Vacationing in a war zone

[theGinsue]

Be quick not to judge, lest you be.... called an ignorant fucking ass-hat for casting judgement on something you'll never understand.

Would anyone on here have enough balls to do what that kid did or is still doing?

We all did stupid shit when we were younger, obviously not this stupid or crazy, but the ignorance of some of these posts astounds me.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Is he honestly any worse off then any of the inbedded Press reporters and photographers, with the exception of no body armor aside? At least he has or at one time had a weapon to defend himself.

Yes, he is. At least the reporters (who I think are typically foolish as well, but..) ARE prepared with the proper protective equipment and translators, etc. They have press credentials which identify WHY they are there. This kid can't speak their language and his motives for being there could certainly fall under scrutiny of both sides of this conflict.

So, what happens if things go terribly wrong for him? Will he and his family expect the U.S. to save his sorry butt? Of course they will - it's the norm for folks who carelessly put themselves in harms way for no other reason than to get a thrill. In the end it always costs the taxpayers lots of money when our government works to secure these folks from their own stupidity. Sometimes it puts the lives of our servicemembers at risk too. So, it's okay to put other people at risk to save you from your own stupidity? I think not.

[Ronin13]

Would anyone on here have enough balls to do what that kid did or is still doing?

Its not my cup of tea, nor would I want to do that as ill prepared as he was, but at least he had the balls to go and do something of that magnitude.
We all did stupid shit when we were younger, obviously not this stupid or crazy, but the ignorance of some of these posts astounds me.

Okay, I have, for the most part, done what this kid did (kind of)... I, at the ripe age of 21, signed a good portion of my life over, trained for a few years, then went over to a war zone. Granted I did it in a uniform that included body armor rated to protect me from rifle rounds, a helmet, boots, eye and ear protection, and a nice array of weapons including an M240B 7.62mm crew served machine gun. That's doing it the right way. And I didn't speak Pashtu, Farsi or any other of the 14 languages spoken in the Afghan frontier. This kid really is stupid. He's lucky that Muslims believe in such sheer hospitality, otherwise he would probably be dangling from a sign post in the middle of the city. There is a thin line between ballsy and f*cking retarded... this kid is definitely not ballsy. The same thing goes with the missionaries that go to Jakarta and then people are up in arms when the Al Qaeda friendly Jakarta extremists kidnap and decapitate them. I honestly look at is as a little thing we learned in school way back when called "Natural Selection."