Marines Desecrate Afghan Corpses

[anti-nonsense]

Question: has there been any known incidents of Taliban doing the same or similar to American corpse?

quite possibly, if so, so what? Are you suggesting that because some Taliban somewhere may have done something disrespectful to Americans that Americans are justified doing the same thing? So much for the moral high ground.

[Shane for Wax]

Because we totally should piss and spit on the corpses of our enemies. By this show of disrespect you are showing the monster you truly are. These soldiers are the representatives of the United States, not just of the military, in the eyes of those in the Middle East. You will never win support if you do shit like this. You'll just make people hate you more. Have more people call you sick, horrible monsters who don't even know how to respect the deceased. Even Neanderthals we have recently found respected their dead.

They don't just make the Marines look bad, but the entire US military and the US. Why this can be forgivable to anyone is beyond me.

Though I'd be interested to see those who say 'the corpse is just a piece of meat or a pile of bones' react to me chopping up their family members then tossing them in a sewer THEN pissing and defecating in that sewer. It would make me look like a complete monster, right? If you cannot respect your dead you cannot be considered someone I'd like to think to share my species. If mere animals respect their dead, why can't you? That makes you less than much of anything.

War may be sickening and horrible but we can try to make it less so by being a bit more respectful to the dead.

You don't need to believe in anything like life after death or a God or anything to show basic respect to someone who was once a family member, a friend, or just a God damn human being.

[Cataclysm]

I guess that analogy doesn't really work since Art's family members probably aren't terrorists, so he probably would view the situation differently. I think killing people is worse than pissing on their bodies.

I have to agree with Vene though. These people probably have a similar view to Shane, but subverted their conscience for the sake of it, and that is just repulsive.

[Shane for Wax]

Well, Lexi, if you are an honorable person then one would think that you should afford enemy dead the exact same respect you give your own family.

Which tells me that these men are not honorable nor are those who agree with what was done.

Or maybe my views of honor are drastically different from other peoples' in this day and age. I would not be surprised.

[Cataclysm]

Well, I think it varies. If someone really hate another person, they probably wouldn't give them the same treatment.

I think that the dead should all be treated the same; Organ donors and worm food. There's no reason to give them special treatment good or bad.

[Shane for Wax]

If I were to kill someone I really hated I would not desecrate their corpse. Nay, I would give them a proper burial. Their dead body has done nothing to me. They are gone and cannot bother me anymore. I will be judged by others for what I do to my enemy. So it is doubly important I am the more honorable, the bigger person, and offer what I can to the dead body of my enemy that has so grieved me. Though my enemy may not have afforded me the same I will do to them what I would desire from them.

But I suppose that is just me, my honor, and my belief system talking.

[ThunderWulf]

Dude.  A corpse is not the same thing as a brick.  You do not disrespect the dead.  Even if they were your enemies in life, once they die, they are what YOU will eventually become.  To defile a corpse is to doubly defile yourself.

A corpse is just dead meat. There is nothing clean or respectful about a corpse; they twitch, burp, fart, shit, sit up, slough off their skin, and otherwise embarrass themselves perfectly well on their own. Whatever there was of the person within dissipated with the cessation of brain activity; respect for the memory of the dead is one thing, but the corpse itself is insensate.

...respect for the memory of the dead is one thing, but the corpse itself is insensate.

So we should respect the dead but not their bodies?

[deadpandoubter]

I don't personally think of corpses as anything special, but for those of us who've been dragged from funeral to funeral, it's hard to say that what I think should be done with corpses should be forced on everyone else.

Consider this-- the corpse is the most tangible reminder of who that person was. While to our soldiers it may be a reminder of a disgusting human being or a war they want to get the hell out of, to the dead person's family that corpse is the only physical thing they have left of their loved one. These people were not terrorists to their families (or so I would hope), they were husbands, sons, fathers, cousins, friends. These were not universally terrible people, so to expect everyone, including their loved ones, to treat them as such is self-centered and moronic.

Back to the corpses themselves. Since the body itself is the best reminder of who the person once inhabiting it was, the treatment of the corpse is often tied to how one would treat that person in life, albeit symbolically (I hope no one would bury or burn loved ones while they're alive ). It really is an issue of respect, not for the pile of dead meat and bones but for the person who once inhabited said pile.

And for those would say "sentimental symbolism is moronic", consider this: we use symbolism EVERY SINGLE DAY. Words themselves are mere symbols; we can't transmit our thoughts to one another directly, so we've manufactured and agreed upon the rules of usage of phonemes and alphabets (in English, mind, not speaking for other languages here) so that we can try our best to communicate what we really think. When we tell people that we love them, do we have a concrete object called 'love' to give to them? No, not really, so it's an abstract idea we've tried to put into relatively concrete terms through language and, hopefully, actions.

Additionally, as someone else already noted, these soldiers did NOT view the bodies as mere hunks of meat. They attributed symbolic meaning to their actions, too. I doubt that these people go about their daily lives pissing on roadkill and ground beef.

[nickiknack]

So much for winning the "hearts & minds"...

[Cataclysm]

If I were to kill someone I really hated I would not desecrate their corpse. Nay, I would give them a proper burial. Their dead body has done nothing to me. They are gone and cannot bother me anymore. I will be judged by others for what I do to my enemy. So it is doubly important I am the more honorable, the bigger person, and offer what I can to the dead body of my enemy that has so grieved me. Though my enemy may not have afforded me the same I will do to them what I would desire from them.

But I suppose that is just me, my honor, and my belief system talking.

But you already killed them, so whatever you do can't really top that.

But what you're saying is that the members of the Talisban probably would take this worse, so it is a bad idea. And that we better think about what the others side would think rather than what we would. If they find it honorable to bury the bodies, then we do that. If they find it dishonorable to pee on the bodies, we shouldn't. And vice versa. It isn't our perspective we should be taking into consideration theirs.

...respect for the memory of the dead is one thing, but the corpse itself is insensate.

So we should respect the dead but not their bodies?

Nobody is calling for a book burning.

[Shane for Wax]

How can I not do anything worse than cleanly kill somebody? That's rather odd. How is it not worse for me to be disrespectful to the corpse of my enemy by voiding my bowels or pissing on their corpse? Like I said, it's probably just my honor code talking. Unless of course you're trying to say killing someone is disrespectful which is just a cause for confusing the fuck out of the subject. And I'd rather not get into the ethics and the like of actually killing someone.

If we tried to show a sign of good faith by doing Muslim death rites for Bin Laden and quickly burying him at sea, then why can we not at the least stop from using someone's body as our personal latrine?

These marines are not honorable.

[Cataclysm]

If we get there in time, yeah.

[Jack Mann]

Yeah, speaking as someone getting ready to actually go over there and get shot at, fuck these assholes.  Even forgetting the fact that this was a horrible, disrespectful thing to do, this is just giving them more propaganda to inspire more people to come and shoot at us.  I don't like getting shot at.  I'd rather not add to the number of people doing it.

[Cataclysm]

Who thinks Karma will bite them in the ass?

[Canadian Mojo]

How many of us here have expressed a desire to desecrate Fred Phelps grave? I see to recall a thread on the old board where quite a few people came up with rather creative ways to give Fred a nice little post mortem 'fuck-you, you piece of shit' message when the time comes.

Fred is just a troll that most, if not all of us, really only know by reputation. Those marines on the other hand, have actually fought the Taliban; they actually have a reason to hate them.

Is it right?
No, but it is human nature. And for that reason I can't get overly annoyed at the marines.  What annoys me is that they are compromising the mission. They should have known better. (i.e. not got caught)