At the Washington Post, Sebastian Junger points out the contradiction made salient by the news that American Marines urinated on several dead Taliban fighters:
For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting our wars. The video doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad — not just for them, but also for us. We may prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is okay to torture the living. I hope someone else knows how to explain that to our soldiers, because I don’t have the faintest idea.
Before worrying about “desecrating the dead”, I think we need to first respect live “enemy” soldiers as valuable and sacred living beings. Afterall, isn’t it impossible to desecrate that which is not sacred in the first place? Or are they only sacred in death and not in life?
Why is it considered honorable to kill these living people, yet shocking and horrifying to piss on the inert results of these killings?
The flag waving government hypocrites in Washington, D.C. and their dead soul warrior hit-men in the Pentagon (the ones so outraged by this violation of the dead) are the very same people who continually order, encourage and applaud turning all these living people into the corpses that they only then find so worthy of their respect.