With the lingering Imus debacle and now this new slew of racial insults from a German army instructor, Al Sharpton (who is "outraged") is going to have his hands full. Yikes. Apparently, the instructor ordered a soldier to imagine himself in New York City — the Bronx, specifically — facing hostile blacks while firing his machine gun. All this was caught on a video that aired on Saturday on national television.
The clip shows an instructor and a soldier in camouflage uniforms in a forest. The instructor tells the soldier, “You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. … Act.” The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.
Ah, I see — it's a lesson not only in how to physically destroy the "enemy" but also in how to dehumanize him. And yet, it's kind of funny that the instructor used the politically correct term (African American) instead of a racial slur.
Coming after scandals involving photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan and the abuse of recruits by instructors, the video seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in Germany’s conscript army.
You think? Well, all I'm going to say is that it looks pretty darn bad that it happens to be a German.