{"id":51900,"date":"2012-01-14T00:30:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-14T05:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=51900"},"modified":"2012-01-13T23:23:46","modified_gmt":"2012-01-14T04:23:46","slug":"our-core-values-piss-on-em","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/our-core-values-piss-on-em\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Core Values: Piss On ‘Em?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Disclaimer: this is not an easy read, but it is not a topic we can ignore.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This has been a week when the threads of policy that have put this nation in extremis<\/em> have woven themselves together to give us a glimpse of the dark fabric of the American psyche. As implied by the title, you probably know where I’m going with this, although video of four Marine snipers urinating on three dead Taliban fighters is just the latest stitch in a larger design. It’s a disturbing image that has caught even the Pentagon’s attention. YouTube will show you the original 34 second clip,<\/a> posted anonymously, providing you sign in as over 18 years old. I’m not sure which you need to be an adult to see, the murdered or the desecration, but we might as well show it to the young ones, it’s so obviously adolescent. Besides, they see worse in their video games.<\/p>\n

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As the YouTube from Afghanistan went viral, a Marine Corps spokesman protested that the “actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our corps.” Well, you could have fooled me! The bodies of those slain are wearing traditional Afghani garb and are unarmed. Point of order: if you’re going to celebrate over the enemy dead, it always looks better if they’re armed to the teeth. But these are Marines we’re talking about, the ultimate fighting force. Bound by their band-of-brothers loyalty and their motto, Semper Fi<\/em>, Marines have always done the down and dirty work for the American military. They’re trained to kill and call it good in service to their country.<\/p>\n

Existing just beneath the thin veneer of civility, Marines have their own code of honor. As Marine General James Mattis put it to Iraqi tribal leaders he hoped to enlist in his cause against al Qaeda, “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.” Mattis is now the commander of U.S. Central Command, with responsibility for Iraq, Afghanistan and the region. A few years back, as a Lieutenant-General, he tried to explain away 24 civilian deaths in Haditha by pleading the fog of war and perils of counterinsurgency. It would have been easier but less politic to state the obvious: Marines shoot first and take names later, if at all.<\/p>\n

I’m not trying to pick on the Marines. I was fathered by a John Wayne clone and I’m a loyal Leroy Jethro Gibbs fan. Every country has its own version of the Samurai, ruthless and tradition-bound — the Marines are ours. There are some acts the average citizen can barely entertain, much less commit. During World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt became her crippled husband’s wandering ambassador for troops and service personnel. Aware of the extreme dangers faced by our drafted military, most of them scared teens fresh off the farm, the First Lady spoke with unexpected candor when she said, “The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!”<\/p>\n

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Perhaps it’s all the fault of photographers in combat. Maybe these are the kinds of events, happening in every war zone, that civilians shouldn’t see. After all, it’s not just the Marines who have pushed the envelope over this last decade of warfare. The Army has its own crosses to bear, what with the Afghanistan “kill team” of the 5th Stryker brigade, 2nd Infantry division, that went after unarmed Afghans and cut off their fingers as trophies, posing with their collections of remains, including skulls. Unable to ignore such an incident, the military has reluctantly convicted 11 soldiers thus far for those deaths, and after years of occupation, the current desecration outrage has only caused the Afghans to shrug it off as expected behavior which they doubt will be found accountable. It will not, they say, interfere with current peace talks with the Taliban, and we have yet to see if there will be public demonstrations over what is, ostensibly, an international crime.<\/p>\n

How did we get to this extreme? Early in the century, our military was hard-pressed to fill the manpower void caused by Dubby’s two wars. In order to get the numbers needed, the basic prerequisites for military service were lowered: waivers were issued to those with a criminal past, to high school dropouts and those who couldn’t pass the ASVAB aptitude test. By 2004, those with mental problems were being routinely sent off to war, by medical standards emotionally unfit to serve. Soldiers with PTSD were minimally treated and medicated, then sent back for additional deployment.<\/p>\n

Such shortsighted decisions have come home to roost. One of our problems with returning soldiers continues to be the lip service given a 1998 mandate to conduct adequate pre- and post-deployment screening of troops. You’d think the mental health of those who have been taught to kill for their country, returning now with high percentages of PTSD and emotional problems, would be of interest to the general public. Evidently, few of us give it a second thought. Perhaps we should.<\/p>\n

For instance, due to its egregious record, merged Army-Air Force base, Fort Lewis-McChord in Pierce, Washington, has been singled out as the most troubled military facility<\/a> in the nation. According to Stars and Stripes<\/em> magazine, not only are incidences of substance abuse and suicide stunningly high, but also it has had a particularly sadistic record of crime the last two years, including:<\/p>\n

“\u2026an Iraq veteran pleaded guilty to assault after being accused of water boarding his 7-year-old foster son in the bathtub. Another was accused of pouring lighter fluid over his wife and setting her on fire; one was charged with torturing his 4-year-old daughter for refusing to say her ABCs. A Stryker Brigade soldier was convicted of the kidnap, torture and rape or attempted rape of two women, one of whom he shocked with cables attached to a car battery; and an Iraq war sergeant was convicted of strangling his wife and hiding her body in a storage bin.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lewis-McChord was home base to the aforementioned Stryker Brigade, and also the deployment site of Benjamin Barnes, the young man who shot Park Ranger Margaret Anderson at Mt. Rainer State Park last week. Heavily armed and speeding through a tire check-point, Barnes headed for the crowded visitors center at the top of the mountain road. Barnes sprayed Anderson’s vehicle with bullets as she blocked his path, killing her but missing a companion Ranger who had joined her. Anderson, mother to two young toddlers, was credited with saving up to 125 lives. Barnes, who died from hypothermia after he left his vehicle, left behind an estranged wife and child. Just call them all fallout from Bush’s military folly.<\/p>\n

Sadly, rogue soldiers no longer shock the world in 2012, but we didn’t need the pissing incident when all eyes were turned toward Guantanamo, the prison’s ten-year anniversary arriving despite Obama’s campaign promise to close it. Congress has imposed a series of hurdles<\/a> that thwarted Obama’s intent, and early efforts to relocate Gitmo’s prisoners stateside fell flat when the public protested that they were simply petrified to have such loathsome creatures as the accused terrorists on American soil. Odd, I thought, since we used to pride ourselves on being the … pardon me … meanest motherfuckers in the valley. In addition, we’ve not only created the largest penal system in the world, but also successfully turned it into one of our last remaining for-profit growth industries.<\/p>\n

We certainly had all the expertise and facilities necessary to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay had the Republicans not thrown a tizzy fit about relocation. With typical American cluelessness, we’re blinded to this continuing PR dilemma by nationalism, only showing interest in Gitmo when a guard<\/a> or released and repratriated inmate comes forward with tales of abuse and cruelty. What the average U.S. citizen sees as a righteous necessity in the age of terrorism, the rest of the world eyes with skepticism and anger. Have our core values turned us into international bullies and warmongers? Abu Ghraib was the darker alter-ego of Gitmo, and many of us fear it was a training ground. None of us can say exactly what goes on there under the warm Cuban sun. Its continued presence is, and will remain, indefensible to those of us who cherish civil liberties.<\/p>\n

Gitmo is a black hole of legality in which to stuff our mistakes. It’s become the international home of “indefinite detention,”now extended to combatant Americans, an infamous place to hold untried prisoners, their innocence increasingly at question even as they’ve been pronounced unreleasable. Every moment that they are held in limbo, justice itself falls prey to American convenience and contrivance. It is a reminder that our nation’s moral credibility is leaking away, and frankly, we haven’t got much left to spare.<\/p>\n

If you read the blogs at Huffy, or listen to some of the television pundits, this “pissing contest” is no big deal, our enemies deserving this or worse. Digby,<\/a>major domo<\/em> over at Hullabaloo, has equated this attitude with our blanket acceptance of a cruel penal system<\/a> that has now imprisoned one out of every hundred American citizens, and doesn’t think twice at state-sanctioned murder. Hullabaloo cross-poster David Atkins,<\/a> of thereisnospoon blog, suggests that this severity runs even deeper in our national DNA, a legacy of the harsh Calvinism that birthed our republic. Seems to me the issues run deeper still, this desperate need for exceptionalism morphing with a psycho-sexual imbalance that keeps us focused on our extremities instead of our extremism. This is what we are afraid to look at, how the mirror would shatter if we told each other the truth about our lack of humanity.<\/p>\n

It strikes me, yet again, that we suffer a kind of national adolescence: an inability to practice self-control, unable to keep our hands to ourselves, unwilling to consider as equal any tribe but our own. And at the base of all this mayhem is the consumptive orgy we call capitalism, constantly in search of something new to strip to the bone for profit.<\/p>\n

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” warned Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gone unsaid is that when each of these killing machines becomes mere merchandise which must find a buyer, those who manufacture them will also manufacture a place to use them. Iran is in the neo-con cross-hairs now, the Israelis are searching for provocation, and the Republican candidates are coming down hard on Obama’s Iran strategy, provocative in an election cycle. Will we sidestep our sadism and ego this time, or fall prey to our own nihilism?<\/p>\n

In the unknowable year ahead, a year whose astrology hints of surprises and extremism, I think it’s clear that we can no longer tolerate this kind of suicidal behavior. We must find a way to heal this disassociation from our own humanity, this separation from what is heartfelt and compassionate. We not only kill our enemies, we make of them “things” that do not deserve basic dignity or respect. That is the zeitgeist that creates the ovens, that broadcasts hate radio and causes genocides. That is intolerable.<\/p>\n

As 2012 dawns, it’s clear we’ve allowed the nation to be overrun by profiteers, lobbyists, mercenaries and politicians who can only be described as ruthless. The actual and projected violence tolerated and encouraged at the heart of our nation has, I fear, become a “core value” that we cannot allow to continue. In a year of extreme change, let’s start with that. Let’s proclaim 2012 the year of the adult, one in which we put away shallow, selfish and childish things. Look at the radical Republican candidates and tell me we could survive one of their presidencies. Isn’t it time to call a halt to so ruthless a game? Isn’t it finally time for liberty, justice and human dignity to reestablish themselves as our national values? Isn’t it — finally — time to grow up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves Disclaimer: this is not an easy read, but it is not a topic we can ignore. This has been a week when the threads of policy that have put this nation in extremis have woven themselves together to give us a glimpse of the dark fabric of the American … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51900"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}