War is Hell

So the media's aflame about a dead terrorist. I don't know the facts on the ground there or whether that Marine was wrong. But I do know that the "insurgents" battling our forces in Iraq don't follow the laws of war. They executed the British woman running the "Care" program there. They're more interested in killing Westerners than their own lives. I'm not sure the Geneva convention even applies. But I'm sure there is no moral equivalence between American Marines and Radical Islamic terrorists.

So, before throwing a hissy fit, check out the sensible talk at Froggy Ruminations:

Here is your situation Marine. You just took fire from unlawful combatants shooting from a religious building attempting to use the sanctuary status of their position as protection. But you’re in Fallujah now, and the Marine Corps has decided that they’re not playing that game this time. That was Najaf. So you set the mosque on fire and you hose down the terrorists with small arms, launch some AT-4s (Rockets), some 40MM grenades into the building and things quiet down. So you run over there, and find some tangos wounded and pretending to be dead. You are aware that suicide martyrdom is like really popular with these kind of idiots, and like taking some Marines with them would be really cool. So you can either risk your life and your fireteam’s lives by having them cover you while you bend down and search a guy that you think is pretending to be dead for some reason. Also, you don’t know who or what is in the next room, and you’re already speaking english to each other and its loud because your hearing is poor from shooting people for several days. So you know that there are many other rooms to enter, and that if anyone is still alive in those rooms, they know that Americans are in the mosque. Meanwhile (3 seconds later), you still have this terrorist that was just shooting at you from a mosque playing possum. What do you do?

You double tap his head, and you go to the next room, that’s what.

I have no doubt the incident will be thoroughly investigated, as it should. But don't be surprised if the probe concludes "War is hell," as a correspondent on The Corner says:

In combat, especially against people whose usual practice it is to violate the law of war, a Marine has to kill the other guy before he gets a chance to kill the jarhead or the Marine standing next to him.

(via LGF)

More:

Powerline adds the powerful detail that the Marine had previously been wounded by an Iraqi terrorist "playing possum."