Piss Off

There's been quite a bit of sturm und drang over the recently posted video of U.S. Marines pissing on the bodies of dead camel-fucking scum taliban. Most of it, as you can imagine, has been a mixture of outrage and condemnation from such notable combat veterans and military experts as Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton. Legitimate military personnel were also quick to condemn the act, although I suspect for different reasons.

Let me make this as clear as I can. I whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment underlying the Marines' actions. I understand the visceral feeling towards people who have quite likely killed and/or maimed your buddies, and are trying to do the same to you. But -- and this is a big but -- those Marines are supposed to be professionals. Their job is to dispatch the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible. In other words, in a professional manner. What they did, however understandable, just provides propaganda and motivation for the other side.

"It is difficult to say what long-term impacts this might have, and I would hesitate to get into speculation, but obviously any sort of footage, any sort of activity of this kind ...  are very much working against our cause..." said Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a NATO ISAF spokesman.

Imagine that you're an Afghan who is not necessarily on the taliban's side, but remains unsure about the American presence. Something like this just might be enough to tip the scale and send you over to the other side. At the very least it makes you more leery and suspicious of, and less likely to help, American forces. It just makes everyone else's job that much more difficult, as evidenced by the following.

A Taliban spokesman called the video "barbaric."

"And no religion that follows a holy text would accept such conduct. This inhuman act reveals their real face to the world," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said via text message Thursday.

"Islam gives values and respect to every human being," regardless of which religion the individual follows, said Islamic scholar Mawlawi Enayatullah Baligh. "The value and respect is the same for an alive person and a dead body. Even the body of your enemy in the battleground is respectable in Islam."

Yeah, right. Tell it to the innocent women and children killed by suicide bombers, the innocent women and children raped, tortured, and maimed in the name of islamic 'honor.'

I utterly and categorically reject any blather claiming that islam 'values and respects every human being.' I would gladly piss on the bodies of dead islamist extremists.

But -- and here's that 'but' again -- I am no longer a professional member of the armed forces. That's the tragedy of this whole thing. Skilled and motivated U.S. Marines are about to be buried under a ton of shit because one of them was foolish enough to record and then post a video of what I suspect is a relatively mild and common after-action event.

Does anyone think things like this didn't happen in the Pacific Theater during WWII? The Korean War? Or Viet Nam?

Thank goodness they didn't have cell phones or pocket video cameras back then...