You will have to pardon me but I have no problem with four marines pissing on the bodies of Taliban fighters. I do have a problem with “sawing” off heads of innocent civilians such as Daniel Pearl, Jack Hensley, Nicholas Berg and Eugene Armstrong. On the one hand, one might say that both are disgraceful deeds and they’d probably be right. On the other hand, what goes on in war is often disgraceful to the casual sideline observer. At least the bodies of the Taliban fighters were already dead. They weren’t subject to the torture to which Pearl and company were subjected.
I have not been in war. Let’s get that straight right up front. I cannot comment first hand on what does and does not happen. A friend of mine was in Korea with a shiny gold bar on his shoulder. He didn’t wish to speak of his experiences in that country. One evening, however, on a trip from Boston to Washington, D.C., he opened up and told me – it was just the two of us in the car – about what he’d seen and what he’d experienced. He cried through parts of the narrative. I’d never seen him cry before. He talked about one of his men trying to dig a foxhole on a hill that had been pulverized by artillery. Everyone was on edge, exhausted from taking the hill by day and then being forced to retreat from an enemy counterattack at night. As the young soldier was digging, he unearthed a fresh forearm from the shelling the night before. It was the final straw; he ran back down the hill screaming; he’d had enough. “There are two things that defy description when you’re in war,” he told me. “You can’t imagine the noise and you can’t imagine the stench. Dead, dying, and decaying bodies just plain stink. It gets in your nose and mouth; into your clothing and even into your boots. It’s worse than anything you could ever think of.”
You and I, we sit at home and watch war on television. Television cannot duplicate the noise; television cannot bring you the stink of war. Television doesn’t show you war up close and personal. We think it does through some of our “captured film footage” or “film by combat cameramen,” but that stuff has all been edited. When you see German POW camps, you don’t see Major Ralph T., a late friend of mine, being pissed on by German soldiers after they’d beaten his back blood raw…no, you don’t see stuff like that; that’s not for public consumption. “We must protect the public from the truth. After all, when Lt. William Calley’s Mei Lai massacre story came out, the public was outraged, and we mustn’t have that again.” That is such a crock of horse manure, it makes me want to puke.
Things happen in wars that are abominable. If everybody and his brother had a camera during the Civil War and if television had been as vast a medium as it is today, America would never have gone to war again. In all probability, wars would have been confined to tribes in the Middle East and other parts of the uncivilized world.
It would be very interesting to know the ‘backstory’ of the those four marines. How long had they been in combat? What ugly sights had they seen? Is it possible those Taliban bodies were part of a group that had cleaned out a village of men, women, and children, leaving them in the street to be further robbed of their dignity by desert flies? We don’t know. Had these marines been stretched to the breaking point but still left on the front lines? Will any of the four eventually have to be treated for post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD)?
Before someone starts screaming, “But we’re the United States; we don’t do things like that,” I want to let you know that there isn’t a country in the world that wouldn’t say the same thing about its young warriors. Yes, we are the United States of America. Our military warriors come from all walks of life, For some, being in the military is the best thing that could ever happen to them. However, don’t you dare tell me that in the heat of battle, when push comes to shove, when it’s kill or be killed, you wouldn’t fling shit in the face of your enemy just to gain a split second advantage. Yes, the “rules of war” say that one should bury one’s enemy on the field of battle. Are you kidding me? Bury, my ass; kill the sonofabitch and get the hell out of Dodge. One of the other rules of war is the chemical, biological, and radiological (CBR) weapons are not to be used, and yet there are places in the world where that rule is clearly disobeyed. If you want these young men and women of the United States military to be polite in battle, you damn well better tear down Ft. Myer North Post and expand Arlington National Cemetery. Better yet, stop trying to tell them how to fight when they get in a combat situation. It’s like the Italian woman who said, after listening to one of the Pope’s sermons, raging against abortion, “You no play the game, you don’t make the rules. When some three-star desk jockey in the Pentagon gets pissed about “the pissers,” he better remember his days in combat.
Let me close with one final story. The Korean War had been over for a couple of weeks. My cousin, Paul, was standing by his ammo truck with his best friend, Frenchy. They were happy and having their picture taken by another soldier. Right after the picture was taken, a North Korean sniper put a bullet through Frenchy’s forehead. My cousin was in therapy for years after that little episode. War? War sucks. However, if the world is going to be run by animals, there will always have to be hunters, and let’s face it, there are no rules when you’re hunting.
Dick Bishop
