What's with the puppy-tossing Marine?

By Matt Sanchez

The video is grainy, but it's easy to make out the features of the smiling Marine holding a black and white puppy by the scruff. Another Marine is recording the whole scene. The camera focus on the dangling dog, one of the two Marines says the puppy is cute. The Marine pauses, throws back his arm and hurls the puppy through the air, like a lopsided football. There is the sound of the cute canine squealing and the thud of it hitting the earth motionless. [Video is posted online – viewer discretion advised.]

From Iraq, we've seen video of real-time beheadings, pictures of men being led by a dog leash and numerous post-bomb carnage, but despite spectacular events, the American public has been mostly immune and indifferent. Yet, the sight, thought and sounds of a puppy yelping after being thrown into the air and presumably killed is enough to cause a national uproar.

As Americans become more cynical and render the value of human life relative, are we looking for intrinsic innocence in cuddly faces that bark? Or are the images of wounded soldiers, crying mothers and aspiring human bombs pledging allegiance so complicated that it's easier to emotionally invest in the purity of a puppy and condemn the malicious Marine?

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Watching the video, I couldn't help but think of how different the rules are in a place like Iraq, a place where dogs are often treated more like rats scampering for food in mounds of trash. I met shepherds who used dogs to herd sheep. I asked one Iraqi what the name of his dog was, but he looked at me confused. They don't name their dogs in much of the Middle East.

Servicemen have to be a bit more attentive. Marines are under orders to shoot any animal that gets too close; the alternative is risking a viral bite and possible infection. Rabies shots are what waited for one Marine from the 5/10 civil affairs unit. Obviously, none of this applies to the Marine who flung the puppy down a cliff – he comes from a different culture.

This Marine came form a culture where we have the luxury of keeping pets and the resources to spend more on four-legged creatures than some peoples around the world can spend on their own offspring; a country where cats inherit millions from wealthy owners, like one cat did in Florida, and where PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) compares a chained elephant in a modern zoo to a chained black slave in 19th century America.

Sympathy is an enormous emotion; it helps human beings understand one another – but how do we understand the abused puppy? Does our own indignation make us feel more human? When we watch the video of the Marine abusing a puppy, do we feel sorry for the puppy, or are we angrier at our own human failing?

Lt. Col. Jay Koppelman showed much humanity when he risked bodily harm and even breaking military law to bring a stray back home with him from Iraq. In his riveting tale, "From Baghdad with Love," Koppelman details just how important his relationship with the abandoned puppy was for his well-being. With each frustrated attempt to get little "Lava" out of the war-torn Iraq, the author wrote of having to save something from Iraq, but it becomes evident through the course of events that the dog saved the lieutenant colonel as much as the Marine saved the dog.

But the dog in the video won't be saved, if the video and puppy were real at all. The images were probably shot last year, and the four-legged critter landed inert at the far end of the cliff. Yet, it's the idea of such an "injustice" that has galvanized the American public.

"That's pretty mean," said the Marine holding the camera to the other Marine shrugging his shoulders.

It's hard to believe what we are seeing. One is tempted to call the whole thing a hoax and believe that it may be a big practical joke. An investigation is under way in Hawaii, where the unit has returned after its tour in Iraq.

"I'm just feeling retarded," is what I think the Marine and presumed puppy killer says, but it's hard to make out the audio. After such an uneven display, we're all a bit confused.

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Matt Sanchez, originally from California, is a New York City-based writer currently embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq. His work has appeared in the New York Post, National Review and the Weekly Standard.

A corporal in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and a student at Columbia University where he's working on degree in American Studies, Sanchez says his mission in Iraq is "to report on the stories that matter the most, first-person accounts by the men and women on the ground." His blog, Matt-Sanchez.com, chronicles his work.