This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Military issues

  • LTC Ralph Peters (Ret) unloads on the Generals

    For those not familiar with Ralph Peters he’s an old MI guy and unapologetic supporter of the war in Iraq who later came out in opposition to the surge, before conceding it worked. His record, as with most fallible humans, is mixed. He’s been know for inflammatory quotes such as:

    “Make no mistake: the anti-war voices long for us to lose any war they cannot prevent”

    and

    “We’ve mired ourselves by attempting to modernize a society that doesn’t want to be — and cannot be — transformed. We needed to smash our enemies and leave. Had it proved necessary, we could have returned later for another punitive mission. Instead, we fell into the great American fallacy of believing ourselves responsible for helping those who’ve harmed us.”

    He’s also had some rather choice assumptions on potential POWs.

    In a piece titled “Soldiers Murder Afghans, Generals Murder Soldiers” Ralph Peters goes all out on the argument that the War in Afghanistan is irredeemable and has far exceeded its expiration date. He makes quite clear that our service members with stars on their shoulders carry much of the blame for this state of affairs.

    If there’s a “battle cry” in Afghanistan, it’s “Blame the troops!” Generals out of touch with the ugly, brute reality on the ground down in the Taliban-sympathizing villages respond to every seeming crisis in Afghan-American relations by telling our troops to “respect Afghan culture.”

    But generals don’t have a clue about Afghan “culture.” They interact with well-educated, privileged, English-speaking Afghans who know exactly which American buttons to press to keep the tens of billions of dollars in annual aid flowing. The troops, on the other hand, daily encounter villagers who will not warn them about Taliban-planted booby traps or roadside bombs, who obviously want them to leave, who relish the abject squalor in which they live and who appear to value the lives of their animals above those of their women. When our Soldiers and Marines hear, yet again, that they need to “respect Afghan culture,” they must want to puke up their rations.

    …

    Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind).

    What are our goals? What is our strategy? We’re told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may not have a genius for war, but we sure do have a genius for kidding ourselves.

    Personally I’d swap out much of the “Generals” with “politicians”.

    He also goes into the Robert Bales incident but that’s really just a foil for a bigger point he’s trying to make, be it right or wrong. Give it a read, it’s worth the 10 minutes of your life. I promise.

  • Joe Klein finds a nut

    As I told the young lady who sent me this link from Time’s Public Relations Office, I hate Joe Klein with the white hot passion of a thousand suns, but this time I can’t argue with him. He writes in Time “Ten is Enough” referring to ten years in Afghanistan. He begins the article like most of the media talking about SSG Bales, all of his deployments, his financial woes, anger over the promotion list and family problems, but Klein dismisses all of this;

    Once again, the 2.4 million young Americans who have served with honor in Iraq and Afghanistan are portrayed as victims and a potential menace, ready to pop at any moment. There has been little acknowledgment that the overwhelming majority of our veterans–even the overwhelming majority of those suffering from posttraumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries–have come home to lead productive and, often, inspiring lives. The unfairness of laying the burden of this stereotype on them, after they assumed the burden of fighting impossible wars for the rest of us, is infuriating.

    Klein goes on to interview actual veterans to get their views – it’s an entirely new concept, I know.

    And so I decided to check in with some of the other veterans I’ve come to know over the past few years, men and women who are leading exemplary lives back home, to see how they were reacting to the news from Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, almost all of them were infuriated by the spew of stereotypes. “The media have done nobody any favors,” said Jake Wood, a former Marine sergeant who co-founded Team Rubicon, a network of combat veterans–many sergeants–who provide disaster relief. “You see headlines like SERGEANT PSYCHO, and what can you say?”

    After repeating some more excellent quotes from other real veterans, Klein concludes;

    But it’s long past time for the bulk of our troops to come home–which means the Obama Administration should announce that our drawdown will not pause, as previously planned, in September but will continue in an orderly fashion. For the life of me, I can’t see the rationale for the loss of even one more American life or limb there.

    While I agree that it’s time for the troops to come home, I have different reasons. This administration has no intention of winning this war against terror past some catchy campaign slogans, and which of us wants to be the last to die for the Obama/Biden 2012 campaign?

    I sent my thanks to Joe Klein for doing the tough work this time, though.

  • Needs more training

    SGT K sends us this video. Apparently no one was injured, although it’s hard to believe;

  • Marine in deep kim-chi for internet activity

    Tman sends us a link to an article about Camp Pendleton Marine Sgt. Gary Stein, who started a Facebook presence called “Armed Forces Tea Party” in which he expressed his opinions which were against the current administration’s policies. Apparently, his command told him that what he was doing was against DoD policy. After Stein did a self-evaluation, he determined for himself that he was within the guidelines of the policy and relaunched his Facebook page. Now, he’s surprised that he’s under the gun again;

    Last week, he said his superiors told him he could not use social media sites on government computers after he posted the message stating he would not follow unlawful orders of the president.

    Stein said his statement was part of an online debate about NATO allowing U.S. troops to be tried for the Quran burnings in Afghanistan.

    In that context, he said, he was stating that he would not follow orders from the president if those orders included detaining U.S. citizens, disarming them or doing anything else that he believes would violate their constitutional rights.

    Another Marine alerted his command about the statement, Stein said.

    Stein said he respects the office of the president, but he does not agree with Obama’s policies. He said he is within his rights to speak up.

    See, here’s the thing; his command told him he was doing something wrong, but the shithouse lawyer decided that he wasn’t. When you start a group, movement or march that gives the impression that you’re speaking in an official capacity (as an agent of the government), well, you’re going to get your ass in a sling. You have a right to speak your mind, just not in uniform, or as an internet presence that operates under the cloak of a military member.

    When it comes to the military, if they told me I was doing something wrong and that I should stop, whether I thought I was right or not, I stopped doing it. I just didn’t need the hassle of drawing attention to myself. There is no right way or wrong way, there’s only the military’s way.

    Stein sounds like he’s under the influence of those dickweeds at Oathkeepers. No one needs to remind the rest of the planet that we took an oath and stand by it…and we certainly don’t need to join a group of Paulians to make it known.

    I hope Oathkeepers will pick up Stein’s legal bills and keep him in pie while he’s sitting in confinement.

  • Man bites dog…

    The first thing you learn in a formal journalism education, is that successful news stories are the odd and the example used is always the “man bites dog” type of story. Well, here’s one of those from the Duffel Blog sent to us by StrikeFO;

    Second Lieutenant Doesn’t Get Lost

    “I seriously couldn’t believe it during the first few klicks [Ed note: kilometers],” said machine-gunner SPC James Owens, “and then I realized that this wasn’t your average butter bar. He must have actually paid attention during his land nav training.”

    For this historic feat — in which he was the first new platoon leader to ever successfully navigate a platoon on the first try — Bailey was awarded an Army Commendation Medal.

    “It feels really good to be recognized,” said [Second Lieutenant Michael Bailey], “and there were times when I wasn’t sure whether I was looking at a contour line, a road, or a river, but that’s when adrenaline and my training really kicked in.”

    Yeah, “training kicked in” like in Kindergarten when he learned his colors; contour lines being brown, roads are black and rivers are blue. See how tough that is?

    The hardest part of being a platoon sergeant is keeping the new El-Tee oriented. I took it particularly serious teaching land nav to cadets so no platoon sergeant got saddled with a map-illiterate louie because of my neglect. I can definitely relate to the platoon sergeant’s comments in the article, though. Go read the whole thing.

    But, 2LT Bailey receiving an ARCOM for not getting lost in a five kilometer movement might be a bit extreme, though. It took me 13 years to get my first ARCOM and I never got lost.

    By the way, LT, things can only get worse from here.

    ADDED: OK, you got me, it’s satire and I fell for it. But shit that’s funny always rings a little true.

  • The stuff my fantasies are made of

    It’s like the Army hacked into my Pr0n (Stars & Stripes link);

    The Army still bars women from fighting in combat units. But some women are trying to break that barrier far from the front lines — by battling male soldiers in chain-link cages against a backdrop of strobe lights, thumping music and swirling smoke.

    The slugfests resemble ultimate fighting, a staple of pay-per-view television, right down to the black wire cages and throat-constricting holds with names like “the guillotine” and “the rear naked choke.”

    The Army says the eight-sided enclosure simulates fighting in a small room and helps develop skills that soldiers sometimes need to subdue foes rather than kill them.

    I know there are more than a few women out there who would like to get me in a steel cage and pound the living shit out of me. Believe me when I tell you that I want that, too. You have no idea.

    I’m proud of these warrior women for walking the walk of equality. But, I’m pretty sure that people who call themselves feminists are opposed to it, because the women involved are acting like men, rather than trying to get men to act more like women. And the one in the picture above is kinda cute.

    One woman made it to the finals. But at least three female fighters were carried out on stretchers. Others limped to a green canvas tent that served as a first-aid station. One fighter burst into tears, upset that a referee had halted her fight before she felt beaten.

    Good for them, and good for the Army to disregard the impending criticism.

  • Ranger Awards ceremony

    ROS sends us a link to a local news station in Savannah which reports the awarding of scores of medals to members of the 1st Bn 75th Rangers at Hunter Army Airfield;

    10 Silver Stars, one of the highest awards for valor, and 16 Purple Hearts, honoring those wounded in action, were among the medals earned by almost 80 Rangers with the First Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. In a deployment last year, they conducted 900 missions and killed or captured more than 2,000, yet none of the Rangers seek singular recognition.

    “It’s for individual valorous achievement, but I think it is more of a collective achievement because we have had so many across the whole Battalion,” said 1SG Michael Eiermann, 1/75 Ranger Battalion, Silver Star recipient.

    Two Silver Stars were also awarded to families of fallen Rangers.

  • FORSCOM Commander has confidence in JBLM

    The commander of Forces Command, Gen. David Rodriguez, felt the need to announce that he still has confidence in the troops at Joint Base Lewis-McChord last Friday in the wake of the murder of 16 Afghans by one of the soldiers at that base and the report that a Lieutenant Colonel had been arrested for plotting the murder of his wife and his girlfriend according to the Seattle Times.

    “There is nothing different here than most places,” said Rodriguez, a four-star general who previously served in Afghanistan.

    “Those things happen … Everybody knows that doesn’t reflect our standards and our values, nor does it reflect the majority of the leaders and soldiers that serve here every day as well as overseas.”

    Well, yeah. Two incidences don’t make a crime spree. There are about 34,000 people at the base, and 33,998 of them haven’t participated in those crimes. In January, My Northwest.com, tried to raise an alarm about troops at JBLM because there had been 1000 more arrests there than the year before – misdemeanor arrests. I sure would like to see what those arrests were for rather than just look at the final numbers. In an age when everything is a misdemeanor, it’s hard to imagine the number of arrests going down.

    In fact, if you look at arrests in the District of Columbia, a mostly non-military population 7 times larger than JBLM’s population, gets arrested at a higher rate with 700 arrests a week. So what is the media’s point, exactly? The majority of the troops behave themselves, but that’s not news apparently.