[Moderator Note]
drewder, it’s against the rules to change the text within quote tags while keeping the original attribution. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Sir, I would NEVER gainsay the beauty of any woman who was better armed than I. :eek:
I, for one, LIKED it, and, as the person whose quote was mangled in an unspeakable and un-American manner, I protest this non-warning.
This might also be a factor in the future plans of service members. The people in the military now are volunteers who are presumably much more likely to be planning on a military career. In World War II or Vietnam, you had a lot of draftees who presumably planned on getting out of the military and resuming a civilian life as soon as they were able to.
Another related reason is because today we rely more heavily on reserve units. Reservists tend to be older and married, so there are fewer single eligible service men and women deployed. FOBs in Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t exactly like liberty in town with bars and clubs, either.
Also, isn’t it at least partly that our culture nowadays is simply less strict about tying sexual relations to marriage?
Sure, soldiers have historically been notoriously lax in their relations with foreign women, but in the mid-20th century there was still a pretty strong belief in many parts of American society that if a “nice boy” got sexually involved with a “nice girl”, he damn well better marry her, irrespective of where she was from.
I would have thought that fraternisation would be forbidden since there is a great potential for abuse due to the lopsided power dynamics, especially when considering widows and orphans, something Iraq and Afghanistan have a lot of.
“Hey Jones, you know the Iraqi orphan girl we met last week, the one that turns 18 tomorrow? Dibs on her.”
but wasn’t the average age of soldiers in WWII 26?
That’s what it says in the song, anyway…
There might be hardly any Afghanistani/Iraqi brides, but a good number of soldiers still marry German, Italian, and Korean woman. I think the rules in Afghanistan/Iraq are just a lot stricter.
I’m also skeptical that it’s a matter of soldiers marrying later, or being more cautious, or more mature, or whatever. I work on an Army base, and have been surprised at how many very young soldiers are married.
This is news to me!
Please do not speak for us. All my relations dreams of the emigration. I believe you write above your desires for these women, it is not what I know or see.
The fact is, in Afghanistan and especially Iraq there’s probably a rather limited number or women who want to do anything with American men but shoot them. And given the reputation for brutality, contempt and casual murder towards the locals we’ve earned, only a foolish women would want to be anywhere near an American soldier. People who’ll kill you for stepping out of your house as they drive by aren’t the sort who you walk over and strike up a conversation with.
Our male soldiers do “fraternize” with them; sexual assault and rape of female American soldiers by their male counterparts is endemic.
Fair enough. I was working last week with a young Iraqi journalist, and she was cautiously optimistic about the role she could play in the future of her country. But she’s just one person, and probably has exceptional circumstances.
“Yeah Smith, she is ready to offer…companionship… in return for protection and food.”
<3
???
Allegedly
Allegedly
I know you’ve been in long enough to see the relaxing of certain attitudes about sex. During my first deployment (to a non-combat zone) married couples weren’t allowed to live together or have conjugal visits. My next deployment to Iraq married couples were put in the same CHUs on the FOB. And no one cared about relationships as long as neither were married and they were of equal rank and out of each others chain of command.
Hate speech alert. You do not have a clue about what you are talking about. Please confine your opinions to MSDNC which no one pays any attention to
Pot calling the kettle black?
I love this question and I haven’t even read the thread. I just want to say t hat, say, WW2 military history buffs don’t know squat if the don’t know about War Brides and their significance and the boat lifts and drain on resources and wedding gowns made out of parachutes and so on. In fact I believe there is a book with this title. Further irony is I spent some time this evening inspecting a wedding gown from no doubt a WW2 marriage…
Just saying.
Military buffs are welcome to PM me. I’ve just been busy.