Combat, desecrating the dead, and our surprise

Why are Bush & Cheney ordering Marines to do this? It's terrible that they never reliquished control of the military over to Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Barack Obama!

I think that the most troubling part about this incident is that it will lead to more harm and violence.

Both Tom Roberts and Sebastian Junger make some excellent points.

Still, all adults are responsible for our actions, and all Christians should be obedient first and foremost to the teachings and example of Jesus. I heard once about a young American Catholic who went to prison rather than be drafted into the army and fight in Vietnam. That man, in my opinion, is a hero.

So, perhaps it is more than justified for us Catholics to strike our breasts during the penitential rite and state that we have sinned through our own fault when we continue to support or choose to ignore the horrible things people do to each other in war.

This is exactly the right issue to raise, the right question to ask.

This is an utter cop-out. It is akin to the excuse for the toleration and obfuscation of sexual abuse of children by clergy and the action of hierarchy.
No doubt that there lies some beastly urges to violate enemy - living and dead; history ancient and contempory is full of them. There is never an excuse. Quite the opposite.

Morality of war aside, the death of a combattant - comrade or enemy - means the ceasing of hostility and acknowledgement/respect for the life taken. Its absence is the marker of bestiality and the utter absence of compassion. If this is what we train our soldiers to be, are prepared to tolerate, not prepared to highlight as intolerable, please give me a pass on that culture.

Still vivid in most American's memory are the iconic photos of our soldiers dead bodies being dragged and mutilated in Mogadishu Somalia. Yes, war has its moments. One thing that absolutely stunned me regarding this Administration's comments was the comments from Hillary Clinton. She said:
"I share completely the views expressed by (Defence) Secretary (Leon) Panetta earlier today. I join him in condemning the deplorable behaviour that is reflected in this video," "It is absolutely inconsistent with American values, with the standards of behaviour that we expect from our military personnel,". Now, let's think about that comment for a moment..... do any of you remember who she is married to? God help us!

Andrew K

I can see you've never been in combat. Those who have know that we didn't dehumanize the enemy. Neither did we -- the great, great majority of us -- defile their remains. We are and always have been aware of the horrors of war, which takes place because we as a people, including those who talk all day about peace, have found no solution to the conflicts that form part of human nature. Sadly, I find no solution to those conflicts in your essay, either.

I find the definitions here unproven: "dead Taliban fighters, but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same Marines just put high-caliber rounds through the fighters’"

It might ease our collective conscience to assume they were fighters. but how do we know? Our only evidence comes from their killers, and we see how reliable they are.

THey might have been young people in their OWN country who were in the "wrong place" at the "wrong time" or simply defending their families from these vulgar, imperial invaders.

More and more the USa resembles the idle violence of the last days of the Roman Empire, or of the British Empire, and like those in their final orgies of violence and dehumanizing other people, we are really not making any friends now in our final season in power.

Love thy enemy.

Speaking of shooting coyotes, the same personnel and weaponry, including remote control drones, are deployed along this border where I live.

All three book religions — Christianity,   Judaism and Islam — profess to teach respect for human remains and prescribe certain rituals for reverent burial.     Desecrating dead bodies is the ultimate act of disdain and disregard for any innate value those lives might have ever had...   even while an infant or child.     A dead enemy of war no longer has any potential to bring personal harm,   so indeed the described behavior goes to a much darker and primitive place.
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Our culture and its media glamorize guns and violence.     Our politics have become a venue for overt hate-speech and promotion of excessive militarization.     Some politicians are promoting yet another war of choice,   as if our being mired in two fiscally and morally bankrupting wars,   and various other undeclared forays,   had not already done us enough damage.     As is always the case,   the privileged and affluent send the young (and often poor) to fight their macho wars of choice.     Our government operates such entities as the School of the Americas,   Guantánamo and secret renditions.     Our military trains many of our youngest citizens not yet out of their teens how to efficiently kill perceived enemies,   yet once the kill-switch is triggered they are left to fend for themselves in how to turn that switch off,   even after returning to civilian life.     Still others are left to deal with a life of guilt,   psychological compartmentalizing and PTSD,   and sometimes this guilt ends in suicide.     Suicides and murder-suicide rates from our past decade of war are staggering.     The miracle is that anyone survives this type of dehumanizing programming.
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Anyone,   or any nation,   can lay claim to "being Christian" or "moral"   ...but the real test is found in gospel living behavior.     To whatever extent violence in speech and behavior is promoted and condoned,   to whatever extent "pro life" is reduced to a mere single-issue culture war,   to that extent we are neither Christian nor moral...   'Just all talk.
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The Pogo Papers paraphrased Commodore Perry's original statement (c.1812) with the words:   "We have met the enemy,   and he is us".     So sadly true.
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“It seems we keep discovering how difficult it is to compartmentalize war in a way that allows us to separate its glories and its crimes.”
I don’t think there is a way to compartmentalize war’s glories from its crimes. To paraphrase General Patton, in war we don’t want our combat troops to die for our country; we want the other sons of (fill in the blank) to die for theirs. I volunteered to serve my country during the Vietnam war. In boot camp and infantry training, I was trained to be a “mean, green killing machine.” I was not taught to fight; I was taught to kill and main. Our mission was to either kill the “enemy” or at least render the “enemy” useless.
Our constitution theoretically provided for a “citizen army.” By setting up and establishing a standing armed force, we have wandered into a region with ethics and morals that are nebulous at most and at times seemingly absent. On my tour in Vietnam during Tet ’68, I saw several warriors returning with “organic souvenirs” of the “enemy.” We have recorded numerous incidents of our warriors glorying in the crimes of war - My Lai, Abu Ghraib, and the current desecration in Afganistan, to mention just three. Please pardon the street language, but there is one reaction that seems to remove war activity from the realm of Christian life, “In war, shit happens.”
Jesus himself told his disciples to cease armed defense and lay down all weapons. (Luke 22:51, Matthew 26:52) Admittedly, this is a radical command that can only be realized in an ideal world. Perhaps Jesus didn’t really mean what he said.
If we wish to make Jesus’ teachings and example practical in our times by having recourse to the “just war theory proposed by Sts. Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, then we should properly train a warrior class. War is not just something one does for one or so tours of duty. War is a way of life. The warriors must be single because as we know only too well, their parental, spousal and communal families always suffer. And it is way of life, like the priesthood: “you are a warrior forever.” Therefore we must instruct and instill in our warriors a sense of ethic and morality that enables them to maintain certain standards of conduct as they accomplish their mission of killing and maiming the “enemy.” This includes our “technical warriors” who control movements and activities in the “war zone,” especially as our stealth drone capabilities improve to the point where weapons of destruction can be deployed and directed from some climate-controlled war room that may be continents away. We must admit that war is no longer for freedom and justice; it’s sole goal is power and profit. We need to honestly assess and recognize what war is and what having a warrior class entails.
Or we can listen to Jesus and recognize that the Way of the Cross is not easy, but that it is the only way that our Father’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Paz y Bien, Rolando, SFO.

So did you write a column on the fact that virtually no American prisoners of war have been allowed to live? Or the fact that their bodies are always mutilated? No? Then perhaps you have been doing some compartmentalizing. Killing terrorists engaged in war is not "murder." You dehumanize these soldiers and marines. But I am sure that the Taliban appreciates your aid and comfort.

Before you ask, yes I am a veteran.

So it's acceptable to kill people, often in rather painful ways {Napalm anyone?}, but urinating on a enemy corpse is horrific? Interesting logic. It sounds like something that the George W Bush school of philosophy would come up with.

This is an issue that needs deep reflection and discussion because both writers, Junger and Roberts, spell out deep, troubling human thoughts and feelings that we must address, sort, and then decide how we shall live. There were no answers to the questions anyone raised about the urinating, the torture, the killing. And it has been happening throughout history. And even in this day with all the supposed technology, with the so-called American morality so easily broadcats by politicians, and with the glaring immorality of the Catholic Church with the sex abuse scandal I have to ask myself: am I really a believer in Christ? Do I really want to drink the cup? Thanks to Mr. Roberts and Mr. Junger for piercing our souls.

As a society, we have gone overboard in praising the military, filling the Washington mall and other public places with war monuments. We never balance tales of heroism with a deeper understanding of war and its horrors. Most of the people killed in any war are citizens. When Americans do the killing it is no less horrible than when the enemy does it. No good soldier ever glorifies war but the newspapers are often filled with people who do.

I suspect the end of the draft since the Vietnam War and the rise of the voluntary and mercendary forces(we accept non-citizens) have insulated the American public from personal impact of war (except the families of those few, generally lower class, Americans who volunteer).

we do not know these we killed were killers, or fighters, as accused in your quote here.

If they are in fact fighters, do they not fall within the Church's rather loose and lenient moral theology regarding war, protecting their families from us, the immoral invaders?

The greatest obscenity here lies in our killing; the rest is adornment.