3 weeks old column, but worth reading
For Monday, June 23, 2003
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20030623/index.phpA Sad Story
According to an Iraqi witness, last week an American soldier at a propane tank got into an argument with an Iraqi woman, took her propane tank away from her and tossed it on the ground, and gave her a hard shove.
An Iraqi man driving by saw this, stopped his car, got out and walked back to the two American soldiers there, shot them both with a pistol and then left in his car. He killed one and wounded the second.
If the Iraqi witness is telling the truth, this was not a drive-by shooting, as the American military described it. Nor was it an organized attack by a supporter of Saddam Hussein. It appears to be just an Iraqi man who got ticked off when he saw an Iraqi woman being abused by a foreign soldier.
This is both sad and revealing. .........
(snip)
Every time our soldiers fire into a crowd, every time they kick down a door in the middle of the night and start jerking people around, they will breed bitter resentment. Some of our soldiers recently killed four young Iraqis who were just firing into the air to celebrate a wedding. It's a custom in that part of the world. T.E. Lawrence called them joy-shots. It's also a custom in that part of the world that every wrong must be avenged. But our soldiers aren't given courses in Arab culture, and they are trained to shoot first and ask questions later. Any man who intended to come home in one piece would have to adopt the same practice.
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