U.S. Marines have created a new wave of international furor, sending officials scrambling to explain another incident of unbecoming behavior and ignorance.
A September 2010 photo showing 10 U.S. Marines purposely posing with a Nazi SS flag began to circulate on news and social media sites in recent months. The picture features the men in front of two flags, one American, and the other an all-blue flag with the two iconic thunderbolts representing the letters “SS.”
“This brazen display of a symbol which is synonymous with death squads, gas chambers, and brutal occupation reflects a sociopathic, marauding attitude which violently jars with the supposed ‘nation-building’ efforts which the NATO forces have embarked upon,” Michael L. Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), said in a statement. “The symbol’s usage conveys a message that the U.S. Military is an organization within which white supremacists can feel at home.”
Weinstein sent a letter Feb. 9 to Gen. James Amos, head of the Marine Corps, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta calling for an investigation and stiff repercussions for all those involved.
The disclosure of the September 2010 photo comes amid an investigation, begun in January, into a video of U.S. Marines urinating on deceased Taliban fighters.
The soldiers in the photo have been identified as members of Charlie Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion which was stationed in the province of Sangin, Afghanistan at the time. According to ABC News, the men were sniper scouts, who were using the flag to signify their elite position in the Marine Corps, not a racist mentality.
“Use of the SS symbol is not acceptable and the Marine Corps has addressed the issue,” Marine Lt. Col. Stewart Upton said in a statement.
However, the Marines in the photo will not be punished. Instead, when the photo first surfaced in November the Corps decided to immediately discontinue the use of the flag and create a teachable moment, according to CBS News.
Others find it hard to believe that members of the Marine Corps could be unaware of the motif’s place in history, and the American lives sacrificed to topple the regime it represented.
“To learn that a unit of the United State Marine Corps serving in Afghanistan adopted the SS insignia alongside the Stars and Stripes, desecrates the 200,000 Americans who gave up their lives to defend freedom against that infamous symbol,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization, said in a statement.
The Schutzstaffel, or SS, were police who also operated the official military arm of the Nazi Party. Under the rule of Adolf Hitler, the SS helped wipe out over 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and any who didn’t fit into his plan for a master race.
