Look at the reply by VoyagerXII.
From the “Scout Sniper PLT” graphic that 2ndamendmentpa posted at #52, and what gunner03 posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 11:51:53 AM at #130...
“...My son was a Marine Scout/Sniper and this symbol was common. As your guide on shows, why didn’t the Marine Corps say anything then, it’s only when the libs and media stir up the s—t to portray our military as murderers...”
... I think it's now clear that the Scout Snipers have a history in the Marine Corps of at least occasionally using the thunderbolt SS symbol.
Here's what the 45th Infantry division did to change its swastika symbol, which predated the rise of the Nazi Party:
http://www.45thdivisionmuseum.com/History/SwastikaToThunderbird.html
Use of the SS “thunderbolt” symbol is already right on the Marine Corps list of inappropriate symbols, linked here: http://www.yuma.usmc.mil/services/eo/documents/tattoos.ppt
If symbols are irrelevant, then why don't we encourage and endorse people waving green Islamic flags showing the Twin Towers burning, or wearing T-shirts of the Ayatollah Khomeini with pro-Islamic slogans? Obviously that's unacceptable. We're at war with Islamofascism, whether our leadership wants to acknowledge it or not, and displaying Islamofascist symbols should result in a strong pushback by patriotic Americans. Same for Nazi symbols, Communist symbols, or other wars we've fought against foreign enemies.
Pushback against the symbol is not the same as punishing the Marines involved. They're not the problem.
It looks like this is mostly a matter of a group of young people who don't know their history due to bad teaching in the school system, and secondarily, that there's a need to follow the 45th Infantry Division in changing the symbol.
As conservatives, however, we should note that we have a more serious underlying issue that can't be solved so quickly. I think the real problem is that we've got soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who don't know their own country's history. Teaching people to be technically proficient snipers is flat-out dangerous if they don't have the knowledge of American history and values to know why we're telling them to shoot people... and perhaps more importantly, why it's okay to shoot our enemies and not okay to shoot in some circumstances no matter what the commander says.
The Nazis caused their soldiers to follow orders out of fear. It's also possible to cause soldiers to follow orders out of ignorance. Do we want that?
There was a day that an educated American citizen voluntarily choosing to enlist in the military could be assumed to know their history. That's no longer true or this wouldn't have happened.