"Our troop's time is better spent doing this or that rather than rescuing him/her."
Oh, STFU.
Our military, which you statistically never bothered to join, takes pride you will never have, rescuing civilians from harm, no matter their ideology.
Idiot commenters like that fail to grasp the basic concept that our military is designed to protect us. All of us.
Not just here, but there as well.
That's what they do. We do (er, I did heh). Kill people, break things, and protect Americans. Not leftist Americans, not conservative Americans, not American Indian African Irish Indo-Chinese Jamaican Arabian Pashtu Tobrukian Americans.
Just Americans.
Here, or there.
So give us a goddamned break on the You-Think-You-Know-Best-What-The-Military-Should-Spend-It's-Time-Doing-Thing.
Unless you have 4 stars on your epaulettes. Then I might listen. But probably not, I have an issue with authority figures.
Updated with revised and extended remarks.
First off, I'm not calling anyone a chickenhawk. However, it helps to have an insider's view when telling the military what you think they ought to be doing.
Sorry for the misperception.
Second, perhaps the phrase "they like it" was the wrong one to use. "They take pride in it" would probably have been more appropriate. For example, if my ship had been tasked to rescue a sinking yacht filled with liberals, and we brought them all back safely, we would have taken immense pride in a successful mission.
Third, the whole notion that hostage rescuing is a waste of military manpower and resources is specious in my view. The job over there is to kill terrorists. Terrorists are taking people hostage. If the military gets a tip on a hostage's whereabouts, and a team is sent in to rescue them, isn't that also an opportunity to kill terrorists? I honestly don't believe that the military is actively looking for these people, otherwise we'd have stories of them busting down doors all over the place in house-to-house searches. Which, btw, I would think would be a waste. After all, the CPT people were rescued after the military received a tip, not from a massive search effort.
Finally, I keep reading that people like Carrol shouldn't be over there in the first place, or, if they are, they should ride with military units. Well, that's not for me to decide. Does anyone read Mark Steyn? He toured postwar Iraq, and wrote about it, and he didn't ride with the military either. He had a driver/translator. I don't recall anyone saying he had no business being there. If he had been kidnapped, I will go out on a limb and speculate that no one would have claimed rescuing him would have been a waste.
There are thousands of things going on in the world that are a waste of manpower and resources for the military. My view is that rescuing hostages from terrorists isn't one of them. Unless it can be proven, of course, that it's a bona-fide Giuliana Srgena setup.
I now return you to your Vinnie bashing. I still heart you all.
1
"they (er, we) like doing it"? What a fucking joke. I'm an infantryman with the 2nd battalion, 22nd infantry regiment with the 10th Mountain Division. Our sector is the Abu Ghraib province, bordering the al-Anbar province about 30 minutes humvee's drive outside Baghdad. My job as of now is PSD for our battalion's command group. We drive around the battalion commander, sergeant major, XO, and ops major. Ok, none of them have 4 stars on their chest, but it's as close as I'm ever going to get.
We spent almost a full month looking around the areas in our sectors (we're responsible for 2) where known kidnapping cells operate for this strumpet. Maybe I shouldn't say "spent", more like "wasted" a month. We had pushed the insurgency in our area back several weeks in operational capability. In the time we wasted looking for this idiot, the insurgency was allowed to restock and refit their cache's. So we had to spend the next month doing raid after raid busting up cells that had regrown. Which would have been unneccessary if we had never been sent on a retarded mission to find this chick.
Civilians and reporters over here know the risks. They leave the wire knowing what kind of danger they're in at all times. Jill Carroll left Baghdad alone, unarmed, and disguised as a muslim woman. But time after time they make the same mistakes over and over again. It's just a matter of time before they get themselves kidnapped, and then waste our time when we have to go look for them.
Do I take pride in finding civilians? Hell no. And that's straight from a grunt's mouth that's on the ground, who was involved in the search for Jill Carroll, and also found the French civilian engineer Bernard Planche.
Posted by: Ryan at April 02, 2006 05:20 AM (aLiCo)
2
Sorry you feel that way Ryan, but you can't expect every day to be like a recruiting commercial. If you don't like doing the job, you can always get out when the time comes, or make enough trouble until they discharge you. Remember, you don't just work for the Army, you work for We the People, as did I, as have millions of others. Suck it up and drive on.
Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at April 02, 2006 07:25 AM (0yYS2)
3
Ryan--thanks for writing from real knowledge, and for your service. It is an interesting debate. If we don't have reporters going outside the Green Zone, we don't know enough. If we do, they will inevitably get kidnapped, some of them, and our military will be less effective at its main job because it will spend resources searching for them.
So, are you suggesting that they don't leave the Green Zone? Or that if they do, the military should not be tasked with looking for them?
Posted by: jd at April 02, 2006 07:27 AM (uT71O)
4
NOrmally I would agree with you, however, these people who are going over often have no business being there. The term freelance journalist in Jill Carroll's case is generous at best. She was a defender of the insurgency and was going over there with an agenda which she knew she could sell to the Christian Science Monitor, a paper which sides with Hamas over Israel as an example of its bent.
Meanwhile the military needs to 24-7 bust up these bastards and IF they have the time to go around and save these people fine, but I would say that right now this is a military that already has one hand tied behnd its back and is never allowed to go out and do its business of killing the enemy as best it can. This just makes its job that much harder.
Posted by: Steve Sharon at April 02, 2006 07:54 AM (/wox2)
5
Vinnie -- you know I'm a long-time fan.
It is therefore with a heavy heart that I tell you that this is one of the worst, least considered things you have written.
Posted by: Rhymes With Right at April 02, 2006 08:00 AM (XN4gd)
6
Jill Carroll was one of the few reporters who would leave the Green Zone, she did not think that she could do a good job covering Iraq from the inside of an armored vehicle. Being a war reporter has never been more dangerous in any other war. I will miss her reporting. If anyone has any links to anyone else who is doing that kind of reporting please post them.
Posted by: john Ryan at April 02, 2006 08:35 AM (TcoRJ)
7
Ralph Peters and Michael Yon have given some of the best reporting out of Iraq by going out of the Green Zone and embedding with Coalition units for protection.
Jill Carroll could have done the same thing.
Posted by: Michael in MI at April 02, 2006 09:52 AM (GANmF)
Posted by: Michael in MI at April 02, 2006 09:55 AM (GANmF)
9
>>>which you statistically never bothered to join,
So only those who statistically bothered to join the military have a right to voice some opinion about the military or U.S. policy? To me, it would seem entirely irrelevant.
I haven't formed an opinion yet one way or the other about the substance of your post, and I'm not just looking to pick a nit with it either, but your comment sounded remarkably like the Liberal cheapshot against "chickenhawks" who support the war yet haven't bothered to join the military. It's fantastic rhetoric, but it has little or no substance.
It reminds me too of the Liberal tactics the Bush Administration used against those who opposed the Harriet Myers nomination and Dubai ports, calling us "sexist" and "racist." There is an attitude behind those tactics that I find disturbing and dissapointing coming from conservatives. We shouldn't let ourselves stoop to that level.
Posted by: Jesusland Carlos at April 02, 2006 09:58 AM (8e/V4)
10
Vinnie's been reading too much starship troopers.
Hey newsflash: civilians can express opinions too, and they can also be valid, even if they are about the military.
Amazing, I know.
Posted by: MiB at April 02, 2006 10:00 AM (2hPsb)
11
Vinnie, you strained at a gnat, and swallowed a camel.
Posted by: jesusland joe at April 02, 2006 10:22 AM (rUyw4)
12
Was that a biblical reference, JJ?
Posted by: MiB at April 02, 2006 12:08 PM (2hPsb)
Posted by: jesusland joe at April 02, 2006 12:48 PM (rUyw4)
14
A few years ago some liberal politician wanted to send our troops to south america to guard the rainforests what a waste of troops
Posted by: sandpiper at April 02, 2006 01:31 PM (0Wk0b)
15
For those of you who haven't looked into any background, Jill Carrol DID travel with U.S. troops for a month as a reporter. The CSM even quoted the company captain, who seemed to speak well of her.
And how many of you have actually read her articles? They seem balanced enough to me that you could read pretty much anything into them you want. For me, I detect a moderately liberal slant, but let's be fair. She frequently wasn't particularly supportive of Iraqi officials and certianly didn't paint the insurrection in glowing terms. Suffering civilians, whatever the percieved cause, seemed to be the burr in her saddle.
I probably wouldn't agree with her politics if she discussed them with me, but that hardly qualifies her as a "moonbat."
Posted by: David at April 02, 2006 01:39 PM (wZLWV)
16
>>>First off, I'm not calling anyone a chickenhawk.
I know you weren't calling anybody a chickenhawk. But dismissing somebody's comments about how to best use our military just because they haven't served in the military is a specious argument-- just like the chickenhawk slur the Left uses.
>>>it helps to have an insider's view when telling the military what you think they ought to be doing.
Whether or not to use our military to rescue moonbats who've placed themselves in harm's way is a civilian decision-- not a military one. This isn't Starship Troopers. So I disagree.
Posted by: Jesusland Carlos at April 02, 2006 04:06 PM (8e/V4)
17
Yup, Carlos. You're right. This isn't Starship Troopers. Damned shame in my opinion.
Posted by: MCPO Airdale at April 02, 2006 05:27 PM (WOQ34)
18
I know you weren't calling anybody a chickenhawk. But dismissing somebody's comments about how to best use our military just because they haven't served in the military is a specious argument-- just like the chickenhawk slur the Left uses.
Actually it's not. The specious comes in when bloggers and blog commenters pipe up with the notion that a person's ideology should be the determining factor as to whether or not it's worth it for the military to rescue them. Which, to me, is in the same vein as the Left's constant carping that the military should be utilized only as a perpetual Meals-on-wheels organization run under U.N. auspices.
Whether or not to use our military to rescue moonbats who've placed themselves in harm's way is a civilian decision-- not a military one. This isn't Starship Troopers. So I disagree.
Yeah, but it isn't made by
bloggers or blog commenters.
Starship Troopers: Never read it, never saw it. Don't have the slightest clue why it keeps being referred to.
Posted by: Vinnie at April 02, 2006 05:42 PM (/qy9A)
19
In Starship Troopers, only military veterans were granted full citizenship and a say so in political matters.
Posted by: Jesusland Carlos at April 02, 2006 06:07 PM (8e/V4)
20
I'll have to catch it when it's on.
I certainly don't advocate that view.
Look, man, when the 4 contractors were murdered and their bodies burned and hung from the bridge in Falluja, Kos said "screw 'em."
It just doesn't sit well with me that when a lib is held hostage by terrorists, people on our side seem eager to say "screw 'em" as well.
Posted by: Vinnie at April 02, 2006 06:41 PM (/qy9A)
21
>>>I'll have to catch it when it's on.
It was a pretty good scifi book written in the 50's. They made a lame movie version of it a few years ago.
I generally agree with you. The distinction I might make, however, would not be based on their ideology, but rather on whether they had ignored our government's warnings to stay out of the danger zone. Add to that the moron's goals of thwarting our government's objectives there (and our military's), and I can see why some people would object.
Posted by: Jesusland Carlos at April 02, 2006 06:58 PM (8e/V4)
22
Bravo to Vinnie for not wanting to only save those who support the president's policies (and bravo to the person who pointed out that the reporter did not, as evidenced by her stories, at least, hate the president's policies). We are all Americans in the war on terror. On 9/11 they killed Republicans and Democrats and Greens and libertarians and independents. And our troops are conservatives and liberals and all points in between. And you know what? To Osama, we are all infidels deserving of death. same with Zarqawi.
Posted by: jd at April 02, 2006 07:06 PM (uT71O)
23
That's the problem as I see it Carlos. If it had been Mark Steyn instead of Jill Carrol, I fear we wouldn't be having this debate.
I'm a conservative, I believe in the sanctity of human life. If I want to be consistent, that life has to include stupid people who willingly go into danger zones where they ought not be.
We cannot stand one of our neighbors. They drive us nuts. But if their house was burning down, I wouldn't hesitate to go in and rescue them.
Posted by: Vinnie at April 02, 2006 07:30 PM (/qy9A)
24
What I would see as reasonable is our government saying--hey, if you go into X area, you are on your own because of the danger it poses to our soldiers, whether that area is Somalia or Anbar province. I don't think that is what journalists in Iraq were told, particularly as so many in government from Wolfowitz on down have complained about the press not getting out of the GZ and getting the real story.
But our obligation to rescue or not rescue must NEVER be affected by the politics of the person kidnapped. The criteria must be neutral (an obvious exception should of course be made for true traitors and spies, but that almost goes without saying).
I feel the same as Vinnie. I don't currently have any neighbors I dislike, but I grew up next to a truly awful human being...but I still would want him rescued if his house caught on fire.
Posted by: jd at April 02, 2006 07:37 PM (uT71O)
25
Allright, did anyone read Ryan's post? I mean for crying out loud, he said it best. And Maximus, that was a whacked comment.."he can get out when his time comes," and sounds like you could use a tour in Abu Ghraib, to open your eyes.
Ryan, 1AD OIF1 03-04 here, I too was in the same area, and your post is similar to one of mine earlier...
Some of these arguments crafting a soldier's responsibilities to include looking for goofball, glory-hounding journalists instead of using that time to as you put it work on more pressing concerns is naive, unrealistic, unfair and lacking any kind of practical application.
Good post and well said Ryan, blogroll anyone?
Posted by: capster at April 02, 2006 09:03 PM (IARJ7)
26
What didn't you understand about my comment capster? If Ryan doesn't like how the Army does business, he can take a discharge at the end of his enlistment, and that's the way it is, because the Army doesn't care about a soldier's opinion. I don't like the fact that our soldiers waste their time trying to resuce these idiots who take side with the enemy then get bitten by the rabid dog they were trying to pet, but if I was still in, I'd have to follow orders too, or get out. As far as your Abu Ghraib comment, it was an incoherent non-sequitur, so I will disregard it as a brain fart on your part.
Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at April 03, 2006 06:15 AM (0yYS2)
27
Poor Vinnie... Somehow he's attracted a legion of useless, clueless moonbats...
Posted by: juandos at April 03, 2006 06:20 AM (2bfAx)
28
Vinnie, I'm not saying anything against Jill or for the contractors, but comparing the two was like comparing apples and oranges.
There's too much hooplah always surrounding the reporters. Peters and Yon wouldn't even be there were it not for the vast majority of left-leaning journalists hampering the effort and being used for the enemy's propaganda.
If we're complaining that reporters are lazy for not leaving the green zone and stupid for venturing out unarmed and unprotected, I'd imagine that says a lot. It says they're useless.
Posted by: Oyster at April 03, 2006 06:31 AM (YudAC)
29
Oyster nails it again. All of you had better listen, because she knows what she is talking about. Useless is the best adjective I've heard in this whole Jill Carroll mess. It speaks volumes about the liberal media and is spot on.
Posted by: jesusland joe at April 03, 2006 08:02 AM (rUyw4)
30
From an earlier chat (a month or so ago) with Ryan doesn't like it but he still does it anyway. As Improbulus Maximus said, orders is orders. He also said he wouldn't mind looking for people who got captured who were normal imbeds, following the troops. It's the random yahoos; free-range journalists, peace activists, moronic children wanting to 'visit' Iraq, etc; that tick him off.
I don't think Vinnie's sinking ship analogy really works that well in this case. Unless, of course, the libs were making speed-holes in the bottom of their boat to reduce drag.
Oh yeah, and I first learned about Jill Carrol from Ryan. He was doing typical grunt complaining about house-to-house searching for the entire day earlier in the week. He was surprised I hadn't heard about it since the news was making a big deal about it, which I had missed because of schoolwork.
Posted by: Ranba Ral at April 03, 2006 09:34 PM (GyNTD)
31
That should be
*with Ryan, he*
and
*analogy doesn't really work that well*
That'll teach me to try to post on 4 hours sleep in the past 3 days.
Posted by: Ranba Ral at April 03, 2006 09:37 PM (GyNTD)
32
vinnie,
about "starship trooper", don't bother with the movie, as someone said above it's a lame hack job by a director who has said it was his intent to trash the book. the original book was written by robert a. heinlien and it's worth a read, he made a number if comments about society that were entirely missing from the movie.
Posted by: "gunner" at April 16, 2006 10:16 AM (SCa13)
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