I'd be surprised if this post doesn't get me a lot of crap

I didn't get the cattle prod I mentioned yesterday because I really didn't want to deal with some humorless boob.
　
Yesterday I read a story about a couple and their kid getting tossed off of an airplane because the kid wouldn't behave. Good call on the pilot's part. I support him 100%. There is no reason 175 people should be cooped up on an airplane with a kid that won't behave itself.


In other news, the troops are now most likely going to experience the Taliban increasing activity thanks to some Staff Sergeant going off and killing a bunch of civilians in Afghanistan. Of course, there is simply no reason for this whatsoever. The Staff Sergeant has just put a lot of GIs at risk and that is never a good thing. While the Staff Sergeant is being detained in safety the rest of our GIs will be at increased risk.

Of course, the Army will courts-martial him and if he is deemed mentally incompetent he will wind up in the screw factory for rethreading. If he isn't considered incompetent he will wind up in Leavenworth and probably have to spend the rest of his life in isolation because the GIs there will probably extract justice from him if he is not isolated.

Frankly, in this particular instance he has committed a civilian offense against the people of Afghanistan. He ought to be turned over to them and let him face Sharia law.

If a GI in, for example, Germany or South Korea committed a crime against local law by there he would most likely have to face criminal prosecution by the Germans or Koreans. I'm pretty sure that the German police have carted in more than one GI for getting drunk and tearing up a bar and taken him to court.

Turning this GI over to the Afghans would do several things. It probably wouldn't get the Taliban settled down but it would show the average Afghani that we don't tolorate that kind of behavior in this country and we don't tolorate our people behaving like that over there.

Over the years I have spoken with a number of professional GIs, both Army and Marine and almost to a man they have told me stories of little acts of kindness paying off in huge dividends.

"Don't go down that street today, Marines," said one kid to a Marine patrol. Sure enough the engineers located a pretty good sized IED a few hours later. Right down the street the kid steered the patrol clear of.

Betcha that won't happen as often after this incident. Innocent GIs are going to pay heavily for this act of cruel stupidity.

This does not mean that GIs are Kumbaya singers, either. They are not. Nor are they wild-eyed killers. They are professionals. They kill when they have to, without hesitation, compassion or remorse. It is just another part of their job.

Right now I believe we have the most professional military that we have ever had in history. They are to a man, volunteers. A large percentage are not still on their first enlistment. They are on professional status. Most of them have at least one deployment under their belt, and many of them have several deployments.

This also isn't another war where the young first enlistment privates and corporals constitute the overwhelming percentage of casualties.
If you look at the casualty reports there are an awful lot of officers and NCOs leading from the front and getting hit. This means to me that the professionals are not simply time servers. They are leading from the front where they belong.

It doesn't really matter if they are reservists or regulars, most of them have been overseas and gotten their hands dirty.

I'll bet there are not a whole lot of GIs out there that support the recent cowardly killings of all those civilians. It would be interesting to see how many GIs would be in favor of handing the Staff Sergeant over to Afghan authorities for trial and punishment.

An awful lot of keyboard commandos out there are going to try and tell me that I'm wrong here but I'd sure like to hear what the boots on the ground over there think. The man has disgraced his uniform, his service and himself. What is a whole lot worse is that it sounds like a lot of GIs are going to pay for these acts with arms, legs, sanity and their very lives.

I'd bet an awful lot of the troops would go along with throwing the Staff Sergeant to the wolves. I'll bet they don't condone that kind of behavior, either for a number of reasons, either moral, practical or both.

Then again I may very well find myself wrong with this post because it is going to take time before all the facts trickle in but this is what it looks like now.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/