How is this a debate about China knowing what you talk about? Your comment makes no sense to me -at all-...

Whether or not not we should get used to this has nothing to do with him being a whistle blower or not.

He is mad because Andy is making this debate about something it's not. See me reply to Andy for more details.

This debate is not about whether or not "spying" is OK or not, if it was, i would upvote your comment.

This debate is about whether Snowden showed something to the public that the government was doing unlawfully (whistle blower), or whether he is showing information to the public, that the public, by law, did not have a right to know about (informant).

We did not know the US government was using this kind of surveillance, and there has not been an open debate with the US citizens on whether or not they wanted this kind of surveillance. Whether or not you think this kind of surveillance is a good thing is not relevant. He is a whistle blower because he made something known to the public that deserves an open debate. If there had been a law permitting this kind of surveillance system, and the US citizens where aware of this, than he would be an informant for bringing out this information.

This is a pro-informant argument, and should be on the other side of the debate.

(it's just adding points to the contra-informant side here...)

This should not be on the informant side of the debate. It is a contra-informant statement!

What do you mean with "he just created more problems?"

Also, in an interview with him he made a good point, that, if he was an informant to china, why would he have been hiding there in some small hotel room? He would be given a luxury home by the Chinese government.

We did not know the US government was using this kind of surveillance, and there has not been an open debate with the US citizens on whether or not they wanted this kind of surveillance. Whether or not you think this kind of surveillance is a good thing is not relevant. He is a whistle blower because he made something known to the public that deserves an open debate. If there had been a law permitting this kind of surveillance system, and the US citizens where aware of this, than he would be an informant for bringing out this information.

I agree that the closer you are to the actual killing in the chain of command, the harder it must become to see the overall picture. Your argument is useful in understanding -why- they did it. But i don't agree that it also forces us to tolerate this behaviour.

I'm sure there are plenty of jobs where you perform tasks given to you by superiors, where you don't see or understand the bigger picture, and your own personal goal is not the same as those giving you the task. In each of these jobs, there are moral rules to adhere to. Granted, the job of a Marine to kill someone is an extreme, but never the less, i don't see how it means a free ticket to do whatever.

Is it impossible for soldiers to act on higher ideals? Take the following story:

In Japan there is a story surrounding the Samurai. They also worked as some sort of police/military force. When one of the Samurai was sent out to kill a target, the Samurai entered his home, took out his sword, and was about to kill his target. The man spit in the face of the Samurai, upon which he put his sword away and walked out without killing his target. He did so because he became angry at this person, and followed a moral code that he was to execute commands without personal feelings.

I'm curious. Would you draw a line somewhere? If their job is to get victory over the enemy, and killing them is the ultimate form of disrespect. What other atrocities would you allow them to do?

Take for example if they had to kill a woman. Would it be ok for them to torture her for days first, without reason to do so. Then rape her, cut her up, send her body parts to her loved ones (surely they've also already disrespected them)? Or would you still say "They're Marines, what do you expect?"

So, summary: Where would you draw the line?

In terms of "celebrating a victory" as in gaming and competition, i see where you're coming from.

If it where a game of ping-pong, and you would do a victory dance, it would be appropriate, since the nature of the game is trying to win it. In the same way the Marines won this round of the war-game.

Yet, is a "victory dance" appropriate in the case of a war? What is the goal achieved that they are celebrating?

For them, killing or capturing the opposing soldiers is their goal. Yet on a higher level, the intent of war is to bring peace and happiness to as many as people as possible (ironically enough). And having to go to war to achieve that is the last resort solution after everything else has failed.

So in conclusion, what peeing on those corpses is also saying is "here we celebrate that we did not find a peaceful way out of this conflict, and feel fine and happy with settling this issue in this manner."

You make a very good point in saying "they killed him, what harm does peeing do". It even made me laugh.

Yet I'd like to make a distinction between the actions based on intent.

In the first case, the killing of the Taliban soldier, the intent was preventing him from doing harm. Killing someone is a very unfortunate, but successful way of doing so.

In the second case, peeing on the corpse, the action does not help a shred to prevent him from doing harm. He will stay down on his own.

So, if the intent of the killing was merely to say "fuck you". Then the killing is equally upsetting as the peeing. But, it was not. At least I hope so.

This turns the discussion into the direction of "what was the intent of the killing?", and whether or not you support the view that wanting to say "fuck you" was a good enough reason to kill these soldiers. If that is the case, i hope you don't take offend in my reply and want to say "fuck you" to me ;)