While the photo was taken in Sangin, Afghanistan in 2010, there are indications that the insignia had been in use for several years. The Marines involved were members of a Scout Sniper unit attached to the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
A spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force acknowledged that "Some Scout Snipers have unfortunately used the 'SS runes' as a symbol for their elite organization," but insisted that the symbol, routinely used by white supremacist and fascist organizations, had no "racial connotations." None of the Marines involved were punished.
The photographs surfaced barely a month after a video showing US Marines urinating on the corpses of slain Afghan resistance fighters provoked outrage in Afghanistan.
Such incidents reflect the overall demoralization of the US occupation forces under conditions in which 10 years of warfare have failed to achieve US objectives. An indication of the real state of affairs was provided by an article published in the Armed Forces Journal entitled "Truth, Lies and Afghan."
The author is Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, an active duty officer with 27 years in the Army, who recently completed his second tour in Afghanistan. Having traveled through at least a dozen provinces and spoken to both US military personnel and Afghan soldiers and officials, Davis writes: "What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by US military leaders about conditions on the ground."
He continues: "I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a US or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.
"I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn't want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.
"From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency."
Davis quoted a senior enlisted officer as telling him: "Guys are saying, 'I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,' or 'I hope I only lose a foot.' Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: 'Maybe it'll only be my left foot.' They don't have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they're living here, what the situation really is."
The Lieutenant Colonel concluded: "How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by US senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect -- and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve -- to have our leaders tell us the truth about what's going on."
In another grim indication of the cost of the Afghanistan war, the military-oriented newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that a record number of US troops lost their arms and legs in 2011, with the number of amputations surpassing those performed even during the heaviest fighting of the Iraq "surge."
Two hundred and forty military personnel had at least one arm or leg amputated, almost all of them as result of wounds suffered in combat in Afghanistan. Marines suffered the worst toll, with 129 undergoing amputations, while 100 Army soldiers suffered loss of their limbs and six sailors and five airmen.
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