The Moral Outrage of Urinating Soldiers

Why does it seem that the only time the American government expresses shock, dismay and horror, it is over the conduct of its soldiers on the battlefield?

Through the Prophet Isaiah, God calls America a “hypocritical nation.” It’s at times like these that it becomes clear why.

Surely you’ve heard by now of the crude homemade video that emerged last week apparently depicting a Marine sniper team in Afghanistan urinating on the corpses of some Taliban fighters. The press jumped on the incident like it was Abu Ghraib all over again, and the highest leaders in the land came out in fire-breathing condemnation.

“Deplorable … reprehensible,” President Obama said through his spokesman. “I condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” said Leon Panetta, the defense secretary. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “total dismay.” Civilian and military leaders promised the guilty soldiers would be found out and punished to the full.

Why is everyone so upset? Let’s be honest: The biggest reason is that they are deathly afraid of offending Muslims. U.S. leaders continue to hope, against all evidence, that avoiding offense will solve problems.

Their man in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai, called the soldiers’ act “simply inhuman.” Is Karzai an authority on moral and ethical conduct? He said he was “deeply disturbed” and that the incident was “condemnable in the strongest possible terms.” But where is his condemnation for Talibani atrocities far worse than this?

That means he either sympathizes with the Taliban’s extremism or feels he must pander to it.

Clearly the ones in the driver’s seat—dictating to both Afghan and U.S. leaders about what is an appropriate response—are radical Muslims.

For their part, Taliban leaders in Pakistan called the Marines’ conduct “barbaric” and claimed, “No religion that follows a holy text would accept such conduct. This inhuman act reveals their real face to the world.”

Behold: a sermon from the Taliban about what is barbaric and inhuman. They have never condemned the torture, beheading or murder of a single non-Muslim. They have murdered thousands of civilians with roadside bombs. They execute people without trial for crimes like laughing at soldiers. They hang the dead bodies of defectors from lampposts to serve as a public warning. And we are supposed to listen to them condemn these Marines?

Are Hamid Karzai or American leaders “deeply disturbed” by the Taliban’s sanction of polygamous “marriage” that allows old men to rape young girls? What about the Taliban commander ordering that an 18-year-old girl who fled her abusive in-laws be punished by having her nose and ears cut off? Who is condemning these acts “in the strongest possible terms”?

America’s media zealously publicize anytime a U.S. soldier breaches the Geneva Conventions. Why then are they silent over the Taliban operating entirely outside of those laws? Taliban soldiers don’t wear uniforms, a law intended to protect civilians from getting killed. They purposefully use civilian structures like homes and mosques for military purposes—another illegal practice that imperils non-combatants. They exploit children not just as soldiers but as suicide bombers, strapping explosives to them and sending them to their deaths. Why no indignation over those “deplorable” and “reprehensible” practices?

The Taliban deliberately assassinate civilians by the hundreds. They consider anyone who is actively trying to rebuild Afghanistan—doctors, teachers, construction workers—worthy of death. The New York Times has reported that insurgents in Afghanistan kill twice as many civilians as they do uniformed government or coalition forces. Where is the outrage against that? Is that an “atrocity”?

No one is defending what those soldiers did. But to single them out for such damnation is to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

America’s leaders have allowed their moral standard to be skewed out of all proportion by extremists whose goal is to use every ounce of leverage possible to cripple America.

It is political correctness run amok: dismissing Muslim evils as irrelevant—after all, who are we to judge them?—while viewing Western actions through a distorted but harshly exacting moral lens.

We need a reality check. And that can only come from looking at the one true absolute standard of morality, the one supplied by the Being who defines good and evil.

God sees plenty of acts in America that are deplorable and reprehensible, that He views with total dismay and condemns in the strongest possible terms, and that He promises to punish to the full. But guess what? The action of these soldiers hardly registers on His radar screen.

Does it matter to you what God finds abominable? Instead of concocting our own standards of righteousness and appointing ourselves as judge and jury, how about aligning our thoughts with those of the Author of righteousness?

Forget the Geneva Conventions: God is outraged over our breaking the Ten Commandments. Blacklisting Him and worshiping idols. Urinating on His holy Sabbaths. Enslaving ourselves in greed, materialism, covetousness and debt, such that it sabotages the nation’s future. Glorifying violence. Desecrating the family. Turning our children out to pasture. Mass promoting and celebrating rank sexual immorality. Embracing fornication, cohabitation, adultery, divorce, homosexuality and other perversion.

God is “deeply disturbed” by such things. The fact that 40 percent of pregnancies in New York are aborted. That is an “atrocity.” The existence of an abortion butcher like Dr. Kermit Gosnell. That is “barbaric.” The support he received from state abortion lobbyists and clinic inspectors—and the pass he got from an appallingly liberal national media. That “inhuman act reveals their real face to the world.”

Why aren’t monsters such as that “urgently investigated” and given “the most severe punishment”?

Yes, this is a “hypocritical nation”—smug and self-righteous, praising, pardoning and punishing according to whatever standards it chooses. “There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes,” Proverbs 30:12 says, “and yet is not washed from their filthiness.”

America wallows in rivers of moral sewage. It’s a little hard to stomach the sanctimonious moralizing about where a few soldiers chose to pee.