The commentary from Ed at Hotair and Rusty at Jawa report pretty much summarize this whole event neatly, I’d only like to add a few things. (Update: American Power puts together a pretty good compilation.)
I can see and understand some people’s comments on YouTube that the Soldiers (Pilots) were a bit blood thirsty, callous, and a little to casual with humor in killing the insurgents. I think their wrong! Frankly, I’d never hold it against anyone in taking enjoyment out of their job. You might find that callous as well. Tough. If your living this 24/7 I doubt you would spend a year without laughing and having a good time. This is war, the thing video games are based upon and billions of dollars are spent for enjoyment (video games, paintball, chess, D&D, movies, ect).
(Update: I’d like to add to the comments I made in the paragraph above in regard to the Pilots. My Marine housemate likes to remind me from time to time, “No one ever said Marines are Saints or Angels; They are the exact opposite; they are some brutal mother_____ers!” These men aren’t Saints, they are life-takers. Don’t confuse them with some ambivalent pansy politically correct Soldier in a movie who is highly benevolent. They are trained killers, and guess what; they have potty mouths to be coupled with their desire to eliminate threats. As the Bradleys came under fire nothing they went into action and became angered when they couldn’t perform their job. Soldiers feel intense emotions when they know their fellow Americans lives are on the line.
The one thing I can never remove from my head is the Spirit of the Bayonet. During my training our drill sergeants made us repeat it over and over again. I’ll repeat it for you; Drill Sergeant screams, “What is the Spirit of the Bayonet.” Answer. “To KILL. To KILL! To KILL without mercy. Make the grass grow green with blood. Huah!” If you enter the world of a Soldier you have to put away your Disney channel mindset.
To further push this. Here are some vulgar quotes from a Great Soldier George S. Patton,
“I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”
“Some goddamn fool once said that flanks have got to be secure. Since then son-of-a-bitches all over the globe have been guarding their flanks. I don’t agree with that. My flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not me. Before he finds out where my flanks are, I’ll be cutting the bastard’s throat.”)
Once again, these pilots did their job. They probably even saved American lives that day.
Now that I think of it this reminds me of the Battle of Mogadishu. During the Battle of Mogadishu when the blackhawk went down and the horde of angry skinnies and enemy Soldiers were on their way, it was said that US Troops fired indiscriminately into the crowd on unarmed civilians. Once again law of war has to be explained to naive college idiots. If you are walking with and it would seem to be in cohorts with the enemy, no matter if armed or not during a battle; that makes you a valid target. Especially during the Battle of Mogadishu, you don’t need an AK-47 or RPG to smash in the head of a pilot laying on the ground. People can kill with their bare hands and feet.
Update:
Little Green Footballs says, “Quite a few people are calling this clear evidence of a war crime. I’m not so sure it is, because at least in the initial group of men, some of them were evidently armed. The shooting of the rescuers, however, is highly disturbing.”
While I claim to be an expert on the military, I don’t claim to be an expert on Law of War. However, I’m going to open my keyboard to my thoughts anyway. Is the shooting of the rescuers really that disturbing? While at first I thought the same thing, they didn’t seem to pose any kind of threat and were acting in the manner of medics. But the bullet is, they aren’t identifying themselves as such. Here is a good example, in Saving Private Ryan Vin Diesels’ character gets shot by a sniper. His buddies try to save him, which is a reoccurring scene in war movies, and the sniper takes shots at them. If your trying to perform the actions of a medic, but are either armed or/and not displaying the red cross your thus an enemy combatant. While it didn’t appear they were carrying weapons in the video, they did have a van which we all know has to be considered in the hands of insurgents to be a possible vehicle borne IED. While this is a stretch, this is war. Tough.
Oh. Also. The US never ratified the 4th Geneva Convention and hopefully will never be part of the International Court. So suck it!
Update 2:
While a little unrelated. I’d like to add a thing about my military training. I was always told you should never make all your shots, kill shots. Sometimes it’s a good idea to wound your enemy so his friends feel obligated to rescue him. Which means with one bullet you’ve now taken at least three people out of the fight.
Update 3:
Sorry, thinking like a cop again. In wartime you don’t need a reason to kill the enemy. Just seeing the enemy is good enough. They don’t have to pose a threat or be armed. That’s what we call an advantage! If you drop a bomb on a barracks full of Soldiers while they are sleeping, that’s a victory. The only way you cannot kill your enemy is when they are actively surrendering. When that van showed up and assisted the insurgents they made themselves a valid target. By assisting them they showed the Apache pilots whose side they were on and made themselves a target.
For those who comment saying it doesn’t look like an RPG or Ak47s. Bull! Your not in a combat zone, your not flying 120mph at 1,000 feet in the air worrying about possible RPGs, and if you wait any longer lives are on the line.
Other people are just ignoring that out of a crowd of 8 to 10 people only 2 were journalist. The others were Insurgents.
To the people that comment and say that these guys aren’t combatants because they aren’t seeking cover from the helicopter till after it shoots at them. Your an idiot! Watch the video again. Notice the time difference from the weapon firing to the time it hits the ground. The Apache was at least a mile away. The Insurgents probably had no clue the helicopter was in the area or if they did was observing them.
Update 4:
I’d just like to add that bloggers have the ability to see the google search you used that brought you to their site. I have an enormous amount of hits from people searching “Collateral Murder pilots names.” I know what that’s about and I just want to comment, that is completely screwed up and very unethical. What are you going to do? Find out who the pilots are and try to find their home address and send them a nasty letter, bomb, hate mail? Leave the troops alone, they don’t need to go to war and have to come home and be dejected to trolls like you.
For those who don’t know, I was stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Many times the families of military police officers stationed there would get death threats through phone calls and in the mail. It’s abhorrent, unethical, and un-American to treat America’s uniformed services with such disrespect (besides criminal).
If 2012 election came around and Gen. Petraeus was running for president of the United States I could see him standing to win. The nice thing about electing a general is they tend to come off as invincible. In public view their comments stick to the job at hand and don’t make offensive off-hand comments that could annoy potential constituents.
If the war didn’t get you, then can Washington hope to kill you? In my opinion, not this guy. Everything I read about him makes me think, Petraeus is one tough old man. I’ve never met him personally, but from what I understand I wouldn’t want to mess with the man. Rick Atkinson’s book In The Company of Soldiers basically chronicles Petraeus’ command through the Iraq Invasion with the 101st Airborne Division (Rick Atkinson was embed with Petraeus). To drive the nail in that he’s tough as them; he’s been known to run his lieutenants into the ground (He was in his 50s, LTs are usually 22 to 28). Maybe this is a case of ‘They just don’t make them like the used to.’
He fixed Northern Iraq as the commander of the 101st. He then fixed Iraq as the commander of CENTCOM. Could he fix America as president?
From my personal experience, every general is paving the way for some kind of electoral position. I’ve noticed the second they take off the big-bird rank and put on a star; they stop yelling and start shaking the hands of the men they meet under their command.
He said in 2007 he wasn’t interested in running. However, it’s probably prudent for a general to keep his mouth shut until he gets out of the service. I mean if Obama knew that he would run against him in 2012. He would undoubtedly make sure until that time he was reassigned to the worst assignments. After that Obama would hope he doesn’t get anymore political coverage. Plus, it’s bad for a general to undermine a political leader (I’m pretty sure it’s against the UCMJ). If he said he wanted to run it would basically be saying, “Hey you guys aren’t cutting it.” Which is the truth, but once again, UCMJ.
In 2012 I would like to see Bobby Jindal and Petraeus compete for the Republican Ticket. Frankly, if Bobby is going to have any kind of chance he has to do better speeches than he did after Obama won the presidency. To be fair, all of his other speeches sounded great! Maybe, he should fire whoever wrote that speech about him being a child and his father telling him, ‘Americans can do anything.’ Before, I felt like Bobby was a very intelligent person who treated me, the viewer, as an intelligent being. After that speech, I felt like he was talking down to me, or speaking directly to children because all of their hippy parents were celebrating ‘The Ones’ nomination.
Leave comments if you got them!? Who’s your presidential hopeful and how badly do you think they are going to compete against Obama? (That’s if they let him take the democratic ticket)
From the very moment I showed up at my first duty station I was abruptly introduced to the concept of a commodity. Or, more precisely that I as an individual am a commodity. The thing about Reserve units is they are usually filled with two things; Old War Goats and College Students. Mostly Old War Goats.
Old War Goats are people who are above 40 years old, they served a long time on active duty and now switched to the reserves. The thing about Old War Goats, and I think it’s kind of systemic of anyone who has a blue collar job and is above 40. They have absolutely no clue how computers work. I don’t mean like the actual electronic functions of a computer I mean; how to use windows, word, powerpoint, excel. Frankly, if you were born after 1980 you probably would be considered an expert on the functions of these software’s in their minds.
College Students refer to actual college students, and people who wanted to join the military but thought it might be a good idea to try out the reserves before joining the regular army. Or, basically anyone that is young and has only served in the reserves.
My first duty station was an Area Support Group which is mostly office jobs. To be fair a lot of the Non-Commissioned Officers usually coming into the reserves were infantrymen or mechanics of some sort. So they would rather eat a MRE than figure out how to Copy and Paste. However, the Commissioned officers were exactly the same. At the heart of the job of a commissioned officer is button pushing and memorandum writing. So I don’t know what their excuse is…
Now this is where I start getting to my point. What was my point again… oh Right! Being previously in the IT field and having classes in high school that covered Microsoft Office I quickly became the unit Computer Expert and was told time and time again I was a valuable resource. The problem with being a “Resource” in the military is commanders have the power to decide whether or not to let you leave the unit and join another unit. Which is why people are ultimately are terrible at everything can leave whenever they want. Commanders are more than willing to give someone else a problem child. If you love your unit this is not a problem, but if you hate your unit and you hate the policies of your command… it can be hell. Also, for people who joined the military to get specialized training, sometimes it can be hard for career development if your commander won’t let you leave. The National Guard is the worst in my opinion on this particular issue.
This might seem trivial, but it makes for a good example (I lied it’s the first thing that popped into my head). Say the commander of the 33rd Baton Cleaners Detachment makes a policy of no one can wear headphones while working out in Army PT uniform. Also, even while in civilian clothes during your off duty workout you may not wear your Ipod or IShuffle (or IBucket… IGlasses) while doing an off duty run on the road. Solely basing the policy to prevent Soldiers from getting hit by cars while running on the road. Before you ask, yes, this is a real policy on pretty much every single base I’ve been on. Now while it’s admirable to prevent Soldiers running along a road to run in front of a car because they didn’t hear it coming. It’s also a clear infringement on personal choice. (To further point out how stupid this particular policy is every military base has a Maximum speed limit of 25MPH. Also I remind you we are talking about trained killers, not children… so to think they are responsible enough to take a life but not run on a road while listening to music is fundamentally flawed)
If a Soldier is unhappy with the policies of their command, right now their is nothing they can do or say. However, if a free market existed pertaining to Soldiers switching units of their own free will. It would be a positive by forcing commanders to change unreasonable policies to hold onto exceptional Soldier that might be convinced to work for a different command. This is what I’m advocating, give Soldiers the same right as normal Americans. You have a choice whether or not to stay with a company that treats you well or poorly. If the pay or the benefits are good. Now, I’m not saying let people out of their military contracts. I’m saying take away the power of commanders to control if a Soldier can move to a different unit or not.
Would you not agree this is a free market solution?
The fact is that keeping “Good Resources” “Smart/Educated/Self Motivated Soldiers in the military is hard because many people get frustrated with the way they are treated. Keep a good Soldier in the Army, Re-enlist! (Sorry don’t like your policies I’m outta here! (by outta here I mean the left the military completely (Man, we need a free market system)))
Before I write anything I have to put down a foundation of my belief in the free market system. I had planned on using an analogy talking about mystical unicorns, but it was too silly. Even for me.
It’s sad that I have to explain this because it’s my experience that people have absolutely no clue at all how perfect the free market really is. It’s like a unicorn. Wait, scratch that. The free market is democracy in the economy. If I could put it in a math equation it would look something like this.
Free Market = consumer democracy.
What is more American then having the freedom to choose which company your money will support. It’s almost like this thing called democracy. You go and vote for the person you want to represent you or to run the country. It works the same way with companies.
Now assume the government does their part in enforcing anti-trust laws, a free market is as pure as it can get. The consumer actually plays a part in deciding whether something lives or dies. If a company makes a terrible product and treats their employees bad. In a free market your not going to last forever. What it does is promote ingenuity and innovation. A controlled market breeds laziness and repetition.
I’ll start off by giving an example of a government controlled market. Mind you this is very hypothetical. Our good old pals the Soviet Union had one of these. You have one car factory. Imagine it’s the dawn of a beautiful bright new era for the Soviet Automobile Service (SAS) and your a new car designer. Sure, when you start off your invigorated by the prospects of designing your love. The automobile! Your first design is brilliant, it’s safe, powerful and gets great gas mileage. So you send up the design to the lawyers, because it’s got to meet government standards (of course). Then, it disappears for months as government experts use a mile or two of red tape. Eventually it comes back with the government’s changes. People who didn’t study automobile engineering at the Soviet People’s University for Higher Learning decided that they didn’t like the design and made some uneducated decisions for you. Well, through the tedious cycle of hogwash a brand new SAS automobile is available for whatever it is they do in a country without money or something.
So you go back to the drawing board but you come to the realization that, “I live in a the controlled market. Hmmmm…. I don’t have any competitors. So. If I don’t get out a new improved model soon, bullocks!” You can chill out, watch some Soviet channel TV. Read a dirty novel about Stalin and the American Farm girl. All while you were supposed to be improving the standard of automobile service for the Soviet people.
Eventually you make some new designs. However, without having a competitor you don’t really have any new ideas improve of off. It’s really just you and your coworker Putin coming up with all the ideas. Decades go by and pretty much the design of your first car looks like your last. The people don’t really have a say in it. Well. Because your the only Automobile Company in town and their is nothing they can do about it.
Now let’s look at a Free Market system. Let’s stick with the automobile industry, let’s come up with a fictional name like Georges Motors, GM for short. Yokota a Japanese made car and Rev a new upstart American car company. GM used to make some really nice cars, but it was so long ago that most of the people that remember the nice cars are dead. GM is a big company and has a huge amount of money. They get cocky and arrogant. The CEO spends more time golfing and flying around in his jet than improving the company. Year’s ago the workers got tired of how they were badly treated by the management that they formed a union to protect themselves. It took a couple years but the union finally got what they wanted. But, the union didn’t dissolve it became to powerful for that. So with accomplishing it’s goals of a better work environment it decided to ask for more and more money. Driving the cost up of the product. The product however didn’t improve in years, just the same car with a higher price tag. Nobody at the company cares. Eventually the consumer wants something different.
The companies Rev and Yokota are making some very efficient cars. People start buying them. Yet GM doesn’t change. Years go by. Eventually, it’s too late for GM and it goes bankrupt. The company died because the employees didn’t care, the CEO didn’t care, and the product didn’t change.
It’s a free market so the death of GM meant that Rev and Yokota through their hard work and new vision have new consumers. They keep making better cars, and because they want to compete make it at a reasonable price. They offer many different products for all different kinds of people.
When Yokota comes out with a new engine that saves 30% more gas, to compete Rev designs a transmission that also saves 30% more gas. Then Rev designs a slick new body that everyone wants. So Yokota has to come out with something new and amazing.
Why has computer advances been made so quickly? Competition!
The person who decide is the consumer, through free choice of products they get to choose the product and company that their money will support.
To expand on this. In part 2 of Free Market Education I will talk about the truth of greed. Oh those GREEDY CORPORATIONS!!!
Video – Collateral Murder?
The commentary from Ed at Hotair and Rusty at Jawa report pretty much summarize this whole event neatly, I’d only like to add a few things. (Update: American Power puts together a pretty good compilation.)
I can see and understand some people’s comments on YouTube that the Soldiers (Pilots) were a bit blood thirsty, callous, and a little to casual with humor in killing the insurgents. I think their wrong! Frankly, I’d never hold it against anyone in taking enjoyment out of their job. You might find that callous as well. Tough. If your living this 24/7 I doubt you would spend a year without laughing and having a good time. This is war, the thing video games are based upon and billions of dollars are spent for enjoyment (video games, paintball, chess, D&D, movies, ect).
(Update: I’d like to add to the comments I made in the paragraph above in regard to the Pilots. My Marine housemate likes to remind me from time to time, “No one ever said Marines are Saints or Angels; They are the exact opposite; they are some brutal mother_____ers!” These men aren’t Saints, they are life-takers. Don’t confuse them with some ambivalent pansy politically correct Soldier in a movie who is highly benevolent. They are trained killers, and guess what; they have potty mouths to be coupled with their desire to eliminate threats. As the Bradleys came under fire nothing they went into action and became angered when they couldn’t perform their job. Soldiers feel intense emotions when they know their fellow Americans lives are on the line.
The one thing I can never remove from my head is the Spirit of the Bayonet. During my training our drill sergeants made us repeat it over and over again. I’ll repeat it for you; Drill Sergeant screams, “What is the Spirit of the Bayonet.” Answer. “To KILL. To KILL! To KILL without mercy. Make the grass grow green with blood. Huah!” If you enter the world of a Soldier you have to put away your Disney channel mindset.
To further push this. Here are some vulgar quotes from a Great Soldier George S. Patton,
“I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”
“Some goddamn fool once said that flanks have got to be secure. Since then son-of-a-bitches all over the globe have been guarding their flanks. I don’t agree with that. My flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not me. Before he finds out where my flanks are, I’ll be cutting the bastard’s throat.”)
Once again, these pilots did their job. They probably even saved American lives that day.
Now that I think of it this reminds me of the Battle of Mogadishu. During the Battle of Mogadishu when the blackhawk went down and the horde of angry skinnies and enemy Soldiers were on their way, it was said that US Troops fired indiscriminately into the crowd on unarmed civilians. Once again law of war has to be explained to naive college idiots. If you are walking with and it would seem to be in cohorts with the enemy, no matter if armed or not during a battle; that makes you a valid target. Especially during the Battle of Mogadishu, you don’t need an AK-47 or RPG to smash in the head of a pilot laying on the ground. People can kill with their bare hands and feet.
Update:
Little Green Footballs says, “Quite a few people are calling this clear evidence of a war crime. I’m not so sure it is, because at least in the initial group of men, some of them were evidently armed. The shooting of the rescuers, however, is highly disturbing.”
While I claim to be an expert on the military, I don’t claim to be an expert on Law of War. However, I’m going to open my keyboard to my thoughts anyway. Is the shooting of the rescuers really that disturbing? While at first I thought the same thing, they didn’t seem to pose any kind of threat and were acting in the manner of medics. But the bullet is, they aren’t identifying themselves as such. Here is a good example, in Saving Private Ryan Vin Diesels’ character gets shot by a sniper. His buddies try to save him, which is a reoccurring scene in war movies, and the sniper takes shots at them. If your trying to perform the actions of a medic, but are either armed or/and not displaying the red cross your thus an enemy combatant. While it didn’t appear they were carrying weapons in the video, they did have a van which we all know has to be considered in the hands of insurgents to be a possible vehicle borne IED. While this is a stretch, this is war. Tough.
Oh. Also. The US never ratified the 4th Geneva Convention and hopefully will never be part of the International Court. So suck it!
Update 2:
While a little unrelated. I’d like to add a thing about my military training. I was always told you should never make all your shots, kill shots. Sometimes it’s a good idea to wound your enemy so his friends feel obligated to rescue him. Which means with one bullet you’ve now taken at least three people out of the fight.
Update 3:
Sorry, thinking like a cop again. In wartime you don’t need a reason to kill the enemy. Just seeing the enemy is good enough. They don’t have to pose a threat or be armed. That’s what we call an advantage! If you drop a bomb on a barracks full of Soldiers while they are sleeping, that’s a victory. The only way you cannot kill your enemy is when they are actively surrendering. When that van showed up and assisted the insurgents they made themselves a valid target. By assisting them they showed the Apache pilots whose side they were on and made themselves a target.
For those who comment saying it doesn’t look like an RPG or Ak47s. Bull! Your not in a combat zone, your not flying 120mph at 1,000 feet in the air worrying about possible RPGs, and if you wait any longer lives are on the line.
Other people are just ignoring that out of a crowd of 8 to 10 people only 2 were journalist. The others were Insurgents.
To the people that comment and say that these guys aren’t combatants because they aren’t seeking cover from the helicopter till after it shoots at them. Your an idiot! Watch the video again. Notice the time difference from the weapon firing to the time it hits the ground. The Apache was at least a mile away. The Insurgents probably had no clue the helicopter was in the area or if they did was observing them.
Update 4:
I’d just like to add that bloggers have the ability to see the google search you used that brought you to their site. I have an enormous amount of hits from people searching “Collateral Murder pilots names.” I know what that’s about and I just want to comment, that is completely screwed up and very unethical. What are you going to do? Find out who the pilots are and try to find their home address and send them a nasty letter, bomb, hate mail? Leave the troops alone, they don’t need to go to war and have to come home and be dejected to trolls like you.
For those who don’t know, I was stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Many times the families of military police officers stationed there would get death threats through phone calls and in the mail. It’s abhorrent, unethical, and un-American to treat America’s uniformed services with such disrespect (besides criminal).
Tags: 2007, apache, collateral, commentary, fox, gunship, iraq, jack valenteen, liberal, murder, naive, News Organizations, pilots, propaganda, propganda, soldiers
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