While I am no fan of Alan West and believe that most of what he says is useless, controversial, right-wing propaganda, I must admit that he has, for once, spoken the truth. War is hell. I see it on TV, and I know it’s hell. But I don’t really know what hell is.
I have never been in the military, and I have never been to war. But I have enormous respect for the men and women who live through this hell on a daily basis and risk their lives so that the rest of us can call ourselves Americans and be proud of our freedom. And I remember the day the twin towers were ripped from the Manhattan skyline by these terrorists who were proud to claim credit for the indescribable horror and call themselves Taliban. I remember seeing the pain in the eyes of the people who lost loved ones and the police and fire fighters who risked their lives in the effort to find survivors.
If that doesn’t inspire hatred in even the most forgiving American, then nothing will. And that hatred is justified. There is simply no other comparable emotion that can express the reaction to the intentional murder of thousands of innocent Americans. To add to the horror, it took years for Americans to even begin to feel a sense of justice with the killing of Osama Bib Laden. His tasteful death, carried out by the U.S. military, was more than he deserved. Evil of that magnitude does not deserve respect.
And the four marines who have been vilified by uninformed Americans, deserve our respect and gratitude for fighting a horrible war and taking those particular Talibans out of commission before they were able to destroy more innocent American lives. And no civilian has the right to judge them for urinating on these bodies without having been in their shoes.
We do not know the whole story, thanks to the media’s relentless portrayal of them as disrespectful rebels. Where is the video of these marines being nearly blown up day after day? Where is the video of them getting shot at by the same Taliban? Where is the video of the horrible war conditions that these marines must live in every day in order to fight a war against terrorism, a war against inhuman militants that could care less about the value of life.
Furthermore, since the names of these marines haven’t been released, we do not their story, what they have been through or the horrors they had seen up until that moment. We don’t know if they lost someone they loved on 9-11, if they saw their fellow soldiers obliterated by an IED, or if they nearly lost their own lives in a Taliban attack the day before. We just don’t know.
So, no we can’t judge them. But we can thank them for fighting for our freedom. We can thank them for risking their lives so they we may continue to live ours.
