The Few, the Proud, the ... say what?!
The Few, the Proud, the ... say what?!
The "best and brightest" ... (unfortunately) continued
"Naïve mistake": Just say, "Whoops!" and move on.
It's just one of those things.
Or, as
Julie Watson explains for the Associated Press:
The Marine Corps on Thursday once again did damage control after a photograph surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS — a special unit that murdered millions of Jews, gypsies and others.
The Corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable, but the Marines in the photograph taken in September 2010 will not be disciplined because investigators determined it was a naïve mistake.
The Marines believed the SS symbol was meant to represent sniper scouts and never intended to be associated with a racist organization, said Maj. Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton, where the Marines were based.
"I don't believe that the Marines involved would have ever used any type of symbol associated the Nazi Germany military criminal organization that committed mass atrocities in WWII," Chapin said. "It's not within who we are as Marines."
The Corps has used the incident as a training tool to talk to troops about what symbols are acceptable after it became aware of the photograph last November, Chapin said.
The image has since surfaced on an Internet blog, sparking widespread outrage and calls for a full investigation and punishment, including bringing those in the photograph and anyone who condoned it to court martial.
To the one, perhaps courts martial are a bit harsh as a solution. To the other, these are "The Few, the Proud, the Marines". And perhaps we might add "ignorant" to the list, too, as the explanation is apparently that not one of the U.S. Marines in the photograph had ever heard of the
Schutzstaffell, more infamously known as the SS.
Legendary evil: The logo of the notorious Nazi Schutzstaffell.
Or perhaps that is a rush to judgment. The Corps' main efforts in World War II were in the Pacific Theatre, so perhaps there is no reason why the sniper scouts should be expected to recognize a symbol of such infamy.
Additionally, the photograph originally surfaced on the website of a weapons contractor called Knight's Armament, of Titusville, Florida. While the company has not responded to Associated Press inquiries, we can safely presume that nobody at KAC, which was founded in 1982, had ever heard of the
Schutzstaffell, either.
In the end, though, the question of courts martial would seem to be a question of how badly this group just tarnished the Corps. And the Corps has decided that this is not embarrassing enough. For the rest of us, a "facepalm" ought to suffice.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, headquartered in Los Angeles, said he does not buy the explanation that posing with the flag was an innocent mistake and insisted the American public has a right to know what happened.
"If you look at any book on the Nazi period, this is the dreaded symbol of the SS, and to have a Marine Corps unit adopt it and put it beside the American flag when 200,000 Americans died to free the world of that dreaded symbol is just beyond the pale," he said.
(Watson)
The few, the proud, the ...
holy flirking schitzel!
As a frequent critic of the American military, I actually feel badly for the commanding ranks, as I cannot imagine the chill that rippled down their spines when they first saw that photo.
("
Sir! I have no idea what the 'SS' is, sir!")
____________________
Notes:
Watson, Julie. "Marines: Nazi flag was mistaken for their own". The Christian Science Monitor. February 9, 2012. CSMonitor.com. February 9, 2012. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest.../Marines-Nazi-flag-was-mistaken-for-their-own
)
