From personal experience within my own family and circle of friends.....it is LIBERALISM!!! It is the constant whining they hear. It is what they see and read while over there from news over here, they do have internet and t.v...even in Afghanistan. Everyone is an armchair general! It is the weakness, lack of values, lack of sacrifice.
Yesterday while talking to my brother you could hear the mortars hitting...a lot more frequent lately, in the Green Zone. He was saying how horrible he felt because of all the fanfare that combat is over and yet he watches our young guys STILL putting it all on the line every minute of everyday, still in danger. What nobody over here really comprehends is the absolute ruthlessness of what really goes on there and the diplomacy that our government wants to engage in is delusional.
Tell him to keep his head down and his body armor close. It's not gettng any better in that area.
“...nobody over here really comprehends is the absolute ruthlessness of what really goes on there...”
It’s interesting you’d say it that way. My father never talked a lot to anyone about his European tour. (’42-’45’)-however in later years, I asked and he told me a great deal.
As far as ‘ruthlessness’ is concerned, though he was deployed in some real ugly places, he was not brutal or violent.
The only time he looked ‘ruthless’ was when I asked him about Malmedy. He was in the neighborhood immediately after the fact and got this far-away, cold and hard look in his eye when he said: ‘The war started for me at Malmedy’. He had been at Normandy, fought in the hedgerows and by the time he reached Malmedy, he understood that he had to shoot-to-kill because he could NEVER be made a prisoner.
Americans are raised as Christians for whom it is a sin to kill. So, it took the murder of unarmed prisoners for many US soldiers to feel the war was going to be ‘ruthless’