A Onetime Marine Scout Sniper on What His Comrades Did to the Dead Taliban

battleland.blogs.time.com ^ | 12 Jan 2012 | Alex Lemons

[smokingfrog]

Alex Lemons, a former Marine sergeant who deployed to Iraq three times – including once as scout sniper – reflects on the video of four Marines urinating on the corpses of three dead Taliban in Afghanistan:

This is all very painful to me on so many different levels. Back in 2004 one of my fellow snipers shot someone in a mosque in Fallujah. You will probably remember it getting on TV. It was very confusing. I have tried stopping things like this before or I’ve been a coward and let them happen.

In my eyes, there are several discomforting or significant things about this event:

– If you aren’t surprised and disgusted by this as a combatant, veteran or as a civilian whose country has been at war for a decade, then maybe you need to take a look in the mirror. Have you become this callous?

– I’d like to know how many tours those grunts have been on. Do we know what condition they are in mentally? Are any on medications?

– This happened a lot in Fallujah II 2004 and I have a couple explanations. There were a lot of kids who imitated things they saw or read in Vietnam War films or literature. You always look back on the last war to explain your own.

Sometimes, Marines needed to take pictures and laugh about the death swirling around them because if they took it seriously and grieved then they would not be able to function and continue the fight.

[AlmaKing]

No use talking sense to internet warriors on these threads.

[Mike Darancette]

MAYBE THE POOR BASTARDS WERE ON FIRE!

Maybe stung by jellyfish.

[BuffaloJack]

> There were a lot of kids who imitated things they saw or read in Vietnam War films or literature.

And all of those films are John Kerry inspired to show America in a bad light.

[HamiltonJay]

War, particular modern mechanized war is dehumanizing to all involved.

Desecration of a corpse is never excusable. However we know that the enemy does this routinely, so while it should not happen, is it an affront to treat an enemy as they have treated you?

We’d love to live by the turn the other cheek mantra, and do unto others... however in spite of our best efforts, we will always have an eye for an eye within us all. Anyone who thinks there is no evil within them, has not lived.

There is darkness in every human being, some far more than others, but it is in all of us, and under the right circumstances it will surface.

The desecration should not be made light of, but it should be taken within context, and not being a combat veteran of a war against a terrorist and honorless enemy, I will yield to the military authorities the judgment they provide to these folks.

[Renderofveils]

For those with no sense of humor I was joking.

I understood the joke. I also understand that soldiers are like any other group of people. Some good, some bad, and a bunch right there in the middle. Since 9/11 this broad "they're all heroes" brushstroke has been painted across the entire military and it's just as inaccurate and quite honestly just as shameful as the "they're all butchers and babykillers" garbage spewed by the left. It's a palatable untruth. It lets people at home remove all of the bad aspects of humanity from a group of people doing what they themselves would never consider doing. Maybe it's a balancing act of conscience to think that the folks out there wielding a gun in your name are infallible weapons themselves. Yeah, it's a pendulum swing from the 60s and 70s, but it really makes you wonder what's going to happen when that pendulum swings back the other direction (and it probably will in the next twenty years or so.)

And for the record, I'm not saying that there aren't genuine heroes in the military. There are. I've met some. And I've also served with guys that would spend their family's bill money on booze and the platoon would pass the plate to keep the family's power turned on. And both of them are called heroes because they chose to wear a uniform.

[goat granny]

The government has no argument as long as they weren’t peeing toward Mecca...they made that a requirement but did they say no peeing on taliban...

[Georgia Girl 2]

Dude you can save that argument for somebody else. As far as I’m concerned everybody in the military is a hero. Have a nice day thanks to the US Marine corp.

[opus86]

All they did was wizz on some terrorist corpses? Oh fer petes sake. We live in a wussified culture.

[smokingfrog]

“They have personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside….”

John Forbes Kerry

... He and others like him now have something else to add to this mix of lies and denunciations.

[Jeff Chandler]

They could have drowned the friggin taliban terrorist in piss and I would not advocate punishment of any description.

They broke the rules and need to be punished. Take away their weekend passes for a month.

[TigersEye]

LOL That’s right. :-)

[TigersEye]

Yeah, it's a pendulum swing from the 60s and 70s, but it really makes you wonder what's going to happen when that pendulum swings back the other direction (and it probably will in the next twenty years or so.)

Piss on 'em.

[IrishPennant]

Brizzarro world - piss on a bloodthirsty enemy who would have ripped your head off to put on a pike and the world is collectively shocked beyond belief.

Be a freeloading, stoner, quasi-hippie who his unwashed, smelly drawers to publicly crap on a police car and no one says a peep!!!!

[TheOldLady]

Slap those Dems!

Slap those Dems!

[Fire_on_High]

First we’d need an honorable foe...