The barberity of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan catched on camera

[The Grand Nudger]

How much booty and cash do you think an american soldier expects, or gets, from their service?

1-Free education

Nope.

2-Free health care

Nope

3-an annual salary of $19,660. The wage is slightly lower for the first four months of service. However, basic pay is only the beginning of the Army's total compensation package.

McDonalds employees make 19-29k a year, first year..and don't get shot at for their trouble..even more importantly - they never have to shoot anyone else.  You sure you've got your man here Winter?

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I'm gonna float what must be a revolutionary idea to a person who thinks he's dealing with mercs and looters.

What if western soldiers are earnest people willing to lay down their lives for a stranger...a stranger they don't like and don't agree with..on anything...for pennies. For nothing, even? Not the best of us, every man down to the worst of us. Whatever else you can say about a guy - that much is true. What if those are the kinds of people your taliban buddies are dealing with? What if those are the kinds of genuinely decent people that are forced to make terrible decisions and do terrible things that they never wanted to do on account of the simple fact that your very good hand chopping friends would rather see you dead - than living in the kind of country you've repeatedly told us you very much want to emigrate to. What if that country, could be your home - no need to go anywhere. Like it is for us, all of the people who live in the countries that you envy. All of those people, who leave their comfy country - for your shithole. What if that's why those people were there? No great satan, just a bunch of awkward 19 year old kids who believe what you do not, what you cannot, and would do what you have not and will not..to help you - at nothing but risk and expense to themselves and their loved ones.

-and then there's you. They have to face the reality of you.

You reaching for your pearls when they start drinking beer out of a plastic foot? Go fuck yourself.

By all means, disagree with our government. We do too, all the time. We have to live in the real world, however..where someone else makes a shitty decision and we have to try to take the ball and make the best of it from there. I gotta tell you, we could use some fucking help. You think that the world is fucked up on account of your pathetic little slice of it...? No, it gets even worse, and we're there too. Most people don't have as much skin in the game as a volunteer soldier. Just accept that you have no fucking idea what it means to be a soldier of any kind, let alone a professional,in a western army.

So what if, Winter..what if you have the actors in the drama playing out in your head all wrong? What if you've confused heroes for villains or vice versa..or maybe there are no heroes..and no villains, at all? Do you think about this as much as you post about it? Do you have adult thoughts on the subject..or is it more the case that you run here to post whatever your silly ass witchdoctor told you was horrible and barbaric on a given day?

-and I know, I know, it challenges your myopic sensibilities to imagine western forces that way, just as it challenges your sensibilities to imagine the soldier in the image this way. Good. Excellent. Because you might want to try to come to terms with the circumstances that turn a decent and genuine 19 year old kid into the kid of person who drinks beer out of a dead enemy combatants prosthesis. Calling them evil or barbaric or terrorists is lazy and untrue and more than anything....comfortable.

The truth of the matter is worse than that.