Grunt Life in Afghanistan

[tequila]

Disturbing or not, I think it is good because it represents a realistic slice of life for at least some Marine grunts in A'stan.

If it illustrates that the average grunt has a way to go as far as empathizing with the people he is protecting, then that is good as well. Far better to know this than to pretend that our current TTPs for cultural understanding are working.

[SWJED]

Disturbing or not, I think it is good because it represents a realistic slice of life for at least some Marine grunts in A'stan.

If it illustrates that the average grunt has a way to go as far as empathizing with the people he is protecting, then that is good as well. Far better to know this than to pretend that our current TTPs for cultural understanding are working.

Understand where you are coming from on this. Regardless, I cringe when I see and hear such stuff - on video or in 'real life'. I maintain that there are no excuses as in 'boys will be boys' - that may have been water under the bridge years ago - but now every one of these BS 'our boys in combat do no wrong' videos seriously damages our efforts.

[Pragmatic Thinker]

Perhaps this video is reflective of our society and its values? In studying irregular warfare and counter-insurgency, I don't see too many American ideals with regards to respect for other cultures, striving to learn the language of the people, and most of all maturity in dealing with other people unlike yourself...these are traits often found in Special Forces A-Teams and not conventional line units. Having served on both sides of the fence I can say that most boys in these types of units are young and immature. They feed off of immediate gratification that is reflective in most things within our society, so I am not at all surprised to see this type of video out there. I recall in the mid-90's when the generals and civilian leadership were speaking out against humanitarian missions and these so-called "soft" missions of winning the hearts and minds. Fast forward to today and these same civilian leaders are saying that we need counter-insurgency doctrine and the training to support this doctrine. Our problem in the armed forces is our ability to adapt to rapidly changing threats and environments. At the end of the day we still excel at the high-end conventional warfare as seen in March 2003 with the invasion of Iraq, but we lack and IMHO will always lack the ability to conduct timely (key emphasis) counter-insurgency warfare effectively.

[FascistLibertarian]

how of it is American arrogance and ignorance towards the locals. It seems to show what a steep climb we Americans have in conducting effective counterinsurgency ops. There's pretty much every 'ugly American' stereotype on display here. I'm hoping that it's just a few bad apples shooting their mouths off. What a disappointment though.

To be fair if the grunts in ww2's pacific theatre or Korea had the ability to tape and upload videos people back then it would have been much worse and offensive.
This is the result of a lot of young people from this post-MTV open source generation in a stressful foreign environment.
It is both funny and offensive.
As a completion of a bunch of different stuff the degree to which parts of it are funny or offensive will vary.

Edit: I have never seent his liveleak.com website before but it seems intresting.

[SoiCowboy]

Liveleak.com is the new and cleaned up Ogrish.com