Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Unknown Target on July 30, 2003, 11:25:32 am
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Now, I'm all for America, I'm a real patriot (not one of those "patriots" that accept everything the GWB says as truth + hates the French for no apparant reason). But I have no freaking CLUE why Jessica Lynch is considered a hero. She was an engineer, took a wrong turn, got shot and was "liberated" from an Iraqi hospital, while still in really good condition.
Now, why does that make her more heroic thaaan, say, a U.S. soldier that died fighting to protect his comrades??? :confused:
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well, uh, cuz "heroic" rescues like that are good for morale, obviously.
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No, it makes her what the media call a "Ratings Grabber".
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lol.
I usually don't agree with an0n, but in this case, he's right, I think
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Here, people get their heroes where they can find them (chalk it up to too many bad movies and the subsequent melodrama starvation people with no lives get in normal life), and people seem to generally have more sympathies for the damsel in distress because they're fuckin' morons. Hell, look at those assholes who got stuck down a mine shaft last year- not a nod to the people who located them, got a heavy drill, and saved their lives, but these guys whose only accomplishment was basically to not drown get handed the keys to the city- and then they promptly start suing the holy living fuck out of each other over movie rights.
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She probably got all the publicity because I believe she was the first female POW for America.
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I sincerely doubt that she is the first female American POW. Actually, according to this site (http://www.aiipowmia.com/inter23/in032903combat.html), 80 US nurses were POWs during WW2.
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Well heroes can't be bothered with fact
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It was a PR stunt. but there were not alot of people captured during the war(in march, I consider the guerilla activities as sereptitous and not war, we experienced the same thing WWII Germany especially berlin). She was also a woman in combat that was captured and it is one thing for a man to be captured but another(especially from a mans perspective) for a woman to be captured. But, unfortunatly the philosophy of never leaving a man behind is often not honored and dismissed as long as it is politically expedient. Cough cough Vietnam MIAs cough cough.
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I hate when you guys bad mouth True American Heroes. It takes real guts to drive into the heart of an Iraqi ambush, take them by storm, and live to tell about it. Not to mention doing all that with only an engineering team. And then when she was wounded and taken capitive, not only did she live to tell about it, but she helped the american commandos... liberate yet another Iraqi Hospital!
what? I just woke up. bite me. =P
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Let her have her moment... Who does it harm?
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My brain. I don't take naturally to misanthropy, which makes me hate humanity all the worse for forcing me to despise it.
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Apparently, the subsequent military investigation concluded that her injuries were from driving her humvee into the one in front when her engineering team blundered into an ambush.......
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Apparently, the subsequent military investigation concluded that her injuries were from driving her humvee into the one in front when her engineering team blundered into an ambush.......
Indeed, but I have to admit it was a good PR stunt at the time, it caught me off-guard and for a while I genuinely felt sorry for her being beaten/whatever-else-the-media-said. Why was I so willing to react to it? Same reason u all were - it was a woman. In the light of day now, I'm rather pissed that this was presented in such a light.
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but aside from everything else I wanna say the army core of engineers kick ass
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I think some people need to go watch "Wag the Dog".
JL was trumped up to be a hero becuase it gave the masses someone to rally for and give their support to. Since most people in this country don't understand that there can be a difference between 'support the troops' and 'support the war' and 'support the ****wit that got this girl over there in the first place', its a perfectly good political strategy.
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Originally posted by vyper
Why was I so willing to react to it? Same reason u all were - it was a woman.
who cares if it was a chick? Why does her morphology come in to play here?
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Originally posted by mikhael
who cares if it was a chick? Why does her morphology come in to play here?
Because its instinct in men to protect women.
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Originally posted by vyper
Because its instinct in men to protect women.
Even if only in hope of a potential shag.........;)
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Originally posted by vyper Because its instinct in men to protect women.
It is? I admit to wanting to protect my wife, but in a danger situation, any other woman is just a hairless monkey as far as I'm concerned.
Did I miss a memo?
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Pfff. I wouldn't protect anything if it meant putting myself in danger.
****, if you gave me the option of....I dunno, stopping Hitler in 1938, but it meant I'd have to lose and arm I'd be like "Fuck that, kill the Jews. I like my arm."
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If they wanted her dead or harmed she would be so. They gave her the best service in the hospital, better than all the Iraqis got. You have one injured woman and several dozen highly armed, very harsh men. If they had any intention of harming her, she'de be dead. But all those are just inconvenient little facts, the main thing is that she's an All American Hero and she showed those Iraqis whos boss
Heres a very thought out article, not just repeating the same old story: http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1059171011351
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Originally posted by Rictor
Heres a very thought out article, not just repeating the same old story: http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1059171011351
I don't know about "well thought out". Its just a load of spin in the other direction (though the interesting details about the black and indian women were new, I admit). I think the best part was how the guy summed it up pretty well at the end though:
[...]the White House spinmeisters will need yet another diversionary, dog-wagging tactic.
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That article ain't spin, it's true. Sarcastic/Narcisicsicsitic as it is.
The best way to get an honest opinion is to ask someone who is annoyed and on the brink of stabbing you. This guy/gal seems pretty pissed.
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Originally posted by mikhael
though the interesting details about the black and indian women were new, I admit
Thats primarily what I meant. The rest of the stuff is pretty much same old, though its interesting about the timing of Jessica Lynch's star-spanggled return to centre stage and how it coincides with the release of the 9/11 report..
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man, the US government is whack! :D
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a quote comes to mind by "PAPPY" Bowington.
may not be exact, its from memory
"Call me a hero ...
and I'll prove he's a bumb"
PAPPY
She did not ask for it.
If it was your sister or mother you'd think differently.
It saddens me to even enterian the thought that some of you would be happier if she was dead, and or abused more.
I never thought she was like a Sargent York or anything, but it was cool the way they went and got her when they could. And even cooler the way that Iraqi good sameritian stuck his neck out to help her.
The blame here, if any goes on the media itself.
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Dick?
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But why is she a hero and not the thousands of Iraqis who were injured as part of the US bombing campaign? They didn't ask for it. They were not given the best healthcare, the best treatment. And at the end of the day, no one came to rescue them. Why are they not heros?
And she wasn't even in the Army for her convictions. Its becuase she was too poor to afford college.
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The media selected her. They always make heroes out of POWs. The real heroes were the Spec Ops that rescued her, but it'll be along time before we know who they were.
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Originally posted by redmenace
but aside from everything else I wanna say the army core of engineers kick ass
Hear hear! Somebody give this man a medal! :D
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Originally posted by Rictor
But why is she a hero and not the thousands of Iraqis who were injured as part of the US bombing campaign? They didn't ask for it. They were not given the best healthcare, the best treatment. And at the end of the day, no one came to rescue them. Why are they not heros?
And she wasn't even in the Army for her convictions. Its becuase she was too poor to afford college.
:rolleyes:
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She was a hero because she finally proved that women are indeed bad drivers :p
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Originally posted by Analazon
She was a hero because she finally proved that women are indeed bad drivers :p
:lol: rofl
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ROFL!
Actually they tried to give her back before the raid, but the Americans just shot at them! It was said a brave Iraqi doctor told the Americans where she was, he was considered brave not for going against his bosses, but for having black hair and a moustache and walking towards an American machine gun!
I'm glad she got out alive, and she deserves the purple heart, however, I don't think valour really came into it. As my Grandad says, a hero is defined by 2 factors, wrong place, wrong time.
Flipside :)
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She's a "hero" because she's an all-American "nice girl" who got captured by Iraqis and saved by a bunch of Marines and the media's definition of a "hero" is someone that most people would like that gets into a somewhat dangerous situation. It's all a pathetic PR stunt.
On a related note, if I see one more TV news story on Jessica Lynch, I'll smash my TV screen with my remote.
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Originally posted by Rictor
But why is she a hero and not the thousands of Iraqis who were injured as part of the US bombing campaign? They didn't ask for it. They were not given the best healthcare, the best treatment. And at the end of the day, no one came to rescue them. Why are they not heros?
I don't think thousands of Iraqi civilians were injured or killed by US bombing. I'd put the number at 500 max. Almost all deaths were Iraqi soldiers. Neither the Iraqi civilians, Iraqi soldiers, nor Jessica Lynch are heroes. The media calls a hero people that your average boob would like.
To me, a war hero has to go far above and beyond the line of duty to accomplish something truly extraordinary. I'm talking Medal-of-Honor-worthy deeds.
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I beleve the most generus statistics for Iraqi civilians is something in around 7000,
and who said she was a hero?
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Between 6500 and 7500 dead Iraqi civilians counted so far, and thats not including many areas which were uncounted and all the bodies that never went to the hospital but were buried by their family.
so, 10,000 dead and who knows how many more injured, that civilians, not soldiers. And people cry about 300 dead American SOLDIERS...
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but you gota admit,this war was a lot better than it could have been, even if it still could have been better yet than it was.
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That's the people who don't understand that wars cost lives.
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Most of them, these days.
Chalk it up to seeing that many faceless bad guy flunkies die in the average movie these days. I don't buy the crap that TV and videogames turn kids into psychopath killers (boredom does, ****, I haven't played more than 10 hours in the past six months and I'm leaving computer boxes prominently by the garbage and the lights out hoping someone'll break in and be treated to a warm welcome by Mr. Tramontina), but it'd be silly to say it doesn't have a desensetizing effect when it comes to people you don't know. ****, look at the whole WTC deal- I've talked to people about it, the sort who got all weepy when they heard the news (my own memories of it would serve as another example, but would also ignite a flamewar I don't feel in the mood for yet), and they respond basically in the same way as they would to one of those scenes in every last friggin' movie ever where the violins go all crescendo-ey and the hero shouts something like "WHYYYY??".
Which is all understandable. After all, they're both just images that appear on TV. Next to nobody outside of the New York area actually personally experienced jack ****, and like most major, world-sweeping politics, nobody would have noticed in the least were the news not doing instant replays of Osama's trick tackle over and over and over again while reporters acted all indignant on the noisy box.
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Originally posted by FETCH
She did not ask for it.
If it was your sister or mother you'd think differently.
It saddens me to even enterian the thought that some of you would be happier if she was dead, and or abused more.
Um, I wouldn't spit on my sister if she was on fire. My mother I would try to save if it wouldn't result in me getting killed. I'd die to save my wife. A man must have his priorities. Want further clarification, just ask.
I don't care how badly JL got hurt. I'm not pleased in the least that she got hurt, or captured, or whatever. I'm happy that she was rescued. I don't think that she asked for any of this publicity, nor do I think that anyone else is saying that she did.
HOWEVER, what we are *****ing about is the some little girl seems to be catching a hell of a lot more PR than everyone else involved--including the people who rescued her, the people that died whilst she lived, etc. What this girl went through doesn't make her a hero. Being in the military doesn't make her a hero. Being in Iraq doesn't make her a hero. It all makes her a girl doing what was expected of her, nothing more, nothing less.