Trigger happy kiddie soldiers who may not get their dessert? I got new for you fuckface. Those kiddies put their lives on the line daily wathcing their brother get blown up constantly with tactics that is currently being discussed while your pathetic ass sits behind a fucking computer in obscureland passing judgement on your fucking betters. You are one pathetic peice of shit.
This is the most well deserved pitting I’ve seen in a while.
Rashak Mani: Fuck you. From reading your posts for a while now it’s obvious to everyone that you are a complete and total dipshit. However, this is a whole new level of fuckheadedness.
Shitbrains like you should just head over to DU and post your anti-American hatred where it will be appreciated by like minded socialist fucktards in a protected environment.
What does happen, in general, when a soldier accidentally kills civilians? I know this has happened before at checkpoints, what happened to the soldiers responsible?
My friend, if the Straight Dope weren’t also a “protected environment” for “dipshits,” “fuckheadedness,” “shitbrains,” and “fucktards,” you would have been evicted long ago.
Oh man this is going to go well.
Slag the troops off in this place and you’re in a world of shit.
Soldiers here are treated like every other person. Yeah they have a dangerous job sometimes(Irish troops serve in Lebanon and East Timor for example) but they choose the job and the get paid for doing it.
It seems some posters here hold the soldiers up as almost untouchable because of their service to democracy or some other patriotic shite.
Bollocks to that. They are humans doing a very hard job and some should not be doing it. They shouldn’t be shat on for no reason but they also shouldn’t be given passes just because of the job they are doing.
Fuck off, dipshit! What, US soldiers fuck-up – and they do so frequently – and one’s not allowed to call them on it? It appears that in your increasingly militaristic society wearing an uniform is akin to having a licence to kill with impunity. Wave the flag, talk about some obscure goals somehow involving “freedom and the American Way” and blast anyone who gets in the way. Hell, it obviously doesn’t even matter if they are actually on your side. Yeah, some fuckin’ “heroes” these guys were.
Fuck them and fuck you!
Hail, Bush!
Wow, your bigotry really moves me to want to see your POV. :rolleyes:
Holding people accountable for things is something we know little about.
Amen, Yojimbo
Well, Debaser - your vitriol is nauseating. Why the hell should Rashak Mani wave the flag and march in lockstep with your flag-waving Freedom Fry-eating my-country-right-or-wrong ideology? He’s not even American, if I remember correctly.
The soldiers are making a ‘noble sacrifice’, sure. But they did volunteer, and if they didn’t realize that they could easily end up in a life-or-death situation because of this, then maybe they’ll think a little harder about their commitments and obligations in the future. That doesn’t mean we don’t support them, just that we hold them to a not unreasonable standard of engagement. We have strict ROE for a reason.
Soldiering’s a tough job, and it requires choices that impact life and death daily. But the soldiers are human, and a lot of them a young, scared and quite frankly out of their depth. I was one of these soldiers once and we were pretty trigger happy ourselves, especially in the early going - fear and adrenaline don’t make for the most stable and reasoned thought processes, especially when you’re 19 and far away from everything you’ve ever known.
I don’t agree that RM is necessarily right about the soldier’s punishment, but quite frankly given this administration’s modus operandi, there’s a pretty decent chance they will just be given a slap on the wrist. Of course, they could also become scapegoats thrown to the wolves, should journalistic scrutiny descend upon this case. There’s no real middle ground with this administration that I can see.
Nonetheless, why should a non-American’s opinion bother you so much? I am a American, and a combat veteran, and I’ve been in that situation. I don’t believe that the soldiers should be given a free pass here. Am I less of a patriot than you because I don’t blindly parrot the party line? On the contrary, I would daresay that that my experiences in these situations speak well of my love for country, and unless you’ve been in the the military during a time of war, had too make these choices yourself, you can suck my liberal anti-war cock.
This whole invasion and occupation mess is a royal clusterfuck and we never should have been there in the first place. That doesn’t mean I don’t support the soldiers themselves one hundred percent, but I do believe they are responsible for their own actions to a significant degree.
What are you doing? Posting from the front lines?
picker
11B, reclassed 31V
Alpha Company, 3/75, 1989-1991
CSC, 3/325 ABCT, Recon Platoon - 1991-1993
“She should have dressed up like Osama, they would have let her right though”
-unknown Farker
Alas I get pitted pathetically ! So when did putting their lives on the line make them free from trigger happy impulses or responsibility ? I guess Iraqi civilians and the occasional reporter getting shot up needlessly is something that should be dismissed easily by flag waving ?
If US soldiers sticking chem lights and stuff up Iraqi asses and humiliating them gets very light sentences... then I guess defending yourself from italian hostage savers must warrant only losing dessert then. Stuff is out of control in Iraq and any illusion of the troops being under control seems to have gone with that poor italian agent.I don’t know what would make you think that’s what I’m saying. It’s not. I’m the first one that says when my country is wrong, and I’m very critical of our government about many things, including the current administration. I certainly don’t insist that Rashak or anybody else must march in lockstep with something that I don’t even believe myself!
Did you get this whole “follow the party line” idea from:
- Something I posted here in this thread
- In the related GD thread
- From my overall posting history
- You just made it up out of whole cloth
?
I certainly didn’t post anything in #1 or #2 that would lead you to jump to that conclusion. I don’t think #3 could be the case, but that might be so (In your opinion, anyway). If it’s #4, I’d like a retraction please.
No, you dipshit. You aren’t being pitted for suggesting that the troops be held responsible. I, and most reasonable people with me, would agree that there should be an investigation and they should be found responsible depending on whether or not they did anything wrong.
You are being pitted for immediately jumping to the absolute worst assumptions about the soldiers without adequate evidence to back it up. You don’t know what happenned, but you happily blame the soldiers and insult them while you are at it. The fact that you still don’t even get why this is offensive to people is just further proof of what a total shitheel you are.
Perhaps, observing the soldiers’ own behavior, he’s simply practicing the Golden Rule.
Daniel
Well… fucken surprise… got my reply swallowed… shit…
Short rewrite: Those soldiers are kids. They are awfully young. They haven’t been trained or enlisted for police duty… and certainly didn’t get adequate training or support to do it. I don’t think they enjoy killing iraqis (well most of them I suppose) or that they are callous or evil on purpose. Still that doesn’t change that they are killing and are being trigger happy. Insurgents car bombs just make 'em more jumpy.
The fact is that US commanders got these kids in that situation and that Iraqis and reporters are getting hit frequently and needlessly. If you of course prefer to blame commie reporters for getting hit... and italians for lousy driving its your rose tinted view of stuff.
Its easy to call these kiddie soldiers heroes just because they are being shot at... I feel sorry for them actually and I'd call them victims not heroes.What a checkpoint is like
Read this one again… and its not hard to figure why so many are getting killed… and 19 yr old grunts don’t make up or order these checkpoints.
Sorry, Debaser - on further review I was reacting far more to Well than to your comments. I do take issue with the whole ‘Anti-American’ line, but I indeed should not have painted with so broad a brush.
Part of it was that line, and I was influenced by your comment in post #27 in the other thread, which seemed a little unnecessarily agressive:
While Rashak Mani is a little strident at times, he’s no rjung and to my mind the overall thrust of his argument was summed in his post from that thread:
Still, upon further examination, I jumped to conclusions after getting pissed off at Well’s post, and you happened to be posting right after him.
My apologies.
Well - you’re still a :wally
I hate when people do things like this, total hypocracy. You realize the above statement is your rose colored view of things?
My frustration with Rashak and his ilk is the tendency mentioned above…to automatically assume the worst and blame the soldiers. It is more convienient to their cherished stereotype to think of them as trigger happy idiots.
As with any large group of young people, you are going to have your poor performers…but the overwhelming majority of our people in uniform are high achievers who deserve our respect simply for the type of people they are.
And yes, I was in the military. Navy 1984-1990.
They have volunteered to do a difficult and dangerous job because many others are incapable or unwilling to do so. I never faced combat in person, and yet I came close to being killed twice while at sea. My first thought when I read negative posts like Mani’s is whether the poster would be mentally and physically capable of getting through basic training, let alone serving under fire.
These soliders were facing a speeding car and followed their rules of engagement. If you want to bring out ridiculous and ego-flattering conspiracy theories to the contrary, be my guest.
It’s the same concept for criticizing police officers following a shooting. It’s easy to sit back and nitpick every 10th of a second after the fact.
Well, let’s be fair here. I agree with rjung on pretty much nothing, politically. However, Rashak truly hates America and all things American. Taking a post from him having to do with the US is akin to listening to bin Laden give a speech on Isreal. I have more concern with what my garden slugs think of me than what Rashak does.