There are a lot of videos on youtube taken by US/British/Whoever troops with helmet cameras on youtube where they get sucked into a gunfight. I've watched a few, usually linked to me by reddit or family members who are in the military. Generally the way it goes is that the camera man will be walking around with his buddies, cracking the crude jokes you would expect, and all of a sudden a mortar round lands near them or the dirt in front of them starts getting whipped up by bullets. Everyone scrabbles and starts firing at various adjacent hilltops or ridges. Fairly intense stuff.
The part that gets me though is how the videos are always labelled. It is always "Gun battle with Al Qaeda" or "Taliban sneak attack"* or whatnot. I don't blame the camera man and company for shooting back or anything, but where are they getting the "Al Qaeda/Taliban" part from? It is not like the attackers are wearing uniforms (or can even be seen in most cases...) It really does seem to be implicitly assumed that anyone who sees value in shooting at foreign troops in their country must be members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. This rubs me incredibly wrong.
The part that gets me though is how the videos are always labelled. It is always "Gun battle with Al Qaeda" or "Taliban sneak attack"* or whatnot. I don't blame the camera man and company for shooting back or anything, but where are they getting the "Al Qaeda/Taliban" part from? It is not like the attackers are wearing uniforms (or can even be seen in most cases...) It really does seem to be implicitly assumed that anyone who sees value in shooting at foreign troops in their country must be members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. This rubs me incredibly wrong.