Gurkha beheads Taliban...

[Pete]

Entirely by coincidence tonight while reading the memoirs of a Wehrmacht private first class I read that the Gurkhas in the vicinity of Monte Cassino in 1944 were in the habit of cutting off the ears of enemies they had killed. His story appears verify my Grandfather's tale from the First World War.

During the Cold War our support of various governments put us in an ethical dilemma when our clients didn't always live up to the norms of behavior we're accustomed to. It's a case of different moral principles being in conflict with each other -- is the main point to fight a moral war without stepping on the ethical cracks in the sidewalk, or winning the war?

In 1945 my Dad saw an unpleasant scene when his battery liberated a small slave labor camp. One of the prisoners there got hold of a U.S. weapon and gunned down his former guards. None of the G.I.s did a thing to stop him because they thought the guards had it coming. Dad said it may technically have been a U.S. war crime because they didn't do anything to prevent it; but he too felt the Germans deserved it.

Dad refused to watch "Hogan's Heroes" on TV because he thought there was nothing funny about German camps.