Am I Right to be Angry About This?

[GePap]

Originally posted by DaShi


Only 50%. I out qualify you then. So I'll just say your wrong and be done with it.

Lovely...(I guess having gone to a US highschool and college don't count?. I guess I must vote for a law to have you deported somehow..)

As for Americans: the Canal Zone in Panama was a wonderfull example. So there you have thousands of American troops and their families living in the middle fo Panama, so how did they interact with the locals?

Well, soldiers did go into Panam city to shop and the nightlife all the time, but you rarely ever saw them with their families. Mostly, young single solders came out, and a lot of them met Panamanian women, and it is this relation that gets them to incorporate into Panamanian culture. But the women and the high school kids remained in the Zone. You almost never saw them in panama for too long. They basically recreated middle Class US suburbs right smack in what was jungle, os that, living 1000 miles from the US, they could live exactly how they lived there in the US.

[SlowwHand]

Just this is enough to show some indication.

Pollard's second granddaughter was born this month, but he hasn't been able to call home to learn her name. Kaczmarek's daughter, Isabella Jolie, was born May 28 -- eight days after he arrived in Iraq as part of an advance team.

"It makes life miserable," Pollard said. "The morale, it's hard to stay high with these problems."

[C0ckney]

cheers DD

[mindseye]

A few more months of this and ... a Democrat in the White House, 2004. Not sure if that's good or bad, the GOP should have to deal with this horrible quagmire it dragged the country into.

"No nation-building" indeed.

[SlowwHand]

Give it a rest, mindseye.

[Q Classic]

i don't think we have enough troops there, honestly. we don't in afghanistan, which is why karzai can't exert any power outside of kabul, and his status in kabul is relatively precarious.

rumsfeld was right in how few americans i takes to defeat another minor power nation. however, he was wrong about the rebuilding phase, while shinseki was right.

and shinseki was stiffed by rumsfeld and co.--so we now have this to deal with.

i don't see why we shouldn't open up the occupation and rebuilding phase to include the un and nato if we're not going to put in all the manpower needed to both ressurect basic services, find the goddamned wmd, and keep the peace.

[Whaleboy]

without open corruption, clean streets and water, easily available services, so forth and so on

Thats not the American situation?

[DanS]

Believe it or not, no.

[Poogas]

To simply answer the title's question:

No your not.

[JCG]

As long as the reason why they're there is still clear in their mind, all's well....

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap


Lovely...(I guess having gone to a US highschool and college don't count?. I guess I must vote for a law to have you deported somehow..)

As for Americans: the Canal Zone in Panama was a wonderfull example. So there you have thousands of American troops and their families living in the middle fo Panama, so how did they interact with the locals?

Well, soldiers did go into Panam city to shop and the nightlife all the time, but you rarely ever saw them with their families. Mostly, young single solders came out, and a lot of them met Panamanian women, and it is this relation that gets them to incorporate into Panamanian culture. But the women and the high school kids remained in the Zone. You almost never saw them in panama for too long. They basically recreated middle Class US suburbs right smack in what was jungle, os that, living 1000 miles from the US, they could live exactly how they lived there in the US.

A few years back when I was in the canal zone I saw Americans going out of the canal zone all the time. Still the best shopping, the best restaurants, and the nicest houses where all in the canal zone so I could see why some retirees wouldn't ever want to leave.

My friends and I would go out to Panama City all the time (and even got up to David once; not much there to see) but we all spoke some Spanish and had local girlfriends so we might fall into the "girlfriend dragged them out" catagory.

As for not seeing most soldiers out with there families, well, most soldiers I knew down there were around 19-21 so they weren't married and didn't have families to go out with.

[GePap]

I never saw one single Zonian teenager out in Panama, and very few families. And they existed, otherwise what was the point of having High schools and other schools?

As for living in Panama City, that was not going to happen. And as for retirees, a lot of them did live in Panama, specially Chiriqui, since it is much cooler and less humid than Panama.

[lord of the mark]

it made me angry - but read closely - the guy's a reservist, who obviously doesnt want to be abroad - he wants to be back at his REAL job. He'd be unhappy if was deployed in Arizona. Havent heard anything like this about the Regulars. (and i doubt its universal among the reservists) It wasnt just his cultural deafness - it was his whole attitude of I dont wanna be hear and Im gonna go shoot off to a reporter. Probably hoping some higher up sees it and decides "we cant have a guy like this in Iraq"

[GePap]

And who are we going to be using to occupy Iraq but reservists? After all, The prez. said all this about bringing the noys back home. Someone has to take their place.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap
HOnestly, what do you expect?

Americans are not very good at adapting to non-American situations, and those in the military are not going to be different.

In general the military in Iraq has been damned good at adjusting to situations not typical of the US - going for days with only MREs, no showers, getting shot at, out of contact with families etc. All kinds of things. So the guy seems a contrast to the combat troops who won the war.

And we have all kinds of americans who like different situations, from backpackers to diplomats.