Re: Marines screw up
Have you ever heard the saying, "holier than Caesar's wife"? That is how we need to appear in this new kind of warfare, fighting for hearts and minds in the middle east. The rules of engagement are biased toward reducing risk of harm to nationals, even if it means exposing soldiers to more risk.
Every soldier who stepped foot in country over there knows the rules and orders and presumably why. We can all understand this kind of behavior that people do sometimes to relieve stress. I have been in the military (drafted) so I know, but why was the video of this event taken in the first place and then, even more incredibly shared??
If it wasn't so likely to get fellow soldiers killed, I'd suspect it was the military doing this on purpose to throw a monkey wrench into the administration's negotiations (brokered surrender?) with the Taliban, in some kind of peace agreement deal. No doubt a power sharing deal between the Taliban and Karzai's government. Karzai barely influences outside Kabul, so this isn't sharing rule as much as dividing up the sand in anticipation of us no longer being around. Who thinks releasing some Taliban held in Gitmo for a decade or so will not end up with them back in the fight, as so many other former detainees have done (several killed or recaptured). I sure hope it wasn't intentional because guess what, it didn't even work... Taliban are still moving the deal forward.
I don't know the real story for these specific soldiers, but IMO they surely had to know better. I am more angry at the cameraman and his larger indiscretion of sharing that video than the team acting stupid in a moment of emotional release.
But they were caught pink handed...disobeying orders. It's ok to feel sympathetic, but they must answer for that behavior, the world is watching now.
JR
PS: This hasn't been a good few months for that theater of operations. It turns out the firing on and killing of Pakistani military near the border was an avoidable mistake. If they were trying to screw the pooch on purpose they couldn't do a much better job.
