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Comment by signalsignal | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean by "Scared kids"? These soldiers we send into combat are adults and trained professionals. If anything they should be better able to assess a situation in combat with boots on the ground, not flying above the area thousands of meters away firing missiles.

Additionally, there is nothing stupid about what Rand Paul is doing. The American government is based on a system of checks and balances. Rand Paul is doing the job he is paid to do.

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Many of them are adults and trained professionals, but many of them are also literally teenagers.

As for Paul, reread what I wrote. I said something specific, and you generalized it to rebut something else that I did not say.

> What do you mean by "Scared kids"? These soldiers we send into combat are adults and trained professionals. If anything they should be better able to assess a situation in combat with boots on the ground, not flying above the area thousands of meters away firing missiles.

I believe we have some combat veterans among the HN crowd; you might ask them whether you've got a realistic view of the stress of a combat situation.

Can I just say real quick that when I said "scared kids" the thing in my head was Kent State? I have a generally high opinion of people who serve in the military. I couldn't have done it. I don't think they're all dumb kids.

For clarity, I wasn't responding to you, Thomas. The people I've known who have been in combat (including my dad) have uniformly said that of course they were scared, but they did their jobs anyway as best they could. And yes, most of them are basically kids.

Trained professional? All of them? Have you about the atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan etc? They might be mostly professional, but that isn't good enough unfortunately.

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