I disagree. Let the MSM hyperventilate, let them blow this into the next 60 minutes segment, let them slobber over this for weeks. Most Americans, certainly the Red-staters, will shrug and say,"Well, yes, that's what happens in war. You shoot them before they shoot you." I, myself, don't understnad why this non-story is being touted at all. It may just be me, but I thought this was how war went. You fire on the enemy--wounded, feigning dead, whatever. The Left is demanding a defense for an action that wasn't criminal in the first place. Perhaps this is a new tactic--re-define the rules of war to impose the greatest limitation on our military. But even worse than a few miscreants playing Abu-Grabass, now they're trying to impugn soldiers actually engaged in combat?? Fine. Let it run. Americans will shake their heads and wonder what world Brokaw, et al. inhabit. Ironically, this being war and all, it was a French guy that said it best--when your enemy is busy making mistakes, take care not to get in his way.

A. Not sure where your disagreement lies. You WANT the media to hyperventilate? The crux of my post is that I'm almost comfortable with it - as it will only hurt their credibility.

B. We don't know the facts or extenuating circumstances. While I tend to give a confused Marine operating in an environment with booby traps and suicide bombers the benefit of the doubt, shooting an unarmed wounded combatant IS a war crime.

The question is how the Marine perceived the situation. I'm confident that with 10 witnesses and video footage, the military will conduct a proper investigation that hashes out the truth of the matter.

When the marines start tearing the wounded apart so that they can play football with their heads, let me know.

War isn't pretty, but that soldier didn't do wrong.

Bill,
I must have mis-read your statement to "not let them get away with it" so, we do agree. I do anticipate the MSM running this into the ground to their own detriment--which is fine with both of us. But I think we disagree on the nature of the charge. Unlike, Abu Ghraib, I believe this is totally baseless, not to mention nonsensical considering the circumstances of a combat zone. Unless a combatant is raising his arms in an obvious, and universal, gesture of surrender, firing is not only acceptable but expected. Someone could be feinging death, booby-trapped, holding a grenade, etc--firing on them simply to ensure the area is safe is reasonable war-time behavior.
Frankly, I've never heard that such a thing is wrong. Unless he's actively surrendering, it's all fair, as they say.

Yeah but this rule of engagement is not clear-cut to people that receive the impression that the Iraqi was a guarded wounded soldier that was known to be helpless. The Marines will sort it out.

I think you'll appreciate the updated link to Froggy Ruminations.

Thanks for the link.

and had been shot in the face the previous day,

That statement absolutely amazes me about this story. Every iteration I have read of this story mentions that the guy had been shot in the face as sort of a side note. This is the big part of the story for me. He was SHOT in the FACE. Only a Marine can get shot in face, head back to work, and then have the MSM complain about how he does his job the NEXT DAY. If you get shot in the face, THEN you show up for work the next day, I cut you a lot of fricking slack. That is work ethic. I hope this Marine gets a medal or something.

Everyone should also look in on the discussion about this in today's Belmont Club post.

Dale Franks might disagree with you:

But no matter how much we might want to, how much we sympathize, and how much we feel we understand the stress that young man was under at that particular moment, we can’t simply look away, and pretend it didn’t happen.

So might Fareed Zakaria, for slightly different reasons:

Keep in mind that the overall objective during a counterinsurgency (which is what the United States is currently fighting in Iraq) is to win the battle of ideas and the politico-military struggle for power. The center of gravity in counterinsurgency operations is the local population. Winning and maintaining their support is crucial. Gaining territory is less important than eliminating support for the insurgents. Now if all this sounds like drippy analysis, it's not my own. All of the sentences above are taken from the Army's most recent manual on counterinsurgency operations (FMI 3-07.22), classified but now widely available on the Internet.

The real issue here is whether we judge ourselves by our own moral standards, or by the hyper-reductionist standard of "at least we're better than the terrorists". The Marine in question should, I agree, be given every benefit of the doubt; in fact, not having had military training, I might tend to give him more sympathy than Franks. It's not a question of blaming the individual soldier; it's a question of doing what we can to make sure things like this don't become routine. And speaking of which, Franks also makes an excellent point about the media coverage in the comments section of his post:

...discrepancies in coverage between abuses they commit and abuses we commit are the result of two simple things:

1: We *expect* them--insurgents, terrorists, et al--to do it. They always have.
2: We *expect* our guys not to do it.

Therefore, when they do it...it's not really news. When we do it, it is.

God forbid we reach a place where it's not news when we do something so terrible. Let's just hope we reach a place where i[t] *is* news when they do something so terrible.

Hard to argue with that, and if you consider it from that perspective, the media coverage doesn't seem at all like a bunch of latte-drinking hippies whose barely-contained hatred of America drives them to actively work at undermining the war effort. In fact, it sounds a lot more like people who think that the ideals of America are something more than just slogans to be exploited by opportunistic politicians.

Walter - Dale Franks might disagree with me?

Hmmmm. I don't get it? Where did I suggest that we ignore it or pretend that it didn't happen? I'm so confused.

My post is about context. I only suggest that the Marine gets the benefit of the doubt because of circumstance, as opposed to a public, preliminary crucifixion by the media. My subsequent comment says ...

I'm confident that with 10 witnesses and video footage, the military will conduct a proper investigation that hashes out the truth of the matter.

So no disagreement. As for Fareed's recitation of US Military doctrine, I generally agree with it. But the concept of a perfect (mistake free) ideal of combat in an asymmetric urban environment with civilian shields and suiciders is not only unreasonable, but a historical myth.
And as for this ...

before, when they do it...it's not really news. When we do it, it is.

Bullshit! This leads to the desensitization of the population to the reality of what goes on there. We cannot objectively view the struggle through some subjective lens of moral equivalency. We are fighting medievalist bloodthirsty barbarians, and our weakness is largely a product of our insulation from the brutal reality of the fundamentalists wackos that want to saw our heads of, or detonate chem, bio or nuclear weapons in our cities.

God I'm sick of a grasp of history that effectively begins in the last half of the 20th Century.

Bullshit! This leads to the desensitization of the population to the reality of what goes on there. We cannot objectively view the struggle through some subjective lens of moral equivalency.

Well, that quote about becoming desensitized was from Franks -- I know it wasn't in italics, I guess because my tags got messed up, but in any case, I do agree with it. If we do become desensitized to our own potential for brutality, then what difference will it make if we defeat the people who have already realized that potential? It's not a matter of "moral equivalency" at all. It's a matter of maintaining moral standards independent of the conduct of our enemies. If we don't do that, then it becomes easy to simply slide slowly into using the same tactics they use against us; in other words, to become more like our enemies.

We are fighting medievalist bloodthirsty barbarians, and our weakness is largely a product of our insulation from the brutal reality of the fundamentalists wackos that want to saw our heads of, or detonate chem, bio or nuclear weapons in our cities.

Yes, we are. So how does failing to self-criticize assist the effort to defeat those people? Is shooting one unarmed, injured terrorist going to stop all the other terrorists from killing us? No, it's not.

God I'm sick of a grasp of history that effectively begins in the last half of the 20th Century.

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. I am not at all arguing that our terrorist enemies are one iota less threatening than you say; I am merely suggesting that once we cause them to become non-threats in a way that leaves them alive, we should treat them in a humane way. This seems more like an understanding of morality that begins in the last half of the 20th century - and you, who argue so eloquently (or at least frequently) in favor of using military force to spread those ideals, should recognize at the very least that they can't be spread just by talking about them in pretty language; they have to be demonstrated by conduct. I can't think of a better way to do that than by making sure we judge ourselves by consistent moral standards, even if that means "self-flagellation" in the media.

Not to mention there's a bigotry of low expectations inherent in the "when they do it it's not news" belief. A patronizing assumption that the Arabs (and presumably other darker skinned folk) will always be savages, can't help it and therefore can't be expected to act in a civilized manner.

...which helps guarantee that it continues.

I'm surprised that we have not heard yet the comparison with ... wait for it ... My Lai.

Unfortunately for you, Walt, you don't have a leg to stand on. If the enemy is planting bombs on corpses and/or pretending to be dead so they can detonate explosives and/or attack our soldiers then any of the enemy caught faking death or looking remotely suspicious is to be treated as a hostile target. The normal protections are invalidated by the enemy's actions.

Or were you wondering why we started firing on ambulances in Fallujah after it became known that the enemy was using ambulances to ferry troops and supplies? For that matter, did you ponder why we were attacking mosques after the enemy started fighting from them and/or using them as ammo dumps? Ever wonder why the first target we took in Fallujah last week was a hospital?

Go on, launch the strawman about how this means we shouldn't "self-criticise" and so on.

Walter, Your quote "Is shooting one unarmed, injured terrorist going to stop all the other terrorists from killing us? No, it's not." But it will help with the survival of that Marine and the ones who count on each other hourly for their survival. People who chose to put a world view on the individual world of the soldier have never been in combat and pontificate from the safety of the country and the environment that is familiar. REMF is not a positon of knowledge about the enironment of the individual soldier and to use this a a jumping off place for some type of moral equivelance about the war in general is absurd and disingenuois.

I have come to the conclusion that the Left has absolutely no respect for human life. They truly don't care about life in general, only when it serves their political purposes, and even then, only if it can make news and get ratings.

You see this over and over, left wing professors defending Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, etc. The media gushing over Arafat.

Just the day before this incident this same reporter caught on tape (probably, he was there) the dead boobytrapped body killing a Marine and injuring others, yet he chooses not to show that footage. Instead, he shows this footage, of a Marine shooting someone in what in that Marines mind was self defense. He does NOT even show the footage a few seconds before of the Marines NOT shooting another wounded insuragent standing near a pillar.

To me, this means that report actually has no respect for human life at all, since he's willing to play games and show only footage he feels like. He does not care about anyone's lives, least of all all the poor civilians who were murdered because they refused to join the insurgents in Fallujah.

"Is shooting one unarmed, injured terrorist going to stop all the other terrorists from killing us?"

That's the point, the Marine did not know he was unarmed.

In a situation where the enemy routinely boobytraps his own body when he is injured, or feigns surrender only to blow himself up, we MUST allow our troops to err on the side of caution.

'To be clear - I am not suggesting that Abu Ghraib and the shooting in Fallujah are incidents that should have been buried by a patriotic press corps.'---Bill

Well you might not be suggesting that but I have no hesitation in so doing.Abu-Ghraib is a special situation and I do see why this stupid act of brutality should have been exposed( although that does not justify the meal the MSM made of it),but the Marine incident is entirely different.Since when is WAR an objective exercise in moral equivalence?
In WW2 would the media have broadcast this type of propaganda boon for our enemies? Would they have sent photos to Berlin so that Goebbels could have shown them 24-7? I think not.
The media is now a declared enemy of 'our'side,and IMHO they should be fully BANNED from the war zone,and if they chose to go anyway,they are totally on their own.Is this how a WAR can be won,when the enemy is driven by ceaseless propaganda and we do nothing but assist them in that regard?
Sorry,but CNN,CBS,ABC,NBC and the other representatives of the MSM are ACTIVELY giving aid and comfort to the enemy and possibly endangering the lives of men on the front lines.
The MSM IS THE ENEMY and should be treated as such.

I doubt this will even go to trial (or military equivalent).

Let the MSM and Arab Street howl.

We are fighting medievalist bloodthirsty barbarians, and our weakness is largely a product of our insulation from the brutal reality of the fundamentalists wackos that want to saw our heads of, or detonate chem, bio or nuclear weapons in our cities.

Ok, that's who we're fighting, but who is fighting us? It seems as though the people we are fighting in Fallujah at least are not foreign terrorists but Iraqis. I would find it very hard to believe that all the Iraqis fighting us now were terrorists before the invasion just waiting for the US to come around so they could saw our heads off. To continue to discuss Iraq as merely the WOT and nothing else lacks that context you like so much Bill. We invaded a country, and one not called Terroria but rather Iraq, and most of the people we now fight are Iraqis. Iraqis that have seen the fall of one oppressive regime and its replacement by a foreign occupying force (I know some of you may not see it that way, but I assure you many Iraqis do). To assume that every enemy kill in Iraq is a dead terrorist is wrong, and to assume that they will eventually see that we're really good guys bringing them democracy and freedom is just stupid and pays no attention to that history of the second half of the 20th century you criticize people for remembering. And don't talk to me about Germany (crushed and humiliated. Don't think that will happen in Iraq), Japan (how much of an insurgency was there in that country after the war? Doesn't jive), or S. Korea (aren't we still fighting that war?). Democracy on a stick just ain't going to work in Iraq, you just wait.

No back to the original post:

Most MSM outlets can't muster up the outrage to energetically condemn the extremist forces that decapitate innocents on camera and wave the severed heads in the air, or shoot blinfolded women in the head,

Is that the job of the media, to energetically condemn things? I thought that was the Republicans job. Is a condemnation news? Really, Bill, to criticize the media for sensationalism, then criticize them for not making subjective judgements about something no American needs to be told is wrong is silly. Do you really think our news should consist of people screaming about how terrorists and murderers are bad people? I already see enough of that about Democrats on Fox.

Regarding the Marine however, I completely agree. I think we can trust the Marines to deal with these kinds of matters fairly, considering the context, and it is a non-story. However, as with Abu-Ghraib as well as the hostage videos, the MSM run with it because they have pictures. Abu Ghraib didn't break despite people knowing about it until there were photos and video. The MSM is not biased against the war, they're just lazy.

Mantis -

You desire context:

I would find it very hard to believe that all the Iraqis fighting us now were terrorists before the invasion just waiting for the US to come around so they could saw our heads off.

The residents of fallujah are Sunni Muslims that primarily consist of:

A. Baathists that did very well oppressing the other 4/5 of the country, reaping the rewards of Saddam's bloosthirsty system.

B. Poorer Sunnis that are followers of an Islamist ideology that closely mirrors and is related to the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia.

So yes actually, the darlings in Fallujah do have a natural affinity for sawing heads off, or at least systematically raping women in the employ of Saddam, slicing out tongues and embracing one of the most fundamentalist strains of Islam in Iraq (outside the very poor Shiite populations that live in slums like Sadr City and certain areas in the south) There's your context.

As far as this goes ...

to assume that they will eventually see that we're really good guys bringing them democracy and freedom is just stupid

What a weird assumption. I don't care whether they see us as the good guys , that's not the goal. The ultimate goal is to empower a new govt. with:

A. A popular mandate by the people that will give it real authority

B. Security forces to enforce the rule of law

C. While bringing enough minority elements into the fold to stem unmanageable dissent.

There are elements that will refuse the mandate of the people and disrupt both the US AND any new government that is any less than a fundamentalist theocracy, and elements that will resist to s shorter point as long as they think that theyll be marginalized in the minority. What many people dont get by lumping the harder line elements in with factions that merely don't like us is the fact that they just need to be killed. Period. Dead. Cockroaches.

That's the difficult nature of this war - doing it without upsetting the whole country. It's possible with will, though by no means certain. And if you don't think that my analysis of the situation understands these complexities, you are mistaken.

But - a common mistake that I suspect you make (along with most journalists in this country) is the application of Western standards of outrage to the incident in question. In a country where a strongman ruled through terror, torture, systematic rape, casual murder and theivery, the hypersensitive Western assumption that a soldier double-tapping a wounded combatant is a fantastically outrageous occurrence is overstated.

We can't instill Western values wholesale - which is part of the reason why the rule of force still holds much greater sway than the gentle perfection that Westereners pine for more than Iraqis.

Mantis, Part two -

Is that the job of the media, to energetically condemn things? I thought that was the Republicans job. Is a condemnation news? Really, Bill, to criticize the media for sensationalism, then criticize them for not making subjective judgements about something no American needs to be told is wrong is silly.

Your interpretation of my post seems to cherry pick one line and extrapolate and shoehorn it to fit your own narrative - it's very similar to what I'm complaining about in the post. I didn't say that anyone needed to scream about anything, please don't put hyperbolic words in my mouth.

What I am saying is that things need to be contextually presented, and if the MSM feels the need to "energetically condemn" the actions in Abu Ghraib (which they did, there's your reference point for "energetically condemn"), they also, AT LEAST need to condemn the murder and torture of innocents with equal vigor.

Context.

Very simple, actually. I hope this helps you understand the nature of my post.

Your bit about Democrats and FOX is a pretty handwringing, funny comment, btw.

I will agree with your analysis of media laziness - it's a huge factor.

Mantis:

If I remember correctly, in October 2001, we didn't invade a country named Terroria, and most of the people we wound up killing were natives of that land as well.

Was that part of the WoT? Are we a foreign occupying force there? Are the people in Afghanistan generally more disposed towards us, or generally more resentful?

PlutosDad:

I have come to the conclusion that the Left has absolutely no respect for human life.

Interesting. I'm arguing that we should respect even the lives of our enemies, and you respond to that by accusing the group with which you associate me of having no respect for human life. It would almost be funny if it weren't so magnificently sad. Let me tell you the conclusion I have come to: the right, especially the so-called "religious right", is largely represented by people who tend to internalize the mechanics and superficial expressions of morality, while the left is largely represented by people who tend to internalize the principles or essence of morality.

You provide yet one more in a long line of examples that have lead me to this conclusion. To state that people whose entire philosophy is based on respect for all life equally "have no respect for human life" indicates that you have no ability to recognize the difference between disagreement in degree and diametric opposition. Not only that, but making such a statement in this context in fact indicates that your moral system is not based on respect for life in general, but on "respect" only for "good life", or life that you consider worthwhile. Finally, it demonstrates your complete lack of ability to take into account any but the most immediate, local, hyper-simplified consequences of any given action.

I say all this not to imply that my position on this incident is "absolutely right" and yours "absolutely wrong", but that the arguments you make in favor of your position are flawed, meaningless, and essentially of no intellectual value whatsoever. Let me try to re-state my argument in a manner I hope you can understand:

1) Do I believe the individual Marine in question was "wrong" to do what he did? No.

2) Do I believe incidents such as this are encouraged by the military? Absolutely not.

3) Do I believe that the enemy we are fighting would behave in a manner that is more "civilized" or "respectful of life"? Obviously not.

4) Does any of this change the fact that the consequences of the incident have to be taken into account from all angles? Not one iota.

If you choose to ignore military doctrine and history with regard to unit discipline and morale, that's your prerogative. If you choose to make the intellectually lazy assumption that any criticism of any such incidents from the mainstream media or "the left" is equivalent to supporting the enemy, that's your prerogative too. But no argument you make based on this incredibly narrow worldview will ever amount to anything more than preaching to the choir.

Patrick Chester:

Not to mention there's a bigotry of low expectations inherent in the "when they do it it's not news" belief. A patronizing assumption that the Arabs (and presumably other darker skinned folk) will always be savages, can't help it and therefore can't be expected to act in a civilized manner.

Garbage. This is really a bullshit straw man, even as straw men go. I'm referring, as you perfectly well know, to the behavior of the terrorists, not of Arabs in general. It is, unfortunately, no longer a rare occurrence for the murdering thugs to publicly kill innocent civilians. They do it all the time, and when they're not doing it, they're trying to. I would expect, if anyone, a right-winger to understand how this makes incidents which might be perceived as "brutality" by our side more newsworthy: they happen less often, so therefore the "news supply" is less, and the "news value" is higher. Not to mention the fact that the American public has no ability to directly influence the behavior of the terrorists, whereas we do, at least technically, have the ability to influence our own government.

We therefore need as much information as possible to make decisions about whether that behavior needs to be modified. That is the media's job. Simple as that. Nothing whatsoever to do with "discrediting the war effort", because as Mantis pointed out, we already know how much worse the terrorists are than we are. And as Mantis also pointed out, not all of the people we're fighting in Iraq are terrorists; many are simply Iraqis responding to an invasion of their country in much the same way Americans would: by fighting the invaders. Whether or not you agree with our soon-to-be Attorney General that the Geneva Conventions are "quaint", do you really want to argue that we should not make the best effort to treat our enemies humanely?

All the pieties of the left and the media commisars about behavior in war are reserved for accusations against the Americans; any beheading, kidnapping, limb chopping or child bombing by the terrorists is barely acknowledged. The ethos that produces such atrocities is ignored or excused. It's the legal system that is to judge their actions, not partisan hacks on TV or the viewing public.

And before 9/11 the left was even more spectacularly uninterested because, well, they're Arabs and they're over there and we're here, so let's lob a few Tomahawks and call it a day. It's their culture, man.

To equate terrorists morally with a disciplined military that requires soldiers to call on the phone for permission to shoot someone is ridiculous and separates the left and the rest of society. It's why IMO Kerry lost.

A minor correction for the sake of accuracy:

According to http://powerlineblog.com/archives/008650.php, the Marine hadn't been shot in the face; he'd caught a piece of shrapnel in the face. Which helps explain why he was on-duty so quickly: being shot in the face would have taken a lot longer to recover from.

Other than that, I have nothing to add to Bill's post. The Marine in question was unquestionably convinced that the wounded insurgent was a threat to him and his squad, and acted accordingly. A public invesigation needs to happen because this has been brought into the public limelight, but I share Bill's confidence that the investigation will clear the Marine of any wrongdoing.

Interesting, isn't it? John Kerry gets schrapnel scratches - and Purple Hearts. He shot an unarmed teen in the back (the teen was running away from him) and he gets a medal.
This Marine gets schrapnel in the face, sees his buddy killed by an insurgent feigning death - and possible saved the lives of his unit - plus that disgusting embed reporter - and may face charges. I want to know why this NBC embed is not being investigated for giving this video to al-Jazeera? This is really good for the morale of our Marines and soldiers who are risking their lives every day.
It is my belief that we need to do something to reverse the outrageous trend of the MSM to attack America at every chance! Anything Patriotic is attacked. What can we do about this? Anyone have any ideas?