The Marine Corps Photo Scandal: Why it’s Time to Stop Treating Service Members Like Saints by Stephen Carlson, Washington Post

The American people largely venerate their service members. There is nothing wrong with this. These men and women sign their lives away in exchange for low pay and generous benefits mired in bureaucracy. In times of war, they face uncertainty and sacrifices that would make most Americans quail. Disappearing for a year or more while leaving family behind to pick up the pieces is hard enough without the threat of injury or death. It is what comes with the job, and if any soldier, Marine, airman or sailor complains about that, they never should have signed the dotted line.

For all the hagiography, though, these people are not saints. They are young middle-class and poor people who often joined up because they had no idea what else to do with their lives. I was the same way. They cover every demographic, every social class and every degree of morality. For the most part, these people are not patriots looking to lead a charge while holding a flag over their heads. They are looking for a steady job, social advancement and, if they can stomach it long enough, a pension. These are classic working stiffs.

And sometimes they act like criminals and sociopaths. Witness the horrific scandal involving countless Marines posting thousands of nude photos of female colleagues. It is hard to decide which is worse, the disgusting commentary on these closed Facebook sites referencing rape and molestation, or the fact that these Marines made a contest out of getting sneak peeks of nude women.

Sadly, none of this is new. In my old Army unit in Afghanistan, sexually explicit pictures of a female soldier at headquarters floated around. Instead of someone in charge putting a stop to it, the photos were treated as a joke, with a bunch of men laughing over the young woman. The photos were taken with her permission, but the sharing of them was not, and she didn’t deserve any of the abuse she received from her fellow soldiers.

The military is built on machismo, and I will never truly understand what female service members have to deal with every day. Idiocy abounds with Joe, the standard term for the standard soldier…

Read on.