Bottom Feeders On Parade

Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities (who I have until now failed to blogroll, unaccountably) has another amazing post today, this one about Kevin Sites, the cameraman who shot the footage of the Marine who capped a wounded, unarmed insurgent in Iraq a while ago. He is defending the fact that the bad guys are using his footage to rally the enemy thusly:

No one, especially someone like me who has lived in a war zone with you, would deny that a solider or Marine could legitimately err on the side of caution under those circumstances. War is about killing your enemy before he kills you.

In the particular circumstance I was reporting, it bothered me that the Marine didn't seem to consider the other insurgents a threat -- the one very obviously moving under the blanket, or even the two next to me that were still breathing.

I can't know what was in the mind of that Marine. He is the only one who does.

But observing all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the dark perils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances -- it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. According to Lt. Col Bob Miller, the rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all.

Fuck you, Kevin Sites. It's not your place to judge that kid, and fuck you for putting yourself and your work on a par with that young soldier, who is defending your right to carry a camera while he is asked to carry a rifle and be shot at, and his work. No one deserves a camera peering over their shoulder, especially when the footage encourages the enemy. Stop being a moral relativist when it suits you and an absolutist when you want to sit in judgement, Kevin.

Like Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities so eloquently says, "he (Sites) comes off as an unremarkable narcissist of the Oprah generation, for whom the most important aspect of any situation is how it makes you feel. The burdens of war are unforgiving for all of us, Sites intones, as if we care about his private conflicts. The only important things are the effects of releasing his video - people will be killed - & its implications for the misguided concept of embedding moral relativists in life & death struggles."

Amen.