Making Mock O' Uniforms

Rudyard Kipling wrote the title of this post in his poem "Tommy" about how society treats soldiers. Some say George Orwell was thinking of Kipling's poem when he wrote that "Those who abjure violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf." And some say Winston Churchill had the same poem in mind when he (perhaps) said, "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

What does it say about our military leaders that they would allow a trial to proceed of three Navy Seals -- from all accounts, the Seals are the best of our best, they are the embodiment of "rough men, ready to visit violence" on our behalf -- what does it say about our society that we would ask these men to risk their lives to fight terrorists and then put them on trial because they harmed an enemy warrior? How is it possible to charge a Navy Seal with assaulting our enemy? We're not talking about standing Ahmed Hasim Abed up naked and attaching jumper cables to his genitals here... we're talking about roughing the guy up, punching him, giving him a bloody lip.

Abed, on the other hand, the man with the bloody lip, was the mastermind behind the 2004 killing of Blackwater security guards, whose bodies were burned and dragged through the streets of Fallujah and then hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River, sparking international outrage.

So sorry, Ahmed, but in America we have a right to face our accusers... if only our commanders would display that right for you and bring those you have accused to you in a room, alone, face-to-face, again. Blind justice holds aloft a scale... one side holds a bloody lip, the other burned and mutilated corpses, hanging upside down from a bridge, being mocked by young boys and terrorists. It is "Making Mock of Uniforms that guard us while we sleep" to treat these men as anything but warriors and heroes.