So a few days ago a video surfaced where it appeared that four U.S. marines, while be recorded possibly by a fifth Marine, urinated on the corpses of recently killed presumably Taliban fighters. The reaction to the incident has been varies and in many ways thoroughly predictable based upon the political philosophy of the reactive audience.

People have done everything from vocal support for the act to calling for it to be considered a war crime. All of that is of course absurd and nothing more in my opinion than general political tribalism.

I land somewhere in the middle, on the thin isthmus of rational ground between the extremists and partisan on either side.

What they young marines did was quite simply out of bounds and unacceptable. War brutalizes and dehumanizes those who are its participants. Many many horrible things happen in war, murder, rape, torture, and horrible abuses all among the unfortunate side effects of this industrial killing process. (Perhaps someone should write up a warning label for wart listing its side effects, or a commercial parody like a Viagra ad.) Given the scale of what can and has happened in war, this is a very minor incident.

That is not to say however that this is simply kids having a prank and we should giggle slightly at it and move on, taking no action and producing no punishments. This is a break down of good military order and discipline, and as such it must be dealt with, but not in the harsh, irrational light of partisan sniping and coup counting.

Recalling my own not terribly illustrious time in the service, I think that this is an event that would be best handled through NJP, non-judical punishment.

A civilian on the outside might think that in the military there’s ‘everything is okay!’ and ‘you’re going to be court martialed,’ with precious little in between, but there is a very important and much used level of justice short of a court martial, in the Navy it was called Captain’s Mast.

A sailor guilty of a minor infraction would be brought before the commanding officer, who would hear the description of the misbehavior and listen to the sailor’s side. After and immediately, the captain would pronounce his judgment like a feudal lord of old, but with a much more restricted range of punishments. (Brief confinements, loss of rank, fines, extra duty and so on.)

The law for the armed services is the Uniform Code of Military Justice. When a member of the military is tried, even in NJP, they must be brought up on charges that specify a violation of the UCMJ. This is just like a civilian case where there must be a specific law broken, but unlike the civilian world the military has a special catch-all clause to snare barracks lawyers who think that they can argue their way out by insisting that they have violated no particular article of the UCMJ. For these situations there is this.

ART. 134. GENERAL ARTICLE Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court.

Fail to make your dentist’s appointment? You can find yourself subject to NJP via article 134. This is precisely in my opinion what should happen to these Marines if they are indeed guilty of what they appear to be. They have violated the standing orders and they have acted in a way that prejudices the good order and discipline of the armed forces. For that that should be punished, not lauded with praises, not subject to court martial for war crimes.