Marines Pull A “Taliban”…..Sort Of
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If the Times editorial board is willing, I’d be happy to pay their airfare over to Helmand Province in Afghanistan so they may also remind the Taliban about the Geneva Convention
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A video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban has circulated on the web. There can be no disagreement that regardless of their state of mind during a difficult tour of duty in Afghanistan, such action is unacceptable and the perpetrators must be punished.
But as is typical with the usual liberal suspects, this situation is to them another example of the U.S. military gone awry and further evidence of an institutional problem especially as reminiscing over Abu Ghraib reflexively occurs. Hardly.
The truth of the matter is this is a further reminder of how professional, and respectful of the enemy, the U.S. military always is when conducting war, but for these outlier situations. It is hard to imagine the Taliban ever giving a Christian or other religious burial to a captured high-level leader of the U.S. if they ever had to inter the body. Yet that is exactly what the U.S. did with Osama Bin Laden, who murdered thousands of U.S. citizens and is reponsible for the death of military personnel who went to war and were killed in the aftermath of 9/11. Such is in stark contrast with the Taliban, as well as Al Queda, who are known for their brutal treatment of their prisoners (hostages).
As to the nail-biting over inflaming anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan, this cannot help the U.S. image but given that the Taliban are well-known to be brutal against their own people, it’s hard to believe that a couple of marines’ bad toilet-training will move the Taliban ahead of the U.S. in popularity. In fact, for many an Afghan, who are pragmatic and more worried about survival, this may be a further reminder of who they think they would fare better with as a neighbor: namely, the U.S. military.
Still, The New York Times editorial board averred that such actions may be a war crime under the Geneva Convention which prohibits degrading treatment of anyone who falls into enemy hands. This is rich stuff and, but for the ludicrousness of such an endeavor, one would almost want to see such charges raised and the marines brought before the International Criminal Court in the Hague where Slobodan Milošević, the late leader of Serbia and Yugoslavia, played rope-a-dope with the court for several years during his genocide trial before he died, with a verdict no where in sight. It’s safe to assume that the Court would handle these defendants with dispatch, if not haste, to show they can handle the “tough” cases and regain some of their lost credibility after the Milošević fiasco.
And if the Times editorial board is willing, I’d be happy to pay their airfare over to Helmand Province in Afghanistan so they may also remind the Taliban about the Geneva Convention. I would not have to pay round-trip as it is doubtful the board would be coming back any time soon, regardless of what the Geneva Convention says.
Perhaps more than anything else, incidents like Abu Ghraib and this one show not so much that otherwise good people can do bad things but that those who are against military actions will use these blemishes to advance their agendas, however subtly.
-I.M. Windee
