Today’s headlines read:
“Defence Minister Stephen Smith says photos showing US soldiers with the remains of suspected Taliban suicide bombers in Afghanistan are ‘terrible’ and ‘contemptible’.”
“The White House has condemned as ‘reprehensible’ photographs showing US soldiers with the mangled remains of suspected Taliban suicide bombers in Afghanistan.”
We saw the same headlines when a video of US Marines surfaced showing them urinating on Taliban terrorists the Marines had just killed in a battle…which means the Taliban terrorists were trying to kill the Marines.
Those of you who follow my blog…which isn’t that many…know I try to follow the high road and give deference to all sides of an argument. So, here’s my position on these honorable politician’s statements…
FUCK YOU AND THE WHITE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON!!!!!
Stephen Smith, I find contemptible that you don’t have the balls God gave a chipmunk and I find your support of Australian combat troops in Afghanistan to be appalling in its lack of sincerity. You idiots sent them there! Don’t even think you have any right whatsoever to criticize the finest military on the face of earth! The US Military will go anywhere, kill anyone who need to be killed (and there are a lot of people in that category), piss on them and take their pictures if they so choose! You, Sir, unless you been involved in combat arms, which you haven’t because you’ve been nothing but a low life politician all your life, can kiss their ever lovin’ asses. About that white horse…wasn’t there something about over reacting to the “Skype Scandal?” Of course you didn’t retract anything you did in that mess, even though a good man’s reputation was unjustly sullied and he was returned to duty. You just couldn’t admit you were wrong, could you?
The White House…aka Barack Obama…damn if the same facts don’t apply to you! Let me look here…excuse me while I search the record…damn, you’ve never been in the military either! You’ve never been in a battle where a bunch of terrorists tried to kill you and you survived. You’ve never felt the exhilaration of survival, being the victor and the emotion that goes with it. Why? Because you’ve been nothing but a low life politician your whole life. As the commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces your response to all this bullshit should be… “Investigate what???!!!” And that white horse? President Obama, I’m waiting for the day your promised “transparency in government” starts to happen in your administration. You’ve been nothing but business as usual.
We sent these men and women over there and hamstrung them at every turn for political correctness, the bane of our American society. We play the mindless political games at the expense of these young people who went into combat believing in what we told them…mostly lies. More than a few have died because of strange penchant to fight nice wars, instead of just relentlessly killing the enemy like we did to Germany, Japan and Italy.
Doesn’t it sink in to those pea brains in Washington that WWII took four years and every war since then has taken no less than ten with no clear cut victory? Why? WWII was a no holds barred war. We broke their military, their society and their will. In every war since then…all the nice wars…we’ve let our society break us. I don’t think we should’ve been involved in most of the wars since WWII, but damn it, if we’re going send our young folks to war, let’s do it right and let our military do the job unhampered by political correctness. Let them go in and ruthlessly kill the enemy.
For those who don’t know, every winter the Taliban retreats to the mountains to rest, recuperate and rearm…and we let them! We don’t follow them and make them fight in the winter. We let them have their winter break. You might think this is nice of us…but this costs the lives of American soldiers and those of our allies. It also prolongs the war.
Of course, no one gives a rat’s ass about what I think…except maybe for some Marines, soldiers and Apache pilots I know…
The above may be offensive to some…tough shit…get over it. It felt good!
We tend to forget the atrocities committed by our enemies. Posed with suicide bomber, big deal. So what? In Nam at the A team we had several VC skulls we boiled, plugged and used to pass around drinks. I would like to have a dollar for every VC ear that was worn arounf a GI’s neck, as a trophy.
We have lost sight of what is really important. When we develop a medal to award for not shooting enemy combatants we have a problem. God save us from this administration, this congress, and the lackies that are wearing General stars!
Thanks for your comment, Ron and thank you for your service in Vietnam. Our political leaders lost the war in Vietnam. As we now know the North was just about to surrender when we stopped Linebacker 2. If we had commenced unrestricted bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong at the beginning, the war would have been over in a year with a victory and not 10 years with defeat. Of course there is the whole question of why we were there to begin with, once again defending a corrupt government.
Hi Mike! Well, when I stopped by your blog I stepped into a free-fire zone!
Look, I appreciate the service of all members of the military, no matter what their rank or whether they have been in combat. I served in the Vietnam era, but not in Vietnam. War, I suspect, brings out the best in some and the worst in others. But I’d like to think of our military in the Middle East as professionals with higher standards than those of our enemies. It’s one of the things that overall makes me proud of those in uniform. If nothing else, pissing on dead enemy soldiers shows a lack of discipline and professionalism, and taking videos of it is stupid in the extreme.
Gae-Lynn on Twitter writes, “some folks just need killing.” Okay, I get that. But we are Americans, not Visigoths. We do have to kill in war, but we don’t have to revel in it.
I’m glad you stopped by and commented on the post, Bob. Most people feel the way you do and most soldiers don’t do what these men did, but I don’t think politicians, especially the ones who sent them and keep them in a worthless war have the right to criticize them for these kinds of act. This is especially true of our politicians who subject our troops to a ridiculously high ops tempo, subjecting theme to stresses our military people have never experienced. This kind of stuff has been going on forever in war by every army, but we never before conducted investigations about it.
You’re right when you say war brings out the best and the worst in people. Only those who have experienced combat know the full range of competing emotions combat produces and there are definite limits to soldiers’ acts our society will tolerate. I just don’t think these acts are deserving of the political and media reaction they are getting. The Taliban commits far worse atrocities on our soldiers and even worse on Afghan citizens and the politicians don’t have anything to say about that!
By the way, I’m on Chapter Three of Little Mountain.
“The Taliban commits far worse atrocities on our soldiers and even worse on Afghan citizens and the politicians don’t have anything to say about that!”
Actually, the pols let their cowardly drones to their talking for them on this issue… you know, bombing schools and killing children…
I’m a USMC Vet. These warriors are programmed to behave this way by “upper management”. Conduct unbecoming can be excused in the heat of battle. But when the bullets stop so should the ruthlessness. There is no glory in killing… anyone, anywhere, anytime. We are suppose to be ‘better’ than the Taliban… and “Apocalypse Now”.
Thank you for stopping by and commenting. I appreciate it and I appreciate and thank you for your service. I don’t disagree with you in principle…we would all like to the think we are better than the enemy, especially ones like those we are fighting in Afghanistan. As you say, these soldiers and Marines are programmed. They are taught to fight hard and kill the enemy. How do we teach them to turn it off in the minutes and hours following all out combat?
I have experienced this over flow in police work where officers in a knock down drag out fight, still want to get in some licks when it’s over and the suspect is in custody. It’s against the rules and we teach officers what the rules are, but we never discuss the conflicting emotions that consume a person during such a fight and how to control them. I think the same applies to combat training.
War is a terrible thing and as history teaches us, it’s pointless most of the time. It’s the politicians who get us into wars. The point of my blog post is the hypocrisy of these politicians who have never been in the military or combat and have no idea what these fighting men and women have gone through.
Mike, if I could reach you, I’d kiss you on both cheeks, and your wife and your kids & grandkids, too.
I’m a Vietnam-era USMC vet, stateside only, because that’s what girls did back then. Yes, the government–ruled by the media (Walter Kronkite, roast in Hell) put our troops into impossible situations and then blamed them for it. It’s no different now, except that now we are running the same little batch of warriors through that wringer again and again and again. Nobody gets out of this eternal war until they are too used up to move.
If you make up a T-shirt with your opinion on it, let me know. I’ve got siblings, kids, and grandkids, too. They know the truth, and they need to propagate it, no matter how dangerous that is or will become.
Rock on!
First of all I get double kisses because I was born in San Angelo, Texas. Second, thank you for your service in the Marine Corps.
I appreciate you dropping by and commenting on my blog. I think most of the American people don’t realize what is happening to our military. I have a particular ax to grind over the ops tempo, because my youngest son is an Apache pilot in the Army and is just finishing up his third combat tour. They go over for a year at a time. In the last six years, he has been with his family for 2 1/2. People don’t realize that when our soldiers are back here, they are frequently sent TDY for various training evolutions…away from their families. It’s crazy. Luckily, his next assignment will keep in the states for three years. He will get to know his family again. Of course, the real hero in all of this is his lovely wife. She has raised three young kids virtually alone without complaints.
Of course the budget cuts and downsizing of our military will only make this worse. We are heading for disaster.
I appreciate the offer about the t-shirts, but I don’t think there’s enough cloth in the world to hold my opinions. And since we can’t criticize a politician at a public appearance anymore, somebody may get arrested…another law reducing our freedom.
Best to you, Texanne and…GET TO WORK ON THAT WEBSITE! You write good stuff.
Hi Mike. I enjoyed reading your blog and certainly understand your sentiment. I agree with you that people with no combat and live fire situational experience, do not have the right to criticize the actions of men and women who have just survived such a life altering event. Whether or not such criticism comes from a non-combat experienced soldier or politician is almost equally immaterial.
In the Royal Canadian Navy, where I served as a Junior Officer for nearly 4 years, we had a rule that when you woke up a sailor, be he from the ranks or officers core, that he could say anything he wants with impunity for the first minute upon being awoken. After one minute the rank structure closes in and such impunity is withdrawn. In short if the Captain of a ship awakes an Ordinary Seaman, said seaman can tell the Captain to take a long walk off of a short pier in language much more colourful than this without fear of repercussions. The same short of rule should apply to anyone in combat and for a brief period of time deemed appropriate by soldiers with such experience, but within reason. In other words, just because you survived a very recent combat event would not justify you shooting an enemy prisoner no matter how “F’ing” stressed out you were.
Now, all that said and my heart felt appreciation for your sentiments, the fact remains that every soldier in NATO is taught from the get-go in basic training that the corpses of enemy combatants must and will be respected and treated with dignity.
Those guys knew that what they were doing would be taken a very grim view of by not only the Taliban but also their own Commissioned and Non-commissioned Officers. And they may well have gotten away with it, but it would have still been wrong. They were stupid in the extreme to not only have done what they did, but to then have photographed or videoed and shared the film afterwards.
Your President may not have had any combat experience, but he certainly received ample advise from his Chiefs of Staff and others, of whom I am certain some had extensive combat experience. As the Commander In Chief and as a politician President Obama had no choice but to have condemned those men, regardless of how harrowing their experiences may have been. The fact that he did so from a photograph is in this instance utterly irrelevant.
Thank you for stopping by and commenting on my blog, Hans. I don’t disagree with 95% of what you said and as you well know, the vast majority of the soldiers over there do the right thing. Where we disagree is that Mr. Obama or any other politician who is responsible for sending our troops and our allies, such as your fine military men and women, have no right to criticize them. As I said in the three blog entries on this subject, the troops are sent over to support a corrupt regime, fight the war hampered by political correctness and are subjected to a ridiculous ops tempo. All of this creates cynicism and extreme stress in the troops and their families.
You would think the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have an accumulation of extensive combat experience, but that is not the case. Some have extensive air combat experience, but there is a definite lack of extensive ground combat experience. I don’t mean that comment in a derogatory way, it’s just the way things are. The fact is this war is poorly run. For a good example of this, read The Mission,The Men and Me by Pete Blaber, particularly the section on Operation Anaconda. It will make you sick to your stomach and mad as hell. Good men and women are dying unnecessarily. This is particularly galling when they are dying in defense of criminals like Hamid Karzai and his gang of thieves. So, my comment was these politicians can’t demand our troops take the high road until they themselves do so.
Thanks again for stopping by and taking the time to look at my website.
Aahahaha I should watch T.V. more often. In all wars, the politicians and high ranking commanders are held to behaving as gentleman. But wars aren’t fought and won by courteousness.
