Morality in the Army

If our troops with their extra-curricular activities in Iraq destroyed any hope of making the Iraqi war a success, okay, it happens. If the world now sees America as a hideous beast, well, if that is what we are, so be it. I can perhaps ignore our troops tormenting helpless Iraqi prisoners, humiliating them, beating their genitals, and worse. That is, well, it happens. I really don't become passionately upset if by so doing we endanger our own troops. Okay, so some US soldiers will be tortured or killed. It happens, you know.

What strikes me, in this scandal, however, is that the guilty soldiers filmed these things, continuously, just like the Germans did. Now, that is a problem. Okay, young men and women have evil inclinations, and they do bad things, especially in the heat of war. But do you take films of it? That, somehow, frightens me very much.

If I want to do something wrong, and I do wrong things all of the time, at least, I don't take films of it. I have some shame. I don't come to the doctor's office with a picture of my holiday diet violations. I don't come to my child's birthday party with a picture of me making a nervous face when the child needed some attention. I am really embarrassed by those things. That is why, even for me, the grouch, the fresser, there is hope. Where there is shame, there is not only hope, but room for optimism. But when there is no shame, there no only pessimism, even despair.

I like to believe that our young people are better than all that. I like to believe in our armed forces. Now, my faith has been strained. However, if I am shocked, it is only my fault. The signs are out there, have been out there, and anyone with a brain should have anticipated this.

In my community there is a police force. As a long time resident, and one who has dealings with sad things from time to time, I have gotten to know some of the police. These are people with character. We don't, in my community, give someone a gun unless we are sure that a moral heart will guide its use.

Why is the American military not so careful? Why has it become so removed from the most basic humane feelings, from the fundamental morality of even base people? For over a generation now, the American military has been molded by people who realize that the new army must not be hidebound by old fashioned morality. For reasons of economics and politics, as well as social doctrine, the American military works hard to bring a lot of women tin its ranks. The Navy now has a huge population of women, and it grows every day. Someone who watched the Memorial Day Naval Parade in Manhattan told me that a fifth or a fourth of the sailors were women.

It goes all of the way back to the fifties. Then, after the Second World War, we began to make a new army, one without traditional morality. We wanted men and women together. We wanted women to be in combat. We wanted women to say good by to their babies and go to war. We encouraged women to think they are men, even if by so doing some have died, such as the poor lady who was pushed too fast up the ladder until she crashed her hugely expensive jet in the ocean because she couldn't fly it onto an aircraft carrier.

Everyone knows that when young men and women work together, train together, and march together, we are going to have not an army, but a brothel. This is exactly what has happened. Huge expenditures go into training women, and guess what? They have to be sent home because they are pregnant. Who pays for the baby and the babysitting, one of the most expensive entitlements in America? Of course, the taxpayer does.

A woman was not long ago punished for having an affair with an officer. I don't blame her. If I was in the army, at my grandpa age, and worked with young lovelies, I would probably be in trouble even worse than when I see a seven layer cake, if such a thing is possible. The Talmud says, "Send your child in front of a brothel, and what will he do?" We have to protect our young people from temptation. If not, we destroy them. We have destroyed out young people. We have turned our military into a giant brothel. Not only does it not win victories for us, but it earns us opprobrium and hate of the worst kind.

A young Catholic was told to stay a few weeks underground with a young lady soldier. He refused. Doing such a thing means having immoral sex, no question about it. Did the army reward this man for doing the right thing? No. It ruined his career. It not only ruined his career. It sent out a message: "The United States Army has no place for moral men and women." It doesn't.

Just ask the prisoners in our jails in Iraq. They know. If you don't believe them, look at the pictures.