A talk show personality that I had never heard of made it to the national stage today. I read about it in a diary written by TarantinoDork. I read more on the Media Matters website. Then I found her response via her Facebook page on Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism. I'll let you find your own link.
Dana wants it both ways - she wants to claim that she didn't condone the actions of the Marines but she also wants to say she doesn't condemn them. She sounds like a conflicted conservative... someone stuck between a rock and a hard place. What she really needs to do is just apologize.
What makes it scary is that Dana is expressing an idea that many in America seem to agree with, mainly that progressives hate our service members. She hits her points hard, providing links to 'facts' on how liberals and progressives hate soldiers except when they are protesting at Occupy Wall Street.
Well, I've had it. One of the reasons I joined DailyKos was to share the diverse nature of today's military. People like Dana think we're all a bunch of conservative, right wing, talk show listeners. She uses words like left and progressive and liberal as if the military community might not be among those numbers. She couldn't be further from the truth.
Update with quotes from this article to be found below: Marines name general to handle video probes
When I arrived at DailyKos, I quickly learned that I wasn't the only military community member here. We have lots of progressives that fit that definition. There are veterans from the Vietnam War and Desert Storm to the current wars of both Iraq and Afghanistan; we have active duty military family members like myself; a few of us blog as active duty service members. We have even more 'brats' than all of those, people who grew up in military communities and whose upbringing convinced them that liberal or progressive politics makes sense.
I never thought I would have to argue to a conservative that peeing on the bodies of the dead enemy is a bad idea. A lot of people keep trying to claim that videoing the incident was the bad idea but they wrong. The actual act of taking out those damned penises to pee on the dead was the stupidist thing those Marines could ever have done. And a conservative should know it as well as a progressive. I bet a large number of conservatives do... I have never seen a list of conservative values that includes the desecration of the enemy's body.
I have also seen many people using the "but they do worse things to us" argument to justify the acts of these Marines. Dana goes down that road herself:
I’ve seen more outrage towards our troops over this incident than I have ever seen towards the Taliban themselves who’ve beheaded soldiers (American and Afghan), raped and tortured women, sent out suicide bombers, and carried out horrific attacks.
I need only quote the values that define a Marine, straight off the recruitment page, to remind Dana and others that their behavior is judged by a higher power, their own code of conduct:
HONOR - Marines are held to the highest standards, ethically and morally. Respect for others is essential. Marines are expected to act responsibly in a manner befitting the title they’ve earned.
COURAGE - Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the ability to face fear and overcome it. It is the mental, moral, and physical strength ingrained in every Marine. It steadies them in times of stress, carries them through every challenge and aides them in facing new and unknown confrontations.
COMMITMENT - Commitment is the spirit of determination and dedication found in every Marine. It is what compels Marines to serve our country and the Corps. Every aspect of life in the Corps shows commitment, from the high standard of excellence to vigilance in training.
I would hope that a true progressive and a true conservative could find agreement in the values that define a Marine. After all, serving in our military goes beyond politics. Or it should.
If I were to find any defense of the Marines, it would not be in the actions that they took but it might be within the atmosphere that the actions happened. Marines don't work within a vacuum. They work within a chain of command. These were 4 Marines... not one, not even 2, but 4. They all felt this was a justified action at the time. Where were they trained? Who was their commander? Where in the hell did they learn that this action was not only justified but an action to be glorified for all posterity? What officer was in charge?
What Dana Loesch needs to understand is that the actions of these Marines makes my husband and every other military member who deploys to the desert LESS safe. Yes, they were already at war but they were at war in an area that was finally seeing less trouble. They were at war in an area where our diplomats are busy working out peace agreements with the enemy. Their little moment of glory could have repercussions for years to come.
In her diatribe, Dana wanted to know:
If “desecration” is a concern for progressives, where was their outrage when the remains of over 200 Air Force members were dumped in a landfill?
For her edification, here are just a few of the progressive responses to that event:
Excuses don't cut it in Air Force's dumping of war dead remains. Accounting needed. And some respectby Meteor Blades
Remains of 274 US Troops Dumped In virginia Landfill Between 2003 and 2008 by tonyahky
Retaliation Against Dover AFB and Arlington Cemetery Whistleblowers by Jesselyn Radack
The Grisly Findings at Dover Mortuary are Growing by Jim Staro
And those are just from DailyKos. I imagine if Dana took the time to look, she would find even more from other progressive sites.
Dana ends her outpouring of outrage at being the target of a progressive 'hit job' with two more statements that are blatantly false. The first I've been discussing throughout this entire piece:
The disproportionate anger on the part of progressives is fueled by their dislike of our military.
I know it's beating a dead horse to even think that people like Dana can imagine people like me, a progressive military wife, living and breathing and actually seeing a role for our military in a progressive world. But I will keep trying. My outrage is not fueled by the dislike of our military. Rather, my outrage is fueled by my desire to keep as many of our troops as safe as we can.
Her final statement takes the cake:
The left is attacking me so they can give the Obama administration a pass–unlike what they did with Bush and Abu Ghraib. Like it or not, I’ll stand up for our troops no matter which president is in charge.
The woman has a martyr complex... the left needs to attack her so that we have a place to direct our anger. She wants to believe that she has become our scapegoat.
I think the woman did a stupid thing and I think she should apologize. If she doesn't, I think her radio station should remove her from the airwaves - unless they agree that peeing on dead soldiers is a new conservative value?
But my real anger is for those Marines and for the officers in their command. I pity them and hope that all who should be are held accountable. And, I hope, unlike Abu Graib, that this goes up the chain until we determine where and when training failed these Marines. If it is determined that they were deployed more times than they should have been, that they weren't given enough dwell time at home, if their training was less than adequate to prepare them for the battlefield, then I expect the proper people to be held accountable. Even if it means following this issue to the man at the top, our Commander-in-Chief.
UPDATE:
Update: Marines name general to handle video probes
The top Marine officer, Gen. James Amos, appointed three-star Gen. Thomas Waldhauser to oversee the case. Waldhauser named another officer to do an internal Marine Corps investigation, which is in addition to a criminal probe under way by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
(snip)
"These actions are in direct opposition to everything the military stands for," Allen said after viewing the video. "Such acts in no way reflect the high moral standards and values we expect of our armed forces on a daily basis."
(snip)
The probe will look into the question of what prompted the four Marines' behavior, said one officer, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss an internal matter. That will include examining whether the Corps' current training and education on the laws of warfare are adequate, the officer said.
A second officer, also speaking privately to discuss an internal matter, said investigators will consider whether more senior Marines, such as the commander of the four Marines' battalion, failed to ensure a climate of proper discipline. The four who appeared in the video are enlisted Marines. Their exact ranks have not been made public.
(snip)
The emergence of the Internet video didn't seem to immediately set back movement toward exploratory negotiations with the Taliban. Asked about possible implications for peace talks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that the U.S. remained strongly committed to supporting Afghan efforts.
Panetta, however, said the incident could endanger the talks.
"The danger is that this kind of video can be misused in many ways to undermine what we are trying to do in Afghanistan and the possibility of reconciliation," Panetta said at Fort Bliss, Texas.
He said it was important for the U.S. to move quickly to "send a clear signal to the world that the U.S. will not tolerate this kind of behavior and that is not what the U.S. is all about."