Hoosier,

The mission of a Marine Corps rifle squad is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy through fire and maneuver. In the defense it's to repel the enemy's assault with fire and close combat.

To most people those are just words. To a lot of Marines even, they are something you have drummed into you in basic and then regurgitate verbatim in order to impress promotion boards.

But at the pointy end, words like fire and close combat begin to have meaning. They mean yelling and screaming and dying. They mean lives that are changed forever in fractions of a second. No matter how much chest thumping some people want to do, killing another human being isn't something you just shrug off.

Please understand, I'm not trying to talk down to you in anyway. I don't know you, your background or what you've experienced in life. I'm also not trying to excuse the actions of the soldiers in the article you posted. I'm in Afghanistan right now and the actions of those soldiers are not new news. Based on what I've read, their actions rank up there with the Mahmudiyah killings in 2006. Despicable acts that should be punished under the UCMJ. Some photos of dead Afghans in a German rag have little/nothing to do with that though.

The American people have had greater access to the face of war over the last decade than we have at any point in our history. The unhappy truth that access has forced us to face is that war isn't clean or pretty. When people (whether friend or foe) die it's messy and unpleasant. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that some people handle it better than others.

I would ask you to try to have a little empathy for an 18 or 20 year old Soldier/Sailor/Marine/Airman who was told his mission in life was to locate, close with and destroy his enemy and then punished for acting violent. More often than not this is failure in leadership.

Counter-Insurgency is difficult work and not for everyone.

I can tell you that I've spent my entire adult life carrying a weapon in war zones. I travel around this AO quite a bit and have the opportunity to work with everyone from Tier 1 operators (guys who really rate the title "operator") to National Guard weekend warriors. I can tell you with out a doubt that there are some great people over here trying to do good work. Please just try to keep that in mind when you see videos of young dumb Soldiers being young dumb Soldiers(or Sailors/Marines/Airmen).