Crap Happens
This post was originally ran on Troy’s Bouhammer Blog. He is, of course, a regular contributor here at You Served. Please be aware that the views and opinions expressed in this space are not necessarily the views expressed by VA Mortgage Center.com and its employees. Thank you. - You Served Editorial Staff
“Only those that have put their life on the line get to second guess a soldier in the field”
It is a quote on a poster that is profiled on the Military Motivator website. How does the friggen ACLU think it has a right to publish a report about rights violations by soldiers. How do they know what it is like? How do they know the whole situation? They don’t, they won’t and they never will. I am steaming mad after reading this article on the FoxNews.com website about the ACLU report which is over 10,000 pages long.
They looked at court transcripts and other official documents to analyze the soldier’s actions and essentially come up with a slamming report on the service members that are proudly serving on the front lines today. Of course the ultra-right MSM (main stream media) will be all over this and somehow spin this around again.
The reality is that people make mistakes and make bad choices. Whether it is a nice guy who decides to try and risk driving home after one too many drinks at a office happy hour, a driver who swerves left instead of right when a dog runs in front of him and that causes him to get into a head-on crash or a soldier who under the stress of combat puts a well-aimed killing shot into a possible enemy only to find out later it was an innocent.
Bad things happen, and as just about anyone can attest to, in a stressful situation you don’t have the luxury to sit back and weigh consequences with outcomes with courses of actions. You also don’t always make the best decision and sometimes later in self-reflection you may not even know why you made the decision you did. Well Crap really happens in combat, and as I have talked about many times on this blog during my tour in Afghanistan, there are moments where time stands still. These moments are mere seconds in duration, yet feel like minutes or hours. It is during these moments that a person has to rely on training, instinct, muscle memory, faith, values, beliefs and the grace of God to guide them to the right choice. In two wars I have had multiple distinct incidents happen to me that could have changed my life forever depending on which way I chose. In both the Persian Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan I was presented with situations where if I would have made one choice versus the other that I could have killed innocents and worse yet fellow American soldiers. These moments still bother me today and haunt me when something happens that reminds me of them.
This is the reason why I am so passionate about this subject. How dare anyone, and I mean anyone (not just the ACLU that I detest), sit back in their comfortable lifestyles with no idea of real stress, no idea of what it is like to watch your life flash in front of your eyes based on an enemy’s actions, and no idea of true discomfort judge me, or any service member and our decisions.
Recently all but one of the Marines involved with the Haditha incident have been exonerated, and it is believed that the last one will also be exonerated soon. This incident was all over the news last year and made major headlines as the ultra-right and bleeding-heart liberals just pounced on them, the Marine Corps and the overall Military. Well now that the Military justice system is finding that none of the Marines did anything wrong and were only following procedure, you don’t see on thing in the news about it. I was asked by friends, co-workers (military) and others about my opinion during the time it was all over the news and I stated then that from what I could see I would do the same thing the Marines did and I think they followed the TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) correctly. Again I only knew what I read in the blogs and saw on the news. I could have been wrong had different information came out later, but I am glad to see that I wasn’t. I am glad to see that for the most part all of the information that came out was fairly accurate and that I was correct in my judgment.
Service members make mistakes, and taking into account the situation, guidance given and other factors they maybe should be punished or not. Just like that guy who gets a DWI for driving home from the office party or the guy that kills someone in another car because he swerved to miss a dog on the road. We are all accountable for our actions and sometimes a simple lapse in judgment or being a “nice” guy does not relieve us of that responsibility.
However it is until the day that you walk in the boots of those that you wish to judge should you be given the right to do such a thing. Until that day, how about just STFU.
David Shaw
September 9th, 2007 at 11:12 amMy wife and i are both veterans.my wife served during vietnam and i served during the Gulf war. WE HAVE ALOT OF PEOPLE WE KNOW WHO HAVE SERVED AND THERE KIDS NEVER SERVED OR WILL THEY.THEY SAY THEY WOULD RATHER GO TO CANADA BOTH ARE LAWYERS THIS IS THE SAD STATE OUR COUNTRY IS GETTING INTO THEY HAVE NOT LEARNED RESPECT OF THIS COUNTRY.THAT WAS ORIGINALLY THE AMERICANS INDIANS TO BEGIN WITH.THERE ARE TOO MANY YOUNG PEOPLE LIKE THIS AND OLDER ONES. I AND MY WIFE BELIEVE WE NEED TO MAKE ALL OF OUR PEOPLE AS THEY GRADUATE GO INTO THE SERVICE FOR 2 YEARS AFTER HIGHSCHOOL NO ONE SHOULD VBE ABLE TO GET OUT OF THIS AS THERE IS A PLACE FOR ALL KIDS TO HELP.OUR COUNTRY.IT WOULD STOP ALOT OF PROBLEMS IN THE U.S. WE NEED TO TAKE BACK AMERICA FROM ALL THE DICTACTORS UTHAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE LISTENING TO THE PEOPLE.WE ARE NOT A FREE COUNTRY ANYMORE.