How the Marines video made the Afghan war even tougher

This personal reflection opinion article by Timothy Kudo on the viral video of United States Marines urinating on dead Taliban insurgents was an incredible inside look of what it is like to be a Marine. Timothy Kudo served in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2009-2011 as a Marine captain. And what was even more interesting was that he knew the infantry that posted the disgraceful video on the Internet, the 3rd Batallion, 2nd Marines. Kudo speaks of the Marines most important mission of a sense of morality in building local support. The 42 second video ruined that sense of morality and is going to create a hard battle ahead for those going back to Afghanistan. Not only that, but the peace negotiations the United States is trying to achieve now are going to be more difficult to achieve. Kudo's anger at his fellow Marines provides so much emotion when he describes the process of dealing with enemy death with respect.

The main appeal of the Washington Post's "How the Marines video made the Afghan war even tougher" is ethos and pathos. The ethos appeal is established immediately when Timothy Kudo defines himself as not only a United States Marine, but one who has been to Afghanistan and Iraq. This ethos establishes a great amount of credibility with the audience because Kudo can relate to the Marines and tell his audience what other Marines think of this action. The pathos appeal shows when Kudo says, "I can't imagine what went through the heads of the men in the video, because desecrating the dead goes against every custom and value the Marines hold dear," (Kudo 1). The disappointment and failure of morality in these Marines is what Kudo writes about and how they were taught to treat the dead with respect. With that, Kudo writes of his own experiences while fighting in the Afghan war and how there were situations where discipline was hard, especially when one of their own died, but it still shined through. The pathos appeal and Kudo's Marine experiences really make this Washington Post article incredible.

Source: Kudo, Timothy. "How the Marines video made the Afghan war even tougher." The Washington Post 13 Jan. 2012, sec. Opinion: n. pag. The Washington Post. Web. 14 Jan. 2012.

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