Jewish World Review Feb. 8, 2005 / 29 Shevat, 5765

Just how bad should our Marines feel?

By Tucker Carlson

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | A highly decorated Marine officer found himself in trouble this week for forgetting to pretend that war is always hell. Lt. Gen. James Mattis, former commander of the First Marine Division in Iraq, announced during a speech that in fact, quote, "it's a lot of fun to fight. It's fun to shoot some people." Those people, said Mattis, include the Taliban — as he put it, "guys who slap women around because they didn't wear a veil. It's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

For these words, General Mattis was publicly reprimanded — which is to say, humiliated — by his boss, the commandant of the Marine Corps. Apparently, the general should have quote, "chosen his words more carefully."

But wait a second. The job of the United States Marine Corps is to kill America's enemies. That's what the rest of us pay them to do. So we don't have to. So we can live safe, peaceful lives untouched by violence.

Yet at the same time, we expect them to hate what they do. Because of all the things that civilians find unsettling about war, maybe the most disturbing is the thought that some people might take pleasure in it. In other words, we want our Marines to kill the Taliban. But on some level we want them to feel bad about it.

And that is asking too much.