Watch this video and you'll feel better.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://video.fquick.com/thumbs_sm/2496.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.fquick.com/videos/Hummer_in_Iraq/1748&h=88&w=112&sz=8&hl=en&start=30&tbnid=h7jD6W9jXY13vM:&tbnh=68&tbnw=86&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkayak%2Bwith%2Bmotor%26start%3D20%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
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6 comments:
Jumping Jehosephat!!!
Understood:
1. I've never been there
2. I've never been exposed to a constant sense of danger
3. I don't know the circumstances
4. I don't know the SOP about our troops traveling thru the crowded streets like that.
Questions:
1. Why were they given orders to drive thru town on such crowded streets? OR
2. Were they just on some private trip?
Impressions:
1. This is certainly no way to win friends!
2. The male voice that could be heard was sounding not stressed out or fearfully alert.
3. The male voice sounded like a young jock that was pushing his way thru a place that he quite likely shouldn't have been ....
I've watched many videos on LiveLeak that shows the soldiers interacting with the throngs of Iraqi children that follow them everywhere. Some are appalling~soldiers teaching the kids obscenities & talking to them with such contempt. But conversely I've also seen soldiers being so kind to the kids, giving them toys or food and water from their very own supplies.
On a lighter note, that video reminds me of riding shotgun with Dad back in the day...talk about your type A driver!! I was white knuckled on many occasions...in fact, that reminds me of a funny story I'll post on my blog from one of our road trips..
But it still brings me back to the American presence in Iraq..how to make sense of it? Is it a good or bad thing? My gut instinct is maybe we need to stay on our own ground and work on all the stuff we have going on here. That might be a good place to start. Once we get our own backyard in order, than we can worry about the rest of the world.
The video gave me a cheap thrill, having all that traffic melt away in front of me. That never happens around here! You guys who don't cope with a lot of traffic every day have the luxury of looking at this and thinking about IMPORTANT matters, like the American presence in Iraq.... I'm only half kidding. It was appalling, just what our enemies say about us...insensitive, pushy, violent. Oh, just wait until all those thousands of young men who've been trained in violence and use of guns start coming back home in large numbers. We are in for some rough times.
Most of the military casualties over there are inflicted on troops in vehicles. In the Humvee you are very much at risk. The last thing you want to do is stop. Then you are a sitting duck and if you stop you will soon be a dead duck!. You keep moving at all costs. It would be great if we could fight the war only during non rush hour times when trafic was light but we havn't figured out how to do that yet. As to the the motives and mission of the troop whose voice we heard I doubt very much if this was a voluntary trip. What you just watched is one of the most dangerous situations a soldier can find himself in. Some of them do it every day & some don't come home.
We might be agressive in our approach but we are yet to cut the head off of one of our enemys on TV and then show it to the world.
As far as the "young men trained in violence and the use of guns" causing rough times, sounds like just the ticket for joining the police force. Also didn't we go through this sort of return at the end of the Revolutionary, Civil, Spanish-American, WW1, WW2, Korean, and Viet N. How did we survive those home comings. It's a mystery...
Good points, I must admit.
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