Just a question…seriously. How would a helicopter know that it was a wedding party and not a group of insurgents?
Max the Vool,
Sorry, but you should change your membername a bit. I woud not recoomend to replace V with F, I would propose to replace the last word with what you called the Iraqi people who celebrate a wedding according their own traditions.
Invaders who invade and occupy a nation while having no clue about that nation is already unforgivable. But they don’t even have a clue about it after more then a year of occupation which says more then any words can say about the cause and reasons of everything what happened there upto know (and that is: what we know a little about).
People who underscribe that arrogance are not only idiots. They are brainless.
Salaam. A
Kalhoun,
How would a helicopter crew know that children are not the resistence?
Maybe they should take a few more Go Pills?
Salaam. A
You must be among those people who think that whole world is just like the US. Weddings included. All just equal to the Mc.Donalds Culture.
By the way: You forgot to mention churchbells and a TV “priest”. And US flags wherever you happen to look.
Salaam. A
Aldebaran, I firmly disagree with the war in Iraq, and think this incident tragic. But…
This is a stupid and ignorant tradition. What goes up, comes down. And it comes down at the same rate. There are always a couple injuries or death on Cinco de Mayo in Mexico when this happens. The sooner cultures learn to stop shooting guns in the air in celebration, the better.
Irrelevant. Firing guns in the air when there are military aircraft in the region is borderline suicide when your country is currently occupied.
And Kalhoun’s question was entirely relevant.
Munch,
Who are you to decide what in an other people’s culture is “ignorant”?
They celebrate their wedding like that. That is their way of celebrating a wedding. They do not celebrate a wedding like you do. Or like many other people do. They do it their way.
There is no reason what so ever for people to change their culture because a lunatical US mass murderer and his Maffia send in US troops to occupy their nation.
Got it?
Salaam. A
Um no…my point is that it is not like a traditional American weding.
Sorry if those flags offend you…I guess all those waving American flags must remind you of how much our country kicks ass.
Yeah because they would never use CHILDREN like that :rolleyes:
Stupid question, but did they do this type of wedding celebration when SH was in power? (I don’t know if they were allowed to have weapons)
Second stupid question. The bullet returns to earth at muzzle velocity? Wha? This is in regards to the comment “what goes up comes down at the same rate”.
The disconnect between idiomatic expression and the lack of comprehension of idiomatic expression by people whose first language is not English is so frustrating at times.
Not to say it’s Aldebaran’s fault necessarily, except in his rabid willingness to roundly excoriate the US for any possible fault, and at every provocation.
Aldebaran, I’m not trying to be obfuscatory when I tell you that when msmith537 said “happy couple coming out of the church,” he meant precisely the opposite. See, he said, “It’s not as if…”, which calls upon the reader to parse both a simile and a negative. This can be difficult for a non-native speaker.
He was saying precisely what you think he wasn’t saying…that Iraqi weddings in all likelihood do not resemble the typical American wedding.
Not true. Not even close. It does come down at a rate sufficient to injure and even kill, but nowhere even close to muzzle velocity.
Well, in this instance it seems that there is a good reason. The reason being, so that they don’t die.
I agree that this is a terrible thing that has happened, but it just seems to make sense that when your country is occupied and is a war zone that you wouldn’t want to fire a weapon into the air.
By the way: There are many things in many cultures that are different then they are in yours.
There are for example many things in other nations - also in my own region - that I don’t see as to be in line with my way of life, my background, my culture.
Do you think that if I send in an army to occupy these nations that the citizens of that nation all of a sudden become like I am?
Do you think they would be even aware of the differences between my ideas and culture and theirs?
Iraqis have the right to have their own culture.
They equally have the right to expect the invaders to know about it and to respect it. At the very least, I should say.
And I have serious doubts about it that a majority of people in Iraq these days have even an idea that they do things different then in the USA.
Hence they expect that those who are occupying their country know that with a wedding there comes some firing of arms.
Or do you think the Iraqis must ask permission of the occupyers to get married?
Salaam. A
Fine. Then can I say that the helicopter pilots were just helping them celebrate?
:rolleyes:
Again, it is stupid and ignorant to celebrate by firing weapons in the air. I can say that because it’s true. The intention of their actions is to celebrate. The *consequence * of their action was to get their entire party killed. In other instances, it is to get other people killed from a bullet straight through the top of their head.
Where the FUCK did I ever say that? The reason for them to change their culture is to stop getting people killed from a dangerous activity. It has nothing to do with the US. If there’s a culture in Sri Lanka where they rape their cousins to celebrate their birthday, they should stop. Why? Because it’s ignorant, harmful and wrong!
Again, there has not yet any proof that a wedding was indeed hit.
Those who blithely take the charges at face value are obviously willing to use any rumor as a launchpad for ideological ranting.
The whole problem lies not with the Iraqis who are in their own country.
The problem is the US arrogance.
Entirely.
From the minute this criminal invasion was plotted up to this very day.
The arrogance to plot to invade a nation
The arrogance to plot to do this whout even thinking about making a single effort to try to gain some insight in the ethnicies, the religions, the cultures of that nation.
Salaam. A
Munch,
So you say that indeed they must run to the occupyers to ask permission to get married and celebrate it as they celebrate it.
And you say that they must know that in the US there are no guns fired at a wedding. Well, I can tell you that many do not know that.
Maybe you should get over there to give a show on how you celebrate a wedding and say that you want them to do it like that.
You should go then from romote village to remote village, with a TV/Video/CD set and don’t dorget your diesel engine to make power and your diesel to get the diesel engine working.
Then you can preach that from now on they must do it like that because the poor US soldiers that came to liberate them right into death have no clue about the world, let be the country they occupy, and believe the world is like the USA.
Good luck.
Salaam. A
You forgot:
The arrogance not to take their weapons offline when they think someone’s shooting at them.
You wanna’ know what else is a stupid and ignorant tradition? The Fourth of July. What blows up is bound to cause a few injuries. Every year, all around the country, some little Timmy decides he wants to play with some M-80’s or other fireworks and blows off an arm or gets himself killed. By the same token, camp fires should be going out the window too. And yet, our ignorant, ass-backward culture clings to these things.
No, firing guns in the air isn’t the height of intelligence, but a lot of cultural traditions aren’t either. It’s culture, and it has value for the people that carry it. It is worth something.
Uh, I pray for the helicopter pilot that cannot differentiate between fighters in tactical positions actually trying to bring down a helicopter and 50-odd people gathered in a circle hollering and firing guns straight up. Think about it, if you were an Iraqi insurgent and wanted to take down a helicopter, would you even try to do it with an AK-47 in the first place? All that it is likely to do is get you noticed by the person you’re firing at without much of a chance of actually damaging the helicopter. You would at least want to use some sort of MANPAD weapon.
All that said, I actually have to agree with Aldebran in this thread, ASSUMING that the story is true. He’s right, we don’t have all the facts in yet and cannot make a conclusion yet. The US Army still appears to maintain that it was a wedding party. It is likely that this fact will become much clearer either way in the very near future. I will restrain from further comment until this is readily apparent.
The current lead story on cnn.com backs this up–the Pentagon is saying they were insurgents, not wedding participants.
Frankly, I believe that to be completely obvious: Insurgents have guns, the people who were fired upon have guns, therefore the people who were fired upon were insurgents. If you disagree, then you’re a long-haired Chomsky-reading pinko freak who hates the USA! USA! USA! USA! Think I’m gonna go huff some more benzene…
I very much doubt that this is the case at all. What is the case is that soldiers have a tendency to react sharply to people whom they perceive are shooting at them.
Dang ol’ survival instinct.