Military Misconduct: Sheep-beating Video Surfaces

Years ago, during World War I, British and German soldiers did something that horrified their superiors: they called an unauthorized truce on Christmas Day in 1914, climbing out of their trenches and sharing cigarettes, rations, family photographs, jokes and songs with their mortal enemies, the men they would later attempt to shoot to kill. These soldiers realized that their counterparts, like themselves, either believed in their country’s mission or were there because they had been sent there and there was nothing they could do but fight each other.

Of course there were atrocities in that war, as in all wars, and people were raped, beaten and abused, but that shining moment on the Western Front stands out as soldiers in opposing armies acknowledged their shared feelings of being desperately cold, lonely and a long way from home on Christmas Day.

We are all familiar with accounts of My Lai, photographs from Abu Ghraib, and now videotape of soldiers urinating on the dead. But there are other victims who also do not deserve what is done to them at the hands of war bullies. Animals are easy victims, and much has been written about how human enemies are easier to kill if they are called “animals,” “rats,” “dogs” and other such names.

Last year, a scandalous video emerged of a U.S. marine throwing a puppy off a cliff. Now there is this video of a soldier repeatedly beating a sheep with a baseball bat to the whoops and laughter of other soldiers who are looking on. I would say “beating to death” because that is probably what happened, but we do not know the upshot. We only know, from watching the video and seeing the mood of the soldiers — and what appears to be a local lad who arrived with the animal — that the sheep could only have come to a very nasty end. He or she tries to rise several times but the soldier continues to thwack away amid the laughter.

*Warning – Graphic Video*  Watch the Video *Warning – Graphic Video*

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