David Motari and the Puppy-Throwing Incident

A 17-second YouTube video shows soon-to-be-former Marine Lance Cpl. David Motari throwing a small puppy off a cliff in Iraq. His comrades looked on, did nothing to intervene and one of them apparently laughed. Motari has received "unspecified no-judicial punishment" (an "article-15" in military terms) and is being "separated from the Marine Corps." The Sergeant who was present, Crismarvin Banez Encarnacion has also received and Article-15 (I am thinking he may not be a Sergeant anymore).

Now let us get to the meat and potatoes of this incident. What was wrong about it? Having served in the military myself, eight years as a Airborne Infantryman in the Army with the rank of Sergeant, I can find so many things that I am not sure where to begin.

Soldiers (and even Marines) are expected to operate under discipline. Without it we would be nothing more than a warlord band. This act was entirely undisciplined. It showed a complete lack of concern for any rules or regulations because throwing a puppy off a cliff is certainly against military rules barring some extraordinary, extenuating circumstance.

Next is the appalling lack of respect for life. If David Motari has no more respect than this for this dog's life, how much respect will he have for a human's life? Even if, by chance, he does have some respect for human life, he has created the appearance that he does not. Frankly it was boneheaded all the way around.

The fact that the Non-Commissioned Officer (Sgt.) present did nothing to stop this or, if he could not stop it, at least take immediate action to discipline David Motari afterwards says something negative about the entire unit. Obviously they did not think this was a serious problem. Also it shows a lack of discipline within the unit, I have to question whether the NCO had enough control over his men to even be able to effectively say anything.

Kicking David Motari out, with an Article-15 first, is entirely the correct course of action for the Marine Corps to take, preferably with a dishonorable discharge. It sends a clear message to other Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. At the same time it is not over reacting we are only talking about a dog here. A dishonorable discharge is no small thing. It takes away all of your benefits and hangs over a person the rest of their life. As we used to say in the Army, "he'll have trouble getting a job flipping burgers at McDonalds with that following him around."

Of course the stupidest thing David Motari did was to allow this to be filmed and put on the net. How boneheaded was that? Did he really think people were going to think this would be "cool" or something? I suppose they really are lowering the IQ requirements for the military these days.