Soldiers-at-Arms
Americans have pledged to retain 50,000 troops in Iraq to continue training their Iraqi counterparts. Just as other countries, like Canada, have plans to continue training Afghan troops to ensure that they eventually become capable of looking to their own interests in defending their sovereign countries against ongoing attacks by fanatical Islamists.What do army personnel do to establish trust between themselves? They turn to other pursuits, to sports, for example, where each side forms their teams and they seek some relief from the rigours of army life by expending good-will energy. Challenging one another through physical prowess in pursuing a game. But then, there is that about games and the challenge sport itself presents.
Sport events where two opposing sides challenge one another for gamesmanship and heated adversarial competition where there is a winner and a loser, constitute in themselves a kind of stand-in for active pursuit of war. They become, in effect, war games. And in their pursuit of winner and rejection of loser status, tempers fray and actions become violent.
Little surprise that in Iraq at an air base where a U.S. army company visited local security forces and where Iraqi soldiers and American military advisers played a game, a quarrel ensued between an Iraqi soldier and an American soldier. "The Iraqi soldier opened fire on them", explained Defence Ministry spokesman Maj.Gen.Mohammed al-Askari.
The game turned deadly. Not the first time it has occurred, and without doubt not the last time it will. Not only in Iraq, but in the Middle East, when Palestinian police trained by the West and by IDF soldiers as well, have turned their weapons on their Israeli counterparts. Nor has Afghanistan been spared, with Afghan police turning their weapons on ISAF forces.
In this latest instance, two American soldiers were killed, and nine left wounded. Predictable?
Labels: Middle East, Traditions, Troublespots, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 08, 2010
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