Maybe we should take a deep breath and pause the national hissy fit over the YouTube video of U.S. Marines reportedly urinating on enemy Taliban corpses last summer.
The Marines knew it was wrong, but maybe we owe a little patience and perspective to those who do our dirty work.
As the WWII, Korea and Vietnam generations are aging and dying, the all-volunteer military means that a small and shrinking percentage of our population knows anything at all about life on a battlefield.
Today’s military force is the most combat-experienced ever; those serving stay in longer than draftees and their families pay the price of deployment to a war zone. That service ought to buy them a little loyalty when they get themselves in trouble.
Our enemy is trained in cruelty to civilians as a tool of terror. By contrast, we train our troops to recognize the natural passions of the battlefield and strive to keep them under control. Occasionally, those passions for payback overcome the training; it has happened in every war.
We judge our own troops in combat from the comfort and safety of our living rooms, naively using a book of rules to mentally measure them, as if they are playing basketball, as if they are here with us instead of in a far-less-civilized world.
How many of you who are horrified have ever dodged a bullet?
We send them to war again and again, expecting them to be half warrior and half diplomat.
We tie their hands with cumbersome rules of engagement that give a significant advantage to an unscrupulous enemy.
When they survive combat, they are second-guessed by desk jockeys in the Pentagon who might put their heads on a stick as a sacrifice to politics.
They deserve better from us.
To keep the Marines’ violation in perspective, we should remember the Taliban’s record of hacking off limbs, disfiguring faces, beheading, hanging, stoning, strangling and other savage acts for infractions like playing Western music or sending girls to school.
Over the last 10 years, our enemy hasn’t begged forgiveness for burning U.S. corpses, dragging their bodies through streets as crowds cheer, hanging their bodies on a bridge or sawing off heads on videotape.
We are better than they are, but our news media is their most powerful weapon against us and we only broadcast our weakness by beating ourselves up and pleading forgiveness before the world on bended knee.
I hope those Marines get a not-too-harsh reminder to be decent to corpses of men who were recently trying to kill them; that upholds American values.
But I also hope America gets over the apology impulse and returns to the bold strength that makes our enemy fear far worse from us than mistreating their dead, fear that stops their laughing at our weakness, fear that makes them tremble as they whisper to each other, “Be careful not to provoke the Americans!”
That strength would keep faith with our troops, prevent wars and build powerful alliances.
Terry Garlock of Peachtree City was an attack helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War.
