3 legged goat said:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46329740/ns/us_news/t/marines-posed-nazi-ss-symbol-afghanistan/#.Tzc7zOP-_9o
I found this story when looking for a Current Event for my class, and my first reaction was facepalm, really, you thought it meant Sniper Scout. This is the reason everyone thinks Americans are retarded. Soldiers who think that the Nazi SS symbol means Sniper Scout. Even if it was true (which it wasn't) they would still be the least educated people ever. If you have had a History class, you have seen the SS symbol. What do you think about this?
I think that I've had many history classes in my life, and none of them felt it was a good use of our time to focus on Nazi Iconography. We saw the swastika, and that about covered it.
If you haven't specifically dedicated time to studying WWII on its own, it's not just possible but
highly likely that you've never encountered this symbol. It would be supremely arrogant for someone to believe that just because they themselves are familiar with a particular factoid, that anyone who isn't is, how was it put, retarded?
It would be like an American moving to Finland and wondering why he doesn't get the 4th of July off anymore. We teach WWII here, but we don't devote a week to making sure everyone has all of the
very generic symbols straight.
So we've got a story here in which people are finding reasons to be outraged. I'd like to present a couple alternate scenarios:
1. Some young guys were fiddling around with symbols for their unit, and someone figured out, "Hey, draw S's like this, and they look like lightning bolts. Lightning bolts are cool and strike from far away, like us!" That's right. It's entirely possible a few young soldiers thought lightning bolts were cool, and happened to also look like the initials of their unit.
That's exactly how the SS chose that symbol, by the way.
2. Some young guys were fiddling around with symbols for their unit, and someone figured, "Hey, the SS used this symbol in WWII. We beat their asses, so now the symbol's OURS." So, on the off chance that someone in the unit knew it was an SS symbol, there's just that small outside chance that, hey, maybe they weren't using it maliciously. Maybe it serves as a reminder that, "Hey, we've beaten worse than these guys." Or maybe it's just prideful posturing.
Bottom line, not every time someone is "outraged" by something does it mean someone maliciously set out to outrage them. It's highly unlikely that this is a unit full of Nazi sympathizers. It's far more likely they didn't realize what it was -- hell, it looks a little like something you'd find on a 70's/80's metal band album cover -- and now they're being executed in the court of public opinion over it.