Hi Jill,

Quote Originally Posted by Sargent View Post
This all ties into an idea that has emerged in my mind that there must be parity in suffering between troops and civilians in a war zone. American troops mutinied in the Rev War because they were starving in a land of plenty. In WWII, the sharing that went on between the Allied troops and the liberated civilian populations probably went a long way to assisting the war effort. In Iraq, I doubt our effort is helped by the fact that the vast majority of American troops are living high off the hog while the Iraqis can't even get the basics.
I think that is a really good point. It is probably even more important in the ME where there is a tradition that conquerors live well at the expense of the populace (happened in other places too, but the memory of it goes back a long way in the ME). This is one of those times when the logic of rhetoric is more important that that of reality .