BRING OUT YR DEAD. AND WE’LL PEE ON THEM.
Jan. 17th, 2012 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogPop quiz: Yr running for President in a highly contested race. You were popular for about two weeks then started fading back due to poor debate performances. The Iowa Caucus went badly enough that you retreated to home base for a rethink. New Hampshire was even worse. South Carolina is yr last chance. You need a headline – something topical and something big you can use to boost yr popularity by showing people that you are not only Presidential material, but someone who can beat the incumbent POTUS.
What do you do?
If yr Rick Perry, you decide to defend those Marines peeing on dead Taliban fighters as ill-advised hijinks.
Kind of like how Abu Ghraib was the equivalent of frat hazing, and Gitmo was like Club Med with jumpsuits and hoods. Because, honestly, who wouldn’t pee on the corpse of someone they just killed with automatic weapons?
The thing about this is that I know Perry is only saying this because (1) it’s a new way to bag on the Obama Admin, and (2) it’s a way to show how far he’d be willing to Support The Troops as their Commander-In-Chief.
And I know that, at some abstract level, Perry is trying to exploit the idea that war is a brutal, ugly business – not in the sense that war is something to be avoided (quite the opposite), but in the sense that because war is ugly, it’s therefore unfair to treat US soldiers like criminals when they occasionally step over the line with a little bad judgment.
But what it comes out sounding like is: “There’s nothing majorly wrong with peeing on the corpses of people you just killed on a battlefield. Misguided, maybe. Disrespectful, okay. But not something you ought to go to jail for.”
Which isn’t surprising since Perry obviously hasn’t thought the argument through. Apart from his silly comparisons to General Patton pissing in the Rhein (a major river being somewhat different from a dead guy), the fact of the matter is that the entire argument falls apart in the face of a simple question: “So if this isn’t criminal, does that mean it’s legal for Taliban fighters to pee on dead Marines?”
So I don’t think this is going to help Perry take South Carolina, no.
The depressing thing, of course, is that it probably won’t hurt him too much either. I don’t have the facts to back this up, but if Zogby did a poll asking how many Americans support peeing on the Taliban, alive or dead, I'm guessing you’d get a pretty high number in favor of it.
All I can really add is that no one should really be surprised at the Marines Group Corpse Whizz meme. War requires you to kill people, and a major component of training young men to do that is to dehumanize the enemy via hatred, bigotry and (where applicable) racism. Under those conditions, some guys are going to pee on dead people, and a whole lot worse. So you don’t get to act surprised when they do – especially if yr one of the people who supported the war in the first place.
At the same time, that doesn’t mean you get to use “War Isn’t Supposed To Be Pretty” as an excuse for behavior that by any current definition can be classified as criminal. There’s no legal way to pee on a corpse, as far as I know – not even if it's on fire. So the Marines in the video don't get a lot of sympathy from me – not least since they were dumb enough to videotape it and put it on YouTube.
Have a good day buddy,
This is dF
What do you do?
If yr Rick Perry, you decide to defend those Marines peeing on dead Taliban fighters as ill-advised hijinks.
Kind of like how Abu Ghraib was the equivalent of frat hazing, and Gitmo was like Club Med with jumpsuits and hoods. Because, honestly, who wouldn’t pee on the corpse of someone they just killed with automatic weapons?
The thing about this is that I know Perry is only saying this because (1) it’s a new way to bag on the Obama Admin, and (2) it’s a way to show how far he’d be willing to Support The Troops as their Commander-In-Chief.
And I know that, at some abstract level, Perry is trying to exploit the idea that war is a brutal, ugly business – not in the sense that war is something to be avoided (quite the opposite), but in the sense that because war is ugly, it’s therefore unfair to treat US soldiers like criminals when they occasionally step over the line with a little bad judgment.
But what it comes out sounding like is: “There’s nothing majorly wrong with peeing on the corpses of people you just killed on a battlefield. Misguided, maybe. Disrespectful, okay. But not something you ought to go to jail for.”
Which isn’t surprising since Perry obviously hasn’t thought the argument through. Apart from his silly comparisons to General Patton pissing in the Rhein (a major river being somewhat different from a dead guy), the fact of the matter is that the entire argument falls apart in the face of a simple question: “So if this isn’t criminal, does that mean it’s legal for Taliban fighters to pee on dead Marines?”
So I don’t think this is going to help Perry take South Carolina, no.
The depressing thing, of course, is that it probably won’t hurt him too much either. I don’t have the facts to back this up, but if Zogby did a poll asking how many Americans support peeing on the Taliban, alive or dead, I'm guessing you’d get a pretty high number in favor of it.
All I can really add is that no one should really be surprised at the Marines Group Corpse Whizz meme. War requires you to kill people, and a major component of training young men to do that is to dehumanize the enemy via hatred, bigotry and (where applicable) racism. Under those conditions, some guys are going to pee on dead people, and a whole lot worse. So you don’t get to act surprised when they do – especially if yr one of the people who supported the war in the first place.
At the same time, that doesn’t mean you get to use “War Isn’t Supposed To Be Pretty” as an excuse for behavior that by any current definition can be classified as criminal. There’s no legal way to pee on a corpse, as far as I know – not even if it's on fire. So the Marines in the video don't get a lot of sympathy from me – not least since they were dumb enough to videotape it and put it on YouTube.
Have a good day buddy,
This is dF
