The way I see it, you kill an enemy, he is out of the fight. Do you really need to be a douchebag about it and disrespect him?

You killed him, it's over, move on.

What level of barbarity is "Okay as long as you don't leave any evidence"?

It's no worse than what they do to the corpses of our soldiers. There's a reason that there's so much of a concerted effort to recover bodies in battles over there. :nope:

It's not right, no, but it's war...human nature prevails in it, and you get some people whose emotions overtake them. For all we know those guys could have lost a member of their unit to a roadside IED the week before.

This kind of thing has happened in every war in the past (heck centuries ago it was encouraged) and it will happen in every war in the future. The fact that there is so much of a scandal about it whenever it happens with a Western force speaks a lot about how far we've gone to try and remove it from our armed forces. The armed forces of Somalia, on the other hand, would probably not hold a court martial for a similar offence.

Does that make us better? I don't know...socially and morally, yes. But morals do not win wars, just ask Curtis Le May and Arthur Harris. Ask the Commissars of the Soviet Union. Ask any of the espionage agents that have died horrific deaths that we have no idea about in order to prevent wars we never knew might have happened.

Inter arma enim silent leges

I'd say it's more about do we want to act better. Because that's exactly what we have done and do: "they" haven't said "you guys are better than we are" and most likely won't. We ourselves have put us in that position, and it is undermined every time something like this happens. As said before, "they do it too" is usually a poor excuse, because that doesn't make us better than them. It slowly makes us equal with them, which doesn't seem to be what we ourself want to be seen as.

Basically we've dug our own pit in this case.

Indeed.
I'm fully in favour of better morality in war, and the good treatment of prisoners, after all...there but for the grace of God...
However such things often fight against human emotion and the strongest element which is revenge. At least these incidents are sporadic events rather than doctrine.
I imagine though, that if there were ever another war against a military power which was stronger than us and we had our backs against the wall and things were desperate...would we still maintain that moral superiority? If our fellow countrymen were being slaughtered in the hundreds and our land was partially occupied. Would we still manage to be upright citizens? Or would that halo slip?

Makes you think...

This.

:agree:

This provokes an interesting thought on the levels of any war. Wars are started by different people than those who fight them. The politicians in their offices benefit from claiming moral superiority. It can be "protecting civilians" or "humanitarian intervention" or "removing a dictator" or whatever, but it can't be "look, we are just really eager to test our new toys and they happen to have stuff we want, so there." That would be an internetional relations equal of suicide for any country, especially these days.

But the guys who actually go there, kill and get killed or at least have their friends killed? Yeah, I can see why some of them wouldn't put moral superiority on the top of their priority list. War is a dirty business, there is no denying that.

Unless it would be "the whole world against us" scenario, I'm fairly sure at least our politicians would still do everything to make us look like the good guys. It's the basics of propaganda, and propaganda is the basics of war, especially one which you are in danger of losing.

Plus, on the international level, sympathy might not mean much, but it's still better than nothing and in some cases can be surprisingly powerful tool. One of the reasons for why Finland didn't lose the Winter War (well, totally anyway) was indeed that we were seen as the good guys in that conflict, and Stalin knew that.

That's why they have lost the war already years ago. Because they did not realise they were in for a real war. Asymmetrical war maybe, but nevertheless a real war. No policing mission. No lecturing lesson. No robust mandate.

A real war.

They also did not see that Pakistan was their enemy. They also denied the ammount to which Iran interferes in Afghanistan, and that both nations have no interest at all to let come Afghanistan to peace and stability.

No war. No enemy. No bad intentions of neighbours. - I see a pattern in intellectual failure there.

The careless loosing of a war can never be excused. But it can be explained.

Somebody above mentioned Bomber Harris, Total War, and all that. Well, it showed to not work, the bombing of civilian populations in case of Nazi Germanby or British cities did not demoralise people, but made them react with stubborness and rallying closer together. In that case, it makes no sense to continue with the attempt of demoralising the civilian population in order to weaken the enemy in his very own home.

Determination also needs pragmatism and an unbiased assessement of what combat methods work as intended for what purpose, and what does not, or works differently, or produces other effects than expected. I do not talk cruelty for the sake of being cruel. I am about determination, and not allowing to get distracted from what helps to win a war, crush an enemy, and reducing the risk to own troops as much as possible.

Cruelty, and determination - are two very different things.

I'm not jumping the gun on this one as there was a British one of this sort of thing a few years ago but was proved to be false.

I just decided to look it up on youtube to see if it was there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjGUo5H0vWM

Ill be honest, I laughed. I'm not casting judgement because If i was over there, I may have done the same thing if i didn't get stage fright. I always had a hard time breaking the seal when others were around to watch. In my opinion, they only thing they REALLY did wrong, was record those shinnigans. That was stupid.

I think the only thing that bugs me, is how people can sit in total saftey behind their desk and spout all this morally superior BS, or claim they'd never do anything like that. I disagree. I'll bet you could, you just don't know it, because you haven't been pushed or molded by the world around you. People ARE products of their environment, and People are capable of anything when subjected to enough of what ill call, "harsh reality" for lack of a better way to phrase it.

Do you ever consider that it is because of the very justifications people have been using for these conflicts.
People condemn torture then justify it, people condemn desecrating bodies then justify it.
That is what should be bugging you, the simple fact that again and again the same people are trying to justify the very things that they condemn.
It has bugger all to do with sitting in safety or being on the front line, it has to do with the gross hypocracy.

Well said...

And consider this, as the investigation furthers, and if it is found some of the more 'superior' non-coms/officers had knowledge of and/or attempted to cover up the situation without taking appropriate action, the level of hypocracy will rise in accordance with rank. The part that always mystifies me in these sorts of situation is how, if the people in command bring forward the incidents themselve and take appropriate action, the military would be seen as properly self-policing and worthy of public trust and respect. Instead what we get is a series of finger pointings from the top down until it rests solely on the lowest ranks and the public is left shaking their heads at military "business as usual"...

Are they actually urinating on the corpses? It might just be the video quality but I don't actually see any urine...

The guy on the left is, dunno about the rest.