Explanations for Image Improvement

Another video surfaces. Four U.S. soldiers recognizable by their helmets and weapons as being members of a Marine Corps sniper unit, enthusiastically urinate on the corpses of three Afghans. Whether the dead were civilians or armed insurgents is unknown, unlike the depressing conduct of the four soldiers who are obviously aware they are being filmed.

The public is outraged and the Pentagon has promised to investigate and possibly court-martial the perpetrators.

In the wake of Abu Ghraib and videos showing the slaughter of civilians by a U.S. attack helicopter in Iraq, this video seems to be new proof of arrogant American inhumanity in its military operations. Except this 39-second film doesn’t really prove that.

The reason it doesn’t is that the misdeeds at Abu Ghraib were accepted as business as usual, exactly like the continual disregard for the excessive brutality of privately contracted security forces and Iraqi forces as documented by WikiLeaks in 2010. In contrast to those, this incident is clearly a macabre joke by a bunch of ratty professional hit men as opposed to being accepted official policy.

This video contains an element of the sort seen in the violent macho videos shot by some teenage Berlin delinquents with their cell phone cameras and passed around on the Internet. Of course there would only be justice if these soldiers were subjected to trial. But it would be a joke if they were convicted while innumerable deadly atrocities still undiscovered in Iraq go unpunished.

This is an occasion when an actual legal investigation of this new video would be valuable because America’s reputation is on the line. Justice only when it’s expedient – that would be the real scandal.