Today is the anniversary of 9-11 and for the past few weeks

I have seen quite a few fine examples of how stupid the entire human race is.

The stupidity in no way is entirely one sided.

Over the past several weeks I have heard the raging contraversey over buillding a mosque near the ground zero site.

What were these people thinking, anyway?

It's as tasteless as putting a nazi headquarters next to a holocaust museum. You simply KNOW you are going to piss people off.

I also point a finger at the Imans that should have been shouting from the rooftops that they and their parishioners had no part whatsoever in the suiciide attacks on the WTC. There should have been a rash of muslims buying up every single US flag in town.

But they stayed silent.

Let's let the muslims take a rest here because I want to address the stupidity of the so-called Christian community and their recent rash of stupidity.

The recent rash of Koran burnings is a prime example.

This is nothing more than a bunch of out and out baiting and just plain looking for trouble.

Do you think the troops are stupid enough to do things like that?

I doubt it, although there is always some idiot in uniform that managed to sneak in because someone somewhere along the line forgot to administer him an IQ test, but he's the exception.

The Vietnam war had a number of incidents of First Class stupidity on the part of the GIs. A single shot coming from a village would often mean that the Zippos came out and the village would get torched.

This would mean that people that had no real interest in WHO ran Vietnam would immediately decide that they were not going to side with the dirty bastars that had just burned them out, and I can't blame them a whit. I'd probably have joind the VC, myself if it had happened to me.

I think the troops have learned from the stupidity of their fathers.

A face to face report with a Marine Gunnery Sergeant seems to make me think that at least some people have learned.

A report I got some time ago from the good Gunny told me that someone can at least use their head. This tells me that the good Gunny has AT LEAST half a brain, and it is very likely he has more than that.

One of our patrols was wandering through the streets of a city in Iraq. There was an old lady and her grandson that wanted to cross the street. It was SOP at the time NOT to let people cross in the middle of a patrol, but the platoon sergeant saw the woman and looked at the Gunny.

He nodded and the platoon sergeant told a young Marine to help the old woman across the strreet, which the young Marine did, treating the woman kindly.

This was just a random act of kindness.

Two days later, the grandson saw the patrol again and saw they were getting ready to turn down a street. He stopped the patrol and pointed at something.

The Gunny diverted the patrol and called in the engineers.

The engineers got the cell towers shut down for a brief time and wound up disarming a pretty good sized IED that would have probably walloped the patrol and caused a number of casualties.

Do you think the kid would have tipped off the Marines if they had just burned a Koran?

I sorta doubt it.

Now let's look at one aspect of Marine mentality.

First of all, there are a lot of people in the middle east that believe that in order to join the US Marine Corps the prospective member has to kill and eat a relative.

(I can hear the voice of Sam Eliot saying "Dad. It's what's for dinner.")

Of course, I don't hear a whole lt of Marines denying it, and I wouldn't deny it either if I was a Marine.

Marines have an unofficial policy of "Best friend, worst enemy."

They don't go baiting the locals, they work with them and help them as best they can so long as they behave themselves. Marines do not go looking for trouble. They let trouble find them.

If you do not want their friendship, that is OK, too. They will cheerfully oblige you by destroying you by using whatever tools they have at hand. Then they willl simply leave you there to rot.

It is simply the choice given to those in their area of operations.

Best friend, worst enemy.

A lot of the people out there that seem to be baiting people and looking for trouble ought to take a prety close look at the way the Marines do business.

Of course, most of these instigators seem to think that kindness is a sign of weakness, but they do not really think.

Look at the Marines. They are probably some of the kindest people in existance.

The few that are stupid enough to mistake the kindness of Marines as weakness generally are not able to make the same mistake twice.

You might want to look at the Marines for guidance before you go and do something stupid.








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