A new video purporting to show U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses hit the Internet, and outrage has been spreading like wildfire ever since. However, the outrage that continued to spread across the web Thursday wasn’t all focused on the actions of the four men in Marine dress who are clearly urinating on what appear to the dead bodies, allegedly dead Taliban fighters killed by U.S. troops. While many people indeed find the depicted act, if verified and found to have actually taken place exactly as it appears, to be a vulgar display of unacceptable, deplorable behavior, many others are outraged that anyone has a problem with the abuse of dead Taliban.
VIDEO: Military Confirms They Have Identified Some Marines In Video, Video Appears Authentic
In response to a Huffington Post article which includes the Marines urinating on Taliban video seen here, many of those who left comments seemed to be openly condoning what the as-yet unidentified Marines allegedly did. A HuffPost reader with the username Rotideqmr had this to say Thursday, “Panetta says there’s going to be an investigation. I hope they find out who these guys are – so they can pin medals on all of them!”
User Mlfertig commented, “Frankly, I am not at all upset by these soldiers’ acts.I can fully understand how they must have felt toward these dead Taliban.” Still another user, Gtrepo1, shared their feelings. “Who cares? The Geneva Convention is a joke as is the United Nations. There are no rules in warfare.” Gtrepo1 went on to explain that we need to “let our service members to their job” and then stated President Obama should “quit binding their hands with ‘don’t shoot.’”
The act of urinating on dead bodies, those of your enemy or otherwise, seems to have little to do with getting the job done, though. Did the soldiers in video attempt to waterboard or drown the Taliban fighters in their urine? No, because the Taliban fighters were already dead. The Taliban fighters were likely already dead because, in fact, no one told the Marines “don’t shoot”, and they shot. They did their job, unhindered, and the result was a neutralized threat from these particular enemy forces.
So, it can be concluded that the video of alleged Marines urinating on Taliban fighters after those Taliban were dead did not depict the Marines getting anything done to further their mission. The video appears to show men pissing, as a group, on dead bodies for sport. That is all the video shows, and it shouldn’t reflect on the Marines or the U.S. military in general. At the very least, the military has conduct rules, and the acts depicted in this video do not appear to highlight conduct becoming of any soldier in any branch of any military for any legitimate reason.
Source:
Huffington Post article/video/comments – “Marines Urinating on Taliban: Unit In Video Reportedly Identified”