Comment How are we supposed to understand this? (Score 4, Insightful) 1671
I always feel like the key trouble with video of any military operation is that the general public has absolutely no basis from which to really understand what they're seeing -- the context of civilian day-to-day just doesn't create the sort of base of experience you need to watch this sort of video and draw decent conclusions from it.
What was the situation? What were these guys trained to do in this sort of situation? What had happened the hour or day or week before in this area, what was happening in the region, what sort of tactics had the bad guys been using, what were other patrols telling these guys? These details are actually more important than what we see in the video towards understanding the events, but we have none of it.
I don't want to make apologies if these guys screwed up -- I'm not of the mindset that out men and women in uniform are all heroes who can do no wrong or anything of that nature. That said, I'm also willing to accept that I don't have the experience or understanding to understand what I'm seeing... I'd be interested to hear from someone who does.
