Murderers, Scapegoats, and Terrorists

Murderers, Scapegoats, and Terrorists

On its face, murder is an abominable crime. Taking another human life involves an abject surrender of one’s own humanity and a total disregard for the sanctity of human life.

Civilized societies today occasionally legally execute convicted reprobates but only after due process and often decades of appeals. Unethical societies treat accused murderers differently, as in the cases of Sgt. Robert Bales and Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

By all accounts, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was an outstanding, highly-decorated soldier, respected and praised by the men in his command.

Before he enlisted shortly after the Muslim terrorist attacks on 9/11, Bales was universally admired by his friends and neighbors. When he was not deployed in battle–three stints in Iraq where he sustained a traumatic brain injury and the loss of part of his foot and recently sent to Afghanistan–Bales lived life as a loving father of two at home with his wife in Washington state.

If the charges of murdering defenseless Afghans, including women and children, are sustained and he is convicted, Sgt. Bales should receive a suspended sentence on the basis of temporary insanity and extreme post-traumatic stess disorder. Better yet, he should be set free today!

Aside from political considerations, chiefly placating the Afghanis and President Hamid Karzai who considers American soldiers “demons,” there is no rational excuse for our military to further punish Bales for actions committed while he was obviously crazed by repeated and intimate exposure to the horrors of war.

He is alleged in the mainstream media to have left his Kandahar base and drunkenly slaughtering 16 innocent people, much as Iraqis and Afghanis have been soberly slaughtering thousands of American troops, many of whom are currently in Afghanistan building roads, schools, and hospitals.

Although Sgt. Bales has not yet been officially charged with the crimes and is now in solitary confinement at Fort Leavenworth, many military-hating American Leftists have already tried, convicted, and scapegoated him, mainly on the basis Bales is a courageous military man, and we all know how the Left abhors the military.

Sgt. Bales’ case stands in remarkable contrast to the matter of Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan who, on November 5th, 2009, allegedly, murdered 13 innocent, defenseless people and wounded 30at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.

Twenty-eight months later, Hasan has yet to come to trial. The carnage he caused was witnessed by dozens of objective observers and, despite evidence he was inspired by Islamist extremists such as Anwar Al-Awlaki to perpetrate the atrocity, our government chose to categorize Hasan’s actions as “workplace violence.” . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=17812.)

Soldiers, from Battlefields, to Landfills, to Non-entities

Soldiers, from Battlefields, to Landfills, to Non-entities

The term “soldiers” once technically only applied to men serving in an army, a definition expanded in modern times to include both men and women and which loosely describes anyone serving in the military, although Marines, Navy personnel, airmen and Coastguardsmen might take umbrage with being called soldiers.

Whatever the interpretation of “soldiers,” generic or otherwise, they are the people who make possible our freedom to dispute nomenclature and they protect our country. As trite as it sounds today, they are the people who enable us to be free.

Yet, many of those same people have been treated like medical waste and the deaths of others have been trivialized.

Seventy years ago, soldiers were idealized and idolized as brave patriots defending their country. Forty years ago at the height of the Viet Nam war, being a soldier meant risking life and limb fighting for their country then came home and were spat on by protestors claiming they were baby killers. Thirty years ago, America elected a commander in chief who once admitted to loathing the military.

Today, we are witnessing the culmination of that spitting and loathing: The ashes of the remains of courageous men and women who died in battle have been dumped in a landfill and the deadliest attack on a U.S. military base in history is being dismissed as “workplace violence.”

The Air Force was faced with a dilemma starting as early as 1996: What to do with the bodies of dead soldiers returned to Dover Air Base, remains which they had been authorized to dispose of in an appropriately dignified, respectful manner. Their version of dignified and respectful involved secret cremation and dumping in landfills.

The practice, abandoned in 2008, was hidden from the Pentagon but not before the ashes and body fragments of as many as 2,036 dead soldiers were dumped, 274 of which the Air Force forgot about until pushed to do an accounting.

However, the Air Force and Pentagon had an excuse for not knowing precisely how many remains were dumped.

According to the Washington Post, that determination “would require searching through the records of more than 6,300 troops whose remains have passed through the [Dover AFB] mortuary since 2001.”

We certainly can’t expect the Pentagon and Air Force to expend all that time, effort, and money simply to provide a bare modicum of dignified respect for our fallen soldiers, now can we?

Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan showed an even less dignified respect for the military and human life when he slaughtered . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=9412.)