First we've got Marines pissing on dead bodies. And now this. The photo below was taken in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in September 2010. Pictured are 10 Marines of Charlie Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif. Emblazoned on the blue flag hanging below the U.S. flag is the logo of the notorious “SS,” personally loyal to Adolf Hitler, known for brutal war crimes and deeply involved in the extermination of Jews during World War II. The connection in the photo is apparently to “scout sniper," an exclusive Marine Corps category.
(Tayler Jerom)
Capt. Gregory Wolf, a spokesman for the Marine Corps., told a reporter for The Marine Times that officials did not become aware of the flag until it was brought to their attention this past November. When it was, the Marines involved were ordered to stop using the logo, which has long been a favorite of neo-Nazis and other white supremacist organizations.
“We don’t believe these Marine Corps snipers had a historical appreciation for what this symbol meant,” the official said. “As soon as leadership was made aware of it, they took action at the unit level and then passed that information throughout the sniper community and to those snipers serving in Afghanistan.”
That seems possible, said Allen Falk, national commander of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America.
“We believe that these young men likely did not understand the significance of this symbol, and we call on the Marine Corps to increase education on American history,” he said. “This issue goes beyond one of racism or anti-Semitism. Our fellow Americans fought and died to stop the Nazis, and it is shameful for any member of the military to display the symbols of Nazi Germany.”
Shameful, indeed. But as to all dozen of these men being wholly innocent of the meaning of that logo? Not a single one of them had ever seen a single war movie with some SS officer strutting around with those runes on his lapel? Nobody thought to Google them? As if these symbols were somehow ambiguous. Puhleez. And as to higher-ups in the Marine Corps being unaware of this until November. Not a single officer? Riiiiiight.
In the second photo, look just ahead of the trigger guard on that 7.62mm M40 sniper rifle and you'll see the SS "runes" again. The two Marines in that photo were with the scout sniper platoon of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines at Twentynine Palms, Calif. According to electronically embedded information in that photo, it was taken in 2004. Are we expected to believe that's the only sniper scout rifle with that logo imprinted on it?
(Military Religious Freedom Foundation)
Corps officials at the Pentagon refused to comment on whether the Marines involved were disciplined, and would only repeat that the issue had been handled at the unit level.
The reason these photos are just now hitting the news is because 45 active-duty Marines contacted Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, because of they were disturbed by the photographs. Thankfully, some Marines had a problem with what they saw.
The photos prompted Weinstein Thursday to send a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. He wrote, among other things:
The implication of these photographs, if true, should be readily apparent. If the use of the Nazi insignia has been, in any way, condoned or tolerated by the Marine Corp. [sic], the implications are abhorrent to everything for which our country is fighting and the constitutional principles for which it stands.
Weinstein also sent a letter to Gen. John Amos, the Marine Corps commandant. In it, he said the Marines involved should be punished: "That flag symbolizes the vile ideology of Hitlerian fascism and sends a menacing signal to religious minorities within the United States armed forces."
No kidding.
He told Adam Weinstein (no relation) at Mother Jones that the Marines may have been reprimanded, moved to new units or given some kind of non-judicial punishment: "That's unacceptable. If this is not a court-martial offense, there are no court-martial offenses."
Some folks no doubt will view this as just funnin' around. Boys being boys. Some folks, like, for instance. the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference, who this year invited a white nationalist to address what he views as the plague of diversity in America.
You would think that if anything would get zero tolerance in the American military, it would be the display of Nazi emblems by men in uniform.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011:
So how scared is Orrin Hatch of getting teapartied next year like Bob Bennett was in 2010?
Well, he's scared enough that he apparently crashed a Tea Party Express town hall on Tuesday to announce that the time had come to "get armed" and "fight back" against the people who have "run this country into the ground" by spending money on things like the TARP bailouts of Wall Street [..]
The only thing Orrin forgot to mention was that he voted for the TARP bailouts of Wall Street. So in fact he's telling teahadists to "get armed and get out there" against people like himself. Oh, and for extra credit, the individual mandate was originally his idea.
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