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Forum Name "What Does RL Stand For?"
Topic subjectRE: As a 17 year Veteran....
Topic URLhttps://forums.carrionfields.com/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=43&topic_id=151&mesg_id=214
214, RE: As a 17 year Veteran....
Posted by nepenthe on Wed 31-Dec-69 07:00 PM
The disconnect here, in essence, is that you need to think a certain way to be able to function as a soldier. I get that. If you think to yourself, this dude with a gun pointed at me might have a legitimate beef with my country, or, he might also have kids he really wants to see again, you can't function out there. You might hesitate when you should kill, and get yourself or other soldiers killed. So you end up in a mindset (which the U.S. Army, smartly, encourages) of thinking the other guy is a fanatical killbot who's just dying to murder and rape you and everyone you care about, because you'd never hesitate to kill that guy.

I get that these things are necessary, but they don't reflect reality.

>Guys like "that" are the leaders. Don't you watch TV? Have you
>been over there where they go to a Mosque and do nothing but
>pray? Western culture and Eastern Culture both have attractive
>merrits to us. But to them it is denied because of the iron
>handed governments they have. And I don't give a ####. They
>canal desicate in the desert for all I care. The problem is,
>they've had Western/Eastern culture for Centries and it's
>never stoped the acts of Violence. Agression to US policy goes
>back to the 1800 with the Barbary Pirates.

Well, let's just look at OBL for example. Where did that guy come from? Essentially, he was trained by the U.S. government to fight the Russians in Afghanistan for them by proxy.

From that, you might draw the conclusions:

1) Obviously, at that point, he wasn't uncompromisingly murderous towards America or the West as you're saying all Muslims are. And that's one of their leaders.

2) Maybe if we (and other governments) stopped creating guys like OBL to do our dirty work for us in other parts of the world, in a generation or two there would be... I won't say no guys like that, but certainly LESS of them.

The world is too small a place. You can't train terrorists and turn them loose on your enemies and think that in no way will that ever come back to you.

Dictators generally rise to power by blaming some external source or threat for all of the problems of a people. We should stop making it so easy for it to be us. That doesn't mean you give in to terrorists, but it also means you don't go out of your way to help them recruit.

>There have been plenty of Generations.

Well, ideally a couple of generations wherein we try not to #### with their countries too much and just let Desperate Housewives work them over for a while.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but think about it. How often do we fight countries that watch our sitcoms and have McDonalds?

How often did we fight those countries 50-100 years ago?

>The last 75 years made
>them Rich beyond belief. Now in their free time they fund and
>export terrorism. What's more Saudi Arabia is a massive
>supporter of producer of them. 18 or the 19 were Sauds.

I actually agree with you here to a point... I think it's ####ty that 9/11 blame went pretty much everywhere BUT there. I actually would have been much more behind invading Saudi Arabia than Iraq.

>Western Societies are soft and
>weak and worried more about hurting an agressors feelings than
>defending their own people.

That's not really how it is. That said, if you kill terrorists but do it in a way that, for every one you kill you convince 10 people who wouldn't have been terrorists that they should be, you can't ever win that war with anything less than genocide.