Peeing on the bodies of people who died trying to kill you.

[Mysturji]

Back to the OP...

Meh. The "victims" were dead, so they didn't know or care about the "offence".
But there are a lot of batshit crazy-ass bastards with Imaginary Friends out there who get very annoyed about this sort of thing.
And everybody knows that.
And the politicians are aware that the folks at home are getting pissed off with this war thing, so they want to make nicey-nicey with the Bad People and stop the fighting.
Therefore, Offending them is Politically Incorrect.
So the politicians NEED to be seen to be doing something about it.
Filming it was fucking stupid.
Allowing yourself to be filmed doing it was unbe-fucking-lievably stupid.
Posting it on the internet... That's just silly.
Stupid people make great scapegoats (especially when they're guilty!)

Why is it newsworthy?
They were stupid.
They got caught.

[amused]

Back to the OP...

Meh. The "victims" were dead, so they didn't know or care about the "offence".
But there are a lot of batshit crazy-ass bastards with Imaginary Friends out there who get very annoyed about this sort of thing.
And everybody knows that.
And the politicians are aware that the folks at home are getting pissed off with this war thing, so they want to make nicey-nicey with the Bad People and stop the fighting.
Therefore, Offending them is Politically Incorrect.
So the politicians NEED to be seen to be doing something about it.
Filming it was fucking stupid.
Allowing yourself to be filmed doing it was unbe-fucking-lievably stupid.
Posting it on the internet... That's just silly.
Stupid people make great scapegoats (especially when they're guilty!)

Why is it newsworthy?
They were stupid.
They got caught.

Particularly bad timing given the upcoming peace negotiations, so the muckety mucks have to go through the motions of condemning the action.

[FBM]

I think if the soldiers had tied the corpse up and staged a (post-mortem) beheading of the type that the Taliban is so proud of holding with live hostages, it would be a lot easier to tell them (the Taliban) to STFU. I'm sick of their "moral indignation" and outrage after all the shit they do to their hostages, much less their women and girls. They have no moral high ground, just hate for anyone who doesn't believe in their particular imaginary sky-daddy. We should be soaking every Muslim combatant's corpse in pig blood or whatever it would take to ensure that, by their superstitious nonsense, s/he would never get to the pie-in-the-sky paradise their bullshit book tells them about. That might put a dent in their military volunteerism. War is hell.

[JimC]

Undisciplined idiots, should be ashamed of themselves. Is that the latest tactic in winning hearts and minds? A moderate who after seeing that video just might become radicalised and take up arms against the piss taking oppressor.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it.

I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

Both from Bobby Lee.

[Eddie]

I think if the soldiers had tied the corpse up and staged a (post-mortem) beheading of the type that the Taliban is so proud of holding with live hostages, it would be a lot easier to tell them (the Taliban) to STFU. I'm sick of their "moral indignation" and outrage after all the shit they do to their hostages, much less their women and girls. They have no moral high ground, just hate for anyone who doesn't believe in their particular imaginary sky-daddy. We should be soaking every Muslim combatant's corpse in pig blood or whatever it would take to ensure that, by their superstitious nonsense, s/he would never get to the pie-in-the-sky paradise their bullshit book tells them about. That might put a dent in their military volunteerism. War is hell.

It's not the emotions of the Taliban that the US should worry about, but emotions of ordinary moderate Muslims in Afghanistan. The Taliban hate western civilians and soldiers alike, and they make sure you know that. They aren't trying to win their hearts and minds. Resentment towards the US invasion among the ordinary people in Afghanistan is big enough without these things, and this can only make things worse. Allthough I do agree this is not so shocking because war really brings out the worst in people.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"War is the thing that reminds us that civilization is a thing we have yet to achieve."

[Warren Dew]

Undisciplined idiots, should be ashamed of themselves.

Indeed.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Undisciplined idiots, should be ashamed of themselves.

Indeed.

Pen, you never went even slightly bonkers after action?

[Robert_S]

There's the "humans who have just been in a life threatening situation and had to kill to fulfil their duty" angle and then there's the "This is not going to make things easier no matter how much they might have deserved it" angle.

I'm not going to judge too harshly on the personal level because none of the times I've ever had a gun pointed at me did I think the person was going to pull the trigger, but those were still situations that kinda threw me off for a good day and a half. It wasn't going on all day, every day, for what... a decade now? I'm not a peer to those guys.

But I'm not going to condone it either. The dead guys were victims of a horrible strain of mind virus and it is horrible PR.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Well, I'll tell you all that I've done worse.

[laklak]

Boo hoo. Poor Taliban.

Fuck 'em.

[FBM]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Do I detect a lak of sympathy?

[amused]

Well, I'll tell you all that I've done worse.

I don't begrudge the acts themselves, I understand the need to offload the emotions. Paying off the Shadow, so to speak.

Filming it was the mistake, given that we're trying to negotiate a withdrawal to get them out of there.