Pissing away our priorities

No doubt you're all aware of the video that surfaced of Marines taking an ungentlemanly piss on some dead taliban terrorists, recently room temperature'd after a life or death battle with the same newly relieved Marines.

Some of our high-minded fellows were piously pissed off at said pissing.

Some weren't.

Dana Loesh mentioned on her radio show that the outrage was bizarre and that given the situation, she'd be more inclined to 'drop trou' and join them, which thoroughly pissed off the pious of the left and the right. A blog I'd not seen before this, SooperMexican, gives a good account of it, Dana said,

“Can someone explain to me if there’s supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a Taliban fighter? Someone who, as part of an organization, murdered over 3,000 Americans? I’d drop trou and do it too. That’s me though. I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say? Come on people, this is a war. What do people think this is?”

And please, do be sure to scroll down to the bottom of that post where he's provided a selection of the righteously pissed off's own commentary. If you believe that they give a fig for simple human decency, congratulations, you are virtually the most deluded fool I've had the misfortune to meet. Today.

The first I heard of the marines waterworks incident was on Adam Sharp's page (Adam, always eloquent, expressed a very correct political viewpoint "Oh, I'm sorry am I supposed to give a sh*t?"), that there was an investigation being called for, and my reaction, doing somewhat of a disservice to the marines, and more service than is due to the taliban, was that the investigation should be over why they didn't bring a kegger with them.

Do I feel bad about that?

No, no I don't. Do I understand how important it is to have respect for your fellow man? Yes I do. Do I think it is important that our military have the highest standards of professionalism? Yes I do. Do I feel bad about what I said or what the marines did?

Nope.

And before you get too riled up at that, here's another question - do you think this was a casual, thoroughly well discussed and deliberated action upon the part of the marines involved? Do you think that if they were approached in normal circumstances, and asked if they thought that pissing upon dead taliban would be a proper and acceptable everyday behavior for someone to engage in, that they would think it would be?

I do not think that they'd answer yes to that.

Do I think they should have done what they did? I really don't think that's a serious question, but I'll go ahead and put my response this way: if I were to hire someone to build a fence for me, and they talked filth in front of my kids, I'd have a few well chosen words to say to them before escorting them off the property. But if I was confident that I'd hired competent professionals, and we heard them when they happened to swear after smashing their finger... I would probably not make too much of a deal out of it.

Multiply the circumstances involved there by several orders of magnitude, being sure to factor in the difference between a hammer striking your thumb, and an IED shredding your closest friends to jagged chunks of flesh thrown into your face and into the dirt along the side of the road, and magnify everything else by several similar orders of magnitude, and then I think that you should begin to see a feeble, though reasonable, comparison.

Now. If you are one of the people all a-flutter over this, let me ask you another question. Are you unable to see how a significant measure of courtesy and understanding should be extended to people, mostly twenty year olds, who are half way around the world, involved in actual war, defending your life by risking theirs; kids who are seeing their friends wounded and killed, seeing women & children slaughtered and maimed by these taliban they are fighting - and who they are there fighting because the taliban brutally slaughtered several thousand of your countrymen who were simply peacefully going about their lives... are you really unwilling to cut some slack to these Marines who are tasked with the horrifying job of having to kill those who'd like to kill you?

If so, I not only question your priorities, but whether or not you have any. If you can't understand that, then I suppose it's also highly unlikely that you'd understand that others would quickly step up to defend them; it's unlikely that you'd see the importance of people quickly stepping up and supporting those which our nation has sent into violent conflict, and so now I question more than your priorities.

A friend drew my attention the other day to this bit in the Daily Caller which sums the flap up well

"Let this be a lesson to everyone: If you want to pee on a dead terrorist, first wrap him in an American flag. Then Keith Olbermann, Eric Boehlert, and other leading lights of liberalism will cheer you on."

For those on the left, it is despicable, but expected - for those on the right, particularly those settling personal scores on the backs of the Marines caught up in this 'urinationgate', it is doubly despicable.

Oh, and if you did serve in the military, maybe even did see combat yourself - sorry, that buys you no pass in this matter with me... in fact it reflects even worse upon you, IMHO. Once upon a time you apparently had actual priorities, and now you've allowed others, of little or no significance, to take their place. Shame on you.

Priorities
Perhaps you can catch a whiff of what those lost priorities should be, in the actions of those who clearly did understand their priorities... and who, amazingly enough, once expressed themselves in a manner similar to these maligned Marines.

Those of you who know anything about Gen. George S. Patton, or even saw the movie, you might recall that Patton, who often stepped out of line with the sentiments of the time, expressed himself in a similar manner, was even photographed in the act, and surprisingly (to the righteously pious & pissed off), did not receive his usual heaping helping of controversy over the incident of his pissing in the Rhine, which was in fact symbolically pissing on an entire people.

"I drove to the Rhine River and went across on the pontoon bridge. I stopped in the middle to take a piss and then picked up some dirt on the far side in emulation of William the Conqueror."

A curmudgeonly fellow over at RedState put it well,

"George Patton knew damned well that, when he urinated in the Rhine River, that the very image (a once-iconic image, by the way, which was snapped by enterprising Army photographers, and that has hung in years gone by in innumerable VFW halls throughout the land) he was sending, indeed, a message to Greater Germany: I’m pissing on you. And you deserve it, for the horrific slaughter you’ve unleashed on mankind.

In short, he was pissed off. And I’m still pissed off at the “Taliban”."

Seems that Patton felt that since the the enemy was the reason for his being there, and the reason why his troops were being killed in battles they'd prefer not to have to bother having to fight, that that enemy wasn't worth any respect at all, and the people of the United States agree with him.

As far as the dead taliban go, another friend had this to say about the moistened mujaheddin:

"Piss be upon them"

Personally - I like that a lot.

But I'll give the last word (almost) to Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, who emailed a comment on this issue,

“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.”

That, to me, seems much more like an example of someone who has their priorities in order.

IMHO, a person's priorities in matters such as this should reflect an understanding that our soldiers swear their lives to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, which provides for the laws which protect the lives, liberties, property and freedom of speech of us all, their priorities should reflect an understanding that those in our military not only put their lives in jeopardy to do that, but they risk enduring hell on earth in order to defend the Constitution, the nation and the lives of us all.

It seems to me that a persons priorities in matters such as this should allow for cutting some slack to those who might not behave as if they were in a corporate boardroom or public classroom, while fighting for their lives with brutal barbarians in an actual war.

To allow those priorities to take a back seat to a concern for politically correct sensibilities, to let those priorities take a back seat to scoring political points, to let those priorities take a back seat to settling personal issues with a person, such as Dana Loesch, who spoke up in defense of those who are defending us… is to piss away your true priorities, and I find it to be despicable.