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http://news.yahoo.com/karzai-condemns-v ... 58800.html I like the opinions on this board because it is so diverse and that is why I started this thread. This issue is really going virule. My take ok so you can shoot the fuckers in the head but don't piss on them. But the young Marine says this piece of shit just shot my buddy in the back. Oh but we can't offend the Muslims to accomplish our objectives. But we are killing them and you don't think this is objectionable to them? Now these K*ds are going to be persicuted for these actions of a K*D wired up on combat in a life and death situation being a K*D. WTF if these people who are out for these K*ds heads want to avoid this shit quit gitting into and escalating these wars. What I really want to say is GO MARINES HO RAH

People do unacceptable things in war. They were Pissed. I remember when I was fourteen and playing football. I was at the fieldhouse and a former soldier brought some pitchers he had taken in Vietnam. It showed about ten decapitated vietcong heads on sticks with their penise's stuck in their mouth. Also remember pics of what appears of them buried alive with just their head sticking up. I have no idea who perpetrated these atrocities. I was told the enemy would do the same to the Americans. War makes people do strange things that are not normally spoken about. It really turned my stomach then and continues to do so to this day. It is something you will not forget.

The "Greatest Generation" got away with much more egregious shenanigans, but if Grandpa had any atrocity pictures or the skull of a "Jap" he killed, he didn't post them on YouTube or MyFace....he kept them hidden in the back of his sock drawer behind his 1950's vintage Playboy magazines or the in the attic squirreled away with the photographs of that "geesha" he banged for a month for just a couple cases of K-rations.

If grandpa served in Europe in '45-'47, he might have had to dodge 'werewolf' guerilla attacks, but he got a lot female company in exchange for nylon stockings and candy bars and cigarrettes.

Oh, when I watch the film "Black Market," and think of Marlene Deitrich purring "do you vant to see my porcelein figure?".....

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"I'm not one those pathetic lietuenant colonels working a silly civilian job, working out two hours a day trying to reclaim a body they lost 20 years ago and four hours a night completing War College by correspondence in a sad attempt at colonel. Tyler Durden told us [i]'Self improvement is masturbation[/i].' My mid-life crisis is going to involve a new sports car, or the zoftig redhead with daddy issues in accounting, or better yet, racking up frequent flyer miles going to Pattaya."

Shakespeare got it, as with most things. King Henry gives the following speech after learning that Bardolph, an old friend of his, is to be executed for stealing a valuable item from a church as the English army fights its way across the French countryside:

KING HENRY V:
"We would have all such offenders so cut off: and we
give express charge, that in our marches through the
country, there be nothing compelled from the
villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the
French upbraided or abused in disdainful language;
for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the
gentler gamester is the soonest winner."
--Shakespeare, Henry V, III.6.

The reason to respect your enemy is the hope that they will accord you the same courtesy.

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"Buy the ticket, take the ride." --Hunter S. Thompson

We don't make much of the "Greatest Generation" taking watches off of live prisoners and dead corpses. Or using their bayonets to remove the gold fillings off of dead (and sometimes dying) enemy soldiers.

However, three generations later, we have youth who feel it is more important to be famous (or infamous) than good and videotape and photograph themselves behaving badly, and then "share" them with their "friends", even if their friends are just people at the other end of a computer connection that they have never really met.

On the other hand, grandpa didn't have to worry about winning the "hearts and minds" of the Germans, or the Japanese, or the Italians. He had no doubts about the validity of his cause.

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"I'm not one those pathetic lietuenant colonels working a silly civilian job, working out two hours a day trying to reclaim a body they lost 20 years ago and four hours a night completing War College by correspondence in a sad attempt at colonel. Tyler Durden told us [i]'Self improvement is masturbation[/i].' My mid-life crisis is going to involve a new sports car, or the zoftig redhead with daddy issues in accounting, or better yet, racking up frequent flyer miles going to Pattaya."

Good points - I would submit that we are highly unlikely to change the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, Afgans, Iranians, as well as the Middle East as a whole.

I would also submit that we make the mistake of believing that the rest of the world acts and processes information as we do in the USA - not the case.

(One small example - we are over in Saudi Arabia, defending them, Kuait, et al in the 1st Desert War - our troops were told to:

Really downplay any [Christian] religous services (and I'm pretty close to being an agnostic)

Show no Christian medals, cross', etc

Because the above actions might "offend" the muslim population - of the countries we are sending our money and letting our troops die to defend )

"Demonize the enemy"--once that's accomplished, anything can flow that's not tightly controlled. Anybody remember My Lai?--one unfortunate adventure from our past.

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"A man accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general gratification of mankind"--Dr. Johnson
"Amen, brother"-ED