Marines’ actions are unacceptable

Reading the Saturday article, “Out of jail, ex-Marine is cheered in Mukilteo,” about Robert Pennington, I noticed a quote by his father, about the general who is in charge of the investigation of the Marines involved in the murder of an Iraqi civilian:

“He could make it like it never happened if he wants.”

Was anyone else as stunned to read that as I was? Here we have a gang of over-amped American Marines, furious because they couldn’t find the perpetrator they were looking for. So they dragged an innocent Iraqi civilian from his home, kidnapped him, and killed him, in cold blood. How, I wonder, would one make that “like it never happened?” The truth is that it did happen, and you cannot undo a murder. Who believes that we should just sweep this under a rug and pretend that it never occurred? The family members of the murder victim will surely not just “get over it” anytime soon! And neither will anyone in their community.

I certainly do understand that I might look at the world differently if I were being shot at every day. But in what universe has it become acceptable practice to kill innocent civilians? Hopefully, not the one we live in. I have lived all 50 years of my life believing that Americans are above that kind of barbarism. Was I mistaken? Perhaps it might be convenient for us to believe that there are no innocent Iraqis; after all, they failed to throw flowers at us when we bombed their cities.

I fear that history will view 21st century America as it views the Roman Empire: arrogant tyrants who behaved as if the world was theirs to plunder. I continue to be outraged at what is being done in my name.

Gina Parry

Snohomish