I am not condoning what the Marines did in
urinating on dead Taliban corpses, but the hue and cry over their actions has me pretty angry. The Taliban were part of a conspiracy that killed over 3,000 Americans; they have
mutilated women,
killed those trying to educate girls,
killed Christians,
killed foreign medical workers,
beaten and tortured their own people, and generally acted like uncivilized savages unworthy of the protections afforded civilized peoples in the Geneva Convention and the various Hague treaties. So cry me a river when a few of their fighters suffer disrespect in death after they meet up with justice.
Now I understand that it is not in the political interests of the United States for our Marines to act in this fashion. To some extent, as Clausewitz famously pointed out, war is politics carried out by other means. To the extent that this allows our enemies to frame the conflict as a religious one, these actions are detrimental to the interests of the United States. But we should leave it at that, and reserve our moral outrage for true acts of oppression.
WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGERY
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