Re: Marines urinate on dead Taliban
I am currently in the USAF (my job is as far removed from a Marine on the front lines as you can possibly imagine). Those young guys out doing the job day in and day out get immense respect and honor from me. I see both sides of what people have said in this thread.
The things we ask these young people to do and the stresses that are put on them physically and psychologically are unfathomable. The things they see and are asked to do are just not something the rest of us can relate to. In my opinion it is a huge credit to the quality of the young people serving in our military and the quality of their leaders that we don't see more stuff like this urinating on the corpses business. These young soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen are asked to do horrible things, to see horrible things happen to their friends and to always uphold the higher standard. And almost all of the time they do exactly that. The rules of engagement they deal with and the ways we conduct these wars in order to try to win the hearts of the local people (to the extent we can do that at all) place our military members in greater danger than they would otherwise have to be. It is a lot of sacrifice and stress. I am tremendously proud of the frontline soldiers I get to serve and help in my role in the USAF. They deserve our respect and honor.
It is also clear that we must be better than our enemies and hold ourselves to a higher standard. It is my belief that we do just that nearly all the time. Was it wrong for these marines to do what they did? Yes. Should they receive some administrative punishment? Yes. Do I think they should be court martialed or receive an other than honorable discharge? No, but we must also make it clear that such behavior is not the accepted policy of the US military. To me this is an unfortunate example of poor judgement by some young people that we ask a LOT from. While standards must be enforced we have to understand what these guys are going through too.
Loren Jones
