Winning Hearts and Minds, example 29,987

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Disclaimer: Spotted this on SmirkingChimp.com; I have no idea what the source of this video may be, but verified stories coming out of Iraq make this look tame by comparison, so odds are it’s legit. It seems more like a sure-fire method for creating an insurgent, rather than a way to instill a sense of justice. When the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, you’re just asking for rebellion. And when you stick a bunch of kids with guns in the middle of someone else’s civil war and don’t give them the planning, training and tools they need to do their job (whatever the hell that is), you’re just asking for punishments that don’t fit crimes.


Discussion (4)¬

  1. Paul says:

    Agree – it was a stupid thing to do. There are other ways to punish looters – but for wood? That is how you make someone want revenge.

    Disagree – they’re not “kids.” They’re adults. Too many people want to extend their childhood and the attendant behaviors. These people are soldiers, not kids.

    This incident happened before the insurgency/civil war. The soldiers had the training to do their job – defeat an enemy on the battlefield. The civil war came later – and shows why the military has avoided “nation building” like the plague.

    So tell me, anyone – I’ve read the objections to going into Iraq in the first place (but not until after things got messy. We’ve all heard ad nauseum the repeats of Clinton’s Kerry’s etc “Saddam’s a threat and we have to take him out.” Regime change was the objective). Saddam killed hundreds of thousands during his reign – mostly Shia – lots of Kurds, some Sunnis. Tortured and raped kids. Now we have the same situation in Dharfur – but this time it’s Arab Moslems killing African Moslems and Christians. So as I watch the “do something now in Somalia/Dharfur” commercials – I seriously have to look at Iraq and ask “why?”

    Regardless of what goes on there, do we stay out of Dharfur?

  2. Tiffany says:

    That’s painful to watch. That’s exactly why we shouldn’t ever occupy another country when it isn’t absolutely necessary, stuff like this happens. It’s inevitable and all it does is breed hatred toward us.

  3. Kristin says:

    What the hell are we doing over there? Is this what we have our troops doing? It’s time to bring them home NOW.

  4. Doug says:

    That’s the problem – no training.

    The US Armed forces aren’t social workers, police officers, political advisors, or nation builders.

    When Bush ran, he said that the US was not in the business of nation building. And right after 9/11, we began nation-building.

    Instead of exporting terrorists, Afghanistan is now exporting heroin.

    Instead of bringing representative democracy to Iraq, we have ethnic cleansing and militias embracing a country whose goals are to annihilate Israel and the United States.

    The goal of the US Armed Forces is to defend our nation from all threats, foreign and domestic.

    However, because most of the nation’s National Guard was pulled into nation building in a country which would rather join Iran in jyhad against us, Katrina’s damage was far worse than possible.

    Instead of securing the border against contraband smugglers who fire machine guns at Border Patrol officers, the National Guard is used as target practice for jihadist psychopaths.

    Because the Armed Forces do not have a specific target to cleanse of hostile activity, they are incapable of bringing peace to Iraq. This is the same situation the Republicans complained about when Clinton sent our forces into Czechoslovakia as it self-destructed.

    This is the same situation that all those generals Donald Rumsfeld fired warned him about when he sent a half-assed sized force to tame Iraq.

    It’s no wonder this situation is as bulloxed up as it is. Rather than listening to leadership who knows how to take care of, or at least avoid messes like this, Rumsfeld had an ego trip and denied soldiers their armor, prosecuted Marines for using the wrong kind of ammunition on terrorists, and other petty acts of micromanagement godhood so that Rumsfeld could feel like Ares, instead of being Major Frank Burns, incompetent warmongering idiot.