Originally Posted by
Abu Suleyman
All of that notwithstanding, the article is limited in scope, where as the nature of a man, or a woman, is not. The moments in the article are just slices of time out of a mans career, and life. A few bad, and even criminal decisions, do not automatically turn someone into Satan incarnate. I find it amazing that people will advocate "seeing things from the terrorists perspective" but will forget to look through our own soldiers eyes. That is a real shame.
It seems that in an effort to justify ourselves, and our actions, and defend the just war, we are willing to abandon anyone who makes mistakes. I would not try to justify Nate in his decisions, and I was not trying to, but he is not some irredeemable goblin, nor an embarassment to the officer corps. He is just human, like all of us. He made many, many decisions in Iraq, and some people want to condemn him for his bad ones, while forgetting his good ones. You can condemn the decisions without condemning the man. More importantly, I believe we should be willing to forgive mistakes, for someone who did so much good, at least in the long run. I am saying that I believe even with the Samarra incident Nate Sassaman's time in Iraq was a net positive for the Iraqis.
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