Now, let’s not get all riled up over this Humvee crashing down the streets and blowing through traffic in a foreign city, because I see this stuff coming home to roost. I think I saw this already in a video about a tank crushing its way down a street in LA. We’ll see this on the news again when the military convoys are racing down the 405 at 65mph over the roofs of all those bumper to bumper traffic snarls so they can get to the LAX airport and protect AirForce1 when Cheyney and his lapdog Bush#43-44 debark to “handle things” in the most culturally diverse city in the USA.

When the insurgents can drive occupying forces to the point of behaving in a paranoid reactionary way that alienates the people they are trying to win over or ostensibly protect, well, then the insurgents have won.

So, there it is, we’ve clearly lost this war.

You don’t have to be any kind of genius to understand this basic fact…just trying thinking as an insurgent (or read Mao’s book). We saw it in Vietnam, and it has already happened in Iraq.

I really don’t see any way of turning this war around. This is not going to work, we’ve spent all the civilized options long ago by allowing horrific management and preparation. We’re so far behind now, because of how poorly this war was managed from the start, that it’d take a miracle to overcome the odds against us. No way, no how.

It’s over folks. Now it is just a matter of waiting until Washington figures that out. Too bad they don’t realize that the citizens of the US have already figured it out.

Why do we expect our soldiers to act any different than GW Bush and asshole cheney!!!

That was like a real life episode of Grand Theft Auto minus the actual auto theft and outright man-to-man violence.  Who said that Americans were not the cause of Iraq’s problems?

What does that behaviour say? “WE ARE YOUR OVERLORDS! WE WILL DO ANYTHING WE WANT—SMASH YOUR CARS—DRIVE DOWN WHATEVER SIDE OF THE ROAD WE FEEL LIKE—SO COWER BEFORE US!!!!” And they don’t show the film of the mercenaries—sorry, I mean military contractors—shooting Iraqi passersby for sport. I wonder how many times similar Mad Max drivers have run over people and blithely buzzed down the road without stopping.

No wonder the Iraqis hate Americans. No wonder they don’t report who’s planting the IEDs and firing the sniper shots. No wonder there’s going to be more and more killing for however long it takes for America to get the hell out of Iraq. Way to win hates and minefields, boys.

Actually, this sort of thing appears to be fairly common and isn’t limited to situations where soldiers have just come under attack. Here’s the link to a couple of blog postings written in 2005 by a soldier who describes routinely sideswiping cars and even carrying along rocks to throw at the windshields of Iraqi vehicles to scare them off if they approach too close:

http://funwithhandgrenades.blogspot.com/2005/11/moving-and-patrols.html

http://funwithhandgrenades.blogspot.com/2005/12/playing-army-part-one.html

He describes laughing “uncontrollably” after these incidents: “I’m still trying to totally grasp why I find the destruction of other people’s property so funny. My gunner and I later likened ourselves to a bunch of teenage hoodlums who find terrorizing the citizenry entertaining, but that’s a bit of a stretch. ... It’s like we’re watching America’s Funniest Home Videos except we’re the stars of the video, the ones causing the destruction. Whenever we come back to the [forward operating base] we always joke about how many more insurgents we made that day through our actions. If you really think about it, it’s not funny at all. If I was getting my vehicle smashed up and having rocks thrown at it by a bunch of foreigners I’d be pretty pissed off and would be a lot more likely to stop by the local Jihadist’s club and go to the bomb-building after party.”

Well, them boys in the Humvee came out of that ride with about 60 more enemies. Don’t they have a horn/warning lights/siren? Oh no that would attract attention, lets just shunt them out of the way-quietly.!!

There’s no justification for US troops smashing their way through Iraqi traffic. It is the act of an uncouth, uncultured bully. This is great evidence both of how desperate the situation is for American occupying troops, and of how seriously and justifiably despised those troops are by the Iraqi people. This is more proof, if any were needed, of why people fighting against the U.S. occupation are seen by most Iraqis as liberation fighters, and not as the “terrorists” Bush claims them to be. What is more, it shows why the REAL terrorists are having such an easy time finding recruits in Iraq since this criminal invasion began.

This is another example of life on the ground over in Iraq and the utter disconnect Americans have for people in other countries or cultures. Gloss it up if you like. Say they are trying to avoid being targets. A person can try to rationalize anything. The fact of the matter is these sorts of actions, which show a disregard for the local inhabitants, add more fuel to the Anti-American fire.  How about the video of the soldiers taunting Iraqi children with a bottle of water. Yeah, real nice. It all just reinforces the stereotype of the rude, ignorant American asshole. I wonder how many times it takes behaving this way before you can no longer refer to it as a stereotype and just say that’s what it MEANS?

I’m not trying to bash the military here, but our morally bankrupt leaders have sent young scared kids to a place they know little about…with guns. They’re not in a very good situation to say the least. We all want to think that our “boys and girls in uniform” are doing a bang-up job…the best we have to offer…the whole fuzzy warm America thing. We romanticize our wars. We are always the good guys and never do any of the “bad things” that happen in a war (and they do happen). There’s a great danger in being that naïve especially when you react violently to anyone that points it out. This is what happens when you have a poorly run military operation in a country that the people/politicians/soldiers know very little about. Add to that the fact that no one seems to know what the mission is and none of those three groups thinks it’s necessary to bother to learn about the people they’ve invaded and you get a situation that goes from bad to worse. And because as we are such a violence and intolerance driven society we don’t even feel all that bad about it. We went in on lies, broke the place and now with no easy solution in sight, we blame the victims.

It’s heartbreaking.

The soldiers are scared and doing their best to survive while acting like jerks.  I cannot blame them.  Who I do blame are the leaders of our country who put them there and then leave them.

Our leaders are WAR CRIMINALS!  Impeach them now and try them for war crimes.

Bring our solders home and finance whatever the Iraqis need to rebuild.

This is truely heart breaking.

Sincerely, Don Stivers

Good to see what “Democracy Building” looks like on the ground.

Given that aggressive driving is contributory to something like 30,000 deaths per year in the US, it would seem we still got a lot of work to do there.

jon
Connecting the dots: From human behaviors to Ecosystem decline
http://StudentsForTheEarth.org

Where is the evidence that the soldiers have been attacked. I hear to mayhem or screaming in the vehicle? I do not hear the sound of anyone wounded or crying for help? There is NONE of that. Yet what we see is a total disregard for the Iraqi civillians. Only imperial soldiers in an Imperial Army act like these thugs. When you are expanding the empire at the cost of internal neglect and external radicalization, you will end up with soldiers like these guys. Young, impressionable, “patriotic” as far as WAR is concerned but not as far as the interests of the country are concerned, some of them most likely bigots, some christian fundamentalist , some christian Zionist, others without any agenda of their own but caught up in a war that they do not support. Yes there are bad apples among the soldiers, and they are by the bushels of them. Not a few bad apples but significant minority of bad apples. What percentage are a combination of either ignorant, or racist, or violence loving maniacs pummped up on testosterone at the expense of their own country’s or the Iraqi’s interests? Who knows, but I would venture that it’s more than 25% ! We need the draft. A so called “volunteer” army that’s actually paid to serve is like an army of mercenaries. A draft will make it less likely, in this day and age, to continue on this imperial conquest in the middle east. We need our Republic back, not a run away Military Industrial Complex with armies of mercenaries ruining the reputation of this country. Today America is the most distrusted and most dangerous Nation on the planet if you ask the World’s population. Surveys even in Western European countries regard our country a greater threat to world peace than China, North Korea, Russia, or Iran

No trust. No respect.

NO POSSIBLE WAY TO WIN ‘HEARTS & MINDS’.

What infects human brains to cause them to INSIST their owners continue to do what doesn’t work and which cannot possibly ever work?

Americans have no more right to drive like insane idiots on Iraqui roadways than they have to be in Iraq in the first place. Oh where oh where is the FORCE big enough to toss the bullies out?

I guess it’s coming… better brush up on your Cantonese and Mandarin!

tell me again,why are we there?

Well, I can’t blame them for driving like jerks to avoid being shot. Just goes to show how messed up things are over there. It’s probably impossible to win hearts and minds one a situation has deteriorated to the level that Iraq has.

This was distressing to watch. You can not save something by destroying it. We can not be in Iraq without destroying it. We have destroyed it. How does keeping troops there help anyone? Why would anybody approve of a people who use such an arrogant disregard for driving about an urban area?

If they are in that much danger that all the energy is spent in destructive actions, bring out troops home. They are learning very bad behavior. I will not argue that they are vulnerable and are reacting to this feeling, but the people they are abusing and disrespectful of are in fact the residents of Iraq, we are not Iraqi. We have no place to be there. Bring troops back home now!

The soldiers depicted in this video have just been attacked. They are choosing between two evils. Stay there, in crowed streets and fight off a likely ambush -with civilians in the crossfire- or get out of the area as fast as possible. “Bumping cars” is not the same offense as it is in America. You need to acknowledge both sides of the story, as Mr. Olbermann did on “Countdown”. I appreciate the publication of this video, it sheds light on what it is like over there. Soldiers are put in these situations, and that is what needs to be discussed.

Come on, do you blame them? I certainly wouldn’t want to make a target of myself, either! Yeah, we’re all against the war, but let’s not be completely stupid.

Besides, I suspect if American soldiers let themselves get stuck in traffic, none of the surrounding drivers would be too pleased with that, either!

I cannot wait for those guys to come home and show off their newly learned driving skills on America’s streets!

At least we’ve given up the charade of being “the good guys”.

US soldiers have obviously concluded that their relationship with the locals is one of mutual hate, pure and simple.

The “mission” has narrowed absurdly to “I just want to stay alive till I can get the f**k out of here.”

Gee, what a noble and constructive undertaking.

Of course they don’t want to make themselves targets you stupid #@%*s!  I think it’s wise, don’t you?!  Your swarmy little comment inferring they aught to be out shaking hands instead of trying to stay alive and attempting to maintain order.  See if you would wait patiently in a traffic jam if you were in their shoes.