Piss on Them

^[1]735 words

The big diplomatic scandal at the top of Drudge Report is that a handful of Marines videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of some dead Afghans — purportedly slain insurgents. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is dismayed ^[2], scrambling to do damage control to mitigate the inevitable blowback.

For a civilization so sensitive that a handful of cartoons could stoke massive rallies across the globe, one can only imagine how much fury the literal act of pissing on them could provoke. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has rushed to throw his employees under the bus, declaring the act “utterly deplorable.”

For its part, the Council of American-Islamic Relations (AIPAC for Arabs) have faxed their demand ^[3] to Panetta that the soldiers are shown no mercy . . .

We trust that this disturbing incident will be promptly investigated in a transparent manner and that appropriate actions will be taken based on the results of that investigation. Any guilty parties must be punished to the full extent allowed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and by relevant American laws.

Pamela Geller, a shrill and vulgar Jewish neocon warmonger, has predictably offered her unqualified support for not only the servicemen involved, but their actions as well. “Perhaps this is the infidel interpretation of the Islamic ritual of washing and preparing the body for burial.” In a defiant follow-up, she pointed out that “We are at war with an enemy that means to slaughter us and overthrow the United States of America.”

I heartily agree with her that our civilization faces an existential threat from hostile invaders from the Middle East hellbent on our overthrow. I agree with her that we must be vigilant and militant, prepared to detain and deport any and all of the enemies hiding in plain sight — starting with her! Had Pamela Geller and the rest of the Zionist agents been identified and treated as such, we wouldn’t be lost in this soul-sucking perpetual war for perpetual peace to begin with. The most expensive military institution in world history wouldn’t be deadlocked against a rag-tag assortment of impoverished and opium-addled neolithic goat-herders. We wouldn’t be investing trillions in preposterous efforts to unleash democracy on an angry mob guaranteed to leverage their vote to install even more rabidly Islamist and anti-American rulers than the ones we hunted down in the first place.

Urinating on a defeated opponent is vulgar and inexcusable, but dehumanizing the enemy is a necessary psychological precondition to the act of killing. Traditionally, warriors were also empowered to sublimate their wills to the martial hierarchy to such an extent that they could sleep well at night knowing that their role was that of an instrument of something transcending self. In the contemporary world, the “leaders” who should bear the moral burden of instigating war are scandalized when war happens. They shrink from the frightening and disgusting (if perfectly predictable) consequences of their decision to declare war. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama imagine themselves waging a clean and moral war, blaming the troops for the parallax between their delusions and their intelligence briefings.

But let’s keep this in perspective. There are worse things than urinating on corpses. The war that manufactured the corpses, for example. Pissing away the lives of the thousands of soldiers and sailors who’ve died, and will continue to die, under false pretenses in the desert for Israel and our military-industrial complex, for example. The American voters who can’t be bothered to educate themselves about the Israel Lobby ^[5] and mobilize in opposition to a foreign regime cuckolding our military to “secure their realm” with our blood and treasure, for example. And don’t forget the Obama supporters who decried Bush as a war criminal then fell silent when Obama embraced and extended Bush’s legacy of warfare and criminality.

America’s bloggers, editorial writers, politicians, and political generals will continue taking turns this week to sanctimoniously condemn the offending Marines, as if the war and the lies that fuel it were lesser crimes. They’ll call for the maximum punishment allowed by the UCMJ, and so be it. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and I look forward to one fine day when the full weight of the UCMJ’s maximum punishment for treason ^[6] is applied to them by a military tribunal. Piss on them.