DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS MARINES QUOTE REGARDING IRAQ, TERRORISM, AND THE WAR AT HOME?

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DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS MARINES QUOTE REGARDING IRAQ, TERRORISM, AND THE WAR AT HOME?


[+] serious ballot by herzog
created Fri Aug 19, 05

In Iraq yesterday a roadside bomb killed 14 Marines. Two days earlier, six Marines from the same outfit were ambushed and killed. Yet those Marines were not the terrorists’ primary target.

You were.

Our enemies know the Marines won’t quit. But they hope you will.

The terrorists realize now that they can’t defeat our military. Instead, they hope to achieve what the North Vietnamese did: To blur the reality on the ground and convince the American public that we’re losing.

Those Marines were tactical targets of opportunity. You’re the strategic target. The terrorists hope that our media will create an atmosphere of failure—and that you’ll give in to a sense of defeat.

The Marines are looking for a few good men (and women). The terrorists are looking for headlines.

The Marines who died on the Euphrates River battleground were closing down crucial smuggling routes from Syria. Recent operations have made life ever more difficult for the terrorists. Our enemies are fighting fiercely because they’re cornered.

They certainly want to kill Marines. But that doesn’t require video cameras.

The rush to document and publicize their occasional successes makes it clear that the terrorists are fighting, above all, a media campaign. It’s their only hope.

That’s no comfort to the families of the Marines we lost, of course. And the fact that 20 fatalities within three days came from the same Ohio-based reserve unit, the 3rd Battalion of the 25th Marines, magnifies the pain.

But the unit’s losses reflect the importance of its mission.

The terrorists want to hit that battalion as hard as they can, to break the unit’s morale and gain some breathing space. They’ve been doing what any thinking enemy would do - concentrating their resources on a decisive point.

They probably studied the forces tightening the noose around them and decided that hitting a reserve unit offered the best chance of success.

They don’t know the Marines.

Our troops will keep the pressure on even as they mourn. The Marines have faced far tougher enemies - not least the suicidal Japanese, another enemy who showed no mercy (and beheaded prisoners, as well).

The difference is that the extremists in Iraq don’t expect a battlefield victory. They’re fighting for time. They hope to wear us down, to maintain a level of photogenic chaos in just enough of Iraq to keep the media hot. They’ll keep chipping away at our forces, praying that our will will prove far weaker than our weapons.

They don’t expect to force out our military through violence. They hope our political leaders will withdraw our troops. The terrorists have done their homework. They know that a disheartening number of our politicians share one of their beliefs: a low opinion of the American people, a notion that we’re weak, that we’re quitters.

The terrorists know that our Marines aren’t afraid of them. But they believe that our politicians are terrified. Of you.

So you’re the target of every bomb, bullet and blade our enemies wield. Those Marines were killed to discourage you. They were targeted to ignite political discord in the USA. They died to give ammunition to those in Washington who view our dead only as political liabilities.
----------------------

Do you agree with this marines asessment of the situation?

Yes
No
Parts of it
Bush hates the military


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COMMENTS:
This is a no-brainer. f course we are the targets. I believe that the media (not saying that they are intentionally complicit, necessarily) is the strongest ally of a guerilla fighter. It's quite obvious to me that, even though we are fighting "their war" (guerilla), our troops are flat-out kicking their asses, from a combat perspective. However, to take one of your terms, the unbiased media reports mainly headlines such as "freedom-hero(yes, a bit of sarcasm with that term ;-)) bombs checkpoint, 13 marines dead" or "Insurgent attack kills 10, injures 45, including 2 marines."

Like in various local-media entitities, danger/violence sells. Watch your local news programs, particularly if you live in a large metro area. Here the first 5 minutes or so (at least) are filled with headlines such as "Murder in North _____ (not getting my location that easy ;-)) or "serial rapist on the loose downtown", etc. How often do you hear "Teenage boy saves granny from speeding truck"? or "Businessman gives his lunch to homeless man"? etc.

To sum it up, the media is a terrorist's best ally, whether it is complicit or not.
by CletuSlackedJawYokel on Fri Aug 19, 05 9:36am [+]

As an American and former Marine; yes!
by Guy_Cabbelero on Fri Aug 19, 05 9:43am [+]

The source is a marine in iraq crank.
by herzog on Fri Aug 19, 05 9:51am [+]

This is symptomatic of one of the major problems I have with Bush, though. If you are going to go to war (rightly or wrongly), have ENOUGH troops to win the war and the peace - quickly.
by FiddleFaddleOnLSD on Fri Aug 19, 05 9:54am [+]

^But the whinos would bitch and bitch, even though hammering them now would probably lead to less deaths overall than having a dragged out guerilla war.
by CletuSlackedJawYokel on Fri Aug 19, 05 9:59am [+]

Parts of it, but not most of it. Bush went out picking a fight and now we're in one. The people battling our soldiers are not the terrorists -- most of them are insurgents. Major difference, although that has become Politically Incorrect to say, back in the States.

I agree that the Marines and other soldiers are targets of opportunity. Once they are not so available, the targeting will decrease dramatically.

This is merely an attempt to make us believe the fighting is for our benefit. It is not. My heart goes out to the soldiers caught up in Bush's Folly ... but that doesn't mean we, back here, are being "protected."
by Cathexis on Fri Aug 19, 05 11:31am [+]

What he is saying is correct, why is the US in Iraq again?
by ABC on Fri Aug 19, 05 11:57am [+]

That "Marine" certainly writes like a journalist. Amazing coincidence. Do you suppose he learned phrases and words like "Euphrates River battleground," "crucial," "ever more difficult," "even as they mourn," "photogenic chaos," "disheartening,"and "political liabilities" in boot camp?

And, of course, the phrasing is just like an editorial page op ed piece.

Looks like this Marine has a promising career ahead, after the military, in journalism or politics.
by cranky on Fri Aug 19, 05 1:33pm [+]

Crank, the question is not who said this, or whether you like him. As he is a US soldier I'm sure you wouldn't. No, the question was whether or not you agree with this statement. Robert Byrd (KKK) could have written it, wouldn't matter, the words are right, regardless of who said them.
by herzog on Fri Aug 19, 05 2:33pm [+]

I think the enemy wants public opinion in the states toward the war to be as negative as possible, and they will do what they can to make that happen.
by larrynelmira on Fri Aug 19, 05 2:34pm [+]

Whether the words are right or not is subjective isn't it?
by aya on Fri Aug 19, 05 2:40pm [+]

^ yes, which is why I posed this as a question. But crank so far has refused to answer it.
by herzog on Fri Aug 19, 05 2:51pm [+]

Marines are trained to think and act to be the most effective weapons.
Whatever this marine says,it doesn't justyfy anything about this war.
by mybackhurts on Fri Aug 19, 05 7:41pm [+]

I quite agreee with the article/opinion or whatever it was.
I can say I support this opinion because my country is fighting terror as well. and we're donig a great widrawl now. let's see how it goes, although Israel's case is diffrent. for some reason Israel's withrawa in the hipe of their success against terrorism...
by guitars_love_life on Sun Aug 21, 05 8:29pm [+]

"The source is a marine in iraq"
by herzog on Aug 19, 2005 9:51am

They actually let readers and writers into that group of government sanctioned civilian killers?
I guess it could have been dictated but there seems to be a distinct lack of profanity to make it real.

Anyway. The targets are not 'us'. The targets are the invading army that had bludgeoned its way through the country.
Fuck, if an Islamic nation (let's pretend there's one strong enough) strolled into the USA or the UK after bombing the hell out of its civilians just to get some oil and other resources....well I bet you we'd be trying to blow up the invading army.

To the Iraqi people the Marines are not a liberating force of good - they are what they are. A bunch of illiterate blood-hungry apemen c**ts murdering their way through a foreign country for no good reason whatsoever.
by wideheadofknowledge on Mon Aug 22, 05 3:07am [+]

i read the first five paragraphs then threw up my breakfast.
by scarlet_pin on Mon Aug 22, 05 9:38am [+]

This reminds me of the statement in the movie Citizen Kane, where Kane blithely jokes when informed his paper is losing a million dollars a year that "at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place - in sixty years."

Except here it's not dollars, it's America's finest, slaughtered on the Altar of the evil lying scum that are Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney etc.

Remember, this whole war in being waged on the premise of a BIG FAT LIE made up and spouted by the above vermin, namely that there were weapons of mass distraction, there are none and never were and they knew this, so what are American kids doing risking their lives every minute of everyday over there, a million miles away from their families and friends, is this the American dream that they grew up believing in?

by Ken_from_Dublin on Tue Aug 30, 05 3:39pm [+]






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