If war were not about the total failure of the human spirit,
there would be something grotesquely funny about the American reaction to the pissing pictures.
For note, it was not the killing of these men that worried the Marine Corps in the US
– it was the pissing.
[ It’s a good thing they blurred the soldier’s winkys out. Or else this photo could have been really offensive ]
Nothing wrong in killing amid the “core values” of the Marine Corps;
you just shouldn’t urinate on the corpses.
And even more to the point: YOU MUSTN’T DO IT ON CAMERA!
Too late.
It comes to this.
Armies are horrible creatures and soldiers do wicked things
but when we accept all these lies about “bad apples” and the exceptionalism of crime in war
– “there may have been some excesses” is the usual dictator-speak
– we are accepting war and going along with the dishonesty of it
and we are making it more possible and easier and the killings and rapes more excusable and more frequent …
.