By now you’ve seen the video. Soldiers gathered around a few dead Taliban soldiers, whipped ‘em out and peed on them. Honesrtly, I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: that these are the folks that represent our military in a foreign country or the reactions that some people are having to this.
Liberals have been pretty quiet, mostly, about the issue, save for the mainstream media replaying the video over and over and over and over and telling us how it’ll hurt our relations with the Muslim world. Conservatives, on the other, have been bending over backward to justify the behavior, or dismiss it. That, my friends, is what I find disturbing.
When the video surfaced, former Army Lieutenant Colonel (And current Representative from Florida) Allen West informed us all that “Unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell,” insinuating that we should somehow disregard these soldiers’ behavior because they’re in a tough spot. He did later clarify that the soldiers should be punished, but only after calling critics of their behavior “armchair quarterbacks” and saying we all needed to “chill.”
Yeah, we need to chill. Apparently, because we haven’t been in the sights of a Taliban soldier, we’re not allowed to be outraged by the desecration of a body.
Often, that line of defense is accompanied by stories of horrific treatment of American corpses in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, if you’d like to see a prime example of this, check out how Jim Hoft, whom I usually agree with, tries to frame the issues as if they’re related somehow:
So it’s okay to piss on corpses because we were outraged when they dragged some of ours. Got it. Apparently, Jim Hoft can comment on the issue because he doesn’t care, so Rep. West won’t have a problem with it, and doesn’t seem to think Hoft needs to “chill,” even though I’m reasonably sure that Hoft hasn’t been in the line of fire of a Taliban weapon either.
Radio talker Dana Loesch? Not a whole lot better. She, who will never be in those soldiers’ position, said she would “Drop trou” and join them. Again, no word if Representative West will be telling Dana she needs to “chill out” and keep her apparent penis in her pants.
What the hell is wrong with us?
When we saw soldiers and contractors dragged through the streets in Iraq, we were horrified, and rightly so. That is not the way you treat a dead body and it’s incredibly inhumane. Apparently, however, that outraged isn’t for our guys. For our guys it’s okay because war is hell and they’re scumbags. And if you don’t agree with that, you’re clearly a terrorist sympathizer who wants to see American soldiers killed in action and dragged through the streets of Fallujah.
It makes sense what’s going on here. It’s an election season, and criticizing soldiers, even when they’re wrong, is not acceptable on the right side of the aisle. Your bonafides are immediately questioned, your motivations suspect, and your strength on “homeland security” and “national defense” is softened.
But, simply put, none of that is relevant.
War being hell is not relevant.
Soldiers being dragged through the streets is not relevant.
Why? Because we are better than that. I know people hate when I say stuff like that, but I’m consistent on that position. I believed we should give Osama bin Laden a proper burial in accordance with Muslim tradition because we’re better than they are. I believed we should allow the Libyan terrorist to leave the country and go home when we thought he was terminally ill because our humanity is more important than their pride. With all that being said, I find it hard to believe that we can’t be more “human” with corpses. Once you’ve killed the enemy, you’ve won. The fight is over. Pissing on their corpse is not the level of decorum I would expect from a fighting force that prides itself on being the most professional in the world.
It also sullies the name and image of other soldiers who are good guys, doing a job.
It also, and I know this is heresy to say around conservatives, will serve for years to come as a recruiting tool for future wannabe terrorists. I won’t argue that they needed them, or that they won’t use anything as ammo for their radicalism, but do we need to provide them video proof of our inhumanity? How do you defend yourself and your country when you have a video of you acting as inhumanely as the people you’re fighting?
You can’t.
And how do you defend this sort of act when you spend so much time telling other countries how to act and be humane toward their citizens, when we piss on their corpses?
If this post offends you, that’s fine, just please don’t hand me that crap about their standards. We don’t hold ourselves to their standards, we hold ourselves to ours, and frankly this is not the sort of thing I want to see the soldiers wearing my flag doing.
I would hope that most Americans would agree with me at this point, as well, but seeing as even right wing bloggers and left-wing douches are in agreement, I’m not holding out hope.
