Let’s not forget 9/11 did happen. I would Imagine like 70% of reddits users are too young to even remember what happened.

There was a time we helped the Middle East for our own interests.

The sad reality is no one on reddit even looks at how much Americans and middle eastern people collaborated during the war to stop these guys from destroying their own people.

Read City of Death. This is a recent account of 2017.

There many other books detailing the war but City of Death is the most recent war book I read that blew me away. You can’t unsee/read that.

https://www.amazon.com/City-Death-Humanitarian-Warriors-Battle/dp/1546081828/ref=nodl_

I stumbled across this clip awhile back, one of the people involved wrote a book about his time with the FBR, including this event. It is an interesting story.

Here is it of your interested: https://www.amazon.com/City-Death-Humanitarian-Warriors-Battle/dp/1546081828

The role of a warrior is to kill the enemy on the battlefield. If Chief G did what is alleged in this article, he should be prosecuted. This, sadly, is not an isolated incident for the US military in the GWOT and there are reasons this is happening.

At Mighty Oaks we talk about why this is happening because we end up dealing with the aftermath of it. I like to frame this issue in terms of Mind-Body-Spirit balance as it explains a lot about the differences between us and the islamic enemy. Comparing these variables in the context of warfare is useful.

Mind: Education, training, access to intelligence information, technical proficiency: US wins easily Body: Fitness, nutrition, PPE, access to medical care/rehabilitation, access to supporting arms (CAS, arty, tanks, etc.) : US has overwhelming dominance. Spirit: Willingness to kill/die, societal level support of the mission, recognition of the spiritual aspect of war, explicit religious motivation: Muj easily wins.

You might say, "So what?" Well, we are 17+ years into this conflict and despite our massive dominance in Mind/Body, we remain unable to defeat/demoralize this enemy and we have fought them to a stalemate at best.

Looking at the Spirit variable:

Willingness to kill: Our guys are willing to kill the enemy on the battlefield, but the enemy is willing to murder women and children, set people on fire, lop off heads, and throw gays off of buildings. Willingness to die: Our guys are willing (in many instances) to sacrifice their lives to save their comrades, but the muj are willing to kill themselves only as a means of killing many of us. Societal level support: US civilian support for the GWOT is a mile wide but an inch deep while muj are fighting for their actual homeland. Spiritual warfare/religious motivation: US forces are largely completely ignorant of the spiritual aspects of war and there is no discernible religious motivation for our end of the conflict, but Spiritual Resilience is essentially the entire strategy of the muj and their leaders frame the conflict explicitly as a holy war.

What is the Spiritual aspect of war? When the decision to take a life or to offer one's own life is made, this is a Spiritual transaction. The Mind/Body are part of the execution, but in the final analysis, this decision is a Spiritual one due to the finality and gravity of the outcome. At the societal level (West vs Islam) there are a very different set of parameters in place that "govern" what is acceptable conduct in war. The West (like it or not) has its foundation in Judeo/Christian ideals in the sense that our laws and culture are heavily influenced by this construct which acts as a restraint on behavior, meanwhile, a muj can take a cell phone video of lopping off a dude's head and show it to their kids certain that they will be seen as a hero. Underlying all of our massive Mind/Body advantages, is a real Spiritual insecurity because our guys are left to wonder how it is that we have all of this firepower, training, and discipline and yet the enemy seems unintimidated by this and is seemingly willing to throw their lives away in the pursuit of killing us.

Add to that the barbarity and cruelty that the muj are more than willing to commit in pursuit of their goals and we have a situation where our guys become disgusted, hateful, and subsequently resort to vengeance at times as a reaction. This Spiritual "hole" our warriors have is often filled with affiliation to Vikings, Apaches (Red Team), Spartans, Centurions, etc. Whatever rudimentary understanding our guys have of these ancient warrior cultures (authentic or not), the historic brutality of these cultures is used by our warriors to gird them against the very obvious Spiritual advantage the enemy clearly has. And it makes our guys vulnerable to shit like what Chief G is accused of.

99% of the time, these instances of US forces crossing the line is known only to the individual or the members of the unit and is not reported. That's fine (Spiritually) while deployed or working in a military context with plenty of fellow warriors around, but it has profound consequences down the road when the warrior is no longer serving, isolated from comrades, and alone. We hear from our students all the time that, "If my family knew what I did over there, they'd think I was a monster." Setting aside the war crimes aspect of this, these warriors cannot ever speak of these things once they are out, and most never discuss them when they are in the service because they are violations of our deepest cultural norms (and also illegal). So these guys, who know they have done something unjustifiable, are left to simmer with this understanding and it causes a lot of problems in their lives. Substance abuse, domestic violence, divorce, bad financial decisions, separation from children, etc. are debilitating outflows from a real and seemingly unaddressable Spiritual crisis.

Returning to my initial statement, our warriors are taking the enemy's barbaric actions personally and it is tainting their motivation to do their job as killers on the battlefield. Killing the enemy does not have to be personal (although it is very difficult when brothers are lost in battle), and it is the lack of understanding regarding the Spiritual aspects of warfare that is responsible for this. I have gone on too long here already, but if you want to read an incredible work on this, go buy Ephraim Mattos' book City of Death about the Free Burma Rangers in the battle against ISIS in Mosul.

Yeah man here it is on Amazon.

City of Death: Humanitarian Warriors in the Battle of Mosul

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https://www.amazon.com/City-Death-Humanitarian-Warriors-Battle/dp/1546081828