To Marines, Justice Is Rotten to the Corps

A Marine found guilty of kidnapping and conspiracy to commit larceny, housebreaking, kidnapping, false official statements, and murder for his involvement in his squad's grabbing a 52-year-old Iraqi from his house, marching him 1,000 yards to a nearby ditch, and shooting him 11 times was given a bad-conduct discharge but no further jail time beyond the 519 days he has spent in the brig while awaiting trial. Some of the squad members testified that they decided to kill an Iraqi out of frustration with an Iraqi legal system that lets suspected insurgents roam free. Prosecutors said squad members tried to cover up the killing by planting a shovel and AK-47 by the victim’s body to make it look like he was an insurgent planting a bomb. The convictd Marine did not express remorse.

His lawyer said a long sentence would mean that Marines have abandoned one of their own despite the Marine Corps dictum that no Marine is left behind on the battlefield. Both prosecution and defense said that the sentence will send a message to troops serving in Iraq.

And that message would be—if you get frustrated with the government you are there to defend, it’s OK to kidnap and murder at random, confident that your fellow Marines will consider it dishonorable to hold you to account for your actions.

What Theists Can't Answer

In a piece by Michael Gerson entitled What Atheists Can't Answer in the Washington Post for July 13, 2007, he writes

"How do we choose between good and bad instincts? … We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. ... Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma. … Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not."

People like Gerson seem to think that believing that a moral code is objective makes it so. Thus, because they think they have an objective truth, they think that any judgment they base on it must be objective. With conflicting faith-based moral codes claiming to be objective, clearly they can't all be. When pressed, people who say they have an objective basis for their judgments reveal that their actual foundation is as subjective as that of the people they criticize.