{"id":20017,"date":"2010-08-04T11:04:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T15:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=20017"},"modified":"2010-08-04T11:04:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T15:04:42","slug":"aarp-member-embeds-with-fobbits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=20017","title":{"rendered":"AARP member embeds with Fobbits"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEW sent us this link<\/a> and asked me to kindly rip this lady, Ann Jones, “a new one”. Well, to do that, i have to give some background on the woman. This embed wasn’t her first trip to Afghanistan…she had spent time with Afghan civilians and writes about Afghan women and the influence of the war on their lives. Ya know, that’s all well and good, but she really shouldn’t carry all of that social baggage with her when she goes to watch the Army’s Fobbits at work. <\/p>\n

But the odd thing is that no one seems to question the relative cushiness of this life at war (nor the inequity of the hardscrabble civilian life left behind) — least of all those best able to observe firsthand the contrast between our garrisons and the humble equipment and living conditions of Afghans, both friend and foe. Rather, the contrast seems to inspire many soldiers with renewed appreciation of \u201cour American way of life\u201d and a determination to \u201cdo good things\u201d for the Afghan people, just as many feel they did for the people of Iraq.<\/p>\n

I emphasize all this because nothing I\u2019d read about soldiering prepared me for the extent of these comforts — or the tedium that attends them. Plenty of soldiers don\u2019t leave the base. They hold down desk jobs, issue supplies, manage logistics, repair vehicles or radios, refuel generators and trucks, plan \u201cdevelopment\u201d projects, handle public affairs, or update tactical maps inscribed (at certain locations I am obliged not to name) with admonitions like \u201cHere Be Dragons\u201d or \u201cHere Do Bad Stuff.\u201d They face the boredom of ordinary, unheroic, repetitive tasks. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So you can see the cranky [insert insulting term for a critical old woman here] really doesn’t know what she’s doing there, so she complains about the opulent conditions which she didn’t expect. She picked up on the Fobbits complaints and without talking to combat soldiers, painted with a broad brush across them all. She spent two weeks at the FOB, went on one patrol and now she understands everything – Americans are spoiled, stupid brats.<\/p>\n

What a waste of an embed slot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MEW sent us this link and asked me to kindly rip this lady, Ann Jones, “a … AARP member embeds with Fobbits<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}