A curious experiment
in gun control
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
This is not your daddy’s Marine Corps. Or maybe it’s
just not your daddy’s general. More likely, it’s
just not your daddy’s commander in chief.
Nothing but a direct order from the White House
could have persuaded Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, the
senior Marine in Afghanistan, to disarm his men on
the battlefield, even for an audience with Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta.
The general tried to make the best of his sticky
wicket, as our British cousins (some of whom were in
the audience, disarmed as well) might say. “You’ve
got one of the most important people in the world in
the room,” the general said of the visiting defense
chief. He said he wanted the Marines to look just
like their Afghan partners. “This is not a big
deal.”
Saying that only emphasizes how very big a deal it
really is. Marines are never parted from their
weapons, whether they’re on their way to the
latrine, the mess tent, or to look up the chaplain.
The luckless sergeant assigned to execute the
general’s order told the incredulous troops that
“something had come to light” and it was everybody
outside to stack their automatic rifles and 9mm
pistols.
Was caution driven by fear that someone might take a
shot at Mr. Panetta? Did someone think that “armed
Marines”—the mere term is a redundancy—would
embarrass the dozen or so Afghan troops who arrived
at the session unarmed? (It’s impolite to guess why
they were unarmed.) Unregistered guns frighten folks
like Mr. Panetta, and he had suffered through a
semi-scary arrival earlier when an Afghan in a
pick-up truck broke through a security line and
screeched to a halt up close and personal.
The sergeant who instructed the Marines to lay down
their arms couldn’t say exactly who the cowardly
lion in the senior ranks might be. “Somebody got
itchy, that’s all I’ve got to say. Somebody got
itchy. We just adjust.”
Mr. Panetta, who was briefly a shavetail Army
lieutenant himself many wars ago, gave the usual VIP
remarks to the troops, all about who’s challenging
whom in “the hell of war itself.” Everybody
applauded politely and nobody took a shot at him,
even with a spitball.
Mr. Panetta was on a fool’s errand to Afghanistan,
to apologize on behalf of President Obama for the
ninth, twelfth and seventeenth time for the massacre
of Afghan women and children by an American soldier.
The soldier was invariably referred to by everyone,
including the correspondents and their editors who
ought to know better, as the “alleged” shooter even
though he turned himself in with a confession.
Nobody is brave enough to speak in simple and
unadorned declarative sentences.
Neither was there anything any president could say
to erase the sadness and madness of the soldier,
removed to Kuwait to await a proper military court
martial. It was right and proper for the president
to try, even though excessive apology suggests
insincerity. Brief is always better.
The aftermath of massacre was entirely predictable.
The usual riots erupted as the rite of Muslim
mourning. What passes for a government in Kabul
stoked the outrage and the Afghans began killing
each other with roadside bombs at once to
demonstrate the profundity of their grief. Keeping
score of madness in the Middle East is a full-time
job.
President Obama got an early reply to his apologies
and good-faith efforts to explain how the massacre
happened. There is universal Afghan scoffing at the
story that one soldier acted alone. Hamid Karzai,
the Afghan president, told Mr. Panetta that “the
Afghan people” had lost their “trust” in the
“international forces” and suggested that bug-out
time is at close at hand. This would enable “the
Afghan people” to get back to their mutually assured
destruction without fear of further interruption.
The Taliban, which has been talking to the Americans
about a “negotiated settlement,” dispatched an
e-mail message to President Obama to get lost, and
take the dead horse he rode in on with him. The
Taliban office in Qatar, opened to enable the talks,
would be closed because of the president’s
“ever-changing position” on “peace” talks.
The Taliban position on peace is clear and
unchanging; it would behead Americans wherever it
found them. So much for diplomacy. Mr. Panetta is
back in Washington, the brave experiment with gun
control is over and their weapons were returned to
the Marines. It’s not yet clear if the bullets were
returned, too.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The
Washington Times.