Mike_L wrote:Ah yes, school-building and candy-giving in the wake of shock-and-awe. I guess it all balances out somehow...

A member of the US Airborne School-building Division conducts a teacher-training exercise at GW Bush Elementary in Mosul...

Fallible wrote:'Sorry about that. Here's a carton of orange juice.'

Fallible wrote:Correct, you don't. Thanks for the silly picture though. We don't see enough of those from you.

Skinny Puppy wrote:Visit during an earthquake


Handing out food.


Helping to build schools


Teaching kids how to blow bubbles


Giving humanitarian assistance


High-fives to an Iraqi boy


Handing out candy


Handing out school supplies

MarkP80 wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:Visit during an earthquake


Handing out food.


Helping to build schools


Teaching kids how to blow bubbles




Giving humanitarian assistance


High-fives to an Iraqi boy


Handing out candy


Handing out school supplies

No no no.
US military is evil.
Those kids were forced at gun point to take those pictures, and were later executed.
How dare you imply that there are shades of grey here?
That only means you are pro military and fully support everything they do!

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Willie71 wrote:I want my kids to grow up to be like these heroes:

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=8560
Will, there is something disturbed in people who can explain this away,

I Helped Create ISIS
By Vincent Emanuele

...
When I was stationed in Iraq with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 2003-2005, I didn't know what the repercussions of the war would be, but I knew there would be a reckoning. That retribution, otherwise known as blowback, is currently being experienced around the world (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, France, Tunisia, California, and so on), with no end in sight.

Back then, I routinely saw and participated in obscenities. Of course, the wickedness of the war was never properly recognized in the West. Without question, antiwar organizations attempted to articulate the horrors of the war in Iraq, but the mainstream media, academia and political-corporate forces in the West never allowed for a serious examination of the greatest war crime of the 21st century.

As we patrolled the vast region of Iraq's Al-Anbar Province, throwing MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) trash out of our vehicles, I never contemplated how we would be remembered in history books; I simply wanted to make some extra room in my HUMVEE. Years later, sitting in a Western Civilization history course at university, listening to my professor talk about the cradle of civilization, I thought of MRE garbage on the floor of the Mesopotamian desert.

Examining recent events in Syria and Iraq, I can't help but think of the small kids my fellow marines would pelt with Skittles from those MRE packages. Candies weren't the only objects thrown at the children: water bottles filled with urine, rocks, debris, and various other items were thrown as well. I often wonder how many members of ISIS and various other terrorist organizations recall such events?

Moreover, I think about the hundreds of prisoners we took captive and tortured in makeshift detention facilities staffed by teenagers from Tennessee, New York and Oregon. I never had the misfortune of working in the detention facility, but I remember the stories. I vividly remember the marines telling me about punching, slapping, kicking, elbowing, kneeing and head-butting Iraqis. I remember the tales of sexual torture: forcing Iraqi men to perform sexual acts on each other while marines held knives against their testicles, sometimes sodomizing them with batons.

However, before those abominations could take place, those of us in infantry units had the pleasure of rounding up Iraqis during night raids, zip-tying their hands, black-bagging their heads and throwing them in the back of HUMVEEs and trucks while their wives and kids collapsed to their knees and wailed.
...

willhud9 wrote:See what Willie71 and others still are not understanding is that no one here has ever said that everything the military does is great and every one who serves in the military is some hero to be worshiped.

Those pictures in a link are awful and from what I gather the people responsible have been tried (at least I hope so because I cannot find anything that says they were not).

But does Willie71 and others think those pictures are the ultimate representation of the US military?

You see the accusation of propaganda cuts both ways. Some one can be constantly around anti-military posts and behaviors and ideologies for so long that they be programed to be the same way instead of free thinking and capable of rationalizing that just like an organization there are pros and cons.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iraq-torture-claims-new-allegations-against-british-soldiers-to-go-to-international-criminal-court-9923409.html

Should I judge all British soldiers for the actions of those that engaged in torture, murder, and inhumane ? Should I lambaste Britain for being such an enabling country because it went to war?

Lest anyone forget Canada had the Somalia Affair 23 years ago.

The point being that there are some soldiers that do fucked up things and those soldiers should be penalized by the law for doing those fucked up things and people should recognize that what they did was fucked up.

But that by no means negates every single action by the military nor does it mean when someone supports the actions of a soldier or the support of soldiers that they are pro-military and also supporting the fucked up things done by those soldiers that fucked up. It is a false dilemma to make the argument that supporting the military means unanimous support for everything the military does. There is no evidence of that being the case. And it especially does not mean that those who support the military are indoctrinated to do so. I support the military. I support veterans, and I support the fact that many of them are off overseas doing the bidding of politicians who say they care about them but don't really. But I am not blind to facts, and just because I support our troops does not mean I unanimously agree with everything they do, or every war time decision made by those in charge and I especially have a distaste for inhumane acts of violence against prisoners, women, and children.

It is really, really simple. So there is no explaining anything away. There is a lot of explaining, which is really unfortunate because I know kindergarteners whom already understand how simple this all is.

willhud9 wrote:But that by no means negates every single action by the military...

Willie71 wrote:I want my kids to grow up to be like these heroes:

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=8560
Will, there is something disturbed in people who can explain this away,

willhud9 wrote:
Should I lambaste Britain for being such an enabling country because it went to war?

Lest anyone forget Canada had the Somalia Affair 23 years ago.

Mike_L wrote:It's instructive to look at the net result of a US foreign policy in which military action is the preferred course...

* widespread ruin and turmoil in Iraq
* the genesis of Islamic State in that country
* terror acts against coalition countries
* a refugee crisis creating tensions in Europe