Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Try Ernie Pyle. If you point is "wars fucks up young men who fight them" Mr. Pyle proved that conclusively in the 40s. still, back then we realized we had to be at war you know, because people were trying to kill us and all.
Maybe if the DNC can advance the CAIR agenda more sucessfully, we'll see that we don't need to fear the Jihadis?
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Probably before Pyle. Heck, Homer mentioned how the Greeks dragged the body of Ajax around Troy after they killed him.
What is your point? That the Diarist was an asshole before he got to Iraq? Were the blogs that Diane and Slave cite, all concerned with truth and accuracy over the statements of an anonymous grunt in a pro-war magazine, also troubled by the lies told by McCain about being able to stroll in the main market of Baghdad? Or about what happened to the market the days after the photo op?
War warps people -- good wars and bad wars. That's a pretty good reason, IMO, for avoiding unnecessary wars. I had a history professor at the square state land grant college I attended tell our 20th Century World History class about his experiences as a tank commander in WWII, and how clean-cut corn fed 19 year olds from Nebraska under his command would shoot their flamethrowers at Waffen SS troops who attempted to surrender in France. And my father's photo album from his Navy days has pictures of Marines on Iwo Jima after the island fell posing with comically-arranged dead Japanese soldiers (it also has a postcard received from some chick who is Not Mom with a joke about Kipling, but that's a different story). I happen to think that this is a sacrifice that was worth it in WWII and Korea (easy for me to say), and in Afghanistan, too. I don't think that it is worth it in Iraq, although now that we're there, we can't simply leave the place willy-nilly. But that, like "I'm sorry, dear boy. I've never Kippled." is a different story.
Bottom line -- this guy (unlike any of the apologists from the Weekly Standard) is a real 11 Bravo who appears to have been telling the truth (have any of the LGF types refuted the playing with the skulls of kids or killing dogs stories?) about what he has seen. Does it have anything to do with whether being in Iraq is a good or bad thing? Maybe not, but it illustrates a cost of war that we don't always think about -- what happens to our soldiers when they are doing their jobs.
