Last week, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page story that included photographs depicting soldiers of the 82nd Airborne division posing with the corpses of dead Afghans.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, nor the second, third or fourth – but it ought to be the last.
In January, a video surfaced of four American soldiers urinating on dead Afghans.
Last year, an entire ream of photographs taken by the now infamous “Afghan Murder Squad” (a group of rear-echelon soldiers who killed, mutilated and photographed civilians in Kandahar) was published by Rolling Stone magazine – a piece which led to the squad’s arrest by the U.S. Army.
This sort of behavior is not acceptable. It’s wicked and does not represent who we are or what our mission purports itself to be.
If we characterize ourselves as liberators and bringers of democracy, these sorts of incidents certainly don’t seem congruous with that message, do they?
If after all the lives we’ve lost prosecuting this war – and after all of the tragedy and turmoil the people of Afghanistan have endured – we lose the progress we have made to the reckless actions of a handful of bad people, we’ll we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Don’t get it confused, we’re playing for keeps. These stakes are high, and this isn’t a game.
This is not an instance of young men goofing around or blowing off steam. These are human beings we’re talking about – sometimes civilians, sometimes enemy combatants, but human beings nonetheless.
All people, regardless of political, religious or ethnic affiliation, deserve a certain amount of dignity in death, or at least not to be paraded about like a hunting trophy.
When our soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu during conflict in Somalia, and when a similar situation took place in Fallujah during the opening days of the war in Iraq, we responded in horror and outrage – just as we should have.
And as images of our boys being desecrated were broadcast around the world, we declared the opposition barbarous.
The insurgents were brigands and animals, and we felt confident in our righteous, ethical duty to carry out our mission in good faith.
We’re rapidly turning into hypocrites.
Our rhetoric must match our actions.
Had we declared our intention of turning Kabul into a crater and burning down every village in Afghanistan – making a desert and calling it peace ­- then we could have done that handily and been about our business.
But that’s not who we are, and that’s not what we said.
If you’re a believer in American exceptionalism, you’ll take my point: We’re sowing the seeds of tomorrow’s Taliban.
It’s bad enough when insurgents lie to encourage followers, it’s worse when we give them facts to work with.
And no, that doesn’t mean these photographs should not have been published.
Quite the contrary, some people will say the L.A. Times has endangered lives by putting these pictures out there, but the men in question should have considered that before acting in the manner they did.
The best we can do now is to properly punish those involved and make sure this doesn’t happen a sixth time.
And hope the patience of the people we are trying to help does not wear too thin.
Nicholas Pierce is a 22-year-old history junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_nabdulpierc.
 
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Contact Nicholas Pierce at [email protected]