Like you, my informed readers, I have seen the video of the 4 Marines urinating on three dead Taliban fighters. The reactions in the US are wide and varied. Here is mine.
As a veteran who happened not to serve in combat, it is hard for me to pass judgement on anyone who has. That is my starting point. Obviously, their action is going to have negative consequences for obvious reasons. One might also argue that any future US soldiers captured by the Taliban are going to suffer for it, but chances are, they would be brutally slaughtered anyway even without this incident.
Clearly, this video will get wide play in the Muslim world. It will be advertised as an insult to dead Muslim fighters even though a scene like this could have played out in any war and probably has.
Our military will treat it as a breakdown in military discipline and take some sort of punitive action. The question is, given the emotion and public relations involved, will the punishment match the offense? In fact, will the charge itself be appropriate? I have heard the term "desecration of a dead body" being tossed around. Is it desecration? If not, what is it? I understand that two of the Marines are no longer in the military? They could be charged by a federal court, but what will the charge be?
What will be demonstrated here is that, unlike our enemies, we have a system of justice that our soldiers must serve under with a set of rules of engagement.
To sum it up, what I am trying to say here is that while better judgment could have been used, I just don't know what kind of punishment is applicable to urinating on the dead body of someone you have killed in war. Like the Abu Ghraib incident, it does damage to our image and our cause, but just what exactly do you want to see happen to these Marines?
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Allen West on the Marines Incident: 'Shut Your Mouth, War Is Hell'
By 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 hell.”
Minus the rhetoric, (we didn't have custody or effective jurisdiction over the perpetrators of the other incidents he refers to) West has made a good case for following the rule book, and leaving it at that.
Nobody deserves to be killed for urinating on a corpse. A live person being urinated on might be forgiven for shooting the urinator, but only at the time the act was committed, not later, and not by anyone else. A prison sentence would serve no purpose.
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