reply to post by mnemeth1
originally posted by mnemeth1
When I said "I was there as well" - I meant deployed to the Middle East in a hostile zone.
Sorry, my mistake, I thought you meant what you said, I didn't know that what you said
meant something else.
Back on topic...
Listen, I've spent nearly 5 years on my life in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of operation, 3 as a member of the US military, 2 as a private
contractor, and this my perspective gleaned from my personal experiences.
We can spend a few million dollars to bomb a village, maybe we kill a few members of the Taliban, maybe we don't.
But for
every single person we do kill, every member of their family would now like to see harm come to our personnel. The sons, nephews,
brothers, cousins and grand children are now receptive to the idea of taking a pot shot or planting an IED along the roads our personnel travel.
We have just successfully manufactured enemies, people who wish us harm by killing someone close to them, perhaps the person responsible for feeding
that entire family.
On the other hand.......
We go into that same village, and hand out half of the money we would have spent on the armament to destroy that same village, to the village elders
and heads of those families.
Maybe, just maybe, we have reduced the number of people who want to see our personnel harmed. We have fed them instead of killing them.
If a few thousand dollars placed in the right hands, can convince some of them,
any of them to go get food instead of an ak-47 or some pe-4
explosives, then we have reduced the amount of enemies right then and there.
The tactic works, it worked in the Al-Anbar province in Iraq, it worked in Bosnia and it worked with the mountain tribes in Vietnam.
A few bucks in the right hands of the right tribal elders, to save a few American lives, and reduce the number of people who want to kill American
personnel, treason or not, is a small price to pay.
I, and most of the people I served and worked with, would much rather be thanked for feeding a family, than cursed for killing their family.
Now that's just my opinion mike.