Upvoted for the information, but your fantasy of "putting bullets into bad guys" while working for the U.S. army is pretty sickening. Outside of military, nationalist propaganda, you are most likely fighting someone who is defending his home country against invasion and occupation. The 'good guys, bad guys' thing is a little uneducated. Sorry for the interlude.
For the invaders, it's mostly their choice to be out there on the ground ... for the defenders, it's not ... so maybe people in the army should understand if the natives are a little pissed off. After all, those bombs they've sent probably killed a lot of innocent people.
"I imagine your perspective changes a lot if you're out there on the ground."
Very true, when your country is invaded and your friends and family shot/raped/jailed/killed by the invader's mercenaries, your perspective probably changes very fast!
Anyone getting in actual combat will experience perspective change no matter which side he is on I guess.
It is a bit harder for the rest of the world to sympathize with the invaders than with people defending their own homes and country. Just imagine your country invaded by a self righteous army trying to "uplift" you. I actually like the Unites States a lot, have lived there and so on, but if the USA were to invade my country you can be sure I'd fight back too. Americans would, if they were invaded instead of being the invaders.
We aren't there to "uplift" them. We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan.
If America was taken over by a group that violated human rights like the Taliban, that was refused to even be recognized as the legitimate government by the overwhelming majority of nations in the world, and was the subject of binding UN sanctions, yes I would sympathize with the invaders. But that's just me.
> We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan.
These people, including Al-Qaeda, where receiving funds from the US (with the help of Pakistan no doubt) to support their struggle against the soviets.
The Taliban's origins are in Afghanistan, which was later abandoned ... which is regrettable, since the aid it needed for building schools and hospitals was a only a fraction of the money already spent in warfare by the US.
I guess this is what you get when you're having the God syndrome. If you're going to interfere with other people's business, at least do it right.
rdl's post that started this thread discussed contracting in Afghanistan, and replies to that post discussed overseas deployments in a general sense. In fact the "bullets in the bad guys" comment that set off this thread comes in rdl's point 2 about combat going on in Afghanistan and not Iraq. It wasn't a trick or deflection. My comments about the Taliban also go for Saddam and his Ba'ath party.
My country has been invaded by a self-righteoius army trying to "uplift" me. I call them Christians, and I consider them the real enemy in this country.
There is a pretty wide gap between the actual bad guys who must be killed (Al Qaeda, other transnational terrorist groups, and the hard core of the insurgencies in many countries..the people who go around blowing up schools, chopping off hands of those who vote, etc.), and the majority of the enemy (who are purely mercenary foot soldiers, or common/pretty criminals, or some kind of tribal/ethnic group).
The ideal outcome is to separate the really bad guys and let tier-1 US units go after them (kill or capture; with kill being the most common outcome), while using politics and economics to reduce the number of the second category, convert them into either peaceful civilians or members of the security establishment in the country, etc.
Saddam, Uday, Qusay, and the other leaders: kill or capture
Top-level baathists: prosecute using local courts
Iraqi soldiers, local tribal militias, etc.: Bring them into the IP/IA/etc.
That's been the (successful) strategy since ~2006.
(I was actually AGAINST the Iraq war, because it was a distraction from going after Al Qaeda globally)
