My first real firefight had everything you see in the movies. It was great. I mean sure, I’d been shot at before, and a few IEDs just missed me. But nothing like this. This fight had mortars exploding in the air, men rushing and diving as RPG’s pounded the earth, giant heroes calmly barking orders while bullets cracked past their heads, a lone medic rushing to save the wounded, all with sound(ish) tactics, outmaneuvering the enemy and returning fire. Really, by the end of it I was grinning, it was one of the happiest days of my life. That fight had it all. Except a villain . . .
Oh sure, we had an enemy. But I didn’t know much about them. This despite the fact that I and the rest of my team did our level best to hunt them down and kill them. I went to Afghanistan because my nation told me to. I did my best to find the enemy and kill them for one reason: that was my job.
My first shots at the enemy had their desired effect. When I saw the round hit the man I was aiming at, honestly all I felt was the satisfaction of a good shot. I didn’t fear him and I didn’t hate him. I was sent there to kill him and that’s what I did.
I think I could have gone on hunting people and possibly even killing people because my nation told me to. Maybe it would have eventually gotten to me. Maybe not. I’ll never know. I’ll never know what that lack of moral justification feels like, because the local thugs calling themselves the Taliban taught me to hate.
Most mornings, after the first call to prayer, I stepped outside our tiny Forward Operating Base (30 meters X 70 meters total) with some of the local Afghan National Army soldiers, Afghan Security Guards and an interpreter. Every morning when we weren’t on some mission I held sick call for all of the local Afghans. It lasted about an hour.
Eventually, we became the de facto clinic for the Shajoy area. People came for all sorts of ailments. I fixed them the best I could. Sometimes they brought their freshly dead for me to cure. That was hard. About a quarter of my patients were traumatic injuries to children. Those were very hard. Five kids stick in my head more than most.
Four girls and a boy had been injured in a local school. Their grandfather and another man brought them to me in two wheel barrows. That’s how small they were: five of them could fit well in two wheel barrows pushed by old men.
The Taliban’s local “Vice and Virtue Brigade” had punished them for their crimes. The crime of going to school, a madrasa even, to learn to read the Quaran. It was not a school operated by the West. But the school taught girls. Girls learning to read was unacceptable to those sick thugs.
To teach their own lesson, the Taliban “fighters” mutilated the teacher. Then they soaked rags in heating oil, wrapped them around the legs and genitals of these children and set them on fire.
Little kids. They set little kids on fire.
It took me a while to take that in. I remember thinking, “what sick fuck even comes up with this”? I treated them the best I could, and sent them on.
Over the next month, I worked with the father of the boy (I wasn’t allowed contact with the girls) to debried his wounds. I taught him how to do it every day. I provided antibiotic cream and bandages to pass out to the other victims.
Think about that: having to debried 2nd and 3rd degree burns on your children without any anesthesia of any kind for months. Think of holding them down, listening to them scream, every day, all for their own good. Because of what those men did to these babies.
I didn’t sleep well for many nights after that. Not because of how sad I was for those children, and I was, and I still am. I didn’t sleep because I hated the men who did that so much I couldn’t rest. I couldn’t rest while they lived.
Fortunately for us, the Shajoy locals weren’t prepared to put up with this kind of torture and abuse. Not very long afterwards, we received good intel on the crime. The Afghan National Police(ANP) and a small intelligence unit embedded in our team found out who the thugs were. They told us where they would be and the local ANP led the raid.
This fight held none of the excitement of the first. Some evil thugs on dirt bikes picking up gear and explosives wound up facing hard, angry men with M2s and M19s. It didn’t last long. No one barked orders. Bullets did not crack over our heads. The first fight required a medic. This one didn’t.
One day, after hearing my story, someone said those thugs may have been evil men, but they had families, or at least wives. They probably starved or suffered some other hardship because of me and my team. How can I sleep at night knowing that we had taken their lives? When I think of the widows of these men crying out, cursing my name at night, I smile inside. I sleep real easy.
Thank you for your service sir!
Thank you for taking out at least a couple of the savages.
+1
+1
I’m sure the “family” did just fine.
I find it difficult, no, impossible, to summon up any semblance of pity for anyone who could love these mosters, or the children carrying their genetic message into the future.
The old testament handled this properly – kill the men and their families and their livestock. Burn their fields and salt the earth.
Thank you for your service Jon. It is appreciated. Hang your head high as you did the right thing and your nation owes you its gratitude.
Godwin’s law by the first comment? That escalated quickly.
Well, maybe one thing is funnier. The image of a culturally aware mediator sitting down with the soldier and the group who thinks that setting fire to small children is a good idea and talking them through their feelings about appropriate ways to settle the differences of opinions.
Oh, wait. Maybe that’s not funny at all.
Thank you, brother.
+ 1K
I would argue that the Taliban are the occupying force. From what I’ve read/heard/seen on tv they seem to be the ones occupying towns and villages and imposing sharia law against the will of the majority of the population. That’s a pretty disrespectful thing to say to our service men I think but I’ve never been there so I’m not really qualified to comment, maybe you are
I don’t think that the people who mutilate children for getting an education are local resistance who’s only cause is getting rid of Americans but whatever you say dude. Everyone is entitled to their opinion
Our [U.S.A.] enemies are scared of all the ways we COULD kill them. They are not scared of us not following the rules of armed conflict. If they were, to a man, they would kill their own kids, and then themselves, before we ever got a chance to do it.
If our enemy ever get us to chuck our humanity, or our shrinking fear of our LORD, we will run out of rags and heating fluid and you won’t have the stones to say sh_t.
It actually depends on which part of the country you’re talking about. Remember, Afghanistan as a country in today’s borders is a Western (British, specifically) construct, and doesn’t possess a single nation. Taliban generally fares better in Pashtun majority areas, and then also in those that border Pakistan. In some places they’re genuinely welcomed. In others, they’re reviled.
Rather than castigate sexless whatever, I hold it as proof. It is free to express itself, thanks in large part to our service members.
I’d be interested to no whether it is gainfully employed… Legally.
I agree with your general sentiment, but the Taliban were probably only surpassed by Kim Jong iL in the misery inflicted upon the people they were ruling. The Afghan invasion/occupation as flawed as it is, still most likely improved the general lot of the Afghan people. I’m not going to define an entire group as good or evil, but lets just say it doesn’t make me sad when another Taliban fighter bites the dust.
The Iraqi invasion on the other hand was just an unmitigated disaster from the perspective of the average Iraqi. Sadam wasn’t a great guy, but as dictators go he wasn’t any better or worse than 40 other governments in the world. The country was stable, the electricity mostly worked, most people ate regularly and under Sadam Iraq actually had good literacy rates, child death rates, etc for a 3rd world country. Now Iraq is ripped into 3 countries, the infrastructure doesn’t work and they are one of the worst countries in the world for infant mortality, etc. Yup, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives to make Iraq a worse place.
Afghanistan was a far better place under Zahir Shah than it will ever be under the Taliban.
>> I agree with your general sentiment, but the Taliban were probably only surpassed by Kim Jong iL in the misery inflicted upon the people they were ruling.
I think it’s pretty hard to beat the Khmer Rouge in that regard.
>> The Afghan invasion/occupation as flawed as it is, still most likely improved the general lot of the Afghan people.
For the brief duration when US was calling the shots there, yes. But long-term, it doesn’t look like anything has really improved. The new constitution of Afghanistan still explicitly says that it’s an Islamic state and that Sharia is the supreme law of the land (which is the clause they used to sentence that Christian convert guy to death, and the only reason why he wasn’t executed was because the president forced the experts to declare him clinically insane, under pressure from the West) – and those clauses are non-amendable. More recently, a bunch of laws regarding family etc have also regressed back almost to Taliban-level oppression on women. And now that US is out, Taliban is back in force and the government is seriously talking with them about a truce and a coalition government.
That story is the cold hard truth. I applaud you and your dedication and pray that that warrior spirit guides all our service men.
You are a hero.
You know that old saw, “I don’t agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it?” Well, in most cases, I am convinced rights are inalienable, but after seeing some of the photos from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the like, I’d have to think long and hard before I’d lift a finger to defend anything you’ve said on here.
I, too, worked as medic in nice place called Iraq (Irbil/Erbil was actually quite nice, but didn’t stay there long)… kids were always the hardest to treat. Not because their wounds were so traumatic, or their screams, but because you have to seriously be f***ed up in the head to mutilate children. I never wish death upon people, but those sick individuals needed a bullet to the head.
Stateside, they just cut them out of the womb and flush them down a toilet. Or they flush them out with pills. Either way, kids aren’t safe in America.
^ This x1,000,000. Once you dehumanize someone because you don’t think he or she is a “viable life,” you can justify committing all kinds of violent atrocities against those who are least able to defend themselves. In America, the disgusting irony is that we call this practice “the exercise of human rights.” It makes me sick both in the Middle East and in America. The Taliban does it to appease their god, and Americans do it to appease our god–our own comfort.
Amen to this. Thanks for your service JWT. And RF-you need to ban the lizard boy. 100 times more obnoxious than Rev. McCain…who left of his own accord.
So, when are you guys planning to start shooting abortion doctors?
As a Marine friend calls them
“Talibitches”
I see ST is still doing what he, she or it does best . . . spouting garbage to try to pull people into on-line debates to try to make himself feel like he matters in even some small way.
Guess what, you don’t. So go back to your Home Shopping Channel show and treat yourself to that nice handbag you’ve been admiring.
Would make hating the enemy much harder if they conducted themselves in an honorable manner to the non combatants. Then its just business, nothing personal.
legitimate partisan resistance doesn’t include the targeting of innocents.
Amen, Brother.
Having spent time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and several other lands that murdering scum who like to torture children and blow up old ladies shopping in the local market call home, I agree with every word you wrote.
You keep saying “nation” but you really mean country.
I would not feel bad for the child burning, mutilating Taliban “soldiers” that were killed. Likely their families are glad to be rid of them. Well, except for the income perhaps. My bet is they treated their own families in the same cruel, dictatorial fashion that they treated their victims. Good riddance. As for SexT you will notice he never posts solutions, only complaints. I ran a business for many years. Told my employees to never tell me about a problem unless they included a suggested solution. Everything else is counter productive bitching and serves no real purpose. I think the same applies here. Anyone can complain but it takes some real thinking to suggest a solution. That does not happen with SexT. Suggest we all ignore his remarks and move on to more thoughtful discussions.
War sucks. Thanks for healing as much as you could.
Maranatha, Lord Jesus!
War does terrible things to people, and sometimes people do terrible things to war.
I’ll be thinking about that quote for a while… It’s true on so many levels.
Whether I agree with you or not doesn’t matter, but I do hate it when somebody relates a micro story and it get dismissed, undermined and maligned at the macro level. What i mean is this; whether or not he should or shouldn’t have been there as part of an occupying military force is beside the point, because that point belongs to a whole other conversation – completely irrelevant and out of context with the level of this story.
This particular conversation is about one individual’s personal experience with evil as he knows it. One man, in one place and at one time, acting withing his moral frame-work to do what he thinks is right – and processing the aftermath. No other context can be brought into it at this level, and to do so is deceptive, evasive and lacking in human empathy.
Attacking this individual and his story for the possible wrongs made by others, elsewhere and beyond his control makes a mockery of empathy, and of compassion – it ridicules the strength of character in the face of moral dilemmas that this story illustrates. And for that you should be embarrassed and even ashamed.
wow, great thoughts.
I like the post. Not sure what it has to do with the second amendment or firearms in general, but I had similar, if not as graphic experiences in Iraq. These are animals and we can’t exterminate them fast enough.
One persons murderer is another persons savior..Killing is a necessary evil, when people are shooting at you..
Thanks, JWT, both for your service and for sharing your story.
I have talked to soldiers who were in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban. Usually the Taliban was playing hit and run on soft civilian or semi-military targets. The soldiers were chasing the Taliban and came across a government orphanage which the Taliban blew up and destroyed with the kids in it. My cousin;s kid who is an officer in the 82nd was in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is that the Iraqis and Afghans think they are civilized because of their Muslim religion, but they really are not civilized at all. Afghanistan and Iraq are regions, but not nations. There is no nation to build.
Iraq is fairly civilized for the most part. They have a good education system, at least in the Sunni provinces. They are for the most part not big fans of terrorism. But it doesn’t take many terrorists to take over.
Afghanistan is not the same. The people are just rodents that walk on two legs and can talk, at least in the southwest region. They have lived in squalor for thousands of years and there is no potential for them to do otherwise. They are illiterate and ignorant. They have no education and do not care. They don’t much care about life, whether it is theirs or their families’ and obviously don’t care about lives outside their family or clan.
We sat through a class, when we were preparing to go there, by an Afghani in a cultural briefing. He told us if you walk past a house and hear a little boy screaming, it’s probably his uncle having sex with him. It is important not to interupt them because you might embarrass the uncle and the family. I’m not kidding.
Not all muslim nations are the same. Iraq has potential. Afghanistan has been conquered time and again over the millenia, but the conquerors always conclude that there is no reason to stay there. We can help Iraqis to prosper, if they wish. We can’t help Afghanistan. The best thing we can do is eradicate the place, and use it as a staging area to threaten Iran.
Afghanistan can be helped, it just takes a long time (same as any other shithole) – literally decades. Soviets were actually working on it before the war, but the war made it tricky, and then USSR itself collapsed. No other country since them seems to be willing to invest that much money (and lives of its soldiers!) for such a long-term civilization uplift effort; and even if someone did, they’d just be accused of “neo-colonialism” anyway …
But here are some photos from 1960s that show what was possible:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2013/01/28/podlich-afghanistan-1960s-photos/5846/
Note all the women without hijab, and the general abundance of Western clothing. This all was under Zahir Shah, when the country was still independent, but cooperating heavily with the Soviets for economic assistance (most of their large infrastructure projects were built during that period by Soviet engineers).
Of course, once the country started to islamize, that all changed. Fun fact: one of the things that riled up mujis the most after a new communist government came to power in 1978, was that they have abolished sex-segregated schools and clinics. So now boys and girls were in the same class, and a male gynecologist would inspect a female patient. O horror!
why did you stop?
To teach their own lesson, the Taliban “fighters” mutilated the teacher. Then they soaked rags in heating oil, wrapped them around the legs and genitals of these children and set them on fire.Little kids. They set little kids on fire.
Just another happy normal day in Afghanistan. Your story is hardly unique from other soldiers who were in Afghanistan.
Tom, Don’t discount it as hardly being unique…. Everyone fights their own personal war when the smoke clears.
JWT, good read. Don’t worry about trannysoreass. His kind are always with us. Mean spirited small minded buffoons with no real status. He’s angry at himself for being a failure and he lashes out at others like yourself for having been there and done that.
The internet, like alcohol, brings out the real man. Sadly, for tranny, his comments show no man at all.
He’s just one of Pavlovs Dogs. Instead of ringing a bell you say soldier or cop and he starts prancing and pissing himself like a hyper chee wa wa dog.
You wouldn’t know him if you met him on the street. He’d either be silent or fawn all over you hoping that you wouldn’t bitch slap him.
x10 to power of 10
Well said. Tranny Rex is a little bitch troll.
I understand some artistic license when telling a story, but at some points you may want to consider if it removes credibility:
It’s spelled debride. burn wounds, even ones that take skin grafts, start the heal process within 1-2 weeks, and so do not need debridement for months.
Intercostal muscles (from a previous post) cannot be visualized through someone’s clothing.
Take some advice from Lewis Carroll: Begin at the beginning and go until you come to the end, then stop.
Thanks you for your service, not attacking your veracity, just to be clear.
Actually you are directly accusing me of lying, and you are mistaken in your statements. First, if you are in a truly sterile environment, maybe you would have such a short time frame for wound care as you state. Maybe. I’ve worked a burn ward here in the states and never seen it that fast, but maybe. Even so, rural Afghanistan is not a sterile environment. Badly infected and dead tissue must constantly be removed.
As far as visualizing the intercostal muscles working through clothes, of course you can, EMTs do it every day.
Sigh… I knew I shouldn’t have posted that, and probably this one as well.
Artistic license does not mean you are lying, just portraying things for effect.
Unless you are superman the intercostal muscles (between the ribs) are not visible with clothes, the supracostals are if the base of the neck and top of the shoulders are visible. EMTs that do it every day either don’t know what intercostal are, or they are filling out forms with a checklist with no idea what those checkboxes actually mean. Sub costal muscles are visible if you pull the shirt up.
If you were debriding wounds that long you were doing more damage than good because you were destroying good tissue at one point.
Maybe you do know more than me, I’ve only been a practicing physician for 9 years.
No matter all this, I do thank you for your service and appreciate what you have done for this country.
Liljoe, I appreciate your tone, thank you. But I think you are still mistaken, and giving some very bad medical advice. I can see all sorts of muscles working through clothes in the same way I can see someone have a heart attack. No, I can’t actually see their heart, but I can recognize the signs and symptoms. As far as wound care lasting a month, I can see no benefit, and only detriment, in failing to remove dead, decaying, and badly infected tissue, regardless of time frame. Remember, this is an environment where care is irregular and antibiotics are few or non existent. Even simple bandages are precious and much of the illiterate population has no concept of bacteria.
Progressives will say we at fault for interfering because that is “their way”. In the minds of progressives, and especially in academia, Muslim rights first, Women’s rights second (provided these don’t clash with the first).
It reminds me of the moral cowardice shown any many ST TNG (the wet dream of many “progressive” types) episodes where interference was forbidden because that is “their way”.
Here’s a unique historical fact. When it comes to killing Muslims, no one has done it better than other Muslims.
For almost 1500 years the Sunni and Shia have been killing each other. If it isn’t the major factions it is one of major factions killing the minority Islamic sects. If you want a recent historical example, when the state of Pakistan was founded, members of the minority sects were declared apostates and massacred. In East Pakistan the situation was so bad the Indian Army intervened eventually forming the country known as Bangladesh.
A more recent example would be ISIS and the Yazidies and Kurds.
Look up the book by Tariq Fatah titled “Chasing the Mirage” in which an Islamic scholar openly declared that establishing a new caliphate is not good for Muslims. The book also covers a lot of Islamic history, and is more than most Muslim’s would know. The first Caliphate only lasted about 60 years during which time they tried to exterminate the Prophet’s family at least FOUR times. The first massacres of alleged apostates occured within weeks of Mohammed’s death. The first caliphate, and almost every one since then, has been riddled with corruption, nepotism, and cronyism.
Fatah argues that Muslims are better to live in a “state of Islam” (ie: a personal belief that is not incompatible with the laws of state) in a western democracy than they are to live in an “Islamic state”. Every modern incarnation of an Islamic state has been a bitter failure to the people in the state.
To me you appear to be a leftist full of self-loathing. Sorry the rest of us are not on an eternal guilt trip for our lifestyles and opportunities. The world has to be taken as it is. Not as you wish it to be.
Given a choice, I would prefer to live under American occupation than that of the Russians, Chinese, or ISIS.
You bring up an interesting point. During my first tour, in southern Afghanistan, the ANA we lived with regularly hosted other nation’s forces. Those included British, Dutch, Romanian, Polish, and others. The ANA allowed them on their FOB and fed them. But one group they would not. The Jordanians. Because they were Arabs. The ANA leadership would have nothing to do with them and had nothing but hate for them.
Sorry, that was a reply to Southern Cross’ last post.
>> Here’s a unique historical fact. When it comes to killing Muslims, no one has done it better than other Muslims.
What’s unique about it? When it comes to killing Christians, no-one has done it better than other Christians.
JWT, thank you for your service.
I’ll never understand how people who claim to love Americans hate America and everything it does. Yet, they continue to live here. It’s a big world, they probably need to move on to someplace where they won’t be consumed by self loathing.
JWT, that’s a damn fine piece of writing. Very visual. Thanks for sharing. It’s important to remind people that real evil exists and what it looks like. Most of us here in the U.S. are spared from contact with overt evil. It can become comforting to pretend it doesn’t exist or you can make deals with it to make it go away.
Seriously, T?
This isn’t a case of propoganda dehumanizing a foe to make them easier to fight.
The Taliban are doing a fine job of that on their own without help.
Thanks for your service JWT! I’m liking the Afghan Journal posts, keep em coming, and never mind the short armed extinct one.
I’m just gonna come right out and say that you suck on all levels of humanity mister tyrannosaurus. Please go spit your drivel on arfcom with the rest of the know-it-all loons.
thanks for sharing your experience Mr. wayne . thanks for your service and it seems to me you are a good and decent man. you deserve to sleep well.
Thank you for your input, Michael Moore
ST thank for your non-service to your(?) country. Now please die in a swamp and turn into oil. That will be useful.
JWT I liked the story. I think anyone in combat sees things they wish they could unseen, it is the nature of war. The boots on the ground get to do all the “fun” jobs that involve getting shot at or blown up. May we remember our fallen soldiers Memorial day and every day, and may those still standing find the peace they deserve.
Roger that, brother….. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that succinctly, or as near to how it felt for me.
I sleep easy too, even though I often have dreams of being back there.
But what was weird then, and still baffles me now….. was what I heard the first time when rounds went both ways, and I was behind my M2 on a hillbilly-armored 998. I don’t remember actually hearing the muzzle-blast from my .50 (that was more visceral than aural); but the links/brass pouring from it, bouncing off the mount, and rattling around the bed of that truck seemed louder than anything else.
Well… except maybe my TC (a Sgt. from W. Texas), cussing and calling out incoming simultaneously.
“hillbilly-armored 998”
So few people have the pleasure of knowing what you are talking about, and that is just awesome. And if you were ever driving Ma, you are my hero. That sound is still the most calming, relaxing sound I know. All hell can be pouring down on you, but when a couple of M2s start talking, you just know everything is going to be Ok.
Thanks, man.
How was your experience and opinion of the Romanian troops?
Pretty good. We worked with them quite a bit, and shared meals and lodging together often. They made damn good food. We never did any patrols with them, they mostly did route clearance in our AO, but we also did QRF for each other.
Their vehicles, the piranhas, really really sucked for that area and kept them on the roads waiting to get blown up. It was pretty ballsy for them to go out at all in those vehicles. I’ll say this for them, they did not wait to return fire, not did they shy away from overwhelming force. And that did cause some problems occasionally. All in all, I’d go to war with those guys again.
Jon,
On behalf of humanity – thanks for what you did. Because of people like you doing these jobs, we don’t have to.
Ignore the idiots on this thread. Killing people who set kids on fire is NEVER morally wrong.
I totally agree with Ted, “Killing people who set kids on fire is NEVER morally wrong.” What some folks will never get is that there are people who CAN NOT be fixed, re-educated, or corrected, by training, counseling, or group hugs. People that would torture and mutilate children are not civilized, are not part of a civilized society and need to be weeded out in any permanent fashion available. The families of such people will either be eternally grateful for the disappearance of the evil from their lives or are part of the same problem and need to be eradicated as well. Burning down an orphanage with the children inside, killing children for trying to learn to read, are acts against civilization, against humanity, and should be punishable by death. I’m not a big death penalty kind of guy, life in prison is usually suitable for the vast majority of mutant misfits. But these especially evil, rotten bastards need to be killed so that they do not infect others with their evil. The message of evil needs to be destroyed. Those that teach this message need to be destroyed. It is not part of any religion to do that to children, it’s a sick perversion.
…. my sentiments exactly.
When I raised my hand & took the oath, I didn’t do it with any self-deceptions or noble intentions; beyond it being the right thing. I only wanted a chance to erase as many of those “people” as possible from the face of the planet, preferably on their turf rather than our backyards.
TTAG thanks for cleaning up this comment section. It looks a lot classier now. And again thank you JWT and all that served for your service.
“TTAG thanks for cleaning up this comment section.”
One million THIS.
Even though I’ve been just as guilty feeding the troll.
But I’m working on it. 🙂
Really? I mean, Really?
Shouldn’t we be allowed to get into a mindless, useless and worthless text war with whomever we choose?
I think I can resolve all of the above conflict by getting us all focused on terms we can all understand, including Ty:
JWT and his crew decided to “do it for the children”.
Who could argue with that? Kumbayah, everybody!
The local Turdiban got what they deserved that day. (Maybe it will go down easier for some if they view this as “social justice” for sadistic child torturers…)
“One day, after hearing my story, someone said those thugs may have been evil men, but they had families, or at least wives. They probably starved or suffered some other hardship because of me and my team. How can I sleep at night knowing that we had taken their lives? When I think of the widows of these men crying out, cursing my name at night, I smile inside. I sleep real easy.”
Nailed it. If they didn’t want their wives and children to “suffer hardship”, they should not have been willing to embrace evil. What the hell happened to the America that was willing to wage total war on Hitler and the Japanese Empire? We didn’t wring our hands and weep over the “noncombatants” who died in WWII – we were at war with evil regimes, and we killed our enemies until they gave up.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
Anyone who is unwilling to see the evil in militant Islam is either willfully blind or an idiot.
Thank you, Mr. Taylor, for not being willing to allow evil to flourish unchecked.
Ah, TTAG purges all comments not sufficiently fawning towards soldiers! 2A: to bear arms and support the troops.
Remember, every dead soldier of an occupying army is a blessing to be cherished.
Figures, the forum is purged of all posts deemed insufficiently obsequious of the military.
For Memorial Day, let’s remember that every dead soldier of an invading and occupying army is a blessing and demonstration of human spirit.
Par for the course. I got censored here for posting that the US built the Nazi war machine through Prescott Bush’s union banking company in the 1930s, that was dubya’s grandfather. This was all part of a congressional investigation in 1944, which shut down said bank for having traded with the enemy. Not opinion, but fact, here for anyone to see, assuming they can type into a search box.
The post also mentioned that the same strategy continues today in Syria with ISIS and in the Ukraine.
It’s not so much flames or opinions that get censored today, it’s facts.