Navy SEALS taking target practice at hijabi Muslim women

[masakochan]

Omid Safi | Jun 29, 2012

"Here is a very curious story from a paper in Virginia Beach

Comments

wonderpup

[wonderpup]

Isn't the point the fact that the woman is firing a gun at the SEALS?

[bellichka]

IMHO this article's title (and its content) is sensationalizing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the point of the training is to place the SEALs in situations and environments as close to the real ones as possible. When you're engaged in a war in Afghanistan, that unfortunately includes Muslim women. Keep in mind also that organizations such as al-Qaeda use both women and children as shields and to carry out attacks, knowing that soldiers' instincts are to not shoot women and children. It happened in Vietnam, happened in Iraq, and is happening in Afghanistan. I see no problem with training the SEALs in duplicated settings to best prepare them for the challenges they may face in combat.

[wonderpup]

MTE

[jasonbeast]

Yeah, I should have ready your comment first. Basically said the same thing.

[ms_maree]

Well, Vietnam is a brilliant example of what the military should do. In fact, none of this training soldiers to kill women on the ground, pfff. Such a waste of time and money. Just napalm the entire town from the air. That way you're sure to get all those terrorists.

Or just use drones.

[jasonbeast]

In SEAL training, the candidates have something called Hell Week, in which they don't sleep at all. One bit of training during Hell Week is spent rolling in mud, to break down the mind's natural instinct to stay clean.

When you train elite soldiers, you train them to do everything they must do in order to reach their objective, otherwise they're not elite. If your objective includes shooting at a woman in a hijab who is shooting at them, then it's going to be easier to do when the time comes if they've been through that situation in training.

Is what they do pleasant? No. I wouldn't want that job. I couldn't do that job. Forty years ago the targets were women and children holding hand grenades. Now, it's women in hijabs. It sucks, but it makes sense.

[masakochan]

When you train elite soldiers, you train them to do everything they must do in order to reach their objective, otherwise they're not elite.

I was talking in that sense that I think that there's got to be another way of mentally training soldiers to be able to 'take out the enemy' without the potential risk of them thinking that 'women in hijab = automatic enemy' without any spare thought behind it.

Even if the writer of the article just saw one image-target, and it was of a Muslim woman wearing a hijab - there's not enough info here to tell whether they're just freaking out. BUT, because of the far-reaching amount of anti-Muslim thinking and Islamophobia in today's society- it wouldn't be too shocking to me if there was some religious bigotry and racism involved in this "kill house".

[baked_goldfish]

Not for nothing, but I distinctly recall training similar to this. We didn't use kill houses because our mission was more outreach/communication so we had actual soldiers role-playing the parts instead, but we did have to "shoot" at opposing forces who had hidden in civilian areas while making sure not to "shoot" innocent locals/civilians. I'm under the impression that this is fairly common type of training for personnel who are running around in areas where there is a mix of civilian and insurgent/terrorist/whatever forces, and one of the purposes is to teach you how to quickly assess who is a threat and who is not

[masakochan]

After I stopped raging about it- I reread through the article and noticed this bit:

The story doesn’t mention it, but something caught my eye

The way it's written could give one the suggestion that the person flipped out from seeing just that one image-target, so I can also think that they assumed what they wrote about in the article.

But then there's the other way of seeing it- which you brought up in your comment:

If all the targets in this kill house are women in hijabs holding guns, it's a problem, and I'm not going to pretend like there aren't enough bigots in the military for that to be a possibility.

Yup. There's basically not enough information to ultimately decide if the person is just making a mountain out of a molehill. But I can't ignore the other thought of there being a possibility of racism and anti-Muslim stuff going on (considering how wide-spread Islamophobia still is). So I can't just blow off their view-point that they're going with.

[baked_goldfish]

I wouldn't blow it off either, but I do believe that it's a smaller possibility than this just being a standard training exercise that incorporates dangerous targets with innocent bystanders, the likes of which have been described by multiple posters at this point. And I'm not really a fan of making shit up to be speculatively mad about, especially when there's legit shit to be mad about specifically with respect to Islamophobia and military treatment of women in general. I don't know if I can articulate why, it just feels off to me.

[masakochan]

I don't know if I can articulate why, it just feels off to me.

*shrugs* I think you've been making sense so far. :D

If anything's 'off' about the article- personally I'm thinking it's this one bit that I already brought up:

The story doesn’t mention it, but something caught my eye:

I mean, I want to believe them due there being so much chance of Islamophobia going on (especially if the writer is Muslim too- so I could only imagine what they must've felt if that's part of the case)- but fhdaskfhsa "but something caught my eye" also gives a potential that they just saw that one image of the Muslim woman and automatically thought that the training house was entirely there for training Navy SEALs how to dehumanize and kill Muslim women.

And I'm not really a fan of making shit up to be speculatively mad about, especially when there's legit shit to be mad about specifically with respect to Islamophobia and military treatment of women in general.

Yup.

Arg- This article is now just leaving me frustrated and confused because NEEDS MOAR

[kira_snugz]

i got really angry and freaked out at my husband over this, and since hes a soldier, he pointed out that, the woman in the target has a gun, therefore, she is a lawful target. same woman in the same dress pops up with out a gun, not a target. he says that they do it with more than just women, and that the issue is, you look for a gun, and then you shoot. its nothing to do with OMG KILL ALL THE WIMMINZ. Its, stop the people with the guns before they stop you.

now if they had photos of all the targets in the house, and they were all women in hijabs, then thats a fucking issue.

[pleasure_past]

Okay, it is a very different thing if not all of the targets are hijabis, but in that case I do still have to side-eye the original article for choosing to photograph that particular target.

[kira_snugz]

i think the author was totally looking for drama to pass the story to a wider audience.