Junger on desecration
"I can’t imagine that there was a time in human history when enemy dead were not desecrated. Achilles dragged Hector around the walls of Troy from the back of a chariot because he was so enraged by Hector’s killing of his best friend. Three millennia later, Somali fighters dragged a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu after shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter and killing 17 other Americans. During the frontier wars in this country, white Americans routinely scalped Indian fighters, and vice versa, well into the 1870s.
The U.S. military should be held to a higher standard, certainly, but it is important to understand the context of the behavior in the video. Clearly, the impulse to desecrate the enemy comes from a very dark and primal place in the human psyche. Once in a while, those impulses are going to break through.
There is another context for that behavior, though — a more contemporary one. As a society, we may be disgusted by seeing U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters, but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same Marines just put high-caliber rounds through the fighters’ chests. American troops are not blind to this irony. They are very clear about the fact that society trains them to kill, orders them to kill and then balks at anything that suggests they have dehumanized the enemy they have killed."
Interesting article. It does a good job of explaining why these things happen, but he misses a few points.
It's my observation that most Americans feel that supporting the troops means putting a yellow ribbon on the car, then waving a flag and saying thank you on Veterans Day. There's a little more to it. Now they have to realize that they may be doing this for a guy that puts high caliber rounds through the enemies' chest and then pees on them. Disturbing isn't it?
There's another facet to this and that is that every man there was a volunteer. They did this for us because nobody else will! It's a limited engagement and only those brave souls willing to volunteer go. While they go do the job, the multitudes sit at their desk contemplating what's right and wrong. Judgement? Wow! How can the vast majority who never served themselves and wouldn't dream of their children serving pass one minute judgement on these guys? How?! How on Earth can these lazy people pass one bit of judgement on those doing the fighting for them?
To make matters worse, we have people like Hillary Clinton in charge! The woman that married one of the world's most famous draft-dodgers is going to tell us that SHE is going to correct this. Boy howdy, that's hard to swallow isn't it?
When I served, there was a common saying when faced with a moral dilemma, "What are they going to do? Bend my dog tags and send me home?". I'm sure that's the same attitude these men have. From what I've read, they were Marine snipers. Any idea what it takes just to train to that level? Any idea what it's like to actually do that job in an environment like Afghanistan? So we're going to put a hurtin' on them for peeing? How's that? Imprisonment for those that risked being a POW? The death penalty for those that face the possibility of it everyday? What exactly are you going to do to them? Some of them may already be KIA for all we know.
I think the most infuriating thing for most is that they know they have no right to say a thing about what's been done. In the end, they need to thank these men for fighting for them. Those passing judgement find it's an appalling look in their mirror.
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