A Marine is a Fighter First

A United States Marine General Officer has been counseled for making remarks regarding his feelings about war. He stated that it was actually fun to shoot some people. There are many out there who think this is terrible and insensitive. I believe that it was not the brightest thing for a General Officer to say but he spoke from the heart. He is a fighter first and since he and his men put their asses on the line in combat to protect our rights then I think he should be entitled to those rights. Unfortunately, to protect the rights of the citizens our service members must give up some of those very rights.. Of course, you usually don’t get the whole story. Here is what he said:

“Actually it’s quite fun to fight ’em, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up front with you, I like brawling,” said Mattis.

“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” Mattis said during a panel discussion. “You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”

When you read the whole thing you get a few ideas about this guy. Number one, he likes to brawl. Good, I want our Marines to be fighters, not wimps. Number two, he thinks that men who slap women around have lost their manhood and should be shot. He also expresses that he enjoys that task. I don’t know how anyone can argue with this. In this country if you are guilty of domestic violence you get in a lot of trouble and some of your rights are taken away. I believe that since these Afghan men he talks about are the enemy, it is all the better. you have two reasons to shoot them. They abuse women and they are the enemy!

Lt. Gen. James Mattis was counseled and he agreed that he did not select his words as carefully as he should have. I say it is done with and let’s move on. The left will probably want him to go to sensitivity training.

What ever happened to admiring a person who enjoys his work and does a good job?

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4 Responses to “A Marine is a Fighter First”

  1. nada says:

    I sort of equate this with the “gallows humor” that occurs in many professions.
    I don’t mean he was making a joke, but the sort of “inside baseball” talk that goes on when the publics not around.

    I rode ambulances for a long time as an EMT and spent a lot of time in emergency departments and in the station.
    We LOVED MVA’s (Motor vehical accidents) and big multi-problem situations in a way. I mean, that sort of hig pressure stuff was what many people sort of thrived on.
    That’s not to say that we were uncaring or unskilled, simply that we were attracted to the job in part for the experiences.
    Jokes were made, things were said, there was a whole culture you wouldn;t have wanted the public to really see.

    I’m sure it’s the same everywhere.

  2. Adam says:

    Nada:

    It seems a bit different to me though because you weren’t causing the accidents. Either way though, I look at this like the George Bush sitution. He says things he doesn’t exactly mean or were worded wrong, like “bring ’em on”. The media puts you under a lot of pressure and will bring you back down to the most simplistic level and then they have something they can air that night and say, “LOOK AT WHAT HE SAID!”

    This is another thing like the Cheney coat incident at the memorial last weekend. What in the world? Heart problems or not, the man was cold and wanted to stay warm. I can’t believe people thought he should have dressed down because that’s more respectful. It was freaking snowing. What is worse is that many on the Right, like Margolis, tag that crap on every Liberal. Blogs For Bush has gone down hill lately with coverage of stupid crap like that.

  3. nada says:

    Wow. Adam, I just wanted to say that was a very honest appraisal of the media, and I was quite impressed that you used GWB as an example.
    I heartily agree, biased coverage completely aside, the media [generally] is many times about either looking through a keyhole or looking through a magnifying glass.
    They’re either ignoring the larger or peripheral aspects of an event or are supermagnifying the import of an event. Liberal tilt or Conservative, most of them are guilty of amplification or distortion in one manner or other, even if it’s just trying to make the story more more important than it really is.
    And that’s certainly one avenue of media bias that goes largely unnoticed. It’s the stories that get ignored, the news that’s not told, the shifted focus, or the retdistributed ‘wight’ of stories, more than the actual bias to any particular story that lends a great deal of weight to the real underlying focus of -any- outlet’s news.

  4. Big Dog says:

    Adam, a cogent post. I like the ideas expressed. Sometimes we all say things that we wish we had said better. It does not make us a bad person, just human.