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U.S. Marines Urinate On Dead Bodies In Afghanistan

:lamo


Now that's funny right there. Infantry Marines are taught and trained to steal everything that isn't nailed down and sometimes stuff that is nailed down but inadequately guarded. That's how we get gear.

We also lie all the time:
Colonel out "visiting the troops to buck up their morale": "Hey there devil-dog! How's it going"
Marine who hates everyone above the rank of Sergeant and who just spent his 6 hours of sleep time cleaning because the F'ing Colonel was coming: "Going fine, Sir."

We cheat all the time too - you think calling in air support in a small arms engagement is fair? Of course it's not - but screw those guys, they have it coming.


You seem to have fallen for the propaganda. The more accurate version is "A U.S. Marine Must Never Be Caught A) Lying to those who don't want the truth, B)Stealing from the other services, Or C) Cheating in a fight in such a way as to draw censure". The only thing that's fully accurate is the last - no Marine is allowed to sully the Corps by being caught - hence these guys will get what they have coming to them irregardless.

no, they do other things. I've seen them play with the bodies, for example. Guys watching "kill tv" will often have a running bookie on whether or not a guy will make it or become paste.


Or they live in a Locked Up Chain Of Command who doesn't allow them any relaxation on deployment, so they go home, become alcoholics, and beat their wives and children. :shrug:

Well, CP, I know we don't always agree, but that was some good **** and I appreciate you keepin it real. It's about bedtime for me, stay safe bro.
 
Well, CP, I know we don't always agree, but that was some good **** and I appreciate you keepin it real. It's about bedtime for me, stay safe bro.

well, that's the trick of it - what you see those Marines doing on the video? :shrug: that's just real Marines in real Combat. the problem is, America doesn't like real combat; America prefers to live in Happy Land where Real Combat is more like movies from the 1950's.

"Ah! Gosh darn it, he winged me, Sergeant!"

"It's okay son, our excellent medic will be here to get you evacuated ricky ticky"

"Gee wiz sarge, I'm just so disappointed I won't be able to give more to America."

"Lock up that complaining, private; according to the script writers you will meet and fall in love with a beautiful nurse who can't resist your boyish charm and rakish ways, before developing a hit broadway show based on how much you love snow in Vermont."



et. al. So we see a video of a guy throwing a puppy off a cliff, or peeing on a dead body, and we have a collective hyperventilating Oh My Gosh You Can't DOoooooo That! period of "shock" where everyone in charge either A) pretends to be shocked or B) demonstrates naivite by acting as though Happy Land were the reality rather than combat on the ground.
 
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well, that's the trick of it - what you see those Marines doing on the video? :shrug: that's just real Marines in real Combat. the problem is, America doesn't like real combat; America prefers to live in Happy Land where Real Combat is more like movies from the 1950's.

"Ah! Gosh darn it, he winged me, Sergeant!"

"It's okay son, our excellent medic will be here to get you evacuated ricky ticky"

"Gee wiz sarge, I'm just so disappointed I won't be able to give more to America."

"Lock up that complaining, private; according to the script writers you will meet and fall in love with a beautiful nurse who can't resist your boyish charm and rakish ways..."

et. al. So we see a video of a guy throwing a puppy off a cliff, or peeing on a dead body, and we have a collective hyperventilating Oh My Gosh You Can't DOoooooo That! period of "shock" where everyone in charge either A) pretends to be shocked or B) demonstrates naivite by acting as though Happy Land were the reality rather than combat on the ground.

My position throughout this whole thread has been this:

The pissing on the dead body was wrong, but hardly surprising. I'm not too worked up about that.

On the other hand, taking a video and allowing it to be somehow uploaded onto the Interwebz is patently idiotic.

What I AM worked up about is this notion that your opinion somehow doesn't count if you've never put on a uniform or served in combat. Both me and you realize that war brutalizes and dehumanizes the individual. That's fine. I recognize that. That doesn't take away from the fact that throwing a puppy over a cliff is ****ed up and the dude needs help. I mean, what the **** ever happened to "personal responsibility" and being accountable for your own actions?
 
My position throughout this whole thread has been this:

The pissing on the dead body was wrong, but hardly surprising. I'm not too worked up about that.

On the other hand, taking a video and allowing it to be somehow uploaded onto the Interwebz is patently idiotic.

agreed.

What I AM worked up about is this notion that your opinion somehow doesn't count if you've never put on a uniform or served in combat. Both me and you realize that war brutalizes and dehumanizes the individual. That's fine. I recognize that. That doesn't take away from the fact that throwing a puppy over a cliff is ****ed up and the dude needs help. I mean, what the **** ever happened to "personal responsibility" and being accountable for your own actions?

that doesn't mean you are ****ed up and need help. It means you have made the necessary mental adjustments to survive with sanity intact. You only need help if you are unable to reintegrate. Took me a while - for example I didn't quite understand at first why my civilian friends didn't think that rape was funny. :shrug: but I self-medicated with alcohol, and spent some good time playing with my son.

that's the point of contention here - while generally folks are agreeing here that these guys have to go down now for the good of the team... what you see in that video is them keeping their sanity. they've had to do that because we put them there. It's like the old story of a guy who has to steal food so his kids can eat - punish him if you must to enforce rule of law, but don't pretend you have the standing to morally judge him for his actions. The world you live in is artificial and easy compared to his.
 
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So, today, along with the "race card," the "race card" card, we now have the "war is hell, you have never served so don't judge our troops" card.

It's funny to me that the people who are first in line to put military personnel on an untouchable pedestal, are also the first in line to let this kinda **** slide. Once again, whatever happened to HONOR, Courage, and Commitment? Do you consider these acts honorable? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you that pissing on dead corpses is not ethical behavior, whether it's an expected or normal response or not.

Do you stand for a military that adheres to high moral and ethical standards (not to mention not doing stupid **** like taking a video and uploading this **** onto Youtube)?

Why are there so many low-expectation-havin mother****ers in this thread?

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? They have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the pissed on bodies, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what they know. That ****ing with corpses, while tragic, probably saved lives. And their existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want them on that wall, you need them on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. They use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain this to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that they provide, and then questions the manner in which they provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.


Gotta love Col. Jessup. :mrgreen:

Anyway, SB, you have to be real and admit that it sure is easy to sit back and criticize when you've never been through it. To be fair, I don't have any idea what it's like any more than you do. I guess the difference is I think there's merit in saying you can't know what it's like unless you've lived it, where you, I guess, do not. /shrug
 
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? They have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the pissed on bodies, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what they know. That ****ing with corpses, while tragic, probably saved lives. And their existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want them on that wall, you need them on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. They use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain this to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that they provide, and then questions the manner in which they provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

If that's what you think I've been doing this whole time, then you haven't been reading closely. I am not weeping for the Taliban, nor do I curse the individual Marines in the video.

I'm all about keepin' it real. That's what cpwill did, and guess what, I appreciate his insight and he brings up some pretty valid points. My problem is with people who pretend that military personnel are like boy scouts, on the one hand, and put them up on an untouchable pedestal, while on the other hand letting **** slide when unethical behavior comes up, and subsequently playing what i called the "war is hell" card.

You can't have it both ways. Either you acknowledge that the military we love and the personnel who serve in it are imperfect, human people, warts and all, that the ethics and moral standards the military claims are absolute BS, and move on (which some people here have done, which allows them to keep their expectations low), or you hold on to those ethical and moral standards and expect the troops to adhere to them, unrealistic though they may be.

Anyway, SB, you have to be real and admit that it sure is easy to sit back and criticize when you've never been through it. To be fair, I don't have any idea what it's like any more than you do. I guess the difference is I think there's merit in saying you can't know what it's like unless you've lived it, where you, I guess, do not. /shrug

:shrug:That's bull****, X. People criticize all the time without having faced the same situations. It happens all the time on this damn forum, from criticisms of President Obama all the way on down to criticisms of the poor for being lazy bums. This despite the fact that the vast majority of people on this forum have not, and will never be, President of the United states, and many of us have not been poor. In fact, for those who criticize the poor, many of those same people go on to talk about taking "personal responsibility" and individual choices - much as I just did. And their criticisms are often not without merit, despite the fact that they are judging people who are facing situations that they themselves never did.

If "you can't know it unless you lived it," then by extension you're essentially arguing that all criticisms of the President are illegitimate and invalid as none of us know how tough it is to run the country from the Oval office. That's absolute hogwash.
 
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My position throughout this whole thread has been this:

The pissing on the dead body was wrong, but hardly surprising. I'm not too worked up about that.

On the other hand, taking a video and allowing it to be somehow uploaded onto the Interwebz is patently idiotic.

What I AM worked up about is this notion that your opinion somehow doesn't count if you've never put on a uniform or served in combat. Both me and you realize that war brutalizes and dehumanizes the individual. That's fine. I recognize that. That doesn't take away from the fact that throwing a puppy over a cliff is ****ed up and the dude needs help. I mean, what the **** ever happened to "personal responsibility" and being accountable for your own actions?

That about sums it up in a nutshell what most think about the whole situation.
 
agreed.



that doesn't mean you are ****ed up and need help. It means you have made the necessary mental adjustments to survive with sanity intact. You only need help if you are unable to reintegrate. Took me a while - for example I didn't quite understand at first why my civilian friends didn't think that rape was funny. :shrug: but I self-medicated with alcohol, and spent some good time playing with my son.

that's the point of contention here - while generally folks are agreeing here that these guys have to go down now for the good of the team... what you see in that video is them keeping their sanity. they've had to do that because we put them there. It's like the old story of a guy who has to steal food so his kids can eat - punish him if you must to enforce rule of law, but don't pretend you have the standing to morally judge him for his actions. The world you live in is artificial and easy compared to his.

I can agree with you right up until about this point.

Can I morally judge him for his actions? I'd say that depends on the action. Desecrating and dehumanizing the body of the enemy, I can understand why it happened, but I still contend that it's morally wrong. But it's not something I'm overly outraged about.

Throwing a puppy over a cliff? The **** is up with that? There's absolutely no excuse for that kind of behavior. There's simply no need for it. Desecrate the body of the enemy if that's what makes you feel sane, but what precisely is the justification for throwing a puppy over the cliff? You need to harm innocent life as well to feel sane, too? I'm sorry, that just doesn't compute.

What about real war crimes, like when guys just lose it and **** like My Lai happens? While we can recognize and try to understand what happened to produce such a behavior, the behavior itself is still absolutely inexcusable. You gonna tell me I'm still not in a position to morally judge those individuals even then? At some point, shouldn't "personal responsibility" - the phrase conservatives know and love - kick in? Most of all for those who serve in the most respected institution in the country?
 
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no, they do other things. I've seen them play with the bodies, for example. Guys watching "kill tv" will often have a running bookie on whether or not a guy will make it or become paste.


Or they live in a Locked Up Chain Of Command who doesn't allow them any relaxation on deployment, so they go home, become alcoholics, and beat their wives and children. :shrug:

None of which is right, none of which is proper, and if you get caught on tape doing it, you are going to get slammed for it. Making excuses for nonprofessional behavior is a piss poor way of arguing. We learned back when we are 5 years old that "because Johnny did it first" is not a valid excuse.
 
If that's what you think I've been doing this whole time, then you haven't been reading closely. I am not weeping for the Taliban, nor do I curse the individual Marines in the video.

I'm all about keepin' it real. That's what cpwill did, and guess what, I appreciate his insight and he brings up some pretty valid points. My problem is with people who pretend that military personnel are like boy scouts, on the one hand, and put them up on an untouchable pedestal, while on the other hand letting **** slide when unethical behavior comes up, and subsequently playing what i called the "war is hell" card.

You can't have it both ways. Either you acknowledge that the military we love and the personnel who serve in it are imperfect, human people, warts and all, that the ethics and moral standards the military claims are absolute BS, and move on (which some people here have done, which allows them to keep their expectations low), or you hold on to those ethical and moral standards and expect the troops to adhere to them, unrealistic though they may be.



:shrug:That's bull****, X. People criticize all the time without having faced the same situations. It happens all the time on this damn forum, from criticisms of President Obama all the way on down to criticisms of the poor for being lazy bums. This despite the fact that the vast majority of people on this forum have not, and will never be, President of the United states, and many of us have not been poor. In fact, for those who criticize the poor, many of those same people go on to talk about taking "personal responsibility" and individual choices - much as I just did. And their criticisms are often not without merit, despite the fact that they are judging people who are facing situations that they themselves never did.

If "you can't know it unless you lived it," then by extension you're essentially arguing that all criticisms of the President are illegitimate and invalid as none of us know how tough it is to run the country from the Oval office. That's absolute hogwash.

Before I forget, I'd just like to add pregnant women who get abortions to this list - a group plenty of men who have never been pregnant have absolutely no qualms about condemning. Do you agree that women who get late-term abortions, or women who use abortion as a method of birth control, are engaging in immoral behavior? If so, what precisely gives you the standing to voice such an opinion, if you've never been a pregnant women? Is that not an analogous situation to this one?
 
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Stillballin is on a roll. Im awed. Great posts.
 
This is so freakin ridiculous I can barely grasp it. In Nam it was common practice to take ears for trophy's and wearing a near necklace wasn't that uncommon. As for cameras it was also common to cut off the heads of a couple of dead VC, and take turns holding them by the hair in front of you for pics. It's WAR, these little celebration things are Good for moral and it really helps blow off steam. I am sick to death of sniveling little lib scum cowards sitting in their easy chairs at home judging soldiers.

Everyone is aware of the disgusting practices and disregard for any life of the US in Vietnam. Having that televised across the world was the very thing which lost you that war even among your own people.

Due to that you have tried since then to keep camera's out and give the pretence you act with some honour in war.

I accept you soldiers are saying combat soldiers go psychotic, that may be so. It is also a good reason for less war.

Someone suggested only combat soldiers talk on this as only they would understand. I suggest we take that idea and use it towards our foes and gain the same understanding of their irrational behaviour hence allowing us the opportunity to stop this constant war which I hear from people on this thread 99% of the time makes people psychopaths.
 
:slaps forehead: stop the war!!!


why didn't we think of that before?


okay, you call Crazy Muslim Headquarters, and I'll start making a cake for the end-of-war party.


Wait - they're going to be cool with this whole "Give up on the demands of your God and just pretend like the last 300 years of Islamic history didn't happen" thing, right?








really. it amazes me. has ever a populace before this thought that wars are things that end when one side becomes bored of watching it on television?
 
:slaps forehead: stop the war!!!


why didn't we think of that before?


okay, you call Crazy Muslim Headquarters, and I'll start making a cake for the end-of-war party.


Wait - they're going to be cool with this whole "Give up on the demands of your God and just pretend like the last 300 years of Islamic history didn't happen" thing, right?








really. it amazes me. has ever a populace before this thought that wars are things that end when one side becomes bored of watching it on television?

Got any more straw men to break out? Want to adress the points people are making?
 
Everyone is aware of the disgusting practices and disregard for any life of the US in Vietnam. Having that televised across the world was the very thing which lost you that war even among your own people.

Due to that you have tried since then to keep camera's out and give the pretence you act with some honour in war.

I accept you soldiers are saying combat soldiers go psychotic, that may be so. It is also a good reason for less war.

Someone suggested only combat soldiers talk on this as only they would understand. I suggest we take that idea and use it towards our foes and gain the same understanding of their irrational behaviour hence allowing us the opportunity to stop this constant war which I hear from people on this thread 99% of the time makes people psychopaths.

The vast majority of our soldiers do act with honor. When they do not and are cuaght, they are heavily punished.
 
Well, when we get avatar robots so that infantrymen no longer have to go into combat, let me know and we can get to work on stopping it from becoming normal behavior. Until then, our ground combat veterans will be largely young men who themselves risk death or dismemberment, and will react as human beings have to those stresses since the dawn of time.

and all soldiers love and respect their chain of command, and are sure that their leadership has their best interests at heart. Perhaps they could celebrate with a checkers tournament? cmon man.

We had a suicide attack once by three guys chucking grenades and wearing vests (well, I say 'we', but I was part of the QRF), the first two guys were ventilated by everyone turning and firing en masse (one wounded an IP), at which point the third guy decided that he was maybe less dedicated to The Jihad than he had thought he was, and turned to run. He hopped a wall, accidentally triggering his own vest, and body parts showered back over. It was pretty hilarious. One of the parts that came back was an arm from the elbow down - which guys picked up and shook hands with, challenged each other to duels, etc. Their Lt let them for a while until it was time to put a lid on it - which was the right call. If you don't let guys blow off steam after a fight, you will find that they bottle and can explode in manners much worse than pissing on dead people.

you are a combat psychiatrist?

indeed. very naughty. then you can explain to them the importance of maintaining proper grooming habits and not wearing or using non-issued equipment while on a two week patrol

Gotta run now, i'll google map it later

I'm not a combat psychiatrist, but I don't need to be to make a call if I think something is wrong. Obviously its not an official diagnosis, but it would be like when one of my Soldiers showed up to the motor pool before a mission and he was piss drunk, this combined with other incidents that happened before made me think "This kid's probably an alcoholic." Now can I diagnosis alcoholism the same way an Army doctor or other trained specialist can? Of course not. But its part of my authority and responsibility to make my concerns known to my chain of my command, along with my PSG and his Squad Leader in the Commander's office. Why? Because I believed he needed someone who could make that medical diagnosis to take a look at him, and I wanted a Command referral to ASAP(Army Substance Abuse Program) to get him help.

Same thing with combat stress or any kind of negative thing affecting my troops, I obviously can't diagnosis them but I can refer them or ask someone with the authority to refer them if I believe something is up. That's part of my job to look after the Soldiers. And if my Commander said no for whatever reason, and I still felt strongly about it and my NCOs felt the same, we'd take that guy aside and have an informal or a formal counseling session. The goal being not to punish him, like if I caught someone pissing on a body my first thought wouldn't be towards punishment, but rather to nip a potentially huge problem in the bud before it goes.

Now every situation is different, I couldn't say what I would have done if one of my Soldiers picked up a guy's arm and started playing with it. But certainly at the forefront of my mind would be taking care of these Soldiers, which means asking questions like "This is guy OK mentally" and if I think "Yes or maybe" I need to think how to proceed. Perhaps that LT made the right call considering the situation, and he felt they needed a chance to detox, who knows. I know the book, regs, and superior commanders if asked for the "official" answer would say hell no to the extreme, but I've mentioned before here I don't always follow those like any good officer in my opinion should. I'm not here to be a walking regulation.

Using your example I think I would have allowed them to laugh and the absurdity and the irony of a guy blowing his own vest while trying to escape, but once body parts start getting played with its something else entirely. But who knows I wasn't there.

I've got a guy in my squad, an old ranger type who spent most of his military career in the rangers before transferring for health reasons to the truck driving field. He has a morbid sense of humor, like how he chuckles when he talks about how when having to put the bodies of the enemy into body bags after rigor mortis set in, they'd have to tie their arms and legs together to keep their limbs from popping back out into the position they were in when they died. And laughing at how if some reporter saw these bodies they'd think they were shot execution style because of the bindings. I understand he needed that humor to get him through that and other morbid tasks, but at the same time he also suffers from the memories of those days. We did have to take him to the hospital once for some serious self inflicted injuries one time.

My point being, I understand the humor as a common way to get over the immediate insanity of the whole situation you find yourself in, but in the long term it may drag heavily on your mind how cavalier you were at those times because the parts of your mind that were losing their **** were suppressed, but they can come back over the years with a vengeance. I want these Soldiers to be dealing with this craziness and stress as healthy as possible in both the present and the future. And if I believe that while playing with body parts, or pissing on bodies, can offer some short term relief but may lead to more problems down the road. I'm going to look for a better solution, which in no way will be perfect. Some of the best doctors in the world can't figure out PTSD and other combat trauma, so what can LT do? Well I'll do what I can, and when I say "I'll do" I mean we'll all do. Me, NCOs, the Soldiers themselves, watching each other watching their leadership, all of us together getting through it as safety as possible and with our minds intact as much as possible so the ghosts don't haunt us.

Like you said, its been a reaction to that stress since the dawn of time, but if I think there's a healthier way I'm going to pursue it. And by that I just don't mean my thinking alone, there are all kinds of resources out there for this problem and those will be my weapons against it.
 
I'm not a combat psychiatrist, but I don't need to be to make a call if I think something is wrong. Obviously its not an official diagnosis, but it would be like when one of my Soldiers showed up to the motor pool before a mission and he was piss drunk, this combined with other incidents that happened before made me think "This kid's probably an alcoholic." Now can I diagnosis alcoholism the same way an Army doctor or other trained specialist can? Of course not. But its part of my authority and responsibility to make my concerns known to my chain of my command, along with my PSG and his Squad Leader in the Commander's office. Why? Because I believed he needed someone who could make that medical diagnosis to take a look at him, and I wanted a Command referral to ASAP(Army Substance Abuse Program) to get him help.

Same thing with combat stress or any kind of negative thing affecting my troops, I obviously can't diagnosis them but I can refer them or ask someone with the authority to refer them if I believe something is up. That's part of my job to look after the Soldiers. And if my Commander said no for whatever reason, and I still felt strongly about it and my NCOs felt the same, we'd take that guy aside and have an informal or a formal counseling session. The goal being not to punish him, like if I caught someone pissing on a body my first thought wouldn't be towards punishment, but rather to nip a potentially huge problem in the bud before it goes.

the problem being, what are you going to do once you have pulled 38 of your 40 soldiers out for psychiatric treatment, and it's just you and your platoon sergeant?

:) "Warning: Combat May Be Hazardous To Your Health" :lol:


Now every situation is different, I couldn't say what I would have done if one of my Soldiers picked up a guy's arm and started playing with it. But certainly at the forefront of my mind would be taking care of these Soldiers, which means asking questions like "This is guy OK mentally" and if I think "Yes or maybe" I need to think how to proceed. Perhaps that LT made the right call considering the situation, and he felt they needed a chance to detox, who knows. I know the book, regs, and superior commanders if asked for the "official" answer would say hell no to the extreme, but I've mentioned before here I don't always follow those like any good officer in my opinion should. I'm not here to be a walking regulation.

well, yeah. I wonder if the people at the top have any idea that ROE's that are clearly not connected to reality will simply be ignored - and that therefore publishing them have effects opposite of their intent?

Using your example I think I would have allowed them to laugh and the absurdity and the irony of a guy blowing his own vest while trying to escape, but once body parts start getting played with its something else entirely. But who knows I wasn't there.

I've got a guy in my squad, an old ranger type who spent most of his military career in the rangers before transferring for health reasons to the truck driving field. He has a morbid sense of humor, like how he chuckles when he talks about how when having to put the bodies of the enemy into body bags after rigor mortis set in, they'd have to tie their arms and legs together to keep their limbs from popping back out into the position they were in when they died. And laughing at how if some reporter saw these bodies they'd think they were shot execution style because of the bindings. I understand he needed that humor to get him through that and other morbid tasks, but at the same time he also suffers from the memories of those days. We did have to take him to the hospital once for some serious self inflicted injuries one time.

well that happens sometimes too. I've lost a few to suicide. But you're spot on about the sense of humor - I don't think I know a single infantry vet without it. Which helps too - even suicide can have it's funny side as well, on occasion.

My point being, I understand the humor as a common way to get over the immediate insanity of the whole situation you find yourself in, but in the long term it may drag heavily on your mind how cavalier you were at those times because the parts of your mind that were losing their **** were suppressed, but they can come back over the years with a vengeance. I want these Soldiers to be dealing with this craziness and stress as healthy as possible in both the present and the future. And if I believe that while playing with body parts, or pissing on bodies, can offer some short term relief but may lead to more problems down the road.

:shrug: maybe so. These guys are probably less concerned about the next 6 years than they are the next 6 months - and rightly so.

Like you said, its been a reaction to that stress since the dawn of time, but if I think there's a healthier way I'm going to pursue it. And by that I just don't mean my thinking alone, there are all kinds of resources out there for this problem and those will be my weapons against it.

you all get hammered together, sing songs to your dead, and go haze the boots.
 
Got any more straw men to break out? Want to adress the points people are making?

guess you missed the post:

alexa said:
I suggest we take that idea and use it towards our foes and gain the same understanding of their irrational behaviour hence allowing us the opportunity to stop this constant war which I hear from people on this thread 99% of the time makes people psychopaths.

it's silly. takes two to stop a war.
 
My thoughts too. It makes me wonder if we lost 58,000 of my generation for nothing.

Am not anti-military either. I remember being in boot camp marching and singing we were going to kill Viet Cong and we were all bursting at the seam to do just that.
I just don't about that war now.
World War II was just and Pearl Harbor still angers me even though I was not born yet.


Wiluxury luxery of time and many sleepless nights reflecting on this I think Nam was a place to have a proxy war with certain countries that wanted communisim to spread and gain power worldwide. It was more of a holding action than anything else. In the end communism imploded with a little help from Reagan and I am not entirely sure if the war really gained us alot in the long term but it's one of those what if things we will never know. All I can really say is God bless all our fallen troops that did their duty when called.


Not to wonder off on a tangent but I read statistics on Vietnam Vets and the fact that Vietnam veterans have a lower unemployment rate than our non-vet age group made me wonder about all those guys at the stoplights with signs saying Vietnam Vet, Anything Helps.

I think many of those guys are like the blind beggar that takes his sunglasses off after he gets enough money in his cup and walks off to the local bar.
 
With the luxury luxery of time and many sleepless nights reflecting on this I think Nam was a place to have a proxy war with certain countries that wanted communisim to spread and gain power worldwide. It was more of a holding action than anything else. In the end communism imploded with a little help from Reagan and I am not entirely sure if the war really gained us alot in the long term but it's one of those what if things we will never know. All I can really say is God bless all our fallen troops that did their duty when called.

Somehow the above ended up inserted in your post, beats me, LOL
 
Everyone is aware of the disgusting practices and disregard for any life of the US in Vietnam. Having that televised across the world was the very thing which lost you that war even among your own people.

Due to that you have tried since then to keep camera's out and give the pretence you act with some honour in war.

I accept you soldiers are saying combat soldiers go psychotic, that may be so. It is also a good reason for less war.

Someone suggested only combat soldiers talk on this as only they would understand. I suggest we take that idea and use it towards our foes and gain the same understanding of their irrational behaviour hence allowing us the opportunity to stop this constant war which I hear from people on this thread 99% of the time makes people psychopaths.
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"disregard for human life"? You have no idea do you, war is far beyond disregard for human life. It is thirsting to kill your enemy that has killed your buddies and taking great delight seeing their dead bodies bloat in the sun. It must be nice in your comfy little world and you should get on your knees and thank all the soldiers through out history that let you have your sweet little life.
 
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