Warning: This video is not censored.
This is disgusting and aptly demonstrates the immaturity of several of those who seek to join the military. These men are part of the reasons why I don't support the troops. Not only are they fighting an immoral war (for expansion of U.S. power, influence, and oil) started by their government, but they are also acting immorally.
This is what Gen. Wesley Clark had to say about these wars.
I need some help. How are they acting immorally? Corpses don't care what happens to them. What stage of death and decomposition is acceptable for the purposes of urination? We eat and breath and urinate on the matter from formerly living people all the time. In addition, this actually seems appropriate as an expression of anger and contempt for people who have been shooting at you and trying to kill you. If their enemies urinate on their corpses at some future date, I suppose that's fair game too. Please explain the moral element to which you object.
ReplyDeleteThis is immoral because according to the Geneva Conventions and U.S. military law the desecration of dead combatants is a serious crime. I do agree with one thing you said though. You do need some “help” if you don't find the above video disgusting and immoral.
ReplyDeleteLaw does not equal morality. Desecration is a religious notion based on the idea that humans have immortal souls. You have explained nothing and just come back with a kind of personal insult. I usually agree with you on most things, and you usually make me think about topics in a way that I might not otherwise. I am hoping for an explanation. When the religious have no good reason for their ideas about gods, they respond in a similar manner. I am beginning to think that you don't have a good reason for your moral outrage on this matter. I can however understand the emotional revulsion at urinating on corpses. But again, it apparently hurts no one. It's like the revulsion some people have about homosexual acts. It carries little or no moral weight. Please, help me to understand where you are coming from.
ReplyDeleteDesecration is not just a religious concept. Desecration can also be an act of defiling, violating, or dishonoring someone. Urination on someone is an example of that kind of act as is immoral. If you still have issues seeing why it's wrong imagine someone coming up to a deceased relative of yours and peeing on them and maybe you can see how profane that is.
ReplyDeleteDisgusting, yes. Profane, not so much. I can say for myself that it doesn't rise to the level of being outrageous. To give some scale, pissing on a prisoner is, to me, an outrageous act. Living persons deserve respect by nature of the fact that they are conscious agents. I could see a more compelling argument that the soldiers actions insult the living relatives of the dead. But even that, in my view, is not an outrageous insult. It's not as if they were directly pissed on. "Someone" implies a living person. So I agree with what you write above. And maybe I'm just wrong, and maybe my priorities are skewed, but if I were to personalize this scenario, I consider making my children attend daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance in their public school to be far worse than pissing on my beloved fathers corpse. So from my perspective, American soldiers pissing on the corpses of enemy soldiers doesn't even merit more than a moment of reflection. So I haven't changed my mind, but I still thank you for challenging me, and helping me to better understand my position on this issue. You do us all a great service.
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