What penalty, if any, do you think US soldiers deserve for urinating on the Taliban dead?

I’m more concerned with what kind of institutional environment and training produces such twisted soldiers.

Combat stress produces all kinds of side effects, both physical and mental. What ever their punishment will be, it will be handed doen with this in mind. I have served in combat, so I know first hand the mentality you need to stay alive on a battlefield. Unless you have been there, you wont really understand. War is ugly, and it can bring out the absolute best, and the absolute worse out of everyone. I think they need better mental evaluation screens before they send these guys off.

For punisment, female circumcision is not legal.

Does that mean you don’t think they should face any disciplinary measures after the fact, but just get a free pass?

They will face punishment from their chain of command for sure, as they should. Because this is not how we operate. There is nothing in our tactical Standard Operating Procedures (TACSOP), that states: “Piss on the corpses of your enemy”. They were operating outside the guidelines of their mission, and they will be UCMJ’d for it. Alll this kind of PR does is give our enemies something else to be pissed of at us for, and it takes away from the good work our guys are trying to do over there.

Pissing on dead corpses is not taught in any training environments I have been in, and I have served 20 years and two wars. All I am saying is some people do better under the strain of combat than others. Most of our guys go there, do their duty then come home and try to reintergrate back into society the best they can.

They should be court martial and disciplinary measures should be taken..

I’m sure it’s not. But what kinds of attitudes are encouraged by the full experience (not just the explicit curricula) of military training? Respect as equals and as worthy adversaries? Hatred and contempt for the evil and treacherous foe? Patronizing superiority toward the weak or benighted foreigners who need us to save them from their neighbors or from themselves? Is it only combat itself that can, as you say, bring out the absolute best or the absolute worst from everyone? What about the process that imposes military discipline? It seems to me that freedom from self can come either as a liberation into something larger, or as a crushing of the spirit.

they should be court marshled and discharged thrown in a mental hospital and then be put in jail

All of our manuals for afganistan and iraq (and there are alot), teach us respect for culture, religious tolerance, language, local customs, basically how to live in their countries without offending, so i dont know where these outbursts come from except to say that they are either stress induced, or they just come from a bad apple. The job of journalism is to sell papers. We HAVE to keep that in mind. Soldiers building schools and delivering food and water doesnt sell papers. F@cking sad.

As I said above, it is not the explicit curriculum, but rather the whole process of socialization into military discipline - at the bottom of the hierarchy, where it is your role to kill or be killed at the orders of your “superiors” - that reshapes the man or woman into a soldier. Think of it as a quality control problem, if you like: One or two individual bad apples in every barrel might be a fluke, but what we see instead is the steady production of these enclaves, however exceptional, wherein the bad apples are able to find and trust and reinforce each other in their subculture of hateful perversity and their expectation of impunity. That indicates a much more serious problem in the way the military turns out soldiers. It is doing no favors for your sisters and brothers in uniform, all of whom are subjected to the dark side of that process as well as to its nobler aspects, and each of whom has to come back here, G!d willing, to build a life.

Another thing that is happening is the Non Comissioned Officers (NCO’s) that are leading the troops seem to be making rank faster than ever before out of necessity because of the rotation cycles. It is not unlike the problem with the Portland Police for instance, which is hiring older men and women (age 38+), because the younger ones have too much ego. Same difference. You put a young staff seargent in a position where he is in charge of a squad of men a million dollars worth of equipment. . . I seen this coming along time ago. Our front line is wearing thin. You cannot deploy soldiers for 10 years and not expect some adverse outcomes.

Ralph A. Remakel

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sends THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines’ video, and has given us permission to publish it. “I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah. “All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq? “The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter. “As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

I have posted this because I am sick and tired of people thinking that they know everything thier is to know about the military in every country. Have any of you ever been in that situation? Have any of you spent time over seas to watch your best friends be blown up, shot at, killed in an inhuman way? Have any of you had to hear your significant other hang up because there is an attack? Did your friend go insane after coming home from his deployment because he was forced to kill a child? If you have been in these peoples shoes then by all means you have a right to say something. For those of you who have not you should keep your mouths shut. Some of you have no idea what so ever about the military and how a deployment is and what can happen to you because of what can happen out there. Instead of saying anything about these men getting discharged and put in jail how about you thank your lucky stars that you have the freedom to enjoy your freedom as these men and women give up huge parts of thier lives for YOU.

Ralph, you wrote: “I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.” Do you take Somali militias and Iraqi guerrillas as the standard-setters for the conduct of U.S. military forces? I certainly don’t. (I also don’t know why you call the private Blackwater mercenaries “ours,” but that’s another matter.) If you missed the ubiquitous self-righteous indignation, media outrage, and condemnation that were rampant in the USA in the aftermath of the incidents you mention, perhaps you were deployed overseas at the time, or down for a nice, long nap. I do not take well to being told - or to hearing other FA-ers told - to shut our mouths. We are under no obligation, and I feel no inclination, to establish my credentials to your or anyone’s satisfaction before addressing any issue I choose in any manner I choose. You are, of course, free to disagree, and I welcome the addition of your voice to the mix. But if you are looking for a place where you can throw your weight around to shut people up for not sharing your experience or your views, or to tell people what they must think and feel in order to be decent human beings, than I humbly suggest that FA is not the right place for you.

Oops, I see from your profile that you’re not Ralph! Sorry I misunderstood that, or I would have “recognized” you from your recent participation here.