DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Kramer on October 26, 2011, 08:28:49 PM
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A United States Army Ranger who has served in 14 combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan since September 11, 2001 was killed in Afghanistan on Saturday, ABC News reports.
Sgt. First Class Kristoffer B. Domeij, 29, was killed on Saturday in Kandahar Province when his elite unit accidentally set off a roadside bomb.
A member of the U.S. invasion force that went into Iraq in 2003, Domeij served in all in "four deployments in Iraq and another nine stints in Afghanistan," ABC News' Luis Martinez and Christina Caron reported Tuesday.
Domeij had earned many distinctions since joining the elite special unit in July 2001. He was a three-time recipient of the Bronze Star. He was also part of the unit that was involved in the "rescue of wounded [U.S. Private Jessica] Lynch from an Iraqi hospital where she was being held captive," Martinez and Caron wrote.
In addition, they note, with his death Saturday on his 14th deployment, Domeij became the Army Ranger "with the most deployments to date killed in action." Prior to Domejj's death, the U.S. Army fatality with the greatest number of deployments had been Sergeant First Class Lance Vogeler, who "was killed in Afghanistan during his 12th deployment," last year, Martinez and Caron note.
Rangers typically serve in more frequent deployments, which run for shorter intervals. But even by Ranger standards, Domeij served more combat deployments than many of his elite peers.
"Tracy Bailey, a spokesperson for the 75th Ranger Regiment, says Domeij had a combined total of 48 months deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan," Martinez and Caron reported.
Domeij, a native of Santa Ana, California, was married with two young daughters.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/army-ranger-14th-deployment-killed-action-afghanistan-205446473.html (http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/army-ranger-14th-deployment-killed-action-afghanistan-205446473.html)
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<<Domeij, a native of Santa Ana, California, was married with two young daughters.>>
If the Army gave a shit about the soldiers or their families, they'd put specific limits on the deployment of fathers of young children. Family values, my ass. They don't give a shit about Domeij's family any more than they give a shit about the hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi families they shred and incinerate. Fuck the whole God-damn bunch a them.
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Don't hold back Tee...tell us how you really feel
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Mike my guess is it wasn't mandatory he be there after 14 deployments and he must have enjoyed it or felt it was his duty. What would be sad, and the liberal mindset, would be to not let him go if indeed that was his desire. Maybe he felt that his experience might be helpful and maybe protective towards young soldiers on their first deployment and wanted to mentor young kids to keep them safer. There are people out there that are selfless.
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The Army puts a lot of pressure on experienced fighters to re-enlist. More likely than not, the guy just needed the money and the bastards weren't willing to put him in a high-paying desk job after his years of service in the field, they just let him know in a nice way that the money was there but he'd have to put his ass on the line for it again. Either of those two explanations seems likelier to me than that he would put the welfare of newbies ahead of the welfare of his own young family. War's a dirty business and people live and die by their experience, judgment and luck - - nobody's indispensable to the war effort and you'll see that the Army survives without this guy, in fact nobody will even notice that he's gone.
Way I look at it, this guy was either a callous schmuck who didn't give a shit about his own family but loved the action in the field, OR he was pressured into re-deployment, either financially or emotionally, by the Army. The other possible explanations are just fanciful, but the Army, if it cared about the guy's kids, would have prevented re-deployment in the field after a fixed number of tours, regardless of what the guy wanted or didn't want.
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My condolences to the Domeij family.
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MT , it is hard to know where to start, you apparently havn't ever spoken to a soldier.
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The Army puts a lot of pressure on experienced fighters to re-enlist. More likely than not, the guy just needed the money and the bastards weren't willing to put him in a high-paying desk job after his years of service in the field, they just let him know in a nice way that the money was there but he'd have to put his ass on the line for it again. Either of those two explanations seems likelier to me than that he would put the welfare of newbies ahead of the welfare of his own young family. War's a dirty business and people live and die by their experience, judgment and luck - - nobody's indispensable to the war effort and you'll see that the Army survives without this guy, in fact nobody will even notice that he's gone.
Way I look at it, this guy was either a callous schmuck who didn't give a shit about his own family but loved the action in the field, OR he was pressured into re-deployment, either financially or emotionally, by the Army. The other possible explanations are just fanciful, but the Army, if it cared about the guy's kids, would have prevented re-deployment in the field after a fixed number of tours, regardless of what the guy wanted or didn't want.
Mike you can't have it both ways. You seem to like big gov and with big gov people become a just a number. As much as liberals like to tell us how compassionate big government is, it's simply not true. Welfare isn't compassionate when applied generation after generation as government does. Compassion come from churches and individuals that donate their own time and money. Drop the big gov notion it's a dead end street.
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<<MT , it is hard to know where to start, you apparently havn't ever spoken to a soldier.>>
plane, I know lots of soldiers, some very well. In my own family, in my neighbours and among my high school teachers. I think it's fair to say that I don't know any soldiers who served after the end of WWII. And I'm willing to consider that they're probably a whole different breed from the WWII vets.
What was your point?
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<<MT , it is hard to know where to start, you apparently havn't ever spoken to a soldier.>>
plane, I know lots of soldiers, some very well. In my own family, in my neighbours and among my high school teachers. I think it's fair to say that I don't know any soldiers who served after the end of WWII. And I'm willing to consider that they're probably a whole different breed from the WWII vets.
What was your point?
You need to tone down the hate speech. Between your rants on this fine young soldier, ranting about the justification of the Red Army raping 12 year old German girls, and your racist rants against Thomas Sowell and Herman Cain you are not doing your cause or yourself any good. People are going to start seeing you as evil and terribly unstable.
Does Canada have any hate speech laws that you might be breaking?
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I'm willing to consider that they're probably a whole different breed from the WWII vets.
What was your point?
That they are not.
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<<You need to tone down the hate speech. Between your rants on this fine young soldier, ranting about the justification of the Red Army raping 12 year old German girls, and your racist rants against Thomas Sowell and Herman Cain you are not doing your cause or yourself any good. People are going to start seeing you as evil and terribly unstable.>>
Thanks for the tip, Kramer. Gee, I wouldn't want people thinking I'm evil and unstable. What people exactly would they be?
The ones who supported the torture of prisoners in secret prisons around the world?
The ones who supported the Viet Nam War in which 2,000,000 Vietnamese died?
The ones who supported the invasion of Iraq and the deaths of over a million Iraqis, based on a pack of lies that even children could see through?
The ones who supported the President's murder of an American citizen without charges, indictment or trial?
The ones who support the incarceration of Bradley Manning without habeas corpus, charges, indictment or trial?
Yeah, geeze, if folks like that thought that I was evil and unstable, I couldn't hold my head up anywhere in decent society. Thanks for the heads-up Kramer.
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<<You need to tone down the hate speech. Between your rants on this fine young soldier, ranting about the justification of the Red Army raping 12 year old German girls, and your racist rants against Thomas Sowell and Herman Cain you are not doing your cause or yourself any good. People are going to start seeing you as evil and terribly unstable.>>
Thanks for the tip, Kramer. Gee, I wouldn't want people thinking I'm evil and unstable. What people exactly would they be?
The ones who supported the torture of prisoners in secret prisons around the world?
The ones who supported the Viet Nam War in which 2,000,000 Vietnamese died?
The ones who supported the invasion of Iraq and the deaths of over a million Iraqis, based on a pack of lies that even children could see through?
The ones who supported the President's murder of an American citizen without charges, indictment or trial?
The ones who support the incarceration of Bradley Manning without habeas corpus, charges, indictment or trial?
Yeah, geeze, if folks like that thought that I was evil and unstable, I couldn't hold my head up anywhere in decent society. Thanks for the heads-up Kramer.
Sounds like everything you are mad about has nothing to do with the loss of this young soldier. Take it up in another place not here.
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<<Sounds like everything you are mad about has nothing to do with the loss of this young soldier. Take it up in another place not here.>>
Well, Kramer, maybe you don't remember this because it was a long time ago, but I think you commented in this very thread that my "hate speech" was kind of turning off a lot of people and in this very thread, YOU and not I began dredging up all my opinion on the Red Army and the rape of Nazi bitches, etc.
But I think you made a reasonable suggestion. How about YOU stick to the topic at hand, the death of this young soldier, and then I too will be able to stick to the topic at hand. Don't raise extraneous issues and I won't respond with extraneious issues.
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I am sorry to hear of his death. I wonder why he would go back for 14 deployments, though. It certainly is not typical.
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Perhaps the "Hurt Locker (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/)" would provide a clue.
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Perhaps you could be a little more explicit. I haven't seen The Hurt Locker and don't intend to. It is clearly a film that glamorizes war.
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My post was in reply to XO.
You know what you know, and that's what you know.
XO expressed curiosity.
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I have seen the Hurt Locker, and it did not seem to me to glamorize war. It was a pretty good film. Not as great as claimed: Avatar was much more memorable, at least for me.
The film was a character study of a soldier who seemed to enjoy disarming bombs,as I recall. It would no more turn a person into a war lover than Yenta would turn them into a Jew.
And I really doubt that any film would turn you into a war lover, MT.
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Didn't claim it glamorized war. You were curious why a soldier would go with that many redeployment. I think the answer might lay in the ending scenes where he is home and then goes back.
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Thanks, XO, for the explanation. BT, if I wasn't curious, why would I have asked you for a further explanation that went beyond the title of a film I'd never see?
All war films glamorize war. It's inevitable. The heroes are good-looking guys, who despite their lowly working-class status, seem to enjoy the attention of babes that look just like Hollywood actresses, their dialogue is snappy and interesting, they look good in uniform and they lead exciting lives which are safe to enjoy vicariously from the seats of the theatre.
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Really? Full Metal Jacket glorified war?
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<<Really? Full Metal Jacket glorified war?>>
Honestly I don't remember enough of it to discuss in detail From what I recall, there were no babes in it but otherwise, yeah, I think it glamorized war in some ways. Ir showed Americans, who for the most part are wage slaves or debt slaves, leading shit lives in jobs that they can be fired from virtually at will, an alternative self-image where instead of being ciphers or schleppers, they can walk around with weapons in their hands and terrorize others, with the power over life and death that normally only the gods can possess. It showed them facing physical danger with courage and resignation. Nobody shits in their pants, nobody's wounds ever show messy body parts hanging out of their cavities . . . at least, not in the little that I recall of the film.
Of course there are films that glorify war much more than Full Metal Jacket. But it's inevitable in the telling of any war story that the narrator comes out as heroic, simply because (in mythic terms) he was there - - he went into the lair of the beast and he returned to his life in the world.
J.D. Salinger landed in Normandy on D-Day and fought his way across Europe with a unit that saw more casualties than any other US unit in the European Theatre of Operations, through some of the bloodiest battles of the war, and holds three Presidential unit citations, but never wrote one word that directly described his or his unit's combat experiences, true or fictionalized. (For Esme With Love and Squalor is the closest he ever came, but it describes only the life of the troops in England and the mental traumatization or "battle fatigue" of a soldier after he's come out of combat.) In one of his short stories whose title I have forgotten, he describes the thoughts of a young man invited to dinner by an older man and listening to the old guy's war stories; the young man thinks at one point "If I ever have to go to war, and survive, I'll never tell anyone about it because simply telling the story of the battle glorifies it." That one short story provides the only clue as to the reason for Salinger's silence.
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Only Blower is allowed to talk of war, which he does non-stop, in every post, ad nauseum.
BSB
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You can talk of war too, BSB, but maybe you'd be better off taking the Fifth Amendment instead. Your choice.
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When I saw Apacalipse now I was in Canada.
Man , that was wierd.
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Weird how? Difference audience reactions?
I saw The Deer Hunter once in Toronto and a second time in Dallas. Toronto audiences sit silently through every movie, but they laugh in all the right places if it's a comedy. Actually that's not totally correct, they screamed when I saw Psycho.
When the Dallas audience got to the part where the GI's escape from the hell-hole where their captors are forcing them to play Russian roulette and they kill their guards, the whole audience erupted in cheers, rebel yells, shouting and whistling. Never heard anything like it in my life. Don't mess with Texas.
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Apacalipse now was a deeply affecting movie , I was pretty young and I was in Halifax.
I can't blame the audience , I wasn't actually watching them. But they were in my thoughts as if I were there to be observed. I doubt they noticed me.