Marine video triggers gross overreaction

I've never been a soldier, so I know nothing of the stress of combat, what it's like to live constantly in a kill-or-be-killed environment, or the toll taken by seeing your buddies blown apart.

But I imagine you have to work up a fierce hatred for your enemy to be able to center him in your cross hairs and pull the trigger, knowing you're evaporating someone who loves his life as much as you do yours.

And I believe that works on your mind in a way that might affect your judgment.

So I'll give ample slack to the four U.S. soldiers seen in a YouTube video urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters. I'd suggest those running our country do the same.

After the video was posted, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rose in great indignation to condemn the four Americans, calling their action deplorable, a violation of the Geneva Conventions and worthy of swift and sure punishment.

You'd think they had another My Lai massacre on their hands.

Their overreaction was triggered by the protests of Taliban sympathizers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who consider the peeing a great moral outrage. (My guess is that the victims themselves took greater offense at being blown away than they did at having their lifeless remains watered.)

Clinton and Panetta harbor the delusional hope that they can turn the Taliban into honest negotiating partners, and fear the soldiers' indelicacy will queer the deal.

Perhaps they should do some scorekeeping, as Gov. Rick Perry did at the South Carolina Republican debate Monday. Perry's had few shining moments on the debate stand.

But he stood out in this one for reminding the Obama administration that Taliban sensibilities weren't nearly as tender when they videotaped their beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, or when they hung the butchered remains of American contractors from an overpass.

On the offensiveness scale, we're not nearly even yet.

I know, American soldiers are supposed to be better than their enemies. I understand what those troops did was wrong, and some sort of punishment is in order, particularly for the stupidity of sharing the video.

But I'm also sick to death of American soldiers being prosecuted as criminals when they make the wrong call in the heat of battle or allow raging emotions to momentarily carry them away.

Soldiers have always done regrettable things under the terror of combat. The difference today is that a camera lens is constantly watching, and the leaders who keep them in these horrible places don't have their backs.

Our daily life here at home hasn't been inconvenienced at all by this faraway war, unless we have loved ones deployed. Our troops are making all of the sacrifice.

These young soldiers should expect the leaders who are keeping them on this battlefield to give them the benefit of the doubt if they crack under that burden.

They should also know that the politicians will worry at least as much about what our own troops are enduring as they do about the feelings of the bloodthirsty fanatics who are trying to kill them.

nfinley@detnews.com

(313) 222-2064

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Read his recent columns and blog at detnews.com/finley and watch him at 7:30 p.m. Fridays on “Am I Right?” on Detroit Public TV, Channel 56.