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| Congressman Allen West's open letter to the Weekly Standard |
“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.
“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?
“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.
“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”Congressman West is absolutely correct. I thank Congressman West and these Marines for their service. The 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines (of which these Marines were part of) were fighting the Taliban in Helmand province. As noted by NPR doing a story of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines fighting in the same region, there were high casualties in the fighting there. Be thankful you did not have to face it.
The video in question was taken months ago. These are young men who were under incredible stress and in danger. What they did was wrong, and no one is justifying that, but it is also completely forgivable. They deserve our understanding and respect, not attacks. Yes war is a brutal, but to suggest this is some sort of war crime, given what limited information of the circumstances is know at this time, is disgraceful. At least allow the military to do its investigation.
As noted by Dana Loesch who was attacked for her comments:
The disproportionate anger on the part of progressives is fueled by their dislike of our military. That what this proves.
The left is attacking me so they can give the Obama administration a pass–unlike what they did with Bush and Abu Ghraib. Like it or not, I’ll stand up for our troops no matter which president is in charge.Of course, some of these critics are too far left now for even their former friends...
Previous Post: How Iraq was won.
Update: Revealing conversation among
Congressman West about Congresswoman Wasserman Shultz
Update II: We better be careful or the Taliban may not like us anymore...
They are young, they are macho and the Taliban IS the enemy. Too bad they were foolish enought to video it. Progressives have loved ones serving in Afghanistan and , gulp, some progressives themselves are there, as you know.
ReplyDeleteI know Allie. Thank you for your comment. No one is condoning this, but obviously on a battle field this is pretty small potatoes. What I primarily take from that video is I am more glad it is the Taliban laying in the dirt than those Marines. I want them to come home safe.
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