Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Brave Sir Robin
Our guys out in Iraq don't get the recognition they deserve. Placed in impossible situations, surrounded by a country in which half the population hates your infidel guts, and the other half expects you to do their fighting for them, with impossible goals set by pencil-pushing political fuckwads back in Washington - they still manage to pull it out of the fire and make progress.
Case in point. Our military units in Sadr City have been tasked with helping the Iraqi Army take the lead in the fight against the Iran-trained and equipped "Mahdi Army" Shiite militia. So, when the other shoe drops and the bullets start flying, do the Iraqis step up to the plate?
Well, some of them do. Others? Not so much. They "bravely ran away", leaving a ragged hole in the combined Iraqi/American line for the militia to exploit.
[link] Major Sattar calmly explained that he was leading the remainder of his 80-man company away from the fight. As if to underscore the point, a convoy of Iraqi vehicles piled high with furniture was parked in front of the American position.
Abandoning the stronghold, however, would allow the militias to move in again and seed the road with roadside bombs. Other Iraqi units had stood their ground through several long firefights, and Captain Veath was surprised that the major’s unit was leaving after holding off another militia attack.
“You went through a whole battle and are now removing yourself?” Captain Veath asked incredulously. “Are any of your men dead?”
Major Sattar acknowledged that his unit had several wounded but none killed. But he and other Iraqi soldiers insisted that they were poorly equipped to battle the militias. Iraqi forces, they said, were short of ammunition, had only a few armored vehicles and were up against militia fighters they said were equipped and trained by the Iranians.
“We are not afraid,” the major responded.
He also complained that he had no means to communicate directly with the American troops.
“That is an excuse, and you know it,” Captain Veath shot back. He argued that one of the major’s platoons was situated just 100 yards from some of the American Stryker vehicles and that the two sides had agreed that the Iraqis could send a runner over to the vehicles to ask for help if necessary.
The Iraqi commander returned to his convoy and Captain Veath followed, promising a Stryker escort if the Iraqi soldiers would only return to their positions.
Dozens of excited Iraqi soldiers began to join in the discussion. As tempers flared and voices rose, Sergeant Angulo ordered the company’s soldiers to stay close to Captain Veath.
The Iraqi convoy drove off, and the Americans began to scramble to find a new Iraqi unit to plug the gap.
Look, folks, I wish this damned thing never started. Thanks, President Bush. However, the cold hard facts are that we are in this thing up to our eyeballs. We need to figure out a way to disengage from this war without completely destroying the country of Iraq, leaving it to the tender mercies of the Iranian theocracy. The regular citizens there don't deserve that.
What a clusterfuck.
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Somewhat off-topic, but
Somewhat off-topic, but there's a great site for supporting US troops: anysoldier.com
Go to the "where to send" tab and I dare you to read through a few without wanting to cry, being really pissed off, or both.
An unpopular view
I fully expect to take heat for this, but I don't think we (the US) were wrong to invade Iraq. At least not morally wrong. Strategically, the timing was bad (we should have done it years earlier), but Hussein time and time again failed to live up to the conditions of the cease-fire established at the end of the first Iraq "war". Clinton should have had the balls to do it in '95, '96, or '98.
I wish we'd been allowed to take Hussein out of the picture in '91. All the arguments against it were the same as they were the second time around, except that we'd have been 10+ years further along than we are now. Since we failed to do it earlier, we shouldn't have gone in while we still had work to do in Afghanistan.
Well, there's a lot more I could say about this, and maybe I will later when I'm not drinking and can pretend to be at least somewhat articulate. Or maybe I'll let it drop. Who knows.
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
Political and religious
Political and religious discussions are best when drinking - that's when people are honest and you can get at the heart of things. ;-)
Shot of goldschlager, anyone?
I agree wholeheartedly
Except that drinking and TYPING discussions never works out for me. In a verbal conversation I speak eloquently and masterfully (read "loudly") when I'm well lubricated. I thoroughly enjoy those debates.
Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.
It's always tough to adjust
It's always tough to adjust to the fact that we might be the bad guys.
It's hard to think of 'the other guys' as more or less like us, except with a different angle of view. There's always a tendency to think that Iraqis are not like us, that they don't react to things the same way we would.
But they do.
There's an army occupying your country. They've gotten rid of the old government, which was maybe not the best government or was a lousy government, but it was yours, at least, rather than an obvious puppet of the invader. At least you had electricity and water and a job. Now you've got a choice between carrying a gun for one side or the other or trying to dodge the people who are already carrying them. And it might just be easier if you didn't have to worry about the occupiers randomly shooting you for being on the wrong street or breaking into your home at night on the word of an informer.
And in your neighborhood, the way to survive is to join the army, where the money is good and you get a weapon and financial opportunities exist if you want to rent out the uniform and gun to the right people.
And now they invaders want you to get killed fighting your own people. They stand there in their body armor and tanks and wonder why you aren't fighting harder for them. Why you don't feel grateful enough to them to put your life on the line for their puppet government of the week.
Not to Godwin this thing, but I imagine the German troops occupying France in 1943 found the actions of the resistance a bit hard to understand. After all, most of the French weren't actively hostile to their faces. Vichy was an ally of Germany--they were friendly troops. Really, they were just gangsters egged on by Germany's enemies, right? What was their problem?
There were partisans behind the iron curtain until the 1960's, hopelessly trying to hinder the Soviet occupation. Did the Soviet troops think it understandable? Or did they wonder why the brigands and terrorists were trying to stop the USSR from bringing the workers' paradise to their unenlightened countries? The Soviets were liberators, after all. They overthrew the Nazis. They held elections. They made sure the bad elements couldn't get back into power. They returned sovereignty to their host nations, who asked them to station troops there. Sure, they had to take a hand in law enforcement to put down dead-enders and such. Democratic Republics and fragile and need support. They even rebuilt the war-damaged nations out of their own pocket--maybe not as comfortably as some would like, but eventually they'd get around to fixing things. How could Eastern Europe not be grateful to the Soviets for their protection? Can you imagine that some bad apples even went so far as to work for foreign governments against their comrades?
Okay, I think that's clear enough. From an Iraqi point of view, we poison everything as long as we are there at sword's point. We can't expect anything from them that we wouldn't give if the situation were reversed.
Steve "And that ain't much." James
Well said.
Well said, Steve.
Putting oneself in the place of the typical Iraqi is very enlightening, methinks. "Wolverines!", and all that.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
The US needs to get the hell
The US needs to get the hell out of Iraq. Yes, we started something that we shouldn't have, but I still say that we need to leave. There are a LOT of different perspectives and very old grievances amongst groups that we don't have the insight to understand, let alone make better. Let these people sort it out for themselves. Our presence is giving groups power that they wouldn't otherwise have, and this allows the violence to continue.
Bush has permanently stained our hands with blood, but sacrificing more American lives won't wash it away.
Clusterfuck
Ok first a really minor note, if we are going into battle with a combined US/Iraqi Army, then why the fuck don't we hand out a couple of radios?
Second, I have a hard time calling anyone in combat a coward (ok you didn't actually use that word, but close enough). Just putting on an Iraqi Army uniform (or US or UK uniform) is like wearing a bullseye while living in one of the worlds most dangerous places. Yeah, its really really not cool to retreat in the middle of a fight which may leave your allies open to being flanked but I wouldn't have been there in the first place so how can we judge them? For all we know they really were almost out of ammo, I don't care how brave you are no one is going to sit around waiting to get ambushed with an empty gun.
Lastly the big one, how do we end this? I don't know. I don't even know what the Iraqi people want. There is a significant portion that does want Iranian fundamentalism, which is a scary thought, then again given the circumstances stability of even the most monstrous form must look good compared to the daily chaos. There is another significant portion that doesn't want that. From here its very hard to tell if our presence there is helping to prevent the situation from spiraling further into chaos or if we are preventing real political progress by supporting an unpopular regime. I just hope that Obama (or Hillary) can find that answer.
On your minor note
I believe I can answer that question. We encrypt the signal on our combat comms...sometimes 2 ways. The first way is simple encryption of the signal and the 2nd way is called frequency hopping where the radios are synced to a specific "hop set". Since the encryption data is classified and a radio is half of the equipment needed to generate an encryption key we don't hand out radios to people we don't trust. (Keys are generally not encrypted using the radio itself except in emergencies but the capability is there).
Fustercluck
That's an excellent point.
Heh. True. I was - and am - pissed about the story. However, as you point out, I really don't have a clue beyond what was written in that NYT article about what actually happened.
Regardless of the details of this one battle the whole situation is all fucked up. And our soldiers are getting killed because of it. Like Jim mentions below, it seems like about half the country there actually *want* Iran's help, and hate Americans. Much of the time other half seem unwilling to do anything to defend themselves.
And we (the collective "we" meaning America) CREATED the fucking situation. It is indeed immoral for us to pull out now. We have to figure out the best solution to get the fuck OUT, without totally screwing the "Joe Iraqi Citizen" and his family.
I guess I'm just frustrated. Kudos to the guys out on the sharp end of the stick, in any case. They are doing a great job in an impossibly fucked-up situation.
Indeed.
Indeed. I must admit, I am really torn about just what to do there: sticking around and allowing our people to be used as proxies between competing factions seems pointless; but just leaving after we've completely fucked up the country strikes me as immoral.
The simple fact is that the military is being broken by this conflict. And the burden is not shared equally by the bulk of society, in any way, shape or form. This is bad on so many levels that it is hard to know where to even begin to fix it.
There has been no real progress, just a pause in the killing now and then as different factions align for temporary truces. There seems to be no political will to settle this peacefully in Iraq itself, and no political will here to just pull our people out of the meat grinder.
Clusterfuck, indeed.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
FUBAR
For what cold comfort its worth, the Iraqis, especially the Shiites, were fucked before we got there when Saddam's thugs were in charge. Now they are just getting fucked by a different set of thugs, and they can console themselves with the fact that the thugs in charge belong to their sect.
Our troops are fighting one Iranian backed Shiite faction on behalf of another Iranian backed Shiite faction. The only difference between the two militias is that one is allied to the current prime minister. The only guaranteed winner is Iran. So the US Army is grinding itself to pieces fighting a religious civil war because President Shit-for-Brains can't admit he made a colossal mistake.
Here is my suggestion: we leave a much smaller force in Kurdistan because they actually seem to have their shit together and it would be wrong to leave them to the tender mercies of their neighbors like Turkey. We let Iranian peacekeepers run the rest of the country east of the Euphrates, because they are pretty much running it anyway, and the Saudis and other Sunni Arabs keep the peace in the west. It sucks, but is there really any better solution? Its not like the Iraqis are all going to become rational atheists and quit believing they are going to get fifty virgins if they just strap a bomb to themselves and blow up a bunch of people at a funeral.
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