Shit...I always regress significantly when I ponder war. War frustrates, saddens and causes me nightmares. War has been my nemesis since 1969 when I...still proudly; after all, what else is left?...rode with the Blackhorse along the Cambodian border.
Read about my eval of the new Afghan offensive below the fold.
I know little more of war than my father, a wise man who squandered his talents on truck driving...he ultimately owned his own truck, a fact that made him, and me, very proud. If I may abbreviate my father's philosophies of war horribly,...he never told war stories...people around the world are all the same. He felt that people were interested not in war, but in simply rearing...he would have said raising...their children, supporting their wife and loving their families. That is one strong impression from my father that I took away from my childhood.
I went to Vietnam in 1969 as a radio operator. I served with the 11th. Armored Cavalry regiment. I, in my opinion was extremely lucky to be in an armor unit rather than a grunt unit. True, we Blackhorse troopers because of our tracks spent more actual time in the field than our grunt counterparts. I never saw a grunt unit that was not happy to see a Blackhorse element pull up on line.
Anyway, enough praises for the Blackhorse that simply soothe my pain.
I wish that I could be more verbose. My last diary landed me into verbal fistfights with...excuse me...azzholes who criticized my brevity and recommended that I not post diaries. Rather they recommended that I take my feeble intellect and simply reply to the diaries of others.
Fug em. I will happily exchange vacuous insults with anyone who wants to build themselves up at my feebly intellectual expense. That is one of the beauties of being a Vietnam Vet. I can take damning with faint praise. I can take being viewed as a freak. In short, I can take being a second class citizen when it comes to our current intelligentsia.
What I can offer is the grit of knowing what goes on at ground zero where...as we used to euphemistically say...the caps are bustin'.
I mourn, obsess over and profoundly miss my brothers who did not come home with me in January of 1970, but in the interest of accuracy, I have to observe that it was the innocent civilians in Vietnam who suffered more than any other players in that unnecessary war.
It has taken me a very circuitous route to make the following observation.
I truly hope that the length of my composition will cause approval of my..for me...lengthy diary from the length of diary police. What twits.
IT IS NOT FRIGGIN' POSSIBLE TO WIN HEARTS AND MINDS BY BLOWING THE SHIT OUT OF MILITARY OBJECTIVES. WE HAVE SO FAR KILLED 16 CIVILIANS IN THE MARJAH OFFENSIVE. AS MUCH AS I WISH THAT IT WERE NOT TRUE, WE WILL PAY THE PRICE OF APPEARING MORALLY INFERIOR TO THOSE THAT WE FIGHT. THIS IS NOT FAIR, BUT YOU MAY TAKE IT TO THE BANK THAT IT IS TRUE.
Please allow me a final statement. It breaks my heart that Bush lied and our soldiers died in a war that never needed to be fought in Iraq. He did this while allowing our initial relatively blood free successes in Afghanistan to be pissed away.