead. These are the same people who've dragged our naked war dead through the streets, stoned and mutilated the corpses of US service men, decapitated prisoners on film, used women and children as human shields, etc.
I think those Marines were kind. They could have hoisted those dead Taliban on pikes as a message to their barbarian kin. That's what real war is like.
I think King George considered the colonists to be rebels, but terrorists? Hardly. They were his subjects, and were civilized Englishmen.
That said, the British exercised immense brutality against the American colonists during the Revolution. Read up on the experiences of those Americans who were captured in battle and confined to prison ships. I think many of them would have preferred death to what they endured.
The British were a rapacious, pillaging force, who showed little mercy to their American kin, whether they were uniformed or civilian. What our Marines did to the bodies of those dead Taliban is mild compared to what King George's soldiers did to us.
It's not the enemies on the battle field that are the problem. It's the ones at home.
F 'em!
War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.
In war there is no substitute for victory."
~ Gen. Douglas MacArthur
MacArthur knew what he was talking about. Too bad our current military leadership doesn't have the cojones to follow his and Patton's examples. The War on Terror would already be over and done with.
Agreed
Oh yea. The next Jihadi to come along, another Solider stationed at Ft. Campbell, but absent w/o authorization from there, was caught before his plan got too far. But his plan was to set homemade bombs off at restaurants in the Ft. Hood area frequented by soldiers. He was caught because a former cop who was the counterman at "Guns Galore" (the same place Hassan had bought his guns) thought something "hinky" about a guy who was buying a lot of smokeless powder, but didn't seem to know what it was.
Since I frequent many of those same restaurants, including the one where I ate this evening with my wife and granddaughter, I took that sort of personal. :)
I wouldn't even tag it under "go to bed without supper!"
You want atrocities and war crimes? Have someone estimate the number of young Americans' needless deaths and mutilations due to asinine "rules of engagement." I'm guessing 40%, if someone has an studied and informed estimate, I'm all ears.
A war with "humane" rules of engagement is not morally or rationally justified, and not worth fighting."
From one of myriad related historical comments, about Germany and WW2...
The trip took thirty minutes. We drove east through suburbs. They looked like a lot of West German places. There were vast tracts of pale honey buildings built back in the fifties. The new neighborhoods ran west to east in random curving shapes, following the routes the bombers had followed. No nation ever lost a war the way Germany lost. Like everyone, I had seen the pictures taken in 1945.
Defeat was not a big enough word. Armageddon would be better.
The whole country had been smashed to powdered rubble by a juggernaut. The evidence would be there for all time, written in the architecture. And under the architecture.
Every time the phone company dug a trench for a cable, they found skulls and bones and teacups and shells and rusted out Panzerfausts.
Every time ground was broken for a new foundation, a priest was standing by before the steam shovels took their first bite.
I was born in Berlin, surrounded by Americans, surrounded by whole square miles of patched-up devastation.
They started it, we used to say.
Many people have said that the last war America was allowed to truly fight and win, was WWII. I think the last 70-odd years of our history with military conflicts completely bears that out.
I don’t know how long it will take for the lessons learned over that time, to finally sink in to the hardened heads of the political class who run our wars, but in the meantime, they’ve done nothing but get tens of thousands of good Americans killed, by tying their hands in battle.
It continues even now.
Must have been a cold day ...
Er....no comment ;-)
Can we get an answer to this question? There's a big difference between urinating into the Rhine River and urinating on a dead enemy.
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