Oh, now isn’t this a sign of the Apocalypse: former Republican presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry in agreement with HBO talk show host Bill Maher?
Well, kind of.
Perry has dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination and thrown his weight behind former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Maher is still doing what he does best: annoying conservatives on his show. Heck, sometimes Maher even annoys his fellow liberals.
Now quite a few Americans have had their undergarments in a wad this past week about that video of U.S. Marines taking a whizz on dead Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan. Full disclosure: I was one of them.
Kind of.
I do believe that when combatants engage in war that the warriors should treat their enemies with the respect due to warriors. But I couldn’t go as far as to condemn the Marines, not when there is at least one dead body, or grave, I’d urinate on if I had the chance. (It’s Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb, for those who are curious, and it’s a long story.)
Perry also condemned the sin, but not the sinners.
“These kids made a mistake,” Perry said in a story that appeared in the Jan. 15 edition of the New York Daily News. “There’s not any doubt about it. They shouldn’t have done it. It’s bad.”
This, according to the Daily News story, was Maher’s reaction:
“A dead body is, just, you know, a (bleeping) body that’s dead and it just doesn’t bother me. If they were real Taliban, if they were people who burned down girls’ schools, and you know, do honor rapes and throw acid in people’s faces, I’m not that upset about (urinating) on them.”
Well, it wouldn’t have been a Maher statement without a mess of cuss words thrown in. But let’s not forget Maher’s larger point: No one group of people has done more to damage the image of Islam than the Taliban.
Perry also had a larger While what the Marines did was absolutely wrong, despicable and distasteful, it does not rise to the level of criminal conduct.
“To call it a criminal act, I think that’s over the top,” Perry said, according to the Daily News story. Perry was reacting to news reports that the Marine Corps had assigned an investigator who will determine if the urinating Marines should be charged with anything.
Perry also used the occasion to bash the Obama administration.
“What is really disturbing to me,” Perry said in the Daily News story, “is the over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military.”
That disdain might be a by-product of the top officials in this administration having no military experience whatsoever. I’m not familiar with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s military record.
President Obama passed on the chance to serve in his country’s military to become a community organizer. His choice, of course, but he’s not the guy I want judging the actions of Marines who’ve served in combat.
Anybody who’s served even one day in our armed forces knows there exist a plethora of disciplinary measures – short of criminal charges – to handle incidents like the Marines urinating on dead Taliban bodies.
When I was in the Air Force – stationed at Bolling Air Force Base right here in Washington, D.C. – all airmen had to pull a detail called “bay orderly.” Basically, we had to clean up the mess made in the barracks by senior non-commissioned officers and guys on the Navy side of the barracks, who were exempt from the detail.
I say give those Marines about six months of a similar detail. It should prove to be quite the attitude adjuster.
Examiner columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated newspaper journalist living in Baltimore.
