1516: War Games

[DWarrior]

Originally Posted by Eightball

Can I serve this Taliban soldier pork 'n' beans?

I just figured it would be interesting to have him feel intestinal and spiritual discomfort at the same time.

Meh, I'd just have them over for dinner for whatevs. I maintain that most people are nice face-to-face, and they'd probably know some great Jew jokes.

[Daemonik]

Originally Posted by da_ticklah

<nerd>

can you connect to the router from a computer with an ethernet cable the reset you did changed the routers web interface password not the WiFi Password
once you connect a laptop to it via Ethernet cable point your browser to http://192.168.1.1

Article Viewer and follow the steps for WPA2 Personal

</nerd>

<nerdier>

Point of fact, resetting the router erased the WiFi password and likely turned it's WiFi off as well as resetting the routers password to the factory default.

The resetting procedure Lucas went through sounds like the router wasn't getting a DHCP address allocated as well, since powering cycling the modem & router doesn't do jack about the password.

</nerdier>

Oh, and a point about the service call cost? They did make a product that worked, and worked fine, throughout it's warranty period. Keith called after the warranty had expired so yeah, I see no problem with them charging more for that, especially since there's a billion online self-help forums for free.

[poingjam]

You're just jealous.

[Keith]

He is so jealous.

[Bucho]

Are you shitting me?!? Ophira and Myka on in the same week?!?!

This is the most delightful case of estrogen overload in the history of everything.

[Andrea's toothbrush]

Originally Posted by Edward's Screen Name

I'm aghast that men trained to kill as many men as possible don't show proper respect for their dead enemies! How is that possible? Mind blowing. Whatever happened to being polite after you've used your machine gun to blow holes into an indiscriminate number of people?

I agree. I don't understand the reasoning of Chemda's "You just peed on a dead body. It's time for you to come home."

These soldiers most likely killed many men. They just shot a Taliban's brains out. Chemda says that this is just "messed up"... But then he pees on the body of the man who just tried to kill him, and NOW he "needs to come home" because he was a bad boy? WTF?

And who cares if the tapes it? People can judge all they want, but there should be no repercussions. As for people 'disheartened' by these actions because "America is better than that". What naive, jingoistic nonsense. Everyone is supposed to be "better than that". And if everyone were "better than that", there wouldn't be a war in the first place.

[whatotherway]

Originally Posted by Edward's Screen Name

I'm aghast that men trained to kill as many men as possible don't show proper respect for their dead enemies! How is that possible? Mind blowing. Whatever happened to being polite after you've used your machine gun to blow holes into an indiscriminate number of people?

In all wars and military actions, those who are being fought have always been denegrated and disrespected. One way this shows up is in the calling the enemy names that belittle them. Limeys, gooks, chinks, krauts, sand ni@@ers, towel heads are all used to belittle the enemy, to reduce them to something less than human, a lesser species, that can be wiped out without worrying about their being human.

Add to this one aspect of basic training, that is to break the recruits, so that you can build them into the image of an ideal soldier. Part of this process is done to make it easier for them to ultimately point a weapon at another human on command, and to pull the trigger. After all we are taught that killing others is wrong, there are commandments against it in most if not all religions (I haven't studies all of them, there are too many) and some soldiers never break that earlier conditioning and find they cannot pull the trigger on command. The belittling process just makes it that much easier to break that early conditioning.

We then send these reprogrammed young people into combat and give them the job to kill the enemy. The enemy has been identified as being less than human, and then our soldiers have to watch as their friends are killed or maimed by the enemy. With the knowledge uppermost in their minds that the enemy is less than human, when compared to us and our allies, the chances are that signs of disrespect for that enemy will surface, and that every once in a while those signs will assume grotesque form.

I don't have to agree with the disrespect that occurred, but I can understand how that disrespect came about. It is on both sides, the Taliban look at us as heathens and worthless unless we convert and join their belief structure, and many are quite willing to set bombs that maim and kill, because they look at us as somehow less than human unless we join them. It is an unfortunate side effect of the way we have made war for the past several thousands of years.

[Daemonik]

Originally Posted by Andrea's toothbrush

I agree. I don't understand the reasoning of Chemda's "You just peed on a dead body. It's time for you to come home."

These soldiers most likely killed many men. They just shot a Taliban's brains out. Chemda says that this is just "messed up"... But then he pees on the body of the man who just tried to kill him, and NOW he "needs to come home" because he was a bad boy? WTF?

And who cares if the tapes it? People can judge all they want, but there should be no repercussions. As for people 'disheartened' by these actions because "America is better than that". What naive, jingoistic nonsense. Everyone is supposed to be "better than that". And if everyone were "better than that", there wouldn't be a war in the first place.

To be honest I didn't get Chemda's reaction either. Especially about how the guy's wives and kids couldn't trust them now or something, like they're automatically deranged serial murderers.

God forbid she ever meets a mortician, I guarantee you the sick jokes they can come up with beat the shit out of pissing on a corpse, and that doesn't make them Ted Bundy. If anything that attitude helps prevent them from breaking down, turning seriously fucked up things into humor.

Soldier's pissing on a corpse is on a level with Pat Dixon's Crime Report joking about the etiquette of a cop raping a woman in an alley. Sick humor, but also a cathartic release valve for the psyche.

[poingjam]

Originally Posted by Andrea's toothbrush

As for people 'disheartened' by these actions because "America is better than that". What naive, jingoistic nonsense. Everyone is supposed to be "better than that". And if everyone were "better than that", there wouldn't be a war in the first place.

Okay, but I can have higher hopes and greater demands of my own country than I can of another. And god dammit, this is America. We're the most powerful country in the world, and while that may not be true for much longer, it's true right now. The most powerful country in the world needs to be better than that. Abraham Lincoln once said, "With great power comes great responsibility," and then he swung away on a web line.

In the end, yes, it's disgusting and distasteful, just as war is disgusting and distasteful, but pissing on people isn't out of the control of the individual the way a war is. A soldier can decide what not to do with his own piss.

That said, people are going to do what they want, and I get being caught up in the moment, but you'd better make damn sure you don't get caught if you do some shit like that. Not just keep it off of video. Don't let anyone see you do it at all, or if they do, make sure it's someone who's doing the same thing you are.

In that way, it's no different from any other symbol not living up to its expectations. If you're Tiger Woods, don't get caught sleeping around. If you're Michael Phelps, don't get caught smoking weed. If you're the president, don't make up words in your speeches. Our military is the face of our country, especially in war, and that shit isn't okay.

[Daemonik]

I don't get the people who are upset that the Taliban might get angry about the pissing incident. Or that this will 'escalate' things, somehow.

We're in an all but name war with these people already. They regularly put up videos of themselves beheading, stoning and other vile brutal acts of what they call 'justice' on their enemies. The escalation has already been brought folks, and it wasn't us.

The people who are crying about 'escalation' aren't concerned about these people's dignity, they're just cowards willing to tuck tail and appease rather than confront.

If they're worried about dignity, let them go to Afghanistan and get in some faces, tell them that selling a 10 year old girl into marriage is NOT acceptable. Killing a rape victim because she was raped and 'shamed' the family is NOT acceptable. Throwing acid on a woman's face because she married outside the faith/tribe/family is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

Pissing on some of these people is more dignity than they deserve.