Marines Sport Nazi SS Flag in Afghanistan & MRFF Demands that Marine Corps Leadership Immediately Investigate Usage of Nazi SS Flag by Marines in Afghanistan from MOTHER JONES & MRFF 9FEB12

I just don't understand this level of ignorance, there is no excuse for it. I do not believe they didn't know what the flag and symbols stand for historically, and it is extremely disturbing that these people find it acceptable to identify with the brutality of the SS. Every one of these people are a disgrace to the Corps, to the US military and to the nation. They should face court martial and be thrown out of the Marines. Absolutely unbelievable and shameful. From Mother Jones.....

—By Adam Weinstein

Marine unit's SS flag in Afghanistan: Tayler Jerom 

The Marine Corps' scout snipers in Afghanistan could probably use a safety stand-down. Just weeks after news broke that one elite unit of the forward-deployed Marines urinated on the corpses of dead Afghans, a photo has surfaced of another unit posing proudly beside a flag of the Nazi's killer SS troops. The Marine Corps Times reports:

The stylized "SS" logo appeared in a photograph of the platoon taken in September 2010 in Sangin district, Afghanistan, a hotly contested area in Helmand province. The Marines were with 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.
The I Marine Expeditionary Force inspector general based at Pendleton was made aware of the "SS" flag photo in November of last year, said Capt. Gregory Wolf, a spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters. The issue has been addressed with the Marines involved, Wolf said. He did not say what specific action was taken beyond ordering Marines to stop using the logo.

The photo in question is not the only one documenting usage of the logo: A second image (embedded below) shows the SS logo emblazoned on a Marine's rifle.The Marines' story is that the unit used the flag "to identify the Marines as scout snipers, not Nazis." The symbolic appropriation may indeed be unwitting, but witlessness is no more desirable a trait in downrange warriors than malice is.
Why is this making news now? Several Marines who were concerned about the photos contacted Mikey Weinstein (no relation), president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that watchdogs religious intolerance in the armed services. Their behavior, Weinstein told me, "eviscerates good order, morale, and discipline," in addition to angering non-Americans and alienating survivors of the Nazis' atrocities. He published the photos on the foundation's website and sent a letter to Gen. John Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, demanding punishment for the Marines involved. "That flag symbolizes the vile ideology of Hitlerian fascism and sends a menacing signal to religious minorities within the United States armed forces," Weinstein said. Walter Plywaski, a survivor of the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II who later became a US citizen and Air Force veteran, expressed disgust at the Marines' behavior. "The photographs below roil my intestines and break my heart beyond words to express," he wrote in an email to Weinstein. "I wish I could really believe that these sniper teams innocently combined the view of the United States flag with the central symbol of the murderous SS!"
The Corps says the matter has already been handled internally. "Certainly, the use of the 'SS runes' is not acceptable and Scout Snipers have been addressed concerning this issue," Marine Capt. Brian Block told Politico in a statement today.
But that's not good enough for Weinstein. "We're hearing that they may have moved Marines from one unit to another, they may have reprimanded them, they may have given them nonjudicial punishment," he said, referring to the military's most lenient administrative form of punishment. "That's unacceptable. If this is not a court-martial offense, there are no court-martial offenses."
A Marine sniper's rifle-stock sporting the Nazi SS symbol: Military Religious Freedom Foundation

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Adam Weinstein

Reporter

Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' national security reporter. For more of his stories, click here or follow him on Twitter. RSS | Twitter

MRFF Demands that Marine Corps Leadership Immediately Investigate Usage of Nazi SS Flag by Marines in Afghanistan

MilitaryReligiousFreedom.org

Fighting for our servicemembers’ rights, so they can fight for ours.

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MRFF Contact: Bekki Miller
Tel. (337) 356-8696
bekki.miller@militaryreligiousfreedom.org

MRFF Demands that Marine
Corps Leadership Immediately Investigate Usage of Nazi SS Flag
by Marines
in Afghanistan

Thursday, February 9, 2012

MRFF Statement on SS Banner Flying Alongside U.S. Flag in Afghanistan

http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/2012/02/mrff-demands-that-marine-corps-immediately-investigate-usage-of-nazi-symbols-by-personnel-in-afghanistan-deal-proper-punishment/
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org) is absolutely sickened by the disgusting images of members of the U.S. Marine Corps 1st Recon Battalion, Charlie Company, proudly posing in front of the U.S. flag juxtaposed alongside a symbol associated with the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, the genocide of religious minorities throughout Europe, and the forces of white supremacist racial hatred.

The fact that United States service personnel were caught proudly posing with the emblem of the Nazi SS, which symbolizes the vile ideology of Hitlerian fascism, sends a menacing signal to religious minorities within the United States Armed Forces. The symbol’s usage conveys a message that the U.S. Military is an organization within which white supremacists can feel at home, free to espouse their murderous ideology and proudly don their symbols of hatred.

This brazen display of a symbol which is synonymous with death squads, gas chambers, and brutal occupation reflects a sociopathic, marauding attitude which violently jars with the supposed "nation-building" efforts which the NATO forces have embarked upon. It exacerbates the anti-Americanism felt by the people of the region who we claim to be helping in the context of a UN-mandated, NATO-led security mission.

In short, this shameful display of SS "lightning bolts" by U.S. service personnel enrages our regional allies, emboldens the extremist Islamist forces with whom we are contending, and eviscerates good order, morale, and discipline within the U.S. Marine Corps. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation immediately calls for the leadership of the United States Military to condemn this stomach-turning display without equivocation or delay and severely punish ALL of those responsible.

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, Esq.
Founder & President
Military Religious Freedom Foundation

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Ongoing News Coverage of this Scandalous Outrage:

CNN – Photo shows Marines posing with Nazi-like
symbol in Afghanistan

MOTHER JONES – Marines Sport Nazi SS Flag in Afghanistan

LOS ANGELES TIMES – Camp Pendleton Marines posed
with Nazi SS symbol in Afghanistan

MARINE CORPS TIMES – Marine scout snipers
used Nazi SS logo

THE DAILY MAIL (UK) – Fury from Auschwitz survivors as U.S. Marines sniper squad is seen in Afghanistan with ‘SS’ flag (but they say it refers to ‘scout sniper’ team NOT Hitler’s henchmen)

THE BLAZE – Marines Punished for Posing with
Flag
Resembling Nazi SS Symbol

MILITARY.COM – Corps Condemns Marine Units Use of SS Flag

BBC NEWS – US Marine sniper unit photographed
with ‘Nazi SS’ flag

THE AUSTRALIAN – Marine snipers probed over SS flag

NY DAILY NEWS – U.S. Marine snipers posed in
front
of Nazi flag in Afghanistan

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES – U.S. Marine
Sniper Squad Posed with Nazi SS Flag

WASHINGTON POST – US Marines snipers go unpunished
after
posing with flag bearing Nazi symbol in Afghanistan

Simon Wiesenthal Center Statement on Marine SS Flag Outrage

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  Letter from MRFF Law Firm Mathis-Donhauser

[TO:]
Gen. James F. Amos Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Headquarters USMC
2 Navy Annex (CMC)
Washington, D.C. 20380-1775

RE: Military Religious Freedom
Foundation Attached Photographs

Dear Gen. Amos:

Our office represents the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org) and its founder, Mikey Weinstein.

The Foundation was contacted today by 45 of its clients who are currently active duty United States Marines concerning their discovery of several photographs, copies of which are attached to this letter.

The photograph of the two individual Marines is currently on the Internet at http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/7431/200404wu2.jpg. You will notice the Nazi SS insignia on the rifle held by the Marine on the right.

The second group of photographs is on the Internet at http://www.knightarmco.com/blog/?p=57 (photo has since been removed). The 1st picture in that series depicts what purports to be a group picture in September 2010 of the 1st Recon BN Charlie Co. in Sangin, Afghanistan. The caption under the picture indicates that the Nazi SS insignia has been adopted and used by United States Marines.

The implication of these photographs, if true, should be readily apparent. If the use of the Nazi insignia has been, in any way, condoned or tolerated by the Marine Corp., the implications are abhorrent to everything for which our country is fighting and the constitutional principles for which it stands.

On behalf of the Foundation and its clients, we ask that your office undertake an immediate investigation into the accuracy and origin of the photographs.

If these photographs are what they appear to be, we demand that you take all necessary action to see that they are removed from the Internet and that everyone associated with the matter, including anyone who condoned it, be the subject of immediate and public court-martial proceedings.

We also ask that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation be kept apprised of the status of the investigation and any subsequent proceedings.

Very truly yours,
Randal Mathis

RM:jw

cc: Leon E. Panetta , Secretary
United States Department of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon Washington, D.C. 20318-9999

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
9999 Joint Staff Pentagon
Washington, D.C. 20318-9999

Gen. James A. Winnefeld, Jr.
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
9999 Joint Staff Pentagon
Washington, D.C. 20318-9999

Adm. Jonathan Greenert
Chief of Naval Operations
2000 Navy Pentagon
Washington, D.C. 20350-2000

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, Esq.
Founder and President, Military
Religious Freedom Foundation

Click here to read original
letter from Mathis Donheiser

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MRFF’s Inbox

We receive an enormous amount of emails at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, both from our
supporters and detractors. "MRFF’s Inbox" allows us
to share
this correspondence with you:

SS and US Marines

Dear Mr. Weinstein!
I write this letter with outraged sadness that fine young men from United States serving their country should have been (hopefully) sufficiently ignorant of recent history to adopt the symbology of the German Nazi murderers as their own! I write this letter also as a longtime supporter of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and, particularly, as a survivor of the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz and Dachau concentration and extermination camps which murdered my parents, uncles cousins and friends, thus killing between 100 and 200 members of my extended family. I also write this letter as a U.S. Army mascot towards the end of World War II, and a veteran of the United States Air Force and the Colorado air National Guard.
The photographs below roil my intestines and break my heart beyond words to express! I wish I could really believe that these sniper teams innocently combined the view of the United States flag with the central symbol of the murderous SS! The use of the SS lightning bolts speaks for itself a sufficiently horrible tale.

I include some photographs below as context for those showing the US Marines stupidly and proudly displaying the symbols on the SS death machine operators!

Walter Plywaski, previously Wladyslaw Plywacki
Ex "native" of the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz and Dachau
Colorado

Click to read letter, see images