Originally posted by Viss1:
Originally posted by Jeb Hoge:
You know, it's an interesting coincidence that this came up. I was watching the Band Of Brothers "Why We Fight" episode last night, and it's rather remarkable how similar the plot to that episode is to Three Kings, and in many ways to the current and recent situation in Iraq. You have a major conflict that's come (or is coming) to an end, you have soldiers wondering what the point was (and incidentally, grabbing their spoils of war), and then you have The Discovery. In WWII, it was the death camps. In Iraq, it has been just how brutal Hussein, and then al Qaeda, was and is towards dissenters and civilians, not to mention our troops.

I wonder...I suspect...that this snatch-and-kill might be the death rattle of insurgency in Iraq.



Interesting observation. I'm struggling to see the parallels, though. Gruesome killings have been a hallmark of AlQaeda since the beginning... that's nothing new. I'm not sure what the "discovery at the end of the campaign" would be in this case.

FWIW that episode of Band of Brothers was my favorite.



Well, yeah, that's true about AQ. Still, the point is more along the lines of the "Why are we here?" complaints. For all that we've grown up with this history of the epic noble struggle of the Allies against the Axis and all the atrocities that Hitler and the Nazis committed, it's really interesting to me to note that the same questions and complaints were being made before the Nazi camps were discovered. I'm not sure how much that applied for the period after.

A childhood friend of my mother's, who is ex-military (Marines AND Air Force, IIRC) and in his 60s, was complaining the last time we saw him about the waste of time and people that the Iraq war had been. And it led my mom to comment later (after our visit with him) that she would have thought that he would have been more supportive of liberating people from genocidal forces, what with him being Jewish and of an age when the Holocaust had just ended when he was born (not that his parents were there, but just that the times coincided).

But then, I suppose it's not necessary to understand everyone's feelings on a matter.

"Think of it, if you like, as a librarian with a G-string under the tweed." Clarkson on the Mondeo.