DON’T PUNISH THOSE MARINES!

On Sunday, Rick Perry ripped into the Obama administration for its over-the-top reaction in condemning the four Marines shown on a video peeing on the dead bodies of some Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. I strongly agree with Gov. Perry.

Once the video was released to the public, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta came before the television cameras to announce that such behavior is not the American way and that the four Marines will be harshly dealt with.

Sen. John McCain piped in by saying that the images could damage the war effort and hurt our standing in the international community. Even though McCain is probably right on both counts, I do not believe that those Marines deserve to be punished.

In every war, soldiers on both sides often desecrate the bodies of enemy fighters. We are quick to point out when the other side does it while we try to cover up our soldiers’ battlefield misconduct. The problem in this case is that someone released a video that got instant widespread coverage on the internet.

I remember in WWII when we propagandized the mass shooting of American prisoners by Nazi SS troops. We also propagandized the cruel treatment afforded our troops by their Japanese captors. We never mentioned that our soldiers often killed surrendering German soldiers and desecrated the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers.

During the Viet Nam War there was the My Lai massacre in which American soldiers killed several hundred Vietnamese villagers, many of them women, children and infants. The Army tried to cover it up and even Colin Powell whitewashed his investigation of the massacre. The only reason that atrocity became public was because Congressman Morris Udall and Senators Barry Goldwater and Edward Brooke launched a congressional investigation after receiving a soldier’s letter describing the massacre.

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that when people are trying to kill each other in the heat of battle there are going to be abhorrent acts committed by some of the combatants.

There are those who say the Marines have to be punished as a lesson to our troops on battlefield decorum. If that’s what it takes, I could go for cancelling their off-base passes for a month and putting them on latrine duty for 30 days, but anything beyond that, including reduction in rank, would be excessive. But that’s not what Panetta and the Pentagon brass have in mind. Those poor bastards are facing prison time. They are going to be served up as sacrificial lambs to those who hate America.

I certainly do not approve of what the four Marines did but I can understand why they did it. What really bothers me is that they were so stupid as to let someone videotape them peeing on those Taliban bodies.

Those four Marines are being scapegoated in order to show the world how righteous America is. To hell with that crap! I say, DO NOT PUNISH THOSE MARINES! If anyone deserves to be punished, it’s the asshole who released that video.