Quote Originally Posted by thehoodedsmack View Post
You are hindering discussion, and restricting the development of new ideas and theories. Understand that you are slowing down the advancement of the discussion, and please try to contribute.
Obviously, you're not going to stop posting, and I don't expect anyone to. I'm trying to give perspective. I'm pointing out that most of the posters in this thread have never had to react to someone trying to kill them. Let alone a whole country trying to kill them...on a daily basis.

I'll tell one of my stories to show you what i mean...

Me and a friend were driving to the beer distributor one night. I stopped my truck at the bottom of a hill where there was a man waving his arms around in the intersection. I asked him if he needed some help. He appeared distraught, something was wrong. His reply: "FUCK YOU!". Then he came up to my window, which was down and spit on me. I tried to get out to beat his ass but he pressed up against the door. I turned around in the seat to kick it open, good thing because it put me just out of reach of the knife in his hand. It barely touched my throat. I grabbed both his wrists and tried slamming them off the roof of my truck. My friend was already on his way around the truck. I shouted several times, "he has a knife, he has a knife!"

He withdrew and threw a hay-maker at my friend..the knife caught him in the back of the neck. He yelled, "he stabbed me!" then punched him and somehow got the knife. the man went down and my friend stomped his head and then i field-goal kicked him across the jaw. This all happened in a few seconds. From the time he went down to the time he was literally snoring from my superb punt was only milliseconds.

But here is my point: I've been in lots of fights and i've always maintained some control. Enough to know not to seriously hurt someone by curb stomping them or using a weapon, or simply knowing when the fight is over and letting the other guy go. This fight was different. The guy was down. He was out. I didn't have to punt him. But there is no instant replay, no rewinding the video, no second guessing, no research and development let's have a vote and see what the consensus says is the best course of action when your life is at stake. Only milliseconds and one chance to react.

I can look back and say that wasn't completely necessary but at the time it most certainly was. I didn't know the knife was too dull to do much damage. I didn't know that this guy was the crack-head son of a fairly influential man in town until he had the police threaten us when we tried to press charges. I didn't know the distraught man in the intersection was really just high on crack. This was not a perfect display of neutralizing a hostile.

Soldiers at war deal with situations like this ten-fold. They do all day it everyday. They cope differently than we do. What I learned from these kind of experiences is not to expect neat and clean and exemplary. If you do you watch too much TV, you're living in a fantasy land. The only new theories and ideas that you could possibly make is not to judge soldiers but to judge war. Anything less is still going to be ugly.