Reblogged from Mother Jones February 12th, 2012 43 notes #HISTORY IS RELEVANTMarines Sport Nazi SS Flag in Afghanistan
The Marine Corps’ scout snipers in Afghanistan could probably use a safety stand-down. Just weeks after news broke that one elite unit of the forward-deployed Marines urinated on the corpses of dead Afghans, a photo has surfaced of another unit posing proudly beside a flag of the Nazi’s killer SS troops. The Marine Corps Times reports:
The stylized “SS” logo appeared in a photograph of the platoon taken in September 2010 in Sangin district, Afghanistan, a hotly contested area in Helmand province. The Marines were with 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.
The I Marine Expeditionary Force inspector general based at Pendleton was made aware of the “SS” flag photo in November of last year, said Capt. Gregory Wolf, a spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters. The issue has been addressed with the Marines involved, Wolf said. He did not say what specific action was taken beyond ordering Marines to stop using the logo.
The photo in question is not the only one documenting usage of the logo: A second image (embedded below) shows the SS logo emblazoned on a Marine’s rifle. The Marines’ story is that the unit used the flag “to identify the Marines as scout snipers, not Nazis.” The symbolic appropriation may indeed be unwitting, but witlessness is no more desirable a trait in downrange warriors than malice is.
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Great American values like liberty, democracy and progress brought to you in Afghanistan one Nazi flag at a time. And assuming the SS logo does indeed have no affiliation with the Nazi logo, Marine Capt. Brian Block does admit: “Certainly, the use of the ‘SS runes’ is not acceptable and Scout Snipers have been addressed concerning this issue.”
is this a good or bad time to mention hitler’s admiration of the usa’s very effective and brutal (not to mention genocidal) campaign against the indigenous peoples here? and that his concentration camps were, in part, influenced by how he saw the europeans rounding up and imprisoning “native americans”? relevant? no? yes? just curious.
