Girls will be girls (for boys)

I have to defend our female soldier mud wrestlers. If they did this at any number of college frat houses, they would be ignored or tacitly applauded. Instead it's supposed to be the next great scandal? Why do we wink and smile at domestic college students, but throw the book at the kids who have to spend several months in a miserable place to pay for college? This incident was completely isolated from any Iraqis or prisoners. It probably crossed some line, but why is this worth publicly singling out one of the girls (let alone demoting her). And who is this creep that took a bunch of sleazy pictures of female soldiers mud wrestling, and then turned around and leaked them to the Daily News? Pathetic.

Look, many of our soldiers do not represent the very best of America. But at the same time, it seems to me that many of them do. And while cynics drive their good deeds out of the news--labeling such stories as jingoism--the media continues to splash unseemly sketches, hoping to land an Abu Ghraib sequel. It's stupid and unfair. Imagine if we made a headline of every asinine thing a New York City firefighter did. You could make them look like a pack of corrupt ignorants too. I think if you take any group of several thousand people and hype all of their misdeeds the picture you get is a lousy one. Let's cut the kids overseas a bit more slack, so long as they are doing their job and respecting our allies and enemies. They are enduring things most of us know nothing about and deserve a reasonable amount of grace.