The Marine Who Killed the Puppy

Yesterday we were treated to the story and accompanying video of a Marine tossing a beautiful puppy over a cliff to its death.

Some psychologists are weighing in on this by justifying it. We're told that this can be a reaction to the stress of having your life constantly in danger: In order to feel that you have some control, you attempt to dominate smaller and more helpless beings.

Aren't those very reasons shared by wife beaters everywhere?

"They're on such a power trip about what they're doing that it doesn't dawn on them how disgusting it is," said said David Spiegel, professor and associate chairman of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "A person can get set to such levels of psychological arousal that ordinary life can seem kind of drab, and the only way to keep yourself feeling kind of good is to do things that are dangerous or anti-social."

I don't have my doctorate in psychology (it's in another field), but I was a counselor for a while and I am trained in general family counseling from a Christian perspective. What Spiegel says makes sense to me. And yet, there is something missing.

What is missing is the fact that there are many, many men and women in our armed forces who are not abusing others and are not tossing defenseless puppies over the cliff and laughing about it as they do so.

That takes a special kind of monster.

The kind of monster who's grip on reality was never strong. The kind of monster who will be a danger when he's re-admitted to American society.

And we should also worry about his compadres. People who are willing to witness (and even encourage) abuse are no better than the perpetrator. People like that aren't merely dim-witted followers. People like that also get a subversive thrill from the deed. They are a typical example of the type of men who won't actually rape a woman, but will watch her being raped.

Cheryl Araujo was the rape victim whose story was fictionalized in the movie The Accused (which starred Jodie Foster). She was raped in public on a pool table while patrons watched: Some even cheered her abusers on.

These particular lookers-on have the same weak, bullying mentality as the patrons in the pool hall. It allows others to do the dirty work while they revel in the aftermath. They are able to stand back and say (with great self righteousness) "But *I* didn't throw the puppy over the cliff" or "But *I* didn't actually put the noose around that black man's neck."

Such blind mob mentality concerns me, and it should concern you. It needs to concern us as a nation because these are the type of monsters that will eventually come home to America.

Are all service men and women of this loathsome character? Of course not!

But we need to prepare ourselves for the fact that there will be some people who didn't have a strong moral backbone to begin with, who got to explore killing and abusing when they were overseas on assignment. We need to start asking what the military is doing to screen our troops when they come home, so that further atrocities can be prevented.

And, of course, we need to discover who these particular Marines were, and we need to deal with them harshly so that they are an example to other troops and a signal to the world that we do not condone such soulless monstrosities.