Warning: I'm Being Mean to the Military
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4018171.stm
I just picked this website out of others, because I thought it had good links. To any of you who have friends & loved ones serving in Iraq, sorry I'm coming off extremely disrespectful, but I think this whole "War on Terror" business is getting even stupider than when it started.
Memorial Day was just a few days ago, and all I can think about is how bad morale must be in Iraq that U.S. troops jump the gun and go psycho on a bunch of civilians. I understand, it's hard to walk by a house and wonder if it's rigged with explosives, or just has people hiding behind a door. But honestly, what fucking hillbillies were thinking, 'ah, to hell with it. I'll just shoot the whole lot and let God decide which is the bastard that killed my buddy.' This sometime after the mysterious "disappearing WMD's", the whole Abu Ghraib deal, and the more recent brilliant idea from the White House: "Dwindling troops, huh? Well, let's just put them guys on the Mexican Border." Plus the story (on the same above link) about a pregnant woman and her cousin being shot dead as they were driving on an closed road to the hospital. Yeah, I get how difficult it must be to be able to tell an innocent civilian from a suicide bomber or insurgent. Seriously, I do. But Im sorry, guys, that's no excuse anymore to me. I keep hearing these claims that we have one of the greatest military organizations inthe world, and I am continually unimpressed. With all your special training, all your apparent knowledge of everyone else is doing in other countries (and unconcerned about nations like North Korea), don't fucking tell me that you can't afford proper armor, or that you accidentally shot innocent people, or that you got mad/frustrated/threw a psychotic tantrum and went on a door-to-door killing spree because a fellow soldier got shot. You're the military. Fix it. Don't go whining about how soldiers should be respected, prove to me that you're worthy of being respected. WWII vets get my respect, because they didn't have a choice, and whatever else went down, they helped get the job done. Vietnam vets get my respect, because they didn't get their ticker-tape parades when they came home. They were forced by the govt. to do their "duty" and came home to hippies spitting in their faces and persecution due the media getting involved in the war.
Yes, soldiers get bored, they get frustrated with how things are going, with the fact that they haven't seen their families in a long time and won't get to for a long time still, or that their lives are threatened. So help me there are even those that "only joined to see the world, and never expected to have to fight". SUCK IT UP. You're a soldier. You're a representative of the United States military, and your branch is only as strong as its worst members. You've signed on to a military branch, which means everything you do, everything you learn revolves around survival through any means necessary. It does NOT mean bully and abuse POW's. It does NOT mean using your training and weapons for personal vendettas, or letting your rage be channeled through your weapons. It certainly means you lose your excuses for misperceptions and colossal fuck-ups. You are not supposed to take the violence that comes with war personally.
Yeah, I'm a little pissed off at how the War in Iraq is going. I wouldn't have gotten all riled up, but we were watching Anderson Cooper on Larry King Live tonight, and he was talking about how the govt. was so preoccupied with how "smoothly" it was operating just after the hurricane that it forgot there were still bodies in the street and people trying to get help. And then I have to keep hearing this shit in the news about irresponsible soldiers who apparently have some kind of ego problem, and the govt. for the most part is being the same way about the war. "Things are going good, we're making progress." Really? Are you sure? You want to back that up by going yourself to a coffee shop in downtown Baghdad? How safe would you feel, due to the "progress" our military has made?
I talked with a history professor once (casually) about why we went after Saddam not too long after 9/11, and he said, "well, Saddam's been saying he had WMD's for years, and Bush Jr. finally called him on it." He said other stuff that made sense and that I could agree with, but this statement stuck in my mind. Hasn't bin Laden been talking shit for a long time? What about Kim Jong-il and the Pyongyang military buildup?
I don't know. I'm still wondering where Bush got his "Axis of Evil" bit. Has he been watching episodes of The Superfriends between military briefings?
Sorry about the bitching. I just had a stick up my butt about this, and around memorial day, most of what I hear from people is this America is the best bullshit that makes me think our country must be full of Toby Keith-"America: love it or leave it" followers.
I just picked this website out of others, because I thought it had good links. To any of you who have friends & loved ones serving in Iraq, sorry I'm coming off extremely disrespectful, but I think this whole "War on Terror" business is getting even stupider than when it started.
Memorial Day was just a few days ago, and all I can think about is how bad morale must be in Iraq that U.S. troops jump the gun and go psycho on a bunch of civilians. I understand, it's hard to walk by a house and wonder if it's rigged with explosives, or just has people hiding behind a door. But honestly, what fucking hillbillies were thinking, 'ah, to hell with it. I'll just shoot the whole lot and let God decide which is the bastard that killed my buddy.' This sometime after the mysterious "disappearing WMD's", the whole Abu Ghraib deal, and the more recent brilliant idea from the White House: "Dwindling troops, huh? Well, let's just put them guys on the Mexican Border." Plus the story (on the same above link) about a pregnant woman and her cousin being shot dead as they were driving on an closed road to the hospital. Yeah, I get how difficult it must be to be able to tell an innocent civilian from a suicide bomber or insurgent. Seriously, I do. But Im sorry, guys, that's no excuse anymore to me. I keep hearing these claims that we have one of the greatest military organizations inthe world, and I am continually unimpressed. With all your special training, all your apparent knowledge of everyone else is doing in other countries (and unconcerned about nations like North Korea), don't fucking tell me that you can't afford proper armor, or that you accidentally shot innocent people, or that you got mad/frustrated/threw a psychotic tantrum and went on a door-to-door killing spree because a fellow soldier got shot. You're the military. Fix it. Don't go whining about how soldiers should be respected, prove to me that you're worthy of being respected. WWII vets get my respect, because they didn't have a choice, and whatever else went down, they helped get the job done. Vietnam vets get my respect, because they didn't get their ticker-tape parades when they came home. They were forced by the govt. to do their "duty" and came home to hippies spitting in their faces and persecution due the media getting involved in the war.
Yes, soldiers get bored, they get frustrated with how things are going, with the fact that they haven't seen their families in a long time and won't get to for a long time still, or that their lives are threatened. So help me there are even those that "only joined to see the world, and never expected to have to fight". SUCK IT UP. You're a soldier. You're a representative of the United States military, and your branch is only as strong as its worst members. You've signed on to a military branch, which means everything you do, everything you learn revolves around survival through any means necessary. It does NOT mean bully and abuse POW's. It does NOT mean using your training and weapons for personal vendettas, or letting your rage be channeled through your weapons. It certainly means you lose your excuses for misperceptions and colossal fuck-ups. You are not supposed to take the violence that comes with war personally.
Yeah, I'm a little pissed off at how the War in Iraq is going. I wouldn't have gotten all riled up, but we were watching Anderson Cooper on Larry King Live tonight, and he was talking about how the govt. was so preoccupied with how "smoothly" it was operating just after the hurricane that it forgot there were still bodies in the street and people trying to get help. And then I have to keep hearing this shit in the news about irresponsible soldiers who apparently have some kind of ego problem, and the govt. for the most part is being the same way about the war. "Things are going good, we're making progress." Really? Are you sure? You want to back that up by going yourself to a coffee shop in downtown Baghdad? How safe would you feel, due to the "progress" our military has made?
I talked with a history professor once (casually) about why we went after Saddam not too long after 9/11, and he said, "well, Saddam's been saying he had WMD's for years, and Bush Jr. finally called him on it." He said other stuff that made sense and that I could agree with, but this statement stuck in my mind. Hasn't bin Laden been talking shit for a long time? What about Kim Jong-il and the Pyongyang military buildup?
I don't know. I'm still wondering where Bush got his "Axis of Evil" bit. Has he been watching episodes of The Superfriends between military briefings?
Sorry about the bitching. I just had a stick up my butt about this, and around memorial day, most of what I hear from people is this America is the best bullshit that makes me think our country must be full of Toby Keith-"America: love it or leave it" followers.
posted by BoneDaddy at 10:26 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home