Read this for a better understanding from the point of view of that Marine who was doing his duty and should face zero dicipline. Also, the media trailing our military into combat should be re-evaluated as potential propaganda that should be cleared by the Pentagon before distribution.

Read “They’re Called Security Rounds” below.

http://froggyruminations.blogspot.com/

If I were a Marine, I’d be shooting the journalists whenever I had the chance and I thought no one was looking.

Frag ém Mr. Griffin,it’s safer. I know nothing, I’ve seen nothing!

Mr. Auster asks,

“Isn’t the appropriate approach to this type of total enemy, as it was in the Pacific War, to take no prisoners?”

Yes, with no media there to distract our fighters. The reality of the many brainwashed masses, especially the “idealists” working in the media that includes their liberal operatives like Mr. Sites who gleefully reports the reality of war on site through the filters of moral relativism and quasi-pacifistic inebriation. War is too absolute a concept for them to comprehend. It contradicts their false world view.

They would rather see a US Marine killed by a booby trapped jihadi than see the Marine do what has been done in warfare since time immemorial, KILL the enemy period. That is why the Pentagon must clear battlefield reports or forbid them altogether, they become propaganda against us.

War is and always has been horror. General Sherman said to paraphrase, “It is good war is so terrible, least we become found of it”. He then went on to savage the city of Atlanta, by burning it to the ground. How would the psudo-patrotic press of today have dealt with that absolute reality?

The liberal flunkies want a civilized war. Their methods result in prolonging the misery and suffering in the name of some lofty ideal that doesn’t square with reality and hinders our military from doing its job.

The many constraints placed on our military are designed to protect whom, us form our military, or our enemies from our military? It’s like we view our own soldiers as a greater threat than those determined to have us conquered by a fascist religious ideology.

“General Sherman said to paraphrase, ‘It is good war is so terrible, least we become found of it’.”

Ahem. Mr. Auster, Robert E. Lee made that quote. Sherman’s quote was “war is hell.” He made sure of that.

But whatever. Your point is well taken.

Mr. Griffin, They’re both right:-O!

I’m sorry. I meant to address my remarks to Andrew.

Point is there is a serious difference of perception between our notion of war and the jihadis. It works to their advantage.

The exact quote from Robert E. Lee:

“It is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it.”

“We are here for the man to our left, and the man to our right. We choose to give our lives so that the man or woman next to us can go home and see their husbands, wives, children, friends and families.”

The marine’s email points to another consequence of the mass media’s contemptuous armchair-quarterbacking of our forces—the eventual contraction of our forces’ loyalties to their own. That is what happens when the bond of trust and gratitude for sacrifice is broken between the civilian and the soldier. It is also a perfect instance of liberal thinking, to so misunderstand the moral consequences of opening up the battlefield to public scrutiny in the name of “the people’s right to know.”

General William Tecumseh Sherman seems to have hated reporters. They were as much a pain then as they are today.

“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.”

“Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster”

“War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over.”

http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/William_Tecumseh_Sherman/

Obviously the media is confused and the enemy is evil, but isn’t it ipmortant that decisions about rules of engagement are made by these Marines’ superiors and are followed by them. This may well be a good shoot under those rules, but Lance Corporals should not get to decide when we have total war and when we follow traditional rules of engagement with respect to wounded and prisoners. It’s not a matter of right and wrong so much as good discipline.

Which is why, Mr. Washington, this business needs to be taken care of out of sight by the military itself. As it is, the media just gave the enemy some great propaganda.

The “media” didn’t pull the trigger while the camera was running. A journalist should report what he sees, not create pro-war propaganda. The Marine in questions deserves the chief responsibility for his actions, whether they were justified or not.

Mr. Washington,

Whats your point?

Mr. Washington, from what I know of this case, and I know quite a lot, I would have had no problem shooting that Iraqi prisoner under those circumstances. And if you were a journalist running amok with stories and images likely to harm the other Marines I was fighting along side of, you would very soon find yourself in serious danger. I’m sorry you don’t understand the basics of combat, but that’s the way it works and always will work.

““I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.””

I rather think that many are afraid htat reporters will print the truth.

It seems to me that it is better that we see things like this person being shot now and that the military and the administration is forced to justify it rather than it be hidden.
To hide it essentially concedes the point that the action was shameful and wrong. Things like this will eventually come out, and the less is done to censor them and the more is done to explain why this action was justified, the less scandalous it will seem.
If this were covered up and it came out a year from now, the fact it was covered up would probably feed the rumor mill. If we are seen to be censoring minor things, it will make it easier for people to believe that major things are going on that are censored. (I support censoring strategic/tactical information, not so much censoring things for PR purposes).
If things like this shooting are necessary, then the public needs to be confronted with it as soon as possible and learn to live with it. Shielding them from war will just make it that much harder to accept the reality of war in the future.

Mr. Jose,

The cover-up is often worse than the crime assuming a crime actually occured. This Marine’s job is to kill the enemy. If double tapping security rounds into the enemy’s head is necessary during the course of battle, why should he be proscuted?

Best that the media is not allowed to tag along during combat operations as they will undoubtedly see things that will disturb them.

Mr. Jose,

On the other side of that coin are the journalists who filmed soldiers making a beach landing during the first Gulf War. It was at night, so the journalists actually brought in huge lights to get the good footage. Their actions could have gotten every soldier (and journalist) on that beach killed.

Now, when it comes to war, I think everything should come a distant second to military necessity. If there is a large battle, fine, we should hear about it. If we are victorious or defeated, we should hear about that as well. But not much more than that. Freedom of the press does not exist in a combat zone, and they are only there through the goodwill of the military or because they have exerted some political pressure. During WWII people didn’t know, or want to know, about every German or Japanese killed and in what manner they died (and there was much more looting, thievery, and murder in WWII than in Iraq), and they didn’t need to know. I’ve read several pieces since the war started that did nothing but endanger our soldiers and make the civilian populace question the chances of victory. But victory is the ONLY way we will be leaving Iraq, so it should not be questioned.

Funny, the last major war we fought that had complete media saturation was Vietnam, one of the sacred cows of the radical Left. I believe that the media wants Iraq to become another Vietnam, and yellow journalists are doing their part to make sure that happens.

But you just made my point, Mr. Jose. Combat is incredibly stressful. There is no morality about it. It is about killing, and once the dogs of war are loosed, the corpses pile up. Even in the 18th century, where armies were led by refined aristocrats with a well defined code of honor, attrocities were common. There are only three types of people in combat: my side, the other side, and non-combatants. If you want to be considered a non-combatant, you MUST not do anything to endanger me or my people. A journalist who is suspected of being “neutral”, ie. of being likely to harm my people, would be in danger. He may be a good person, an honest person, and a truthful person. That means nothing to a soldier who is putting his ass on the line.

I am confident that the officer corps in this or any other military is aware of this and will take all of this into due consideration when this case is brought. I’m just saying that a foreign public (the Arab public) is not necessarily on our side and must under no conditions be handed information damaging to our soldiers based on the occurence of isolated incidents like these. It is the height of folly to do so.

“The cover-up is often worse than the crime assuming a crime actually occured.”

Andrew, you missed my point, which was that the cover-up of a non-crime makes it look like a crime. If there is no crime, then the cover-up is certainly worse than the incident, because the incident is not bad.

If what the soldier did is not a crime, why bother cover it up?

I never said the soldier should be prosecuted. I was discussing entirely the anit-reporter bias that many of the posters have. My point was that the public should see things like this and the public should be made to understand why these things have to happen in war.

“Best that the media is not allowed to tag along during combat operations as they will undoubtedly see things that will disturb them.”

Why? If what the Marine did is good, why are you ashamed of it?

I personally don’t have a problem with what the Marine did. But I also don’t have a problem with the reporter showing what the Marine did. Why is there the assumption that the reporter was horrified by this anyway? Did the reporter explicitly portray this as an incident of brutality, or did he just report this with all the other stuff and it got picked up that way?

It seems to me more productive to criticize the media interpretation and portrayal of the incident rather than to criticize the reporter for reporting. Besides, much of the media has no problem with this guy getting shot (Fox News and Talk Radio). It is not as if all of the media will portray this negatively. So it seems to me that the only reason people are upset about the reporter is that they feel that the only footage allowed should be footage of incidents that no one will disapprove of.

This from today’s Wall Street Journal:

Some 40 Marines have just lost their lives cleaning out one of the world’s
worst terror dens, in Fallujah, yet all the world wants to talk about is the
NBC videotape of a Marine shooting a prostrate Iraqi inside a mosque. Have
we lost all sense of moral proportion?

The al-Zarqawi TV network, also known as Al-Jazeera, has broadcast the tape
to the Arab world, and U.S. media have also played it up. The point seems to
be to conjure up images again of Abu Ghraib, further maligning the American
purpose in Iraq. Never mind that the pictures don’t come close to telling us
about the context of the incident, much less what was on the mind of the
soldier after days of combat.

Put yourself in that Marine’s boots. He and his mates have had to endure
some of the toughest infantry duty imaginable, house-to-house urban fighting
against an enemy that neither wears a uniform nor obeys any normal rules of
war. Here is how that enemy fights, according to an account in the Times of
London:

“In the south of Fallujah yesterday, U.S. Marines found the armless, legless
body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out.
Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the U.S. Navy Corps, said that
she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two.
The woman was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was
unclear if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret
Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both were
married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in Baghdad
last month.”

When not disemboweling Iraqi women, these killers hide in mosques and
hospitals, booby-trap dead bodies, and open fire as they pretend to
surrender. Their snipers kill U.S. soldiers out of nowhere. According to one
account, the Marine in the videotape had seen a member of his unit killed by
another insurgent pretending to be dead. Who from the safety of his
Manhattan sofa has standing to judge what that Marine did in that mosque?

Beyond the one incident, think of what the Marine and Army units just
accomplished in Fallujah. In a single week, they killed as many as 1,200 of
the enemy and captured 1,000 more. They did this despite forfeiting the
element of surprise, so civilians could escape, and while taking precautions
to protect Iraqis that no doubt made their own mission more difficult and
hazardous. And they did all of this not for personal advantage, and
certainly not to get rich, but only out of a sense of duty to their
comrades, their mission and their country.

In a more grateful age, this would be hailed as one of the great battles in
Marine history — with Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Hue City and the Chosin
Reservoir. We’d know the names of these military units, and of many of the
soldiers too. Instead, the name we know belongs to the NBC correspondent,
Kevin Sites.

We suppose he was only doing his job, too. But that doesn’t mean the rest of
us have to indulge in the moral abdication that would equate deliberate
televised beheadings of civilians with a Marine shooting a terrorist, who
may or may not have been armed, amid the ferocity of battle.

I speculate that the baby-boomers and their parents—particularly women—fed on the stream of newsreel propaganda from WWII were totally unprepared for the images they saw during the Vietnam War and thus America lost its nerve. Younger generations seem more savvy, more aware that a few excesses do not spoil our national honor, and that war is inhernetly chaotic and violent. I think most Americans showed as much sense in re-electing Bush in the wake of the non-scandals of Abu Gharib etc. Other than liberal critics, who really cares about this kind of stuff?

“On the other side of that coin are the journalists who filmed soldiers making a beach landing during the first Gulf War. It was at night, so the journalists actually brought in huge lights to get the good footage. Their actions could have gotten every soldier (and journalist) on that beach killed.”

Censoring the military for security reasons is one thing. Not letting the reporters do something dangerous is not what I am protesting about.

I am referring to censoring the content of reports for PR purposes.

“here is no morality about it. It is about killing, and once the dogs of war are loosed, the corpses pile up. Even in the 18th century, where armies were led by refined aristocrats with a well defined code of honor, attrocities were common.”

And these things will eventually come out, however hard we try to censor them. There are two options a military has when dealing with the unpleasantness of war (a) hide these things from the public, and (b) desensitize the public to them.
I say that (b) is the better course.

“During WWII people didn’t know, or want to know, about every German or Japanese killed and in what manner they died (and there was much more looting, thievery, and murder in WWII than in Iraq), and they didn’t need to know.”

Of course, if it is possible that censorship allowed us to defeat Germany, it is equally possible that censorship is what allowed FDR to sell out eastern Europe to Stalin.

“I’ve read several pieces since the war started that did nothing but endanger our soldiers and make the civilian populace question the chances of victory. But victory is the ONLY way we will be leaving Iraq, so it should not be questioned.”

Our current scenario for victory (a united, democratic Iraq) is impossible. We need to rethink our goals if we are to achieve any meeaningful victory (ultimately, some sort of partition with ethnic cleansing will probably be necessary). So yes, victory SHOULD BE questioned, to the extent that we are questioning what victory conditions should be rather than achieving victory.

Unless of course you believe that sufficient determination is the only thing necessary to make victory occur.

I recommend the John Ford’s movie “The Man who Shot Liberty Valance.” It’s about the idea that civilization depends on men who use violence, but that civilization, once it it founded and secure and no longer needs violent men, ignores and derides the very men without whom it wouldn’t exist.

Also, I think that beach landing that got lit up by reporters was not in the Gulf War but in the Somalia expedition.

Mr. Jose,

I don’t think I missed you point. I was not saying there _was_ a crime to cover up, I was pointing out that you seem to be implying that by your language.

You introduced the notion that reporting the shooting is better than “Hiding” it because it “Forces” the authorities to then “Justify” their actions which if valid we need not be “ashamed” of.

See the pattern of your words? You adopt the_ language_ of someone who is subtly making the assumption of guilt and asking then expecting the accused to prove his innocence.

You then continue by coyly saying the public can handle the truth, better they see it than have it hidden. Yes, by what about the propaganda value such footage has on the Arab channels like Al Jazera? Are they able to deal with Muslim jihadi’s being shot in their mosques no matter what the reason? This fuels anti-American propaganda and demoralizes our troops.

Finally, please do not put words in my mouth. I never said I was ashamed of anything, least of all our troops.

You seem sensitive to anti-reporter criticism, are you a reporter, sorry “journalist”?

Correct. It was Somalia. The press acted like a bunch of freshmen.

Let me also say this.
As I see it, the only way to win this war without committing genocide is going to be partitioning Iraq with massive population transfers (Kurds out of Turkey to Iraqi Kurdistan, Arabs and Turkmen out of Iraqi Kurdistan to other parts of Iraq or to Turkmenistan or Turkey, probably Iraqi Christians to Lebanon or Syria, quite possibly a large number of Lebanese Muslims to Syria or Iraq, and possibly a lot of Kurds will move to eastern Syria and take over that part of the country).
The ONLY way we are going to get people to agree to that is if they are desensitized to this sort of violence.
If we cover up the violence and try for unrealistic solutions, we will either lose the war or wind up in the end committing genocide (not because we are evil but because it is the only way top win).
So the people on this board are correct when they say that trying to “be nice” and to “avoid violence” will only lead to worse violence later.
However, the type of violence that will be necessary will ABSOLUTELY not be able to be kept secret.
So if we are to win, we cannot cover up the violence. Rather, we will need to desensitize the public to it.

I’m sure we can count on Hollywood to do it’s part in desensitizing us, Mr. Jose.

Mr Jose, desensitizig us are you kidding?

Why bother building this Theory that Jack Built to support such an outlandish claim. If your idea accomplishes anything it will be the further distancing of this nation from the clear vision of victory which we will need to win.

“There are two options a military has when dealing with the unpleasantness of war (a) hide these things from the public, and (b) desensitize the public to them. I say that (b) is the better course.”

And I agree with you, though I believe you assume too much about the news-watching public. The purpose of gladiatorial games in ancient Rome was to desensitize the public to the sight of blood. But back then being a Roman meant everything, and empathy for the enemy was basically non-existant. Let me remind you that the President did not win the election by a huge margin, and there are many conservatives who say that had John Kerry had an actual message and stuck to it, he would have soundly defeated Bush. Kerry had all the virulent anti-war people on his side.

So, I believe that if you were to try to desensitize the public it would backfire. Rather than get used to the bloodshed and the fact that there will be Americans killed, they would more likely have ANOTHER pithy protest, and another and another until we withdrew completely from Iraq. If Kerry were president, he’d be only to happy to oblige them.

“Our current scenario for victory (a united, democratic Iraq) is impossible.”

Bush’s scenario for victory is a failing one, and it does not concern my argument. As I said elsewhere, our only concern in Iraq should be unconditional victory, meaning we should lessen the restrictions of using artillery and air support, using psychological warfare against the religion of the terrorists (for therein lies their week spot), and above all, allowing the infantry to be infantry. Those men realize that civilians are living in a war zone and many of them are going to die, but it was the enemy who brought us there to begin with. They should be able to concentrate on destroying the enemy without distraction.

“Also, I think that beach landing that got lit up by reporters was not in the Gulf War but in the Somalia expedition.”

My mistake. Luckily it does not affect my point.

No, I am not a reporter. I am a graduate student in biochemistry.
I used the word “hiding” because the consensus among many seems to be that the military should not have allowed that footage to come out. If the military is trying to make certain that we do not know what happened, that is “hiding” it.
By “forcing the authorities to justify it” what I meant was that anyone who thinks we should not have allowed this to get reported obviously feels that some people would not find it justified. The proper way to deal with this, in my opinion, is to explain why it was justified rather than trying to pretend it didn’t happen.
As for “ashamed,” my point was that by censoring things like this, we implicitly concede that they are shameful, and moreover we fuel rumors that we are doing things that really are bad. The more we are seen to cover up things that we shouldn’t be ashamed of, the more it will fuel speculation that we are covering up really terrible things.

As for al Jazeera, I hate to say this, but there is no way to hide the brutality of war from people who are actually in the war zone. No effort by us to censor the news is going to alter things in the Arab world. The only people whose perception of Iraq we can do much to influence by our coverage are the American public.
Our response to biased reporting from al Jazeera should be to broadcast our side of the story again, and again, and again. In fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to set up a debate between someone from the Arab world who is appalled by things in Iraq and someone who thinks we are doing good. Ultaimtely, presenting our side of the story in a way that engages the other side is better than just trying to starve the other side of information.

Mr. Wijk, I don’t think it is correct to say that the Colosseum was for the purpose of desensitizing the Roman public, thought it had an effect.

I was under the impression it was created to entertain the public and had a large role in the Roman economy of the time.

This idea of desensitizing is way off base and assumes too much.

They should have put the prisoner in an orange jumpsuit and sawed his head off while videotaping it like some type of quasi-snuff film. Hmm…oh whoops! That’s what the other side does!

This incident was on the front of aljareeza.net yesterday….no mention of the innocent CARE Aid worker who was shot in the head the same day….surprise, surprise…

When even Juan Cole is willing to defend the actions of this marine (to an extent) I think that there is little concern about it causing an antiwar backlash.
I think that the vast majority of the American people are reasonable and willing to accept that bad things happen in wars, if you give them a chance.

Mr. Jose,

First, the military has not tried to hide anything in this matter, that is a false assumption. I don’t think my reservations to this story is based on a fear of justifying it, but rather a concern for the propaganda value and fuel is adds to the enemys fury. As for your language, you say we cannot hide the brutality from those in a war zone, but this news has international reprucussions beyond the zone and again it is in no way being hidden though I think it should.

As for your debate idea, I don’t see how that applies to this situition, nor do I believe debate as of late has any real value with the Arab world except to help spread their particular intolerance.

The previous post was meant to have contained a link to a posting by Juan Cole on his blog. However, this site does not appear right now to be supporting html or else I entered the link incorrectly:
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/more-on-marine-mosque-killing-iraqis.html

Terribly sorry andrew if I gave the impression that the military is trying to hide anything. I wasn’t referring here to the actual behavior of the military, but to the behavior that many of you WANT the military to have. My argument is against those who say that the military should have covered this up, not with the military.

“and again it is in no way being hidden though I think it should [be].”

Yes, that thought is what I was arguing with, not the military’s actual practices.
I’m sorry if I implied that the military was covering anything up, because as far as I can tell, they are handling this very well.

I thought I had explicitly stated early on that I wasn’t suggesting that the military was covering things up, but reading back on this thread it appears that I edited it out before I posted.

Mr. Jose,

The problem occured after you misunderstood by statement that the cover up is always worse than the crime ASSUMING there was a crime. I was not saying there WAS. You then went on to say this:

“…[If] the military is trying to make certain that we do not know what happened, that is “hiding” it”.

Do you see how the discussion went? I understood that you were speaking in terms of broad public perception and the word [if] made all the difference towards the end.

Mr. Jose, take a look at the effect the report had on fueling anti-Western sentiment in the Arab world. One citizen said he was outraged and was a normal Muslim, but now wants to turn to jihad as a result of the non-stop footage. Someone else here said something about the orange jumpsuits. The beheading of prisoners in Orange jumpsuits began shortly after the Abu Gareb “TORTURE” scandal. This is why is would be better to control these images.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=54652&d=18&m=11&y=2004

“The problem occured after you misunderstood by statement that the cover up is always worse than the crime ASSUMING there was a crime. I was not saying there WAS.”

I understood perfectly that you were not saying there was a crime (in fact, I thought you were implying that there wasn’t). My point was that there doesn’t have to be a crime for there to be a cover-up, and the cover-up can still be bad and cause problems even without a crime.
If the military wants to erase the shooting from the record, then that is a cover up, whether or not the shooting was a crime. I rather figured that if we tried to erase these type of shootings from the record, then eventually when one or the other of them came to light, they would look like crimes even if they weren’t.

“”…[If] the military is trying to make certain that we do not know what happened, that is “hiding” it”.”

Uh - the “if” was in the original quote, so I am not certain why it is being bracketed.

I should have said “if the military were to try to make certain that we didn’t know about the shooting, as many posters have suggetsed it should do, then that is ‘hiding’ it, regardless of whether the shooting was legal or illegal.”

As for the Abu Ghraib scandal, I have a feeling that even if we controlled the images, reports of the abuse would have gotten out anyway, and enraged the Arab world. The only difference is that the US media would have kept silent about it.

While I agree with Mr. Jose’s idea that it is important for the US public to know the truth about what is going on, I think the real danger lies in the leftist media’s constant propaganda use of an incident like this one by removing the context of the event in question. Who is going to counter the MSM propaganda machine? Fox? FreeRepublic?

During Vietnam, the video that likely destroyed public support for the war most of all was the one with the Saigon police chief firing a .38 special into the head of a VietCong prisoner at the heighth of the Tet offensive. Not until years later did I learn about the context surrounding that event. The prisoner who was executed has just slaughtered the chief’s best friend and his entire family. The media played the story as a melodrama about the thuggish, corrupt South Vietnamese regime who we were supporting in their brutal oppression of innocent Vietnamese patriots. Large segments of the public fell for it, too.

Mr. Wijk also raised an interesting point which fills out the context of Fallujah a bit more. Our forces surrounded the city for weeks on end and issued repeated warnings for all civilians to leave. Could we not then justifiably assume that any “civilians” remaining were, in fact, jihadis or jihadi sympathizers? Instead of sending in Marines to fight house-to-house, why not carpet the city with fuel-air bombs (the ones that burn all oxygen in the atmosphere in the explosive zone and suffocate anyone within)? I dare say that resistance would have been slight if we had done so first.

Again, we see a basic failure on the part of Presidente Boilerplate to understand the true nature of the enemy. We seem to act as if we are fighting Germans in WWII, not jihadis who worship death and slaughter a civilian woman who worked to aid Iraqis for three decades.

Carl raises a good point. As bad as the Germans were, they were at least civilized by the standards we’re witnessing in Iraq. These people are barely a few notches above tropical savages.

Let’s not lose control of ourselves. The Germans bombed London civilians at will. Cut off all food and water to Stalingrad, forcing the civilian population into starvation and cannibalism. Invaded northern and western Europe at will. Used submarines to kill unarmed American merchants. Used einsatzgruppen A,B,C, D to machinegun to death 1,000,000 jewish men, women, and children in shallow graves. And created such monuments to human depravity such as Aushchwitz, Buchenwald, and Dauchau.

In the early 1940s, the Germans were anything but civilized. And this is something we must always remember: if we lower ourselves to their level of behavior, we’ll lose, too.

Sorry, Mark. The all time winners in that game were the Russians. They are the gold standard in depravity. Just because they didn’t single out your favorite minority for special treatment doesn’t hide the corpses…according to Robert Conquest about 18 million of them by 1939.

But more to the point I was making. On an individual basis, the Iraqis are truly more savage than any Europeans have been since the middle ages. Sawing heads off living people? Disemboweling women and mutilating their corpses? Sending children as suicide bombers? The only way they could sink lower would be to descend to cannibalism and EAT their victims.

Bob,

Sorry, but I don’t have a favorite minority. I just think shooting 1,000,000 jewish women and children in shallow graves qualifies as savage behavior. Perhaps you’re standards are different than mine.

And I agree that the Russians were far sleazier than the Germans were. However, that doesn’t mean that the Germans didn’t resort to savagery and barbarism. And you’re wrong, the gold standard doesn’t go to the Russians. It goes to the Japanese. (Nanking, Unit 731, etc.)

Speaking of cannibalism, it was the Arabs that introduced it into sub-tropical Africa. I agree with Bob that Arabs are much more savage than the Nazis ever where. You might recall how in the fall of 2000 a Palestinian mob lynched two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. The victims were beaten to a pulp and then burned (I’ve seen the photographs with my own eyes).

“were” not “where”, sorry. My eyes are really tired from all the typing I had to do today.

Look, Mark, you’re taking this discussion to an area I don’t care for. Of course I think those German, Jap and Russian mass murders were horrible. How could I think otherwise? The point I was making was that I don’t think your average Bolshevik or Nazi was quite up to the task of sawing off people’s heads while they squealed like pigs. I think that these Mulsim fanatics would be infinitely worse than the Germans and Russians if they possessed that kind of organizational ability and the wherewithal to have so many of their enemy in their power. In other words, whose concentration camp would you prefer to die in? I’d just as soon die in a German one. But if you’d prefer to take your chances with the Muslim version, go ahead. But this is a silly argument and I’m done here. This is divisive and non-productive.

And I will agree with you! :)

To get back on topic…well, sort of: I wonder what the reaction from the Muslim world would have been if it was an Iraqi (fighting with the Americans) who shot the resistance fighter. Now that would be interesting!

Bob Griffin has a point here that the big thing the Nazis and the Commies had going for them was their power. They weren’t necessarily mroe evil than a bunch of other groups, they just had the power to execute their evil.

Lawrence states that we must kill as many jihadists as possible: not good enough. They must all be killed. Each, every last one. I’ve watched and analyzed 1/2 dozen Islamist beheading videos. I consider beheading the signature crime of the Islamist movement. In none of these videos is displayed the slightest bit of passion by the perpetrators. It is as if a pig or goat is being slaughtered. The behavior is ice-cold-blooded. Colder than the Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists or Imperial Japanese combined,many times over. The jihadists are the purest killers. They’re not touched by their victim’s screams, they’re comfortable with the spray of a dying human’s blood on their faces, and they praise “god” for the “honor” of the experience. Like all serial killers, they have no souls. Kill them, kill them all and destroy the cultures that produce them and will continue producing others like them, or they’ll eventually destroy the civilized world.I want my children to survive, my country and myself to survive.I will never allow my children to live under the club foot of Islam. I will never pray to Allah. Therefore, all jihadists must die.

In terms of Iraq the choices are clear. Either kick the press out and treat all acts of insurgency with no mercy and without hesitation or pack up, come home and seal the borders and await seige.

I agree with Rocco DiPippo that anyone who committed these beheadings or is an accessory to people who committed them must simply be killed. We don’t want to have them as prisoners. They are enemies of the human race and must be wiped out.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the videos, but at some point I will, out of respect for the poor people who had to die such a terrible death.

I quite agree with Mr. DiPippo’s comment about the jihadists. They should be killed at every opportunity. Death is what they worship - give it to them.

Sadly, I seriously doubt that will happen. We’ve yet to execute a jihadi that has been captured. Worse, with the urging of spineless Euro-Eloi like Tony Blair, we’ve even released captured jihadis to go and attempt to kill our people again. To top it off, the US Imperium (the Supreme Court) has granted jihadis the constitutional rights of US citizens. How’s that for liberal insanity? Both the US and Blairland are even harboring Chechen jihadis who supported the machine-gunning of fleeing children in Beslan in September. Liberals like Bush and Blair ‘just don’t get it.’ They are incapable of see the enemy as he is. All Boilerplate can do is repeat the phrase about “staying the course” ad infinitum.

I have seen a few of the videos. They are horrific. In a couple of cases (Berg and Johnson), the victims were most likely dead before being beheaded - this from a family member who has worked in ER’s for years. Others (like the Nepalis) are unadulterated barbarism of the lowest sort shown live. There just aren’t words to describe such depravity.

I found the scenes from Beslan the most horrible of all. The hellish scene of rows of young children slaughtered by those who screamed “Allahu Akhbar” as they were committing this evil was absolutely heartbreaking. After that one, I could sympathize with those who advocated converting Mecca into a vast sea of molten glass dotted with shadows of the vaporized. I think we should make ourselves see these dreadful sights, if at all possible. This is the true face of our enemy.

rocco dipippo wrote:

“In terms of Iraq the choices are clear. Either kick the press out and treat all acts of insurgency with no mercy and without hesitation or pack up, come home and seal the borders and await seige.”

My sentiment exactly. Why should we loose our boys instead of just burning the hellhole down?
Because El Presidente talks tough and has Texas cotton balls.

Carl,

Not to nitpick, but I watched Nick Berg execution video and he was screaming while RoP practioner was sawing his head off.

I resolved to not poison my soul by watching these depraved acts.

Despite this, I accidentally viewed a video of a Russian solider being beheaded while clicking around a Hindu website. It played so fast and the shock was so paralyzing, I did see this depraved horror. The degree of soulless evil involved is so pure as to almost be satanic.

I am a bit late commenting on this thread, but there are three perfectly good reasons for taking prisoners 1) Prisoners can talk 2) It encourages others to surrender 3) It avoids brutalizing our own men to the extent possible.
Contrary to some remarks made here, while killing of Japanese prisoners did take place in the Pacific War, the main problem was that Japanese were indoctrinated to fight to the death. Late in the war,with morale getting lower, thousands were captured both on Okinawa and in Burma.
Contrary to Tyrone Washington, most of us baby boomers were exposed to the grimmer side of World War II, which was not successfully hidden after 1945. (Ever read “The Naked and the Dead”?) I heard of the firebombing of Tokyo, etc. The stupidities of the Vietnam War era, I am afraid, require a different explanation.

After seeing the gruesome “B” film “The Exterminator” (about a Vietnam vet who goes on a vigilante spree killing gang ghouls in Manhattan) wherein he witnesses the half-beheading of one of his Army buddies tied to a stake, I decided long ago I never would want to see the real thing.

Sorry to change the subject away from beheadings, but one thing that would please me a great deal, since he has won re-election, would be for Bush to declare war on “Islamo-facism”. He still calls it simply “the war on terror” which is faceless and country-less. That is so incredibly pc/woosie-ness, in my opinion. Has there ever been a case in our history where a president refuses to say “who” the enemy actually is—after fighting two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) against “him”? Unbelievable.

I would like to thank David Levin for making the last point. I feel like a damn fool for not noticing it myself. The equivalent of Bush’s empty mouthings in the 1940s, I suppose would have been for Roosevelt to say we were at war with “extremism.” Or maybe just people who had an anger-management issue!

Here’s the cameraman’s own account of what happened: [Note by LA: commenters must place at least about 100 characters in their comment preceding a hyperlink, otherwise it forces the entire content of the right-hand column down to the bottom of the main page. I must fix this. Thank you.]

http://www.kevinsites.net/2004_11_21_archive.html#110107420331292115

“Froggy” is correct that the first Marine to encounter an enemy fighter doesn’t need to give him the opportunity to surrender. The rules are also sufficiently vague where they need to be vague on whether an enemy’s surrender even needs to be accepted. Killing him, even if wounded, even if not obviously armed, is combat and not murder.

But, once that enemy’s surrender has has been accepted by other Marines, once he has been disarmed and taken into custody by other Marines, killing him then is murder and not combat.

According to Sites, what happened in the mosque was somewhere between the two. The five wounded Iraqis had been taken prisoner the previous day and then left in the mosque overnight. He also suggests that the first squad to enter the mosque that day may not have known that.