Marines urinating on Taliban corpses: Putting words to the picture

You know what I find interesting - that the mainstream media is in a rush to condemn this behavior on the one hand, and then immediately understand these poor, troubled Marines on the other hand. In almost none of the reporting, to include Mr Lembcke's, are the words "President Obama" mentioned, unless it is to stress how upset he is by the event. How could this be? What are we in an election year, or something??? Could there be an agenda afoot here?

What kind of coverage would this be getting if you-know-who was still president? Shame on your laughable bias!!!

In the early Church, the faithful Christians were not permitted to be soldiers or fight in wars declared by the secular government. The mission of the non-violent Jesus was still in their consciousness. Years later, even the Church allowed torture and death for those who disobeyed their commands! Today, it is not at all surprising that our global culture permits and promotes violence of all kinds in the name of justice. What is astonishing is that one could equate the two!!! Our consciousness has morphed into something that is unrecognizable through the lens of the Gospel mandate. I pray that we are not forever lost as a nation or global society-- I pray that some of us can remain a faithful witness to the nonviolent Jesus and find ways to be hopeful for the salvation of our very souls.

Thank you for this Jerry Lembcke. The morality of war aside, at the death of a soldier, comrade or enemy, hostility ends. That which makes a soldier an enemy is their being on "the other side". A dead soldier is no longer on a side, a mission or cause. He or she is the remnant of a person.

The training of a contemporary soldier, in a civilized country that is not prepared to instill this reality, this value in its soldiers and which would encourage the mentality, not explicietly exclude it or attempt to rationalize or justify such behavior is hardly worth fighting for let alone dying for. Let us hope that this is a singular, rare aberation and an occasion for a very significant learning moment.

It is a sad day when those in the American military show such disrespect for human life - no matter who they are. But I guess it is happening right here in our cities as many lives are taken each and every day. What will it take to help lead us to show more respect for each other?

We and those Marines live in a culture that glorifies violence and deifies power. From the nut cases of the NRA that insists a citizen has the "right" to own an assault rife to police officers who think they have the "right" to be judge jury and executioner in the performance of their duty to "protect and serve" to those demented and evil young men who willingly and in cold blood shot their fellow classmates and teachers only to be "explained away" as perhaps social outcasts the entire society wreaks of the havoc of the religion of "the cowboy"! We worship the cult of celebrity and we use monetary value as the only absolute by which we judge worth. We celebrate television programmes that display dysfunctional families and individuals raise to the level of the theater of the absurd and demand more. Our humor is toilet humor and our language toilet language. We demonize those who dare challenge our racism which our right wing politicians use effectively to stir up the blood lust of that racism. We never sin we just make mistakes even in the most "sacred places"! We are "horrified" at the photos of war and yet we do not condemn those who behead journalists and "infidels" for fear of the charge of sectarianism. We have never been honest about who and what we are as a nation nor have we ever accepted the responsibilities for our own genocide and slavery of others. We have had our own wars of conquest and colonialism in the name of America. Until the day comes when we fundamentally change our values peeing on dead enemy soldiers is just Photoshop to many people.

As a teenager in WWII I admired members of the military, especially one special person, Hank Wickman, a young Marine whom I admired. He was killed in the war in the Pacific. My admiration of him and what he stood for as a Marine clearly resinates in my mind.. 70 years after his death...and is in stark contrast to my feelings about the wars and the Marine Corp of today. With our culture of starting wars (Iraq) and condoning, yes, encouraging violence, we have created a different breed of individuals which to me DO NOT represent the America I grew up in and love dearly nor the Marine Corp personnel of WW II. What we are experiencing today is further and rapid disintegration of our great country. God Bless America.

"Almost nothing of what Exum and Ignatius said made sense."

Exum and Ignatius noted the dehumanizing effect which are the consequences of war and training for war. That makes sense to me. What about that doesn't make "sense" to you, Jerry?

I see parallels between this incident and behavior on the football field, with all the taunting, not only after touchdowns but after every tackle or catch or broken-up catch. I think of the old Packers of the Max McGee era. His advice was "when you score a touchdown, act like you've been there before." No big deal. This is what I do.

I see the blame for such taunting behavior on the battlefield as poor leadership right down the line from the generals to sargeants. Without good leadership, we'll always have such incidents, undoing our professional soldiering, which these days includes a good bit of winning hearts and minds of the people.

This comment in no way advocates urinating on corpses. It considers seriously the honor due to the human body as well as the use this event will be made of by "the enemy." Nonetheless, can one compare in any honest way the disrespect to the body to riddling it with bullets and depriving it of life, often enough in an agonizing suffering, as opposed to urination on the same? This is not torture either. Apologies are due; reprimands as well. But get real: those who are so shockingly offended need to go to war.

It goes without saying that urinating on corpses reflects an attitude about death that is wrong in a bunch of ways. But let's not get carried away with righteous moralizing or wild speculation about just why young Americans would do such a thing without seriously thinking about the nature of combat and awful human condition these guys have been facing. For starters, think of the fact that these corpses were very recently live humans determined to kill these young Americans and anyone else who tried to stop their uncivilized acts of aggression. Yes, I'm saddened by the whole scene but I'm not about to criticize, much less condemn the actions. I pray that these brave Americans, doing a job as representatives of all of us, will not be scarred permanently by their experiences or by the unfair criticisms of their human reactions.

"we'll see the still-uglier sight of a country that lost its sense of place in history"
and we'll suffer the profound wounds caused by accepting, either readily or reluctantly, the concept of a just war" and interpreting the 5th Commandment accordingly.
Lord, send down your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Paz y Bien, Rolando, SFO.

THEY don't care! These talking heads really need to stop defending and denying the hypocrisy which continues to hide the REAL reason the USA maintains the military occupation of Afghanistan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/14/discovers-t-minerals-afghanistan/
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/no-the-military-didnt-just-disco...
How many times have you ever seen the NYT and FOX News agreeing on something?

Most of the comments would have one think that war is a tidy event dominated by moral decisions about what to do and what not to do; that is, an event dominated by rational processes. Those who have experienced combat know that is false. Combat IS dehumanizing. The idea is that one kills an enemy before that enemy kills him. Pissing on an enemy corpse is a dehumanized celebration of survival. Next time it may be you so cherish the moment.

I was a product of pretty regular U. S, Army training in World War II. Nothing I was taught, or that I taught, was dehumanizing. The infantry division I served in Europe served honorably and well. We had discipline based mainly on respect and honor and not from hazing or demeaning of troops in training. IK9TTF always felt that the attempt to build discipline by these means was ineffective.

Nevertheless I saw examples of behavior by other army outfits that showed lack of discipline: One, display of the bodies of four German soldiers around a table with cards in their hands as if they were playing a card game. This required manipulation of the corpses. Two, complete destruction of every container in a small family liquor warehouse so that a footbridge had to be built over the pond of liquor that resulted.

In 1944-45 had I come upon four of my men desecrating bodies in the way these four marines were caught doing, I honestly believe my reaction would have been, “Hey guys, knock it off. Get back to your posts.” I would have attributed it to their experiences not their training. I don't believe it would have occurred to me to arrest or discipline them.

This column or whatever it is really does not address the problem, and the writer really does not know what he is talking about. The event itself was ugly, even frightening, but each of the professional commentators on PBS framed it properly. It is not so much about war (which the NCR writer triumphantly decries) but rather about the dehumnization of all of us by the actions of a few misguided and terribly troubled men who happen to be US Marines.

I find the discussion surrounding this incident not only surprising but bordering on hysterical hypocrisy. It's ok to kill someone but not ok to urinate on their remains? Who on earth ever came out with the philosophy that once someone is dead they are no longer an enemy. It is the whole Taliban culture that is the enemy not just individuals. That's why the US went to war.

To suggest that this is new and what the US Society has become in recent times is to deny the country's history. Have a closer look at the untold inhuman brutality of the Civil War and look up what the great WW1 hero Pershing did to the corpses of the Muslim rebels in the Philippines fifteen years earlier. It's war, they were corpses. What happened may have been distasteful but it wasn't a War Crime! If given a choice I would rather be urinated upon than shot.

Of course Marines are going to urinate on dead bodies. Their whole mission is to make live bodies into dead bodies. Just read "Hell, Healing and Resistance," a book that documents the chants that Marines sing as they jog in training: all about burning down the village, raping the women, and killing the children. Training in the Army has the same goal: training men and women to be killers of other men and women. I went through that training myself. Luckily, the Army sent me to Korea, not Vietnam, and I was never called upon to kill anyone.

The bottom line for me, as a Christian and long-time pacifist, is this: Let's be realistic about what the military is and does. We should discourage as many kids as possible from joining. Once they're in, we should do everything in our power to keep them from being sent off to war of any kind, but especially to bogus adventures such as Iraq and Afghanistan. When they're over there, we shouldn't fool ourselves into believing that they're fighting for freedom. That might be why they enlisted, but once they're in combat, they're fighting to stay alive, to protect their buddies, and if one of their buddies is killed, to avenge him or her. So, when they commit atrocities, we shouldn't be surprised. Finally, when they get come back horribly disfigured in mind and body, we should treat them tenderly and justly.

Did Jerry Lembcke serve on the front lines? Whether yes or no, this is a huge omission.

I am a former Marine. And, yes! What these men did was wrong. And they should be punished. But not lynched with ink or a rope.

We are a nation who cares. The men in the military care more than many who never put themselves in harms way. Before one sets off on a pious rant, perhaps he should listen to the story as it unfolds.

Without these men and their like, Jerry and the rest of us might not be so free. And with or without the media, these fallible human beings will re visit this scene many times in their lives. Perhaps becoming more ashamed as they mature. Perhaps begging for forgiveness. I will not cast the first or last stone.

Allen West on the Marines Incident: 'Shut Your Mouth, War Is Heck'
JAN 13, 2012 DANIEL HALPER
Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sends THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines' video, and has given us permission to publish it.

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.
“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?
“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.
“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is heck."

I know two of the 4 Marines in the video. One has been to Afghanistan twice before and saw his best friends get killed or their legs blown off right in front of him. He's not a criminal, just worn down by the war and his experiences. This is a failure of Marine leadership and their screening of deployers. These guys lost a buddy the day before this video was shot and this is how they acted out. The Corps should remove operators who have just seen someone die, remove them from combat for a couple days and let them cool down and compose themselves.

What can we expect from men whose business as members of the military is killing. They are trained to be specialists in the art of death and destruction! Pray for their souls but let us not excuse, rationalize or approve of their actions or the violence they carry out in our name. (Watch the video, they enjoy what they do!)

People who blog here routinely dehumanize those who disagree with them with language far more demeaning than anything the Marines did. The Marines were just honest about who they are and what they believe.

When we ask our children to go to war it is incumbent upon us to write a narrative that will engage the qualities of loyalty, moral turpitude, sense of righteousness, self defense that have been cultivated in each one over time. One must believe the cause is just. At the same time we must fortify them by casting the enemy as morally corrupt, one who holds the shadow side of the human condition. We ask them to submit to training that that will reinforce this dichotomy; we are righteous, the enemy is corrupt. The potential to kill is in you and me. Warriors must have this ignited in order to enter the battle. Inherent in the warriors training is the dehumanization of the enemy. Herein lies the dehumanization of our children and the cycle goes on and on and on…! The following poem (long – I apologize) makes me bow my head!

REVENGE
At times … I wish
I could meet in a duel
the man who killed my father
and razed our home,
expelling me
into
a narrow country.
And if he killed me,
I’d rest at last,
and if I were ready—
I would take my revenge!
*
But if it came to light,
when my rival appeared,
that he had a mother
waiting for him,
or a father who’d put
his right hand over
the heart’s place in his chest
whenever his son was late
even by just a quarter-hour
for a meeting they’d set—
then I would not kill him,
even if I could.
*
Likewise … I
would not murder him
if it were soon made clear
that he had a brother or sisters
who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
Or if he had a wife to greet him
and children who
couldn’t bear his absence
and whom his gifts would thrill.
Or if he had
friends or companions,
neighbors he knew
or allies from prison
or a hospital room,
or classmates from his school …
asking about him
and sending him regards.
*
But if he turned
out to be on his own—
cut off like a branch from a tree—
without a mother or father,
with neither a brother nor sister,
wifeless, without a child,
and without kin or neighbors or friends,
colleagues or companions,
then I’d add not a thing to his pain
within that aloneness—
not the torment of death,
and not the sorrow of passing away.
Instead I’d be content
to ignore him when I passed him by
on the street—as I
convinced myself
that paying him no attention
in itself was a kind of revenge.

Nazareth
April 15, 2006

© 2006 by Taha Muhammad Ali. English translation and copyright 2006 by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin.

Peeing on dead bodies, drinking booze from butts, stripping prisoners and sicking dogs on them and the untold numbers on women in the military by their peers...Americas finest? And we talk about Respect Life as an abortion only issue!

Baby and Bathwater Too?

The author's worry about the atrocity-trauma narrative as the only acceptable understanding of war is the heart of the article. He even suggests that atrocity-trauma is now (after Vietnam) the only acceptable posture for "manly" soldiers. He sees the urinating marines as "displaying their own degradation as a badge of honor." The blame then lies on a culture that accepts/endorses the idea that war dehumanizes those involved to the extent that they are inevitably "damaged."

This is a provocative way of framing the issue, and courageous in attacking what seem to be sympathetic, progressive responses to veterans' experience: diagnoses like PTSD.

I worry, though, about romanticization of the Second World War and it's "greatest generation," who in the author's mind, seem to have been tough and durable, able to calmly (joyfully?) report what they did in the war, while not being narcissists wallowing in the self-pity invited by the 'what happened to you?' question.

But a whole host of recent memoirs from children of WWII vets describe their veteran fathers not so much as triumphant liberators proud of their service as silent, stoic, quiet types, loathe to talk about the war at all. Many of these memoirs also note abusive behavior that often accompanied this silence: alcoholism, aggression, domestic violence, unpredictable tempers. They therefore critique the idea of a greatest generation, suggesting it glosses over the full emotional register of mid-century veterans' experience.

The author raises a powerful critique of contemporary narratives of manhood and war, but the conversation can be enhanced by consideration of the risks of the kind of stoicism the author implicitly embraces.

Let's not throw the (sensitivity to psychological war wounds) baby out with the (pathologizing all veterans) bathwater.

It shouldn't have been shown. But PBS and Woodruff bend over backwards to get their stories straight and remain one of the only reliable sources of news - most of which never appears on the other channels.

Correction on Stevie's earlier comment

Peeing on dead bodies, drinking booze from butts, stripping prisoners and sicking dogs on them and the untold numbers of women raped in the military by their peers...Americas finest? And we talk about Respect Life as an abortion only issue

I agree that military training dehumanizes our soldiers, and more importantly (from a military perspective) the "enemy," that's the whole point. Most would not do what they are asked to do otherwise. But this should not excuse these reprehensible actions. I would ask those who are trying to excuse their actions or minimize their consequences this question, "If the roles had been reversed, if those had been "enemy" soldiers desecrating our dead by urinating on Americans, what would be your reaction?" What justice would we demand? I am sure missiles would be in the air.

In a recent essay by Mark Edmundson entitled "Do Sports Build Character or Damage it?" he makes some very insightful observations about sport and war and comapres Hector and Achilles. A rather long quote follows.

"In the Western heroic tradition, the paragon of the humane warrior is Homer's Hector, prince of the Trojans. He is a fierce fighter: On one particular day, no Greek can stand up to him; his valor puts the whole Greek army to rout. Even on an unexceptional day, Hector can stand up to Ajax, the Greek giant, and trade blow for blow with him. Yet as fierce as Hector can be, he is also humane. He is a loving son to his aged parents, a husband who talks on equal terms with his wife, Andromache, and a tender-hearted father. He and King Priam are the only ones in Troy who treat Helen, the ostensible cause of the war, with kindness.
One of the most memorable scenes in The Iliad comes when Hector, fresh from the battlefield, strides toward his boy, Astyanax. The child screams with fright at the ferocious form encased in armor, covered with dust and gore. Hector understands his child in an instant and takes off his helmet, with its giant horsehair plume, then bends over, picks his boy up and dandles him, while Andromache looks on happily. Astyanax—who will soon be pitched off the battlements of Troy when the Greeks conquer the city—looks up at his father and laughs in delight.
The scene concentrates what is most appealing about Hector—and about a certain kind of athlete and warrior. Hector can turn it off. He can stop being the manslayer that he needs to be out on the windy plains of Troy and become a humane husband and father. The scene shows him in his dual nature—warrior and man of thought and feeling. In a sense, he is the figure that every fighter and athlete should emulate. He is the Navy Seal or Green Beret who would never kill a prisoner, the fearless fighter who could never harm a woman or a child. In the symbolic world of sports, where the horrors and the triumphs of combat are only mimicked, he is the one who comports himself with extreme gentleness off the field, who never speaks ill of an opponent, who never complains, never whines.
But The Iliad is not primarily about Hector. It is the poem of Achilles and his wrath. After Hector kills Achilles' dear friend Patroclus, Achilles goes on a rampage, killing every Trojan he can. All humanity leaves him; all mercy is gone. At one point, a Trojan fighter grasps his knees and begs for mercy. Achilles taunts him: Look at me, he says, so strong and beautiful, and some day I, too, shall have to die. But not today. Today is your day. At another point, a river close to the city, the River Scamander, becomes incensed over Achilles' murderous spree. The hero has glutted its waters with blood and its bed with bodies. The river is so enraged that it tries to drown the hero. When Achilles finally gets to Hector, he slaughters him before the eyes of his parents, Hecuba and Priam, and drags his body across the plains of Troy.
Achilles is drunk on rage, the poem tells us. His rational mind has left him, and he is mad with the joy of slaughter. The ability to modulate character that Hector shows—the fierce warrior becoming the loving father—is something Achilles does not possess. Achilles, one feels, could not stop himself if he wished to: A fellow Greek who somehow insulted him when he was on his rampage would be in nearly as much danger as a Trojan enemy. Plato would recognize Achilles as a man who has lost all reason and has allowed thymos to dominate his soul.
This ability to go mad—to become berserk—is inseparable from Achilles' greatness as a warrior. It is part of what sets him above the more circumspect Hector on the battlefield. When Hector encounters Achilles for the last time, Hector feels fear. Achilles in his wrath has no idea what fear is, and that is part of what makes him unstoppable.
Achilles' fate is too often the fate of warriors and, in a lower key, of athletes. They unleash power in themselves, which they cannot discipline. They leave the field of combat or of play and are still ferocious, or they can be stirred to ferocity by almost nothing. They let no insult pass. A misplaced word sends them into a rage. A mild frustration turns them violent. Thymos, as Plato would have said, has taken over their souls, and reason no longer has a primary place—in some cases, it has no place at all."

Dehumanized by war?

Dehumanized by life !

Being a Marine, just not active anymore, and a war veteran myself. At that age it could have been me, the difficulties of daily life in a battle zone is only understood by a few. If you have not lived in don't bother giving me your opinion. I wish these young men wouldn't have filmed it or done it either but I'm not going to rant about it either. Hell I'm not sure if anyone that served in a battle zone being on pins and needles daily wouldn't do something a little strange that in a normal condition they would never think of doing.