craziness
 

So I was reading a thread on the main board and didn't want to go OT in the thread and am posting here instead. Just a random thought. It had to do with the saying "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out." I think that is pretty good but it made me think of this. Does anyone else think the folks in the Middle East are crazy when they start throwing rocks at guys with machine guns? I always thought that was just plain stupid. :eek:

Lots of people throw rocks at me and I hate having to use my machine gun, but that's how I'm equipped.

Okay, here come the rocks.

It's more a show of defiance, then an actual military tactic.

I can think of less harmful defiance methods. I will stay with my original thought "it's stupid".....at least to me.

Leon

I understand what you're saying.

Just remember though....

If they are holding a weapon & attacking you, they are called "insurgents".

If they are holding a weapon & attacking you and you shoot them, when they fall to the ground dead and drop their weapon they are called "innocent bystanders".



Jantz

It is like bringing an extremely small knife to a gun fight!!! I agree Leon!!!

While on Hajj, or Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims throw stones at three pillars to represent their defiance of the Devil in a tradition known as "Ramy al-Jamarat". Yes, it is a symbolic gesture not a military tactic. Unfortunately, the "Devil" in some parts of the Muslim world has come to be all "infidels".

And yes it's idiotic.

Leon, did you just try to quote Rowdy Roddy Piper? "You don't throw rocks at men with machine guns."

Last great act of defiance

http://images.cheezburger.com/comple...42f085f103.jpg

Check the history books when the Germans invaded poland the polish charged the tanks on horses, in my eyes better to fight and die than to lay down and die. And as an ex soldier who has seen plenty of action I can say that.

Unfortunately, I think civil disobedience is often treated more harshly in some of those countries than throwing rocks at guys with machine guns.

Everything is treated more harshly.

Someone I know was in Egypt. Nearby a "foreign" woman (Probably european as the area had a number of european residents) was groped at a bus stop and started beating the guy. The police arrived during he spectacle, pulled them apart and sent her on her way on the bus. The local guy was taken just around the corner, beaten and left lying in the road.

When I asked if the beating was for messing with someone from another country or for getting beaten by a woman the anwer was "probably both, but if she'd been a local it would have gone differently"

The old regime didn't like anyone messing with foreigners, especially tourists.

The other story was that a hardline bunch in a village on the way to the pyramids kidnapped a busload of tourists -That made the news. What didn't was a couple weeks later when the road was closed for two days while the army dealt with the kidnappers.

Despite our "problems" I'm very happy I live in the US.

Steve B