And it is not the use of the letters SS that is problematic in the picture - it is the nazi-runic form of the SS.
As I said, I cut the guys in the field miles of slack...not so with those here who try to spin and whitewash what was a dumb move -- dumb in the inescapable fact that it gives the anti-military left a convenient and hard to argue talking point.
I'm as opposed to politically correct garbage as anyone else.
But that **IS** the SS symbol.
Apparently, based on the photo, at least 10 snipers and a photographer didn't know that. I suppose it's possible they knew and didn't care, but the internal investigation showed that wasn't true. Honest mistakes happen and need to be handled as honest mistakes.
Yeah, we can blame our education system, as hot tabasco and lots of others did. And they're right.
But even watching Hogans Heroes reruns would have taught that, as Andy58-in-nh said, “Anyone with a modest grade school education or even a passing interest in military history ought to know exactly what that symbol means.”
I can tolerate (barely) our public schools not teaching history, but these are members of the Armed Forces. This wasn't just one junior enlisted guy, but ten snipers plus a photographer. Are they not being taught the history of past American military conflicts?
I think the real problem is that we've got soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who don't know their own country's history. Teaching people to be technically proficient snipers is flat-out dangerous if they don't have the knowledge of American history and values to know why we're telling them to shoot people... and perhaps more importantly, why it's okay to shoot our enemies and not okay to shoot in some circumstances no matter what the commander says.
The Nazis caused their soldiers to follow orders out of fear. It's also possible to cause soldiers to follow orders out of ignorance. Do we want that?
Maybe some young Marine captain or grizzled gunny needs to sit these guys down with a stack of DVDs of old World War II newsreels to show them more about Nazis and why we fought them.
Of course, some explanation of the role of the Nazis using the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to recruit Islamic soldiers for the SS in the Balkans might be helpful, and showing the Grand Mufti's later connections to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and to Arafat might help show these Marines just how bad the links are between Nazi hatred of Jews and modern Islamofascism... but I suppose that's too much to ask our modern military to teach its uniformed personnel.
Never mind that we taught as much if not more to World War II servicemen about Nazi ideology and why we need to fight it. That's why the old newsreels can be so helpful — we used to teach stuff to average Americans that now doesn't get touched outside upper-level college classes.
67 posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 8:24:11 AM by wtc911: “Anybody here though who tries to pretend it's anything other than the notorious SS runic symbols is full of crap.”
I thought the same until I saw the graphic at post 52. Apparently this symbol has been in use for years.
It looks like the Marines are handling this entirely appropriately. Notice that the SS symbol is **ALREADY** considered inappropriate, via this list:
http://www.yuma.usmc.mil/services/eo/documents/tattoos.ppt
These comments to Army Times by Allen Falk, national commander of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, seem entirely appropriate: “We believe that these young men likely did not understand the significance of this symbol, and we call on the Marine Corps to increase education on American history,” he said. “This issue goes beyond one of racism or anti-Semitism. Our fellow Americans fought and died to stop the Nazis, and it is shameful for any member of the military to display the symbols of Nazi Germany.”