While in actuality, they were just prior to the kid getting blown apart, fighting to kill him.
Military Medics are NOT non-combatants. They’re COMBAT support. That was impressed on us in Basic Training and once again in Tech School, we were to be basically Monkey Mechanics, keeping the Human Fighting Machines in good working order. Every bit as dehumanized and coldly efficiently calculated as the base armorer keeping the Rifles in good working order. The base Veterinarians office keeping the Police Attack Dogs in good working order, and a subset of that, the Base Exterminator (yes, under the command of the Base Veterinarian) whose job is to control wild animals, like the flocks of birds near the runways, skunks, coyotes, rats, cats both native and feral, wild hogs, etc etc…
And to use Herbicides like Agent Orange to kill the native vegetation, so that there’s a clear field of fire.
They SAY all this is necessary because if we don’t do that, we wouldn’t be able to provoke and fight Wars.
Help me out here, I’m not seeing an actual Downside.
A far simpler solution than patching up the kid after first dismantling him, how about just Get The Fuck Out Of HIS Country, and stop using Massive Firepower to dismantle his country, and stop using that firepower to dismantle HIM and other PEOPLE like him.
You God-damn blow people apart then for a propaganda photo-opportunity patch one of them back together, to what, show that you’re not the Dehumanized Uniformed Drones (duds) who are forcing your “Superior” civilization on his people? Because you’re so God-Damned culturally and morally sophisticated that you Owe It To Him and his fellow Kids to murder them if they don’t bow down to that “superior” sophisticated culture? And of course the “superior” Military.
They told us in Tech School that in combat zones we should scrape that Red Cross off our helmets.
Told us that there was a Commie Propaganda campaign that started in the Korean war, saying that American Military used the Red Cross symbol to smuggle munitions. I’ll find the post I made about that, A Dynamite Box label for “red cross BRAND military grade Extra Dynamite 1949” written in Chinese.
The boxes I had found in a military landfill on Ft Bliss, Texas, had the inscription in English.
Which your average Chinese or North Korean soldier wouldn’t have been able to read any more than the Redneck War-pigs here would be able to read the same thing in Chinese.
All they would be able to understand would be the Red Cross symbol.
But of course the VietNamese people and the Laotian and Cambodian and Chines were just, you know, Lying because that’s what Commies do.
Besides, “We are here to win your hearts and minds…. or just burn down your goddam huts”