Quran book used for target practice

Posturing.

ignorance killed america.

Discipline, Discipline, Discipline. Modern warfare has made America Arrogant enough to forget about the oldest rules of warfare. Win over the people and you win the war.

So what. Oh thats right. The mooslims can use the Bible for toilet paper, behead people, riot and kill over cartoons, demand special treatment due to their "religion" and nothing is said. But let one GI put a round through the koran and the poop hits the fan. What a load of crap.

Paratus, killing is killing whether they're beheading people or we're dropping bombs. We're not going to convert the populace of Iraq to Athiests of Christians and of course that isn't even our goal. beefcurry is on to something.

Big deal. And if he had used a different book that would be OK? The Origin of Species? Or A Brief History of Time?

I wouldn't mind shooting at any book. It's just a bunch of ink and paper. It doesn't feel and doesn't think anything.

Hawmang:
This is not a war for the hearts and minds. It's a war for our survival. We are not going to win the war with islam by winning their hearts and minds. I doesn't matter how "nice" we are. Clinton sent us to the Balkans because of a massacre (didn't happen but we went anyhow) of the Kosovars. Mooslims attacked the WTC, the Cole, embassies, the WTC for the final time, etc., etc. anyway. We send massive amounts of aid to these countries. It does no good. They will not stop until you convert or die. If you think this war will stop because we leave Iraq, don't shoot at the koran, give up pork or whatever you are wrong.

Paratus, I disagree. Support from the local community in the war zone as well as the world at large is the fulcrum by which wars are either won or lost. I do not believe that not shooting the Qur'an will stop the war. But it will definitely intensify it and motivate more Islamic members of the world to sway towards the anti-American side of the aisle.

A Pew Research Center survey recently reported that in the world's largest Islamic country, Indonesia, favorable opinions of the U.S. plummeted from 75 percent in 2000 to 29 percent in 2007. http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/256.pdf As Chalmers Johnson states in Blowback (2004), "Despite Indonesia's long tradition of a relaxed and heterodox approach to religion, outrage against America's arrogant and racist attitudes toward Muslims has started to turn the country toward Islamic fundamentalism and militancy".

Yes, al Qaeda and co. attacked the WTC, the USS Cole and US embassies. It continues to fuel insurgency and terrorism in Iraq and other Western interests around the world. What did it's leader, bin Laden, cite as the reason for the attacks? The US's affinity for bacon? No. The core grievance for his entire holy war is U.S. occupation of Islam's holiest of lands, Saudi Arabia. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fat...

In The Revolution: A Manifesto, congressman Ron Paul notes that "[w]hile al Qaeda terrorists are twice as likely to hail from a country with a strong Wahhabist (radical Islamic) presence, they are ten times as likely to come from a county in which U.S. troops are stationed... Between 1982 and 1986 there were 41 suicide terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Once the U.S., France and Israel withdrew their forces from Lebanon, there were no more attacks."

The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism explains that the reason these attacks stop "is that the Osama bin Ladens of the world can no longer inspire potential suicide terrorists, regardless of their religious beliefs."

As far as sending aid to these countries, I'm not sure that we should be sending aid to any country. It certainly does not fit with George Washington's sentiment that "in regard to foreign nations... [we should have] as little political connection as possible]. ". Would Thomas Jefferson describe our current foreign policy as having "[p]eace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none"? Would John Quincy Adams say that at present America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy"?

My point is that if we are already battling one monster we should not be inviting others to the fray. Aspects of this war have become very complex. We do not want to make it any easier for groups like al Qaeda to recruit resentful and enraged muslims around the world. Using a Qur'an for target practice is something we could have and this soldier should have avoided.

Wait a minute, this guy got sent back to the United States so that he might be redeployed elsewhere...

Holy crap! If the other soldiers get wind of this then its possible that there could be many other shootings of the Koran in order to be sent away from Iraq!