Disgusting Mail article, need to rant...
- Thread starter apeZ
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It's sadder than that. If there was no war to fight, man will make one up. It's too good for business.
It must be lovely sitting, foaming at the mouth in naive righteous indignation, comfy in you nice secure ivory tower armed with a keyboard... Meanwhile, back in the real world...
I don't really see it as the paper glorifying death as such, but instead the glorification of the achievements and capabilities of two of our soldiers.
Such PR work is designed to instil fear into enemy forces who have connections back in the UK by rumours and word of mouth. Knowing there are highly skilled snipers about to pick you of at any inclination that you may be engaged in enemy activity is a frightening prospect.
And the mere fact that they seem to gain satisfaction in their killing should be of no concern to anyone. These guys join the army knowing their purpose is to serve and that having to kill people will become mandatory at times for some. And unless you've actually served out there, I don't think anyone has any space to criticise the soldiers for being proud because unless you've been there, you truly couldn't possibly understand the mindset the situation fixates on you.
As for the kids who think its 'cool' etc, just ignore their naivety and blame their parents for letting them play the videos games that they do without gaining a full understanding of the horrors of war. But then on the other hand, why bother? I'd say most normal kids (predominantly male) gain some sort of pleasure from fantasising about shooting people etc. If we didn't, why would we have such and interest in anything warfare related?
EDIT
The fact that many of us are filled with testosterone is testament to the fact that we are following our human instinct. Just because you don't have those manly traits, don't try and put the rest of us down for having it. Man up.
And it does make them better because we don't plant bombs willy nilly waiting for some unsuspecting person to walk on it and then get blown up. We don't walk onto a train carrying an explosive device to take out hundreds of people who have probably never even held a gun or have no idea how to make a bomb.
War isn't insanity, sitting back and being victims of terror is insanity. Sort your priorities out.
Such PR work is designed to instil fear into enemy forces who have connections back in the UK by rumours and word of mouth. Knowing there are highly skilled snipers about to pick you of at any inclination that you may be engaged in enemy activity is a frightening prospect.
And the mere fact that they seem to gain satisfaction in their killing should be of no concern to anyone. These guys join the army knowing their purpose is to serve and that having to kill people will become mandatory at times for some. And unless you've actually served out there, I don't think anyone has any space to criticise the soldiers for being proud because unless you've been there, you truly couldn't possibly understand the mindset the situation fixates on you.
As for the kids who think its 'cool' etc, just ignore their naivety and blame their parents for letting them play the videos games that they do without gaining a full understanding of the horrors of war. But then on the other hand, why bother? I'd say most normal kids (predominantly male) gain some sort of pleasure from fantasising about shooting people etc. If we didn't, why would we have such and interest in anything warfare related?
EDIT
The fact that many of us are filled with testosterone is testament to the fact that we are following our human instinct. Just because you don't have those manly traits, don't try and put the rest of us down for having it. Man up.
And it does make them better because we don't plant bombs willy nilly waiting for some unsuspecting person to walk on it and then get blown up. We don't walk onto a train carrying an explosive device to take out hundreds of people who have probably never even held a gun or have no idea how to make a bomb.
War isn't insanity, sitting back and being victims of terror is insanity. Sort your priorities out.
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So, any terrorists need to be left alone then? Nice thinking
Maybe it would have been a good idea to leave Hitler and his mad ideas?
which terrorists are from afganistan then? maybe i am mistaken, but i dont think any were from there...?
The small amount of news trickling through from Afghanistan and the like is the real problem. Stories like this are more about inspiring compassion for the soldiers fighting out there, who are fighting for what has been deemed the most appropriate way of defending our country and it's people. With the media stagnation about this, who is going to understand what is going on, how we are doing, and how the hell are people meant to support their troops?
Stories like this are a hell of a lot better than the ones about how our country is slowly disintegrating. I mean look at all the stories about murder, rape, paedophilia etcetera, why don't you get more worked up about those than a story about a man defending his country?
Beggars belief...
Stories like this are a hell of a lot better than the ones about how our country is slowly disintegrating. I mean look at all the stories about murder, rape, paedophilia etcetera, why don't you get more worked up about those than a story about a man defending his country?
Beggars belief...
Its a country which could export terrorism or supply it indirectly.
Soldato
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Right op. Go rage on some hippy forum.
[FnG]magnolia;18672550 said:
Sorry I didn't realise it needed an answer. My original question was simply for clarification on whether the OP was addressing the Article's authors or the actions of the Soldiers themselves.
You answered that question for me, that is all really.
I haven't really made up my mind if the article is overly glorifying what these soldiers done or not. I doubt very much that the soldiers in question truly feel bathed in glory because of what they need to do.
It is not easy doing what they do, every time you take a life, however you justify it, you wonder about their family, whether they have children, a wife, what his job was, what kind of person he is, what led him to this point and a hundred other things flash through you head.
This may sound like silly sentiment, but each time a sniper squeezes that trigger and the bullet hits the target, a small piece of his humanity is lost in that action. It is a very personal way to conduct warfare.
Every single kill he makes will be with him forever and the older they get, the more they question themselves. The victims are not only those on the end of the bullet, they are also the ones with the gun. The problem with articles and most books I have read on this subject, rarely, if ever, look at or mention this and are solely interested in the glorification and patriotism that people assume is how they really feel.
Soldato
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My point was more that your suggesting that I have less validity on making a moral call on this than anyone else here because I haven't lived in these countries. That's a spurious call at best.
It's that place where we justify the situation as a necessary lesser evil because to not capitulate would make it worse for us in the long run. The sad effect of this is that we settle into a common situation with no end in sight. I'm not trying to belittle the sacrifice, I respect the individuals sacrifice but the end result is still dead people.
I'm not 'crying' about anything. I'm stating a fact. I'm also not suggesting that from a fundamental human perspective there is some seriously awful stuff that goes on in the communities all in the name of God/Control. I personally loath religion and I loath what people do in the name of it. I am in no way justifying the personal atrocities that go on in these countries. What I am saying is that what these people are seeing are westerners with no real vested interest (apparent) rolling into their countries and telling them how it is.
I have to disagree - I think the sad fact of humanity is the apparent lack of humanity that gets displayed when the word war starts getting bandied about. What humanity do you see in glorifying the achievement of two snipers killing their fellow human beings? I can't see it... all I see is an animalistic base testosterone filled response of "**** yeah! The rag heads got what they deserved". That's the hard piece of pie to swallow.
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you can say that for any country... I don't think one terrorist has been from there?
the 911 terrorists were financed by ??arab?? money, trained in america (to fly), and from jsut about every country that was NOT afganistan.
we are making 1000's of poeple hate us and want to strike back against us by being there its just madness...
The "Taliban" (which the CIA trained when they were fighting the USSR), Al Qaeda were also based there at the time of 9/11.
That reminds me of Platinum87's sig.
we attacked them....
they never started the war...
the taliban did not finance, train and supply the people who were involved in 911 (as far as I know but I may be wrong)
The Taliban are not Terrorists, however they do and have consistently supported terrorists.
The issue with Afghanistan is that under the Taliban Regime they allowed and actively encouraged International Terror Groups to use their country as a Safe Haven and Training Grounds for acts of Terrorism and the furtherance of Islamist ideology.
This had to end and I am sure people can see why.
Whether we were successful and whether fatal mistakes (like not involving the Pakistani Military in cutting off Taliban access to Northern Pakistan) were made is for another debate.
What is clear is that there was no viable alternative to military action in the face of a clear danger that allowing the Taliban Regime to continue would have further destabilised already fragile Governments in the surrounding region.
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The Taliban were put in power by the USA after they armed/funded them so they could overthrow the USSR who controlled Afghanistan at the time. After 9/11 the decision was made to remove the Taliban as they were helping to train/supply terrorism (notably their links to Al-Qaeda)
It should be noted that Taliban means "students" and is a common name for groups to use, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban are completely unrelated they just have the same name, it causes a lot of confusion, similar to how a lot of people believe "Kung Fu" to be a martial art when in fact it is the Chinese words for "martial art".
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