An interesting item, the lede from Inter Press News Service, written by Dahr Jamail:
“Iraq war veterans now stationed at a base here say that morale among US soldiers in the country is so poor, many are simply parking their Humvees and pretending to be on patrol, a practice dubbed ‘search and avoid’ missions.”
Jamail’s full story can be found at antiwar.com, probably the best all-around news site on anything relating to current wars, and we do mean wars as in extreme plural: Nasty, atrocious, little affairs, all brimming with killing and dying, from most-reported Decider George’s little pieces of shitfire-horror in the Middle East, to Myanmar (now on war’s back burner), the Congo, Sri Lanka, Uzbek, among a vigorous red-ant-hill of other conflicts covering the planet. War sucks, despite all the hype.
As wildfires in Southern California create yet another dream-like disaster scenerio — the evacuations considered the quickest, largest, single migration of humans in all of history — Decider George has jumped, or maybe leaped, into the forefront in an attempt to create an immediate anti-Katrina glow. That dog won’t hunt, however: Where’s the Guard and all it’s accompanying equipment?
Disaster upon disaster with no readiness or prep. The US has been put on the back burner while Iraq descends into a horrifying, surreal slice of a Twilight Zone episode coupled with a plot from Boots and Saddles, a 1957 TV series depicting calvary troopers on patrol in 1880s Arizona, Apache country.
War is a human whiplash-offshoot of Cain and Abel, albeit on a grand scale. Nation states fight other nation states just as Cain fought and killed his brother, all over greed, and in the right-now, it’s greed for energy. In nation-state wars, however, many, many times the average citizenry is slaughtered because a leader is inept, or corrupt, or both, as in the case of current US history.
A lot has be written and said about supporting the troops: Yellow ribbon around the old tree trunk. It’s not the young GIs on the ground in Iraq, but the assholes sitting on toilets in Washington, D.C. The only way anyone can truly support the troops is to proclaim in a loud, boistrous voice: BRING THEM HOME NOW!
There’s something to be said about Cool Condi Rice getting up-close-and-personal with an antiwar demonstrator in a crowded congressional chamber: Force the issue.
Never has a nation with seemingly so much sent its young citizens off to war with so little. Does dumbshit Donald Rumsfeld care or even consider frontline troops lacking basic, proper equipment? “…you go with what you’ve got…” as square-jawed Don said, as if he was sending off some hikers into an urban park without good walking shoes.
A lot of the GIs are not trained in the kind of warfare being conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the equipment is breaking down, friends, buddies, killed or horribly wounded, or just shot-at-and-nicked, guzzling energy drinks, trying to survive.
And top of all that shit there’s the Total War affect: Kill and destroy anything even suspected, creating on the ground the grim agenda of unrelenting tension in a foreign country. Bombing strikes from US military aircraft has hugely increased this year, forcing soldiers to also go through continous piles of rubble containing women, children, old men, maybe sometimes a known insurgent or two, animals. A practice to ensure a GI’s troubled daily outlook as a witness to the futility of it all.
So such, no surprise then in reports of “search and avoid” patrols: Find a nice spot, kick back, smoke some cigarettes, listen to some music, pretend patrol. Just an example of the military’s breakdown overload in the Iraqi misadventure soley formed in the twisted, arrogant brains of Decider George and his weasel-hole vice president, Dufus Dick Chaney, along with an inbred host of other insolent assholes, but assembled and held in place by the lives of sons and daughters of average US citizens.
And a goodly portion just Guardsmen and Reservists. Even more average US citzenry. In the horror everything can be rational.