U.S. Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, told our troops yesterday to stop urinating on the enemy.
Urinating on the enemy, said Panetta, is bad for morale and can compromise the mission through bad publicity.
I admire Secretary Panetta for calling the troops to a higher standard, but he did so for the wrong reason.
It won’t take our boys too much cogitating to figure out their conduct is only bad for morale and the mission if the media finds out. They will think, “So long as we keep it off Twitter, Facebook and out of the Los Angeles Times, we can have at it.” They will think this, and they will be dead wrong.
Urinating on the corpses of the enemy, just like sexually abusing prisoners at Abu Gharib, is not wrong because it creates bad press; it’s wrong because even one’s enemies are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity. And while in war, it’s sometimes necessary to kill the enemy, it’s never necessary to urinate on them or sexually abuse them.
But as long as we are telling would-be urinators their conduct is only bad if they get caught, we can expect them to continue to act badly. GS