The Editors of the LA Times don't like me

I was going to write this as a letter to the editors of the LA times, but the reality is that they're a right of center fascist pandering rag, and their editors don't tend to like the perspective I try to bring into their opinion section. So instead I'm just going to publish it here, where it can be read or not read by as few or as many readers as care to do so (I still haven't gone to the trouble of learning to use the traffic tracking function I added a few weeks ago, so I don't really know what that number constitutes).

On February 5, the Times ran an article titled 'Did Marines Kill Wildly or Not?', in which they continue their coverage of the court of inquiry into the actions of the Marine unit which allegedly fired into civilian crowds without provocation or justification after an IED explosion near one of their Humvees while on an unauthorized patrol in southern Afghanistan.

Near the end of the article, a Sergeant in the unit, thinking that he's making an ominous prediction that justifies his behavior, says that in the future, "I would hesitate to shoot my gun...knowing I would have to go through this fiasco."

As I had written it in my draft meant for the LA Times, a grateful nation and his entire general staff respond, "Good! Great! That's all we're asking; that you, a professional combat soldier, a U.S. Marine, perhaps the most highly trained general infantry in the history of the human race, would risk your life one fraction of a second longer than any lesser soldier would in order to gauge weather you can really justify firing your weapon.

In doing so, you not only obey the rules of engagement you were trained with and laws of war you are legally bound to obey, you protect your mission and your country, in addition to yourself. In fact, in not doing so, you may reduce the immediate risk to yourself, and I do stress 'may,' but in the long term you increase the risk to yourself, just as American soldiers in Vietnam were at increased long term risk because of the atrocities they committed in the name of self-preservation three decades ago.

I don't pretend to understand the stress of combat. I am grateful to Sgt. Heriberto Becerra-Bravo and all of his comrades for the risks they take to secure me the luxury of that ignorance. But I do know, as I have studied it in greater detail than they, that both their mission and their immortal honor are at stake in that small difference.

The fact is, that small hesitation will rarely be necessary, as in most circumstances, it will be abundantly clear that they are under attack. But in that small fraction, be it ten percent, one percent, or one tenth of one percent that their hesitation results in their realizing that they need not fire their weapon, they do more service to their country and to their mission than they do in entire live-fire combat episodes.

I personally with to express the respect and honor, uncharacteristic as it is of my political ideology, in which I hold the Marine Corps, and the entire U.S. Armed Forces, but we expect better than the conduct unbecoming an American of any stripe, rank or role that Sgt. Becerra-Bravo and his unit exibited.