Sparing Human Lives, but Not Man's Best Friend

What is wrong with us? We're Americans. We go into the bowels of other countries and defend all that is right and humane. We hunt down the bad guys who commit terrible atrocities against other people and serve them up a whopping dose of justice. We can even help defenseless animals stranded on buildings that are moments from being whisked away in natural disasters.

So why then is it funny, humorous, or even entertaining to throw rocks at a visibly disabled and mangled dog like our soldiers recently did in Iraq? Liveleak.com is currently airing a video of supposed American troops throwing rocks, laughing, and poking fun at a dog that had either been injured in war torn Iraq or suffers from a deformity in its legs. The video is disturbing and horrific to watch and to hear the dog's yelps and cries, watching it run in fear from these men is even more dismal to watch. One of the soldiers even proclaimed that this "is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life", as the dog limps and hops away from the men. The video itself has had over 280,000 views and over 550 comments, the majority of those comments echoing disgust over the soldiers' treatment of the dog and their lack of respect for the uniform they wear and the country they represent. I can't say that I disagree with the comments. The men in this video anger and disgust me to a level I didn't think was capable inside me.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is calling for everyone to write the Department of Defense to launch an investigation of this video. To say that this is just another black eye on how other countries view America is an understatement. It speaks to the very core of how we treat living things. To hope that there will be an actual investigation of the video is probably just that; a hope.

It's not just our soldiers that are committing unspeakable acts to man's best friend. In Ohio, the Award winning Cleveland Clinic Foundation recently went under fire when one of its neurosurgeons killed a dog during a sales demonstration. The dog was given an aneurysm and put under anesthesia, then killed at the end of the demonstration. The surgeon is not being fired but the hospital is not releasing how they are carrying out a punishment. Again, PETA, and other animal activists are calling for the surgeon's license to be revoked.

A morning Public Television program in Ohio remarked how easy it is to get an animal for research, demonstrations, or murdering. Check through the local newspaper and scan how many "Free to good home" ads you will find for pets. If you're like me, you really thought some loving family was going to show up and take the pet you couldn't keep off of your hands. Not so, according to many people who wrote in on forums and letters to the editor in Ohio. It really is just as simple as calling up the pet owner in the paper and say, "I have a loving home." What's more, many animals are handed over from the local pound for such purposes as well.

We live in a world where we can make a phone that will do everything short of starting the coffee maker in the morning. So why can't we put those geniuses to work to come up with alternatives to testing and demonstrating on animals? We can create robots that will baby-sit your children, clean your house, and walk the dog, but we haven't come up with one (that I know of) that can feel pain, die, and live to tell you the effects of the demonstration and testing all at the same time. Instead we use animals. We use them because it's easy and its inexpensive, sometimes even free. They are gotten from shelters, homes, the local Animal Protective League, Humane Society, and other places. If we decided to use the millions of senior citizens that are dumped and forgotten about in nursing homes and hospitals by their so-called loved ones; there would be a huge uproar in America. However, since its only fuzzy animals and rodents, it's ok. We'll just look past it. It's for the good of mankind, Right?

Have Americans become so numb to cruelty to animals that we can sit back and say that animal treatment like this is OK because it's our hardworking, sacrificing, soldiers that do this. I know that I can't possibly understand what they deal with during war or the horrible acts that they witness, but why should we excuse them for blowing off some steam like this? To give the soldiers some credit, at the end of the video, one soldier was heard asking if it was ok to kill the dog. We don't know if that too was for kicks or to put the poor animal out of its misery because at that point, the video ended. But the thought still weighs heavily on my mind that I can't have respect for men like this.

I can't have respect for a doctor who chooses a dog to perform a sales pitch on instead of the many other alternatives available. The reasons for it are poor at best. Surely in our technologically advanced society, there is another way to pitch to salesmen than using dogs and other animals.

At least the dog in the video got a chance to get away and limp off on two legs and its tail while the soldiers laughed at the site of it. The other dog, well he wasn't so lucky.