06-22-2008, 06:13 PM
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#12 (permalink)
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Living Dead Girl
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Toronto
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lrrp
Certainly...This is part of a discussion my brother and I had when he got back from his last tour.
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Excellent, thanks very much
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Think about how hopeless things are for the average Iraqi teenager in this day and age. There are no city services to speak of, no trash collection, clean water, safe schools, power or telephones.
The only schools that are open are pretty much just madrasas, and we are fairly sure they are teaching hard line Islamic extremism instead of math and so forth.
There are no jobs for these people to hold either because the money isn't there or no-one wants to get thier heads cut off for being an Iraqi cop.
Shopping is a dangerous experience, death squads, IEDs and kidnap-for-hire is more of a business now than, say, maintaining a store front in Ramadi.
Now, on top of all this, throw in the most reliable assault rifle in the world, the AK-47. I can teach anyone to use and maintain the thing in 3 hours, including field stripping and cleaning. It will fire with all kinds of crap in it, and you can clean it well enough with knotted bootlaces dipped in motor oil. The Soviets produced millions, maybe even billions of those rifles and has sent them all over the globe. Hell, the national flag of Mosambique even features one.
So, when you have thousands of passionate young men, with no education, & nothing else better to do, being taught to hate with religious ferver in a place where AK's are as common as t-shirts, getting paid to plant IED's...well, how can you not have trouble?
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Yes
Hits a real chord for me after reading a few books about Africa (particularly 'Blood Diamonds' centering around Sierra Leone). In their case, it's lack of opportunity. Survival is the best most people there can hope for: from my western point of view, it's a living hell.
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What we should be doing is teaching these poor souls how to run water treatment plants, repair the electric grid and the roads. Instead we are too busy defending ourselves from people who literally have nothing to lose. Until we address that, things can't get any better, young men with a cause are the most dangerous thing we face there...
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*So agreed*
Thanks again for your post |
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