Posted on 09/02/2017 7:11:10 AM PDT by ameribbean expat
Al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi lost his aura of invincibility in 2006 when the U.S. military released raw outtakes of a captured video showing the terrorist chief to be a befuddled, pudgy bumbler in a black ninja costume who didn’t know how to operate a machine gun.4 But some in the U.S. military didn’t get the value of ripping down al-Zarqawi in this way, arguing that the machine gun, an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, is “complicated to master” and requires extensive training. Plus, the M249 in question was an “older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising.”5 Arab journalists, on the other hand, saw the value immediately. Iraqi television broadcast the video over and over for days.
(Excerpt) Read more at armyupress.army.mil ...
I could teach an truck driver E2 how to master a M249 in about 30 minutes.
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M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, is “complicated to master” and requires extensive training.
Weaponizing ridicule is what the media are doing right now with our president.
And if we do it to Democrats, were immediately labelled misogynistic, homophobic or racist. Well, that and they’re too stupid to know they’re being made fun of.
“..When a police state loses its ability to instill obedience or fear, it cannot long survive. When terrorists lose their ability to terrorize, they lose their most vital psychological weapon. Terrorism being by definition a form of psychological warfare—the name says it all, which is to instill terror among populations and leaders—the perpetrators cannot exist in perpetuity if they fail to cow the people.....”
hmm
Reminds me of Kerry in the space bunny suit!
The other side of this is that it can lead to underestimating the object of the ridicule.
The M-73 7.62mm co-ax machine gun we had on our M-60A2s in Germany in the mid-70s was easy enough to field strip, unfortunately one got proficient in doing so because it CONSTANTLY jammed. On the other hand, the M-85 .50 cal rarely caused a problem. Of course neither of these were man-portable infantry weapons.
Tyrants are often aware of the dangers of ridicule, and their response will be slaughter. Try ridiculing kim ding dong.
Or Dukakis sticking his head out of a tank with a big grin on his face. Or Jimmah Cahtah mentioning Amy in his debate with Reagan. Or LBJ grabbing his dog by the ears.
Look no further than Sarah Palin to see how effective this can be; they tried it with Trump as well, but too many Americans are tired of this Greater Depression - and they still rally to Trump even as we are told he is a failure.
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