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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Highway Hoss: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Reverend: [qb] Anyone who didn't expect a blood bath when invading and occupying a country like Iraq was deluding themselves. This is urban combat with a deeply entrenched enemy, across a vast area of land where everyone and their auntie has a machine gun close at hand. I don't mean to offend any Americans reading this but yank soldiers are quite possibly the worst equipped and least experienced to deal with this situation. By most accounts they have serious trouble building up trust with the locals, they are gung-ho, reckless and in the words of John Simpson they have a habit of "shooting first and asking who they shot later". Indeed a British army Staff Sergeant once told me that American soldiers are great blokes but when the shooting starts, he'd be much more worried about being shot with a round from an M-16 than an AK-47. So combined with the current administration's apparent lack of any clue as to what they're actually doing or why they're doing it, it's no wonder that there's a steady stream of folded American flags heading back to the states. [/qb][/QUOTE]No offense taken, Reverend; as a matter of fact, many American officers have complained loudly about the lack of adequate training and equipment for US soldiers at the knife's edge. Colonel David Hackworth has been particulary vocal on this subject in his books [i]"About Face", Hazardous Duty"[/i] and [i]"Steel my Soldiers' Hearts"[/i]. The website [URL=http://www.sftt.org]Soldiers for the Truth[/URL] has also been a forum for those soldiers pushing for reform. The biggest problem IMHO has been a collective case of denial concerning the experiences of the Vietnam War by American military and political officials; too many of them tend to treat Vietnam as an anamoly rather than take a hard, objective look at what happened. As I noted in another post, what makes it worse is that the majority of the architects of Bush's pre-emptive war policy are "chickenhawks"; those who scream loudly for war but avoid serving in the military themselves. These policy makers are living in an academic never-never land totally at odds with the reality of the world. BTW this is a failing of both Democrats and Republicans; look at some of Clinton's interventions. As for hearts and minds, too many American troops seem to subscribe to the notion that "If you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." IMHO our collective problem is quite simply that since the majority of Americans are descended from or are immigrants from other countries who came to the US for a new life, we tend to have a dim view of the rest of the world, seeking to either isolate ourselves from it or change it so that it is more to our liking. Another factor is our history of "Manifest Destiny"; American history have always had an expansionist streak. Look at the Mexican and Spanish-American wars, for example. We figure that if we can tame the "Wild West" and the indians, we can tame the rest of the world and its natives as well. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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