UPDATED: Congressman Duncan Hunter Reveals His All-American Sadism
At a San Diego County forum on Memorial Day Weekend, Congressman Duncan Hunter admitted to an audience he’d posed for pictures with dead combatants during his Marine corps deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
UPDATE: via Zero Blog Thirty military podcast. Rep. Duncan Hunter defends Navy SEAL accused of war crimes: "Even if everything the prosecutors say is true in this case, Eddie Gallagher should still be given a break."’
The District 50 Republican’s original remark was covered nationally, with stories in Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Politico, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and all the major news networks.
The Post story included this tidbit explaining why Hunter’s comment was such a big deal:
According to the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual, enemy military dead must be treated with “the same respect as would be afforded to, or expected for, friendly military dead.”
“The respectful treatment of the dead is one of the oldest rules in the law of war,” the manual reads. “Enemy military dead must be protected from disrespectful or degrading acts . . . posing with bodies for photographs or leaving a ‘calling card’ on a body are also inconsistent with the respectful treatment of the dead.”
Hunter’s comment at the forum came in response to a question about the possibility of President Trump issuing a pardon for Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher, who has been charged with war crimes.
The remark was apparently directed at one action he found to palatable--I did it so it must be ok--and the not the other three charges Gallagher goes on trial for starting on June 10th.
Gallagher’s case has become a cause célèbre with militant right wingers, energized by constant repetition of stories on Fox News suggesting his prosecution is yet another example of political correctness. President Trump and some Republican lawmakers have been receptive to the idea of pardoning Gallagher, suggesting he is an innocent war hero being unfairly prosecuted.
This case is a prime example--whether or not Gallagher is found guilty-- of the kind of sadistic representation of violence pervading the Trump administration and its core supporters. The trampling of the rule of law is somehow justified by the level of disgust conveyed toward whomever is the unfortunate victim.
Here’s Hunter’s remark. via Ken Stone, whose reporting was the basis of most of the other national coverage, at Times of San Diego:
Eddie did one bad thing that I’m guilty of too — taking a picture of the body and saying something stupid,” Hunter said at a border-issues forum with his father, former Rep. Duncan L. Hunter.
The younger Hunter, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, said he’s taken pictures “just like that when I was overseas” — although he didn’t text or post images to social media. “But a lot of my peers … have done the exact same thing.”
Hunter said the trial of Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher was set for Tuesday. But actually it begins June 10 at Naval Base San Diego, where he faces murder charges in the slaying of a wounded teenage ISIS prisoner in Iraq in 2017.
Gallagher allegedly texted a fellow SEAL: “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.”
https://twitter.com/cmarinucci/status/1132669486761254912
The “good story” led to the most serious of the charges, namely premeditated murder. On or about May 3, 2017, according to the charge sheet, Gallagher allegedly murdered a wounded ISIS fighter by stabbing him in the neck and body with a knife.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Joe Warpinski took sworn testimony from 9 members of Gallagher's unit, SEAL Team 7 Alpha Platoon, not exactly the kind of witnesses you’d expect to be characterized [by Hunter] as part of a “military justice system run by lawyers and bureaucrats [who] go after the war-fighter.”
Think about this--these charges didn’t come from some Pentagon desk jockey. Gallagher’s fellow SEALs turned him in.
Here are some more details from Task and Purpose, a newsletter for military personnel:
Charges against Gallagher also included two other incidents that took place at separate times, in which the SEAL Chief allegedly shot and wounded two civilians.
The first incident occurred on or about June 18, 2017, when Gallagher, posted in a sniper hide in a tower east of the Tigris river, allegedly shot and wounded an elderly Iraqi civilian walking along a road. The second incident, on or about July 2017, involved the alleged shooting of a young girl from the same location…
...Meanwhile, the charge sheet also alleges Gallagher obstructed justice by attempting to discourage members of the platoon from reporting his actions to leadership during and after deployment. SEAL Petty Officer C.M., for instance, claimed to investigators that Gallagher told them, "I have shit on all of you. If you bring this up you all go down."
Hunters’ condemnations of the judicial system in this case are an extension of his statements about his own legal problems. The Congressman and his wife, Margaret, were indicted in 2017 on federal charges of illegally converting more than $250,000 in campaign contributions for personal living expenses. Both have pleaded not guilty.
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This isn't the first time we've been down this road.
In April 2012, the Los Angeles Times published 18 photos of US Army 82nd Airborne Division soldiers posing with dead Afghan insurgents, and assorted body parts. This reporting was widely disseminated, and drew condemnations from both military and civilian leaders.
The photos were taken in February 2010, during a yearlong deployment of the 3,500-member brigade when they lost 35 men — more than 20 to homemade bombs. All the insurgents depicted were killed by bombs they'd made, detonated while they were planting them to kill U.S. soldiers.
Stars and Stripes reported the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan saying he "strongly condemned" the publishing of the photos.
"The actions of the individuals photographed do not represent the policies of ISAF or the U.S. Army," Allen is quoted as saying. "This behavior and these images are entirely inconsistent with the values of ISAF and all service members of the fifty ISAF countries serving in Afghanistan."
The Army was also (perhaps even primarily) concerned about the disclosure of the images would incite further violence against U.S. troops.
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The school of thought embraced by Duncan Hunter and other extremists is a necessary function in establishing an authoritarian society. Societal norms and institutions are being debased as a means of eliminating any roadblocks on the pathway to denigrating democracy.
Erich Fromm’s 1957 essay on The Authoritarian Personality delves into the difference between a society based on the rule of law and the dark place where President Donald Trump and his enablers are taking this nation.
When recognition of authority is masochism and its practice sadism, does that mean that all authority contains something pathological? This question fails to make a very significant distinction between rational and irrational authority. Rational authority is the recognition of authority based on critical evaluation of competences. When a student recognizes the teacher’s authority to know more than him, then this a reasonable evaluation of his competence. The same is the case, when I as the passenger of a ship recognize the authority of the captain to make the right and necessary decisions if in danger. Rational authority is not based on excluding my reason and critique but rather assumes it as a prerequisite. This does not make me small and the authority great but allows authority to be superior where and as long it possesses competence.
Irrational authority is different. It is based on emotional submission of my person to another person: I believe in him being right, not because he is, objectively speaking, competent nor because I rationally recognize his competence. In the bonds to the irrational authority, there exists a masochistic submission by making myself small and the authority great. I have to make it great, so that I can — as one of its particles — can also become great. The rational authority tends to negate itself, because the more I understand the smaller the distance to the authority becomes. The irrational authority tends to deepen and to prolong itself. The longer and the more dependent I am the weaker I will become and the more I will need to cling to the irrational authority and submit.
All the great dictatorial movements of our times were (and are) based on irrational authority. Its driving forces were the submissive individual’s feeling of powerlessness, fear, and admiration for the “leader.” All the great and fruitful cultures are founded on the existence of rational authority: on people, who are able to muster the given functions intellectually and socially and have therefore no need to appeal to irrational desires.
The desensitizing of our culture and morality to acts of violence didn’t start with our current president. But what was once considered aberrant is becoming normalized art an ever increasing pace.
Here’s McMaster University Professor Henry Giroux on Donald Trump at The Conversation:
Needless to say, Trump is not the sole reason for this more visible expression of extreme violence on the domestic and foreign fronts. On the contrary. He’s the endpoint of a series of anti-democratic practices, policies and values that have been gaining ground since the emergence of the political and economic counterrevolution that gained full force with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, along with the rule of financial capital and the embrace of a culture of precarity.
Trump is the unbridled legitimator-in-chief of gun culture, police brutality, violent hypermasculinity, and a political and social order that expands the boundaries of social abandonment and the politics of disposability—especially for those marginalized by race and class.
He’s emboldened the idea that violence is the only viable political response to social problems, and in doing so normalizes violence. Violence that once seemed unthinkable has become central to Trump’s understanding of how American society now defines itself.
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Congressman Duncan Hunter is proud of his perversion. It fits right into a vision for the U.S., where people aren’t supposed to care about the suffering of anyone other than themselves.
As Lawrence Lewis said not long ago in a terrific essay entitled The Sadism of the Modern Republican Party:
In the vacuum where their souls should have been, the only way elected Republicans can make themselves feel better seems to be to make others feel worse. This is not normal. This is not okay.
Duncan Hunter’s sadism is not normal. Don’t brush it off as another manifestation of a privileged white boy gone loco. Say it: This is wrong!
And if you happen to live in the 50th Congressional District of California, you’d better be damned sure to let your neighbors know this isn’t okay. If you live outside the 50th, commit to supporting the candidacy of Ammar Campa-Najjar, a human being running for office to serve his constituents rather than himself or the cause of authoritarianism.
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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com