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  • Jessica Lynch

    Is she a real hero?

    I mean cmon, what happened to her? she got shot, was caught, and jailed.

    Does that make her a hero?

    In other countries they would have spit on your face if you were a POW.

    And she gets to have her own parade, where's my parade?

    Any opinions.

    (with all respect, i dont mean this as an insult)

  • #2
    She's hardly a hero.

    Comment


    • #3
      I concur.

      The skinny dude with the glasses seems like the real hero in that fight.
      "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

      Comment


      • #4
        All the hoop-lah was a ploy by the government to put a positive spin on things and to get more public support for the war in Iraq
        Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

        Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

        Comment


        • #5
          Jessica Lynch was a godsend for the military and political PR people. She's a female (GOLD!), young (GOLD!), pretty (SOLID GOLD!) from a very humble rural home (EVEN MORE GOLD!) and she was rescued in a daring raid - even if there was no opposition, there could very well have been an entire Iraqi battalion hidden away in that hospital just waiting to turn it into another Desert One.
          There is no question that she endured hell on earth, apparently being sodomized one point, and her conduct appears to have been without reproach.
          Unfortunately for the other POWs, they just weren't as photogenic as PFC Lynch.
          And yes, that skinny kid who actually DID do all the things that were ascribed to PFC Lynch should be getting the accolades. Too bad he's not a pretty young female, otherwise things would be different.
          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

          Comment


          • #6
            What Tophatter said....
            Your look more lost than a bastard child on fathers day.

            Comment


            • #7
              I have seen TV reports of the pilots who were shot down treated as heros when they returned to the US and gave grave statements. Lynch too was treated as a hero [though it is contested, I believe].

              We are somehow sceptical of those chaps or ladies who are failures in war. POWs and pilots shot down are treat as failures here. Maybe it is our rather funny logic, but we don't apprecaite failures and under no circumstances given them a hero's welcome.

              My father, who was also a miltiary officer, wrote a letter to me from this death bed, during the 1971 war with Pakistan,stating that I had no place in the family if I returned as a failure. He felt it was better to die than come home a failure and worse, a coward!

              The best part was that he had many very good friends in the Pak Army [being in the undivided Indian Army] and yet he thought of honour of the family and they nation first.


              "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

              I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

              HAKUNA MATATA

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Jessica Lynch

                Originally posted by PiggyWiggy
                Is she a real hero?

                I mean cmon, what happened to her? she got shot, was caught, and jailed.

                Does that make her a hero?

                In other countries they would have spit on your face if you were a POW.

                And she gets to have her own parade, where's my parade?

                Any opinions.

                (with all respect, i dont mean this as an insult)
                Well said. That is...if you were held as a POW, and IF you actually took a few bumps & bruises even half as bad as PFC Lynch, when the Humvee she was riding in crashed.

                Interjecting my opinion in though.

                You claimed to be Russian. So chances are the other posters would belive you if you said your unit "stepped in something awfull".

                And your CO ran off, like the Commanding Officer of that convoy the 407th was in did.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Ray
                  We are somehow sceptical of those chaps or ladies who are failures in war. POWs and pilots shot down are treat as failures here. Maybe it is our rather funny logic, but we don't apprecaite failures and under no circumstances given them a hero's welcome.

                  My father, who was also a miltiary officer, wrote a letter to me from this death bed, during the 1971 war with Pakistan,stating that I had no place in the family if I returned as a failure. He felt it was better to die than come home a failure and worse, a coward!
                  Sir,

                  This is the result of the VN War Missing In Action list. There is a collective guilt that they were left behind.

                  My job, Sir, is to bring my people home and the best way and the fastest way I know how is to complete the mission. That is my responsibility and if somehow that they get left behind, then, they are viewed for having the bravery to endure until we can get them back home.

                  I like to share something with you, Sir. During my course as Section Leader, I was given my orders to save my section everyway that I can. I did the usual cover and withdraw against a superior OPFOR. Try as I might, a day later, my section got wiped out. The Sgt Maj was not so easy on me, screaming why didn't I save my people. I replied that I tried everything I could, cover and withdraw, blocking force, even a dead run. I didn't know any other way to complete my mission.

                  "Why didn't you surrender?"

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Saving one's command is an inherent command responsibility. However, it is not the paramount issue. The paramount issue is to defeat the enemy and accomplish the mission.

                    If saving one's command and men was the paramount issue, it leads to a defensive mindset. A defensive mindset cannot win wars as I look at it.

                    As far as surrendering is concerned.....NO WAY.
                    Its then Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori!!


                    "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                    I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                    HAKUNA MATATA

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Sir,

                      I don't believe I made my point clear. My point was that as a young greenhorn Lieutenant, I never considered surrender as an option. What the exercise showed was that there comes a point where you have to consider it.

                      If there is no longer any valid strategic, tactical, or moral reason to continue the fight - that is if you're completely surrounded, no escape, no ammunition, and with sick and dying, would you surrender to save the rest of your men or do you committ them to a suicide pact?

                      There are some enemy that you will never consider surrender, the Tutsis are one such enemy. In that case, I would save the last bullet for myself and would tell everyone of my men to do the same.

                      Then, there are those I expect to obey the Geneva Conventions. The Red Army was one such enemy.

                      At what point, Sir, do you swallow your pride and get your sick and dying the help that they need, which by the way may include civilian women and children? At what point, Sir, do you take as many of the enemy with you as you can?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Colonel
                        Dear God your story gave me the shakes. I instantly put myself in your shoes and imagined myself in your position. It wasnt until you mentioned the OPFOR that I realized that it was an exercise. I felt relief....that is, until the sergeant major came down on you (and me) like a ton of bricks, screaming at you, like he was your "dead" soldiers, asking why you didnt save them. You gave the responses I would have given: "I did my best...I did all that I knew how". And then his stinging indictment: "Why didnt you surrender?"

                        It didnt occur to me either:cry
                        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          An eye openner, isn't it? And a soul searching event.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Officer of Engineers
                            An eye openner, isn't it? And a soul searching event.
                            ill say, i just would have hid my squad as well

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Oh, we've hid. We've hid so well that even we couldn't find ourselves. The OPFOR had the distinct advantage of knowing the terrain and knew where we had to come out in order to get unlost.

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