Pissed off

Ah, the news. Always new opportunities to get irritated, frustrated or downright angry. During the past few days, a particular article had me raise my eyebrows...

You might have seen the video featuring American soldiers urinating on dead Afghan bodies. The 40-second clip, showing four men in combat gear exposing their genitals and relieving themselves whilst making bad jokes ("Have a great day buddy, golden like a shower!"), went around the world quickly and sparked outrage and a possible diplomatic row between Washington and Kabul. Even the Pentagon spokesman said the video was deeply troubling, and added "Whoever it was, and whatever the circumstances, it is egregious behaviour." Understandable, right? 

In a sense - a very weird one, that is, because the comparison I am about to make is more farfetched than a massive cruise ship running aground off the Italian coast, because the captain felt like waving his family (and a few other people, may they rest in peace) goodbye - this all reminds me of a discussion I had when I was 21 years old. I used to be a member of WINA at that time, the student organization associated to our mathematics department. As a matter of fact, I was in charge of taming the freshmen at our cantus activities (schachtentemmer, if that makes sense to you). 

To be more precise, this also implied that I had the final responsibilities over the student initiation ceremony (for those of you who are not familiar with this: it's a kind of passage rite, involving lots of beer, some nudity, oodles of ingredients to make pancakes and, of course, even more beer). Even today, I can still clearly recall that one particular moment when some of my fellow WINA members asked me whether they were allowed to 'wash' the students that very night. When I asked them what they meant by that, they gave me a 'you-idiot, isn't-that-plain-obvious'-look and added "Spit on them, of course!". I wasn't shocked, I knew far worse stories from other student organizations, but I obviously answered that they weren't. Because to me, student initiations were (and still are) all about recruiting people, engaging them in social activities and offering them a night of fun to remember for the rest of their lives - despite the alcohol. As opposed to what some people believe, it is not about humiliating people. 

So why am I telling you this? What does it have to do with US soldiers urinating on Afghan war victims, facing severe punishment because of (and I quote) this apparent desecration of the dead as a violation of our nation's military regulations and of international laws of war prohibiting such disgusting and immoral actions? I will tell you why: because this reasoning pisses me off badly. I find it very ironic - in a bad sense of the word - that people are judged as immoral because of something they did during a fucking war. It wasn't a cantus, nor a social activity meant to bring people closer together or to offer them an experience to remember forever (I am afraid that soldiers are returning with enough experiences they'd rather not remember). It happened during a conflict which, by its very definition, leads to mortality and human behaviour defying what we consider to be 'right'.

I am no expert, nor a philosopher - merely a pacifist with a humble opinion I feel like sharing - but according to me it doesn't make sense to make rules about what is okay and what is not during a war. Because the act of declaring and fighting a war itself is not okay. Period. Who are we to judge people who were actually trained to kill other people, from behind our desks or the comfort zones we tend to call 'houses'? Do not get me wrong (repeat twice!), I am by no means saying that what these soldiers did is morally right, but I am questioning the very concept of making rules about something that should not be in the first place. Amen.