tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24278802250250586762024-02-19T06:38:25.774-05:00ONE OF THE IMMORTALS'EVERY TIME WE CHOOSE SAFETY, WE REINFORCE FEAR.”Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-73875100656927677392010-01-12T13:30:00.000-05:002010-01-12T13:30:28.736-05:00MARC ADIN'S BLOG MOVES!This blog has been through a long transubstantiation process and now is located at this address:<span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://undertheshadeofthetrees.typepad.com/landing_on_my_head/"> http://undertheshadeofthetrees.typepad.com/landing_on_my_head/</a>.</span><br />
The new blog <i>should </i>be more enjoyable in an odd kind of way, than this one, but no less edifying, if you are interested in drugs, sex, American ingenuity, sex, adventures, close calls with death, the law, crime, sex, prison, and the life of the mind.<br />
<br />
Any comments, ideas, theories, critiques, codicils, last words, and “do not resuscitate” instructions should be sent directly to the chaplain.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading this blog, and I hope you continue on to “Landing On My Head.”<br />
<br />
Thanks.<br />
<br />
Marc B AdinAdinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-21026325136144632862010-01-08T01:18:00.003-05:002010-01-08T01:29:28.945-05:00ONE FACE OF WAR<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ2QFCp0dkFQU_z9QuWfCS25ljvuD8vTwJgpf0O0xtf_b_IzdYT4rT8fJ5cxug1X7Q8ttNSgjbLIg_GLvlmvlySBWQwy2HOnVqFjTYRREs2cKtc6gI_1cEZjNouee5vMt59qNy5uuMxQ9r/s1600-h/AfF*.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ2QFCp0dkFQU_z9QuWfCS25ljvuD8vTwJgpf0O0xtf_b_IzdYT4rT8fJ5cxug1X7Q8ttNSgjbLIg_GLvlmvlySBWQwy2HOnVqFjTYRREs2cKtc6gI_1cEZjNouee5vMt59qNy5uuMxQ9r/s640/AfF*.jpg" /></a><br />
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</div>Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-84224027618332565262010-01-06T02:32:00.001-05:002010-01-06T04:03:08.903-05:00AMERICA, THE FEARFULLeft or right, Democrat or Republican, each of us must ask ourselves, "What have we done?" What has the overthrow and execution of one man, and his tyrannical regime cost? In lives alone, we have sent 4000 young American women and men to die in Iraq.<br />
Most credible estimates put the number of Iraqis killed since the American invasion at 1,300,000. We have made Saddam Hussein look like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, compared to the blood bath we put into motion and pursued. It's not over yet, even though American troops are now hunkered down in a defensive mode, protected by multi-million dollar fortresses built by private contractors.<br />
<br />
The worst is yet to come in Afghanistan. I think we are there to find and kill Osama bin Laden. One man. Time will reveal the nature of the mission of our 100,000 troops. I don't believe this insane military adventurism will accomplish anything more than the deterioration of the American armed forces, and the soldiers who fight in our conflicts of moral desolation. The ever quickening disintegration of our short lived opportunity to do any better for our own people, or anyone else, than any preceding empire is rapidly becoming evident.<br />
<br />
The total number of American troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan will soon be about 200,000. If we add our contractors and paramilitaries from the CIA, FBI, DEA, and DoE, we'll be at about 500,000 people in an area of South Asia that was no more of a threat to us on 8 September 2001 than it is today. Yet today, South Asia is far more dangerous to American national security than ever before in American history.<br />
<br />
Sandwiched between Iraq and Afghanistan is Iran. To the north of Iran and Afghanistan are Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. These countries sit at the back door of both China and Russia. It is from the ‘stans, countries that we have bought and bribed our way to the platforms for war, that the next wave of anti-Americanism will arise. We have access to airstrips, huge fuel and ammo depots, and the all the trappings that will supply, support, bring death, and destruction to Afghanistan. If we take one step back, and ask ourselves how we got here, we have no choice but to answer because of a steady stream of lies, from both the Bush and Obama administrations. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Afghanistan’s civil war in the wake of the Russian withdrawal in 1980 allowed the Pakistanis to create and support the Taliban, with the assistance of the Saudi’s and the Egyptians. <br />
<br />
Today, a wild chaotic mix of anti-Americans, religious fanatics, jihadis, thugs, criminals, and tribes who don’t like their traditional areas of control to be invaded, are living out their most luxuriant dreams. Caught in the middle of this bloody maelstrom are the innocents who simply want to live their lives in a modicum of peace, love their children, and awaken in the morning without wondering if this will be the last day of their lives.<br />
<br />
The latest attempted bombing by the alleged underwear bomber has set off a panicked stew of fear mongers and pointing fingers. Our reaction is to investigate how we let one person to slip through our Berlin Wall of security. Hundreds of millions will be spent on new technology at airports and air travel will become so onerous no one will want to fly. The truth is that someone will always ‘get through.’ Live with it. Since 9/11 about 4000 American non-combatants have died in terrorist murders world-wide. <br />
<br />
What will happen when someone bombs an Amtrak? Eventually, will we abandon all modes of transit except one? The one of monumental physical, emotional, and environmental carnage caused by the drivers of a car. Between 9/11 and 31 December 2008, 300,330 Americans were killed in automobile accidents. Now that’s what I call blood and guts, not some penny ante 4000 during the same period of time. Since 1974, when statistics began to be collected, an average of 42,800 people have been killed every year on our highways.<br />
<br />
Who shall we blame? The bloated federal bureaucracy, who funded the nation-wide network of high speed roads? How about the automobile industry for making cars that have been death traps? How about our failure to ‘connect the dots’? The failure of American technology to use our vaunted imagination in order to create safe, fast, mass transit? How about The presidents who allowed this carnage to go on during their watch? Now, here’s a rogues gallery: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GWH Bush, Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama.<br />
<br />
Anyone who believes the expansion of our war into Afghanistan is a good idea, should either go [if they meet the qualifications], or urge every eligible young man and women to join, and go. Be a hero. Be a proud American. To do any less is to be a fraud. <br />
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This war will blow up in our faces, and we won’t be able to hide from war’s brutal face any longer. The ‘stans will blow up, Afghanistan will descend into a nightmare of blood and famine, Pakistan will crumble, and a regional nuclear war will teeter on the brink. <br />
<br />
We have failed as a nation and as a people. We have lulled ourselves into believing we are something special, when the opposite is true. We have no national or personal sense of honor. We have accepted the mean and brutal notion of Darwinian Capitalism, and we will be impaled upon its bitter fruit.<br />
<br />
Obama will be left holding a pinwheel in the gale, looking for common ground, dreaming of slapping the fat cat bankers around, and wondering what might have been.<br />
<br />
Me? I’m done with war. <br />
<br />
This blog will turn, and leave geo-politics behind. There are stories to tell, and entertainment to be enjoyed. January is a good time to change directions and explore new lives and the spaces that are still unseen.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I’ll be riding my new bicycle.Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-42200594146392092352009-12-03T17:37:00.000-05:002009-12-03T17:37:27.503-05:00CONDITIONS ON THE GROUND10:52 PM EST 1 December 2009: <br />
Wind from the N (010 degrees), at 18mph, Gusting to 28mph,<br />
Visibility .5 miles,<br />
Sky conditions 100% cloud cover,<br />
Ceiling 250 ft.,<br />
Temperature -7F,<br />
Dew Point -7F,<br />
Relative Humidity 100%,<br />
Precipitation Heavy Sleet, Mixed with Snow,<br />
Pressure 29.23 Hg.<br />
<br />
I don't know about you, but I'm getting off at the next exit. It's time to get off the road of death and destruction. Like a sprinter in the darkness, we are headed full speed into a brick wall. I don't know how this will end, other than to know we are a contaminated nation. Sick with our own poison, we poison others. Our future options in South Asia restricted by our failure to see how stuck we are, we have committed ourselves to inscrutability. We don't know where we are going and like the great empires before us, we have hung ourselves out to dry, destroying ourselves from within.<br />
<br />
The sub-text of Obama's speech was that we cannot do anything of value in the geographic areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. Who would have thought that in the detritus of the Russians, the British, and the Soviet Union, we would create a worse situation than was left in the wake of the brutal ten-year long Soviet war against the Afghanis?<br />
<br />
Obama's speech was a strange, strained explication of why we are escalating our war in Afghanistan. He was fully detached from the reality of the ground, the topography, mountains, and the valleys of the rarified air of the Hindu Kush. No matter what he read from first hand reports, from all the intelligence we could gather, reams of briefing papers, think tank analyses, trusted and not so trusted advisors, he had surrendered to The Great Bubble.<br />
<br />
It took all of nine months for him to lose attachment to a universe that he must recall as if it were a dream from his childhood. His speech provided no understandable way forward for almost 100,000 troops, no way out and no way back. He fell into the trap of something for everyone: the generals, the private contractors, the ambiguous American public who have conflated the Taliban of 9/11 with the Taliban of today, and added nothing but confusion in helping Americans understand who the Al-Qaeda are today, and how they can be defanged. Perhaps a decision not to pursue the military option may have hurt the president politically, but I believe the escalation option will be the most counter-productive, only serve to weaken us further, and energize those Islamic moderates who will be pushed to become more and more radical. We continue to strengthen those who see us as mortal enemies.<br />
<br />
His speech summed up a broad American strategy through the backdoor, as if he were embarrassed by what he had decided. For Obama to think that an expansion of the war in Afghanistan will weaken the Afghanistan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban, ignores history and the facts. This widened war will further break the Pakistani Army and ISI, worsen the complex nature of the Indian and Pakistani conflict, will exacerbate the destabilization South Asia, and is a hard blow to both our national security, and the region's. South Asia is a Gordian Knot to be sure, but to reduce our on/off over-arching strategy as essentially determined by the grand caveat of "conditions on the ground," is no more than "we'll see what happens when we get there." It's the off-ramp position that lets almost everyone off the hook. With one important exception: it leaves our young men and women dead on a field of battle, where the "conditions" just weren't right. In the American War in Viet Nam, those dead were called "wasted." A young life 'wasted' for no purpose, and for no worthy cause. We can call the now living, soon to be dead, "heroes," but the truth is their lives will be wasted for an ill-defined, contradictory, and ambiguous purpose that accomplishes nothing. <br />
<br />
The cost of the two wars thus far is one trillion dollars. It will cost another incomprehensible amount of money to carry out the expanded war in Afghanistan with about 100,000 troops. On 30 September 2009 we still had 124,000 troops in Iraq, plus an additional 180,000 civilian contractors employed in direct support of US troops. There are no troops from any other nation remaining in Iraq. I cannot determine how many additional civilian contractors will be employed by us in Afghanistan. I have no evidence to believe that a 1:1 ratio of troops to civilian contractors is not a reasonable assumption. In passing, the one trillion dollar figure does not include: ships, submarines, and unanticipated needs, such as medical, transport to and from Afghanistan, mechanical repair, fuel, et.al. (which is problematic as Afghanistan is a landlocked country, and we have to work from the 'stans along the northern border, and our shaky friends in Pakistan).<br />
<br />
The Taliban operating both in Afghanistan and Pakistan still have an exceedingly close relationship. It is not at all clear what the Pakistani reaction to having 100,000 American troops near their border will be. The Taliban are still well funded by Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt. If all the poppy crop of Afghanistan were sprayed with Agent Orange today, the Taliban would remain as well funded as they are today.<br />
<br />
Al-Qaeda and its pathological embrace of religious fundamentalism, rage, purity of cause, and the righteous warriors of the dream of an Islamic Caliphate still exists. The problem is that they are geographically scattered, and understand us well. They are tenacious and will survive in either a more benign form or rise from their apparent defensive posture and promote jihad against our increased presence in Afghanistan. If the Pakistani Army and ISI appear to be fragmenting, the Americans, Russians, Chinese, Indians will be in a doomsday race to take possession of the nuclear weapons currently under Pakistani control. If there is only one reason for so many US troops to be along the Pakistani border it would be that. However, it is increasingly evident that American intelligence agencies have been tracking the nuclear delivery systems, the warheads themselves, and the triggering devices. It is believed that all three of these components are not co-located with each other for security purposes. But in the complex cross-currents of this most dangerous part of the world, it would be wise not to leave anything to chance.<br />
<br />
That leaves us with a strategy and set of tactics to isolate and degrade Al-Qaeda. The first question is how do we go about destroying 'state of mind' that has metastasized into a hydra-headed terrorist organization that will use any tactic to advance its goals? We focus on killing the leadership at every possible opportunity. Just as Iraq caused us to marginalize Afghanistan and the re-emergence of the Taliban, the expanded war in Afghanistan will cause us to marginalize Al-Qaeda. It will be far more effective to form an effective alliance with Western Europe, Russia, China, India, and Kenya to create a comprehensive, coordinated, highly sophisticated intelligence and international police operation to locate and destroy the leadership of Al-Qaeda. The Russians are concerned about links with Al-Qaeda in Chechnya, the Chinese with Al-Qaeda among the Uyghurs in central and western China, the Indians and attacks emanating from Pakistan, Western Europe, and Africa, where the murder of large numbers of innocents in London, Madrid, Ankara, and Nairobi reminds each country of the mortal threat of Al-Qaeda. <br />
<br />
No matter how frequently the familiar mantra of the "Global War On Terror" is repeated, it is not. A war requires an articulation of "victory" as an endgame. If we continue to be at war with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda we are committing ourselves to endless, bloody strife. Terrorism has always been with us and will continue to be. Our goal must be to police it as we do any murder, except Al-Qaeda and their accomplices are international murderers. <br />
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We do not have to go down this path, with all of its weaknesses, of blood spilled, of new enemies made, of the potential nuclear destabilization of South Asia, and the inevitable weakening of our commonwealth through the most expensive of all human endeavors: war.Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-75966627790603440672009-11-25T10:55:00.000-05:002009-11-25T11:31:45.570-05:00FINISHING THE JOBfrom nothing<br />
grew everything<br />
everything brought<br />
nothing.<br />
wide eyed we<br />
scowled at the void<br />
yet still<br />
death came<br />
as the twin charges<br />
side by side<br />
brothers<br />
of drooling<br />
suicide.<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>“Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.<br />
<br />
Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.<br />
<br />
And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.” Bill Moyers, 20 November 2009<br />
</blockquote>We are lost and confused, as we have become purveyors of armies in a permanent state of war, who, joined by our deformed mercenary armies, will never return home. Why are we compelled to wander so long and so far, becoming strangers everywhere? We have become an anguished nation, inconsistent, and blanketed in covert mockery of what many say we represent.<br />
<br />
We hurtle down the road as Death and Destruction. Our actions announce as so, we are the fearsome crimson name that promises what we shall bring to those who dare defy us. The bleached human skull, the jaunty icon, proclaims our presence for all to dread.<br />
<br />
The Taliban in Afghanistan can be destroyed piece by piece through careful targeting with a whole menu of overstuffed weaponry from Hell Fire missiles, Tomahawks, whatever the evolving robo-battlefield drones can now fire, and in rare instances, Special Operation Forces. The Taliban can be reduced to marauding gangs that the Afghanis can live with or not. Afghanistan is Pakistan’s geo-strategic playground. The ISI and Pakistani Army played the lead role in forming, supporting, and directing the operations of the Taliban. They still do. Now, however, infighting among various factions of the ISI and an increasingly fragmented Pakistani army, has created a new, equally fragmented Taliban. The imaginary border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has never been secure in any sense of the word. American forces by their very nature will be restricted to the south central and southeastern areas of Afghanistan. The Hindu Kush will continue to be the scene of more frequent and higher intensity air campaign.<br />
<br />
All of this will serve to energize the Afghanis and Pakistanis against US troops, increasing casualties of both American troops and civilians as we increase combat missions. The ubiquitous friendly fire casualties and collateral civilian deaths will increase. Across the broad southern swath of Pakistan, the tribal area of Balochistan may seize the opportunity to expand their simmering struggle to break away from Pakistan, as East Pakistan (Bangaledesh) did in 1971. Balochistan shares a border with India in the east and Iran in the west. Both Iran and India would be interested in an ‘independent’ Balochistan. Its natural resources are the richest in Pakistan, and there has long been a plan for a gas pipeline running from India through Balochistan (Pakistan) to Iran. Recently, a number of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were killed by an incursion of an unverified group of ‘terrorists’ from Pakistan. <br />
<br />
Nothing good will come out of an increased presence of American troops in Afghanistan. The threats to our national security can and do emanate from anywhere in the world. Any increase of US troops, and mercenaries (who currently outnumber American troops in Afghanistan), will destabilize Pakistan further with unknowable consequences, none of which will calm the tensions in South Asia.<br />
<br />
Regardless of how many time specific qualitative and quantitative benchmarks President Obama demands to be met, or how many ‘off ramp’ options there are in any plan he advances, they will all vanish in the whirlwind when casualties go up. The unexpected will happen and the generals will need more troops to get the region stabilized. What then, besides more dead and wounded?<br />
<br />
We should work with China, Russia, and India to help the more moderate elements of Pakistan gain a position where economic and national security are paramount. That is the only path that can eventually heal the rift between at least India and Pakistan. Eventually, with a much diminished American troop presence, and an end to American intrusion into the internal affairs of Pakistan, a positive outcome remains possible. Right now, we are headed down a dead end. <br />
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General Petraeus’ asked, “Tell me how this ends?” The answer will be “more horribly than we ever could have imagined.”Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-69510094759427382122009-11-14T19:27:00.000-05:002009-11-15T13:01:39.870-05:00IF 6 WAS 9<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">If the sun refused to shine,</span></b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">I don’t mind, I don’t mind.</span></b><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">If the mountains fell into the sea,</span></b><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">Let it be, let it be.</span></b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">Now if a 6 turned out to be 9,</span></b><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">I don’t mind, I don’t mind.</span></b><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">Alright, if all the hippies cut off all of their hair</span></b><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #660000;"> I don’t care, I don’t care.</span></b><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="color: #073763;">Jimi Hendrix, 1967</span><br />
</div></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>My previous post “Shattered Mind,” might have left you with an incomplete, incoherent, or at least unbalanced sense of what the life of an infantryman in war resembled. Even in the worst of conditions we still managed to find or create humor. Some might say it was a coping mechanism to stay sane in the insane, disassociated world in which we unfairly (of course) found ourselves. After a month of fear punctuated by brief, sudden firefights, rocket attacks for no good reason, accidents, the unremitting war within a war between the enlisted men and the officer cadre, and the other enemy, the lifers, we were all nuts.<br />
<br />
Sandrigo was in my squad. He was a twenty-one year old from San Francisco due to rotate back to The World about six months into my tour. His favorite possession and obsession was a photo of himself the day before he went into the army. He had a big toothy grin, a tie-dyed shirt, and long, black, straight hair that was about three inches below his shoulders. He showed it to us at least once a day. As his time to leave approached he began to whip out his photo four and five times a day. He loved to show it to me because I still had six months to try to survive after he left. <br />
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“Hey Adin, mah man! Look at this shit, will you?” He'd be holding the photo up about foot in front of my eyes. “Six, seven months from now, that’s they way I’ll be lookin’ again.” He was wearing that shit-eating grin that wouldn’t stop. I really liked Sandrigo. He would be twirling the tips of his out of regulation moustache with extravagant glee. <br />
<br />
“Nobody grows hair that fast, Sandrigo. Not even you!” I said. At that weak retort, he’d poke me in the chest and backpedal, laughing, “Then I’ll get me a fookin’ wig until it grows in, nice and long and straight.” We would both crack up, and he’d turn around singing a rambling ditty. It was about women, showers, flush toilets, and clean sheets. I lost his voice as it faded into the din of a departing flight of Hueys , kicking up clouds of dry, red dust.<br />
<br />
The same pattern was repeated until the night before Sandrigo was going to leave. He wanted to have “an important” meeting with the squad, all seven of us. At zero dark-thirty that night we clustered in a bunker to hear what Sandrigo’s big deal was all about. We gathered around him as he spoke in a hushed voice. “I really love you guys. You know you are all brothers to me. I know I will probably never meet any of you guys again, but I’ll always remember the all the days we spent together, no matter if they were good or bad.” I looked up at Smitty, East St. Louis Smitty, whose future plans included joining the Black Panthers as soon as he got home, and I didn't know whether he was about to laugh or cry.<br />
<br />
“HAH!” He yelled in his outside voice, startling us all for a moment. Sandrigo laughed as he continued. “But when I get back to San Francisco, I'm going to find six tabs of the best LSD I can find and send it to Adin. I’ll taste-test it for you first, of course. You think this place is some shit, wait ‘till you get this shit!” Now, he was beside himself, melting into his inaccessible giddiness. He was going home. He had survived.<br />
<br />
We were momentarily amused by his idea. I don’t think any of us had taken acid before, but the idea intrigued us. We all smoked some weed, told stories, and eventually, just before daybreak, shuffled back to our assigned bunkers at a fire base near Dak To.<br />
<br />
As the days and weeks passed we forgot about Sandrigo and his acid. Things happened. It rained for days, it got cold, and tiny scrapes or cuts quickly became infected with some awful fungus known affectionately as “jungle rot.” We ate our cold C-rations out of tin cans. I traded three small cans of beans and franks for a tin of angel food cake and a tin of fruit cocktail. It was my favorite combination.<br />
<br />
One dark, windy, late afternoon, we gathered for mail call. My name was called out, and there was my daily letter from my mother, and another letter with my name on it. The return address was printed in tiny letters; I couldn’t make out who it was from. When I got into a bunker I read the return address: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">Mr. Frank Zappa, One World Circle, San Francisco, California.</span></span> It was from Sandrigo. I carefully opened the letter. Inside were two index cards and between them was a white piece of blotter paper, with two rows of three light blue dried drops of some liquid. On one index card were four words. “Blue Owsley. Be careful.” <br />
<br />
I ran over to the six other squad members who were lingering around waiting for another letter or package. I found Sanders first. A proud Alabaman, he was due to go home in a couple of months. I told him about Sandrigo’s letter. Sanders said, “Cool. Let's drop it now. Times a wastin’.” I reminded him that we had a three-day patrol beginning tomorrow, and Sandrigo said the LSD could last for twelve hours. We had to wait. <br />
<br />
Smitty and Rendon had the same reaction as Sanders. I decided to hide the acid until we could work this mission out. I found Duncan and Bamberg and told them. I looked for Waters and finally saw him near the perimeter transfixed by the sight of the new guys pouring a mixture of diesel and gas into the bottom half of a 55 gallon drum. The drums had been dragged out from under the latrine.<br />
<br />
“Waters, what are you doing, man?” Waters looked at me as if I were an idiot. “I'm checking the prevailing wind direction. I don’t want to be on the down wind side when they torch the shit.” Waters was a tall, thin dude, with a shock of thick blonde hair that stood straight up even if he wore his steel pot all day. He was from a small town in Vermont and was the only college graduate in the platoon. He was teaching high school chemistry when he got his draft notice. He should have had some sort of deferment for teaching in a public school, but somehow it didn’t play out that way, and now he was in Viet Nam checking out the daily shit burning ritual.<br />
<br />
He was a good guy with a sly, understated sense of humor. I told him about the acid, and he looked off in the distance. “Hey Waters! You remember Sandrigo telling us he would send us LSD, right?” Waters smirked. “Yeah, but I didn’t know it was an acid.” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Huh?” I responded. Waters sounded serious. “Do you know what the pH value of that shit is?” He laughed at my ignorance or his cleverness. “Waters, what the fuck are you talkin’ about?” Waters put his long arm over my shoulder and said, “Adin, you’ve gotta cool out and not get so emotional about everything. Bad for your health. So when are we going to take it?” He smiled as he turned back to watch the shit burners just as they were torching it. I wandered off wondering why everything had to be so complicated.<br />
<br />
We went on the uneventful patrol, spending hours whispering about what a ‘trip’ might be like. We were lucky we weren’t ambushed.<br />
<br />
Back at the Fire Support Base [FSB] we were each assigned to a bunker or fire tower at the perimeter each night when we weren’t out doing something else. Two troopers at each location, two hours on, two hours off. There was no way for us to drop the LSD together. It had been quiet for a few days, and nothing was going on in the area except for our continuous artillery fire, out going.<br />
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Just before we were taking off for perimeter guard we gathered up, and I ripped the blotter paper into six pieces. We all popped them in our mouths and took off.<br />
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About an hour later I was tripping. In the darkness I was watching my red, glowing blood flowing through the veins in my hands. Suddenly my wired telephone handset rang. It was Duncan. He sounded a little weird: his voice had multiple echos. “Adin, I'm trippin’.” “Yeah me too,” I answered. After that Duncan’s words poured over each other in some echo chamber, and I couldn’t understand him. Duncan’s call was followed by Bamberg, Smitty, Waters, and Rendon. I recall some panic setting in when Smitty asked what we would do if we were attacked. Someone thought it was funny and began laughing hysterically when I put the phone handset in its cradle. I was laughing so hard I was crying and was gasping for air, when the loudest crack I had ever heard in my life bounced me against the sandbag walls of the bunker. The bunker partially collapsed around me, and I was stuck in the stinking, old, moldy sandbags. Cracks and explosions followed one after another. I looked at my watch again and again, but I couldn’t tell the time because I had forgotten what ‘time’ meant. After either minutes or hours, I realized it didn’t matter. I clawed my way from under the bags, and crawled into a corner of the bunker when suddenly it was sunrise. Even the sunglasses I wore day and night couldn’t stop the sun from going into my eyes and coming out the back of my head. I looked out through the gun port and saw Sgt. Waring, our platoon sergeant, jogging towards me. I could hear the sirens, the Hueys medevacing the wounded out, and all the screams and hollering that follow a heavy rocket attack. The acid was wearing off, and Waring was coming to arrest me and send me to jail. It was all over for me and my fellow dwarves.<br />
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“Adin, what the fuck are you doin’ in there? Get out and help for chrissakes! Do something. Now, I said! Find your squad and do a headcount.” I gathered up my shit and walked out into blinding, brilliant sunshine.<br />
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A few weeks later at mail call, I got another letter from Sandrigo. At first, I was going to tear it up into a million pieces. I noticed the return address had his name on it. I opened it, and in between two index cards was a photo. The note on the card read, “It's taking longer than I thought to grow my hair back. But I'm still cooler than you.”<br />
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<b>Sandrigo, San Franciso, 1969</b><br />
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Next, Pakistan, An Answer.Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-73620869077746863542009-11-10T22:09:00.000-05:002009-11-16T00:53:12.306-05:00FRAGMENTS FROM A SHATTERED MEMORYYears ago, I thought that one day I would recover from my 365 days in Viet Nam. The physical wounds would heal, the nightmares, the tremors, the bursts of anger, the strangeness of home, the home I dreamt of for 365 days, all that had gone wrong, would be set right. I was wrong. <br />
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The physical wounds only festered and with time, and multiplied as ripples of a stone dropped in a still pool. The psychological wounds became an infinite series of obstacles, of high walls that had I had to struggle to overcome. It all left me exhausted, and there were many times that I felt the struggle wasn’t worth it, that death would be better a path to follow.<br />
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I often wondered how infantrymen of past wars came to terms with the very same problems, both during war and after. I watched movies, read books, spoke with veterans of other wars for the hint of an answer and finally realized that none of us returned to the world we recalled. There was no answer. We were isolated from the ‘civilians’ who couldn’t imagine what we saw and did. <br />
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The combat experience is as all encompassing as an orgasm, past and future do not exist, all is here and now. Combat is the struggle between life and death, a titanic struggle ending in annihilation. <br />
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At the end of each fight all existence is reduced to the living, the dying and dead, on or off, zero or one, black or white. For a minute or two, I knew everything. Life was simple, and I was the answer. I was at the center of the world. Later on I would understand that the killing place was nothing but a personal memory, unrecorded, unknown, and of no interest to anyone. As time passed, even I wondered if anything did happen, if I were even in a battle. Perhaps it was all a dream.<br />
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September 1, 2009, passed by without note that seventy years before, World War Two began when German tanks and infantry invaded Poland. World War Two was the greatest catastrophic human event in the history of the world. It estimated that 78 million people died during the war between September 1, 1939, and September 2, 1945. At wars end, the geo-political boundaries of the world were rearranged, millions were refugees, the French and English Empires collapsed, wars of liberation and independence began, much of western Europe was destroyed, and the Soviet Union’s smothering, dictatorial subjugation of eastern Europe began, setting the Cold War into place.<br />
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By September 1, 2009, the veterans were all dead, the monuments to their sacrifice cold, and hard as ancient tombstones. Europe had been rebuilt, the reality of war became history once again, and no memory of it remained. The events of World War Two became objectified, forever frozen in time and place. Unfortunately, that is the way with all wars, no matter how cataclysmic and devastating.<br />
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All wars are spoken of as if there is a Big Picture and Small Picture. The Big Picture is the ken of monarchs, politicians, dictators, and generals. They mostly are people who never lived in the Small Picture of war. As every combat infantryman knows, the Small Picture is where you stand, where you sit, where you sleep and how far you can see. You are always outdoors despite the weather. You are too hot, too cold, too wet, too filthy, hungry, and always sleep deprived. You are always living amid your own feces. It is a miserable existence even if no one was trying to kill you. Those who were trying to kill you were not limited to the ‘enemy.’ There were the faceless unknown officers who wanted warm bodies here, or there, and then back here. Hurry up and wait. There were your fellows soldiers who thought you were there when you should have been here; the artillery rounds that fell short and exploded among us; the planes who thought you were someone else. The new, inexperienced officers who sent troops to the wrong place to get killed or wounded because they were panicked. And then there was the guy in your squad who hated you for some reason, and was waiting for the chance to shoot you during a firefight. There are as many ways to die as there are soldiers who die in a combat zone.<br />
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Soldiers who are killed never looked like anything I imagined. A human torso without arms, legs, and head, steaming from the heat of the blast; just buttocks, attached to nothing, with no thought as to whose they might have been. A recognizable human face pealed back from the skull flattened against a vehicle’s unbroken windshield. Someone struck by a piece of metal, still walking with a pink mist around his head, then just dropping to the ground with blood spurting yards up into the air and on the ground. The human body is a balloon filled with blood under high pressure<br />
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Once I was walking a few yards behind a guy and his back exploded. I recall thinking, “why did you carry a hand grenade on your back?” Then I was on the ground and all I could hear was a high pitched ringing in my ears. Later, I would learn that a piece of vertebrae of the guy in front of me had penetrated my lower lip and lodged in the back of my mouth between my upper and lower jaws. He had been shot in the chest.<br />
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The stench of war is a Small Picture. Large amounts of fresh blood always smelled like aluminum foil to me, the dead who had been killed yesterday smelled one way, but those dead three days, were intolerable unless I had Kool filters jammed up my nose and kept my mouth closed.<br />
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The reality is that there is no Big Picture war. War is a small, disgusting Small Picture. War should be reserved for survival in the face of destruction. To make war for any other reason is not only stupid, it is insane. <br />
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It is about to be Veterans Day as write this. I think of all those young men who gave their lives in causes that were driven by those who have never seen, smelled, or risked everything in war. I wish it had all been different. But most of all, I wish that future war makers understand that there is nothing honorable in dying for a cause which can’t even be articulated. What would be honorable would be to ensure that war should be the last, the final resort, so that young men can enjoy all that life is, instead of what might have been.<br />
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<b>What Might Have Been</b><br />
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" quality="high" width="400" height="266" align="" src="http://www.zenfolio.com/zf/code/slideshow.swf" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="id=729907531&background=0xffffff&delay=4&transition=2&loop=1&allowfs=1&allowthumbs=1&showlink=1&allowtitles=0&showtitles=1&autostart=1&allowtopbar=1&allowcontrols=1&transparent=0&frame=0xffff00"></embed>Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-7193235436592631512009-11-06T16:39:00.000-05:002009-11-06T16:46:24.016-05:00Know-Nothings On The March - The Daily Dish | By Andrew SullivanI have had something I wrote noticed on a well read site on the web, at The Atlantic.com, 'The Daily Dish.' It is both rewarding and disappointing at the same time.<br />
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Below is the link, entitled Know-Nothings On The March<br />
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<a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/knownothings-on-the-march.html">Know-Nothings On The March - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan</a>Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-84643535680705873352009-11-03T00:12:00.000-05:002009-11-16T00:42:43.765-05:00IT IS NEVER AS BAD AS IT SEEMS<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" quality="high" width="400" height="266" align="" src="http://www.zenfolio.com/zf/code/slideshow.swf" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="id=272051388&background=0xffffff&delay=3&transition=2&loop=1&allowfs=1&allowthumbs=1&showlink=1&allowtitles=0&showtitles=1&autostart=1&allowtopbar=1&allowcontrols=1&transparent=0&frame=0x036343"></embed><br />
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Sometimes it's worse.Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-80840005613906737852009-10-31T15:52:00.000-04:002009-10-31T15:53:33.036-04:00LET’S GO TO VIET NAM!I was 20 years old in 1967 and a sophomore in college. The American war in Viet Nam was blowing up. Confusion and chaos were beginning to permeate my world. As a full-time student, I had a draft deferment but I was imprisoned: either I remained a full-time student or would be drafted into the army and end up in Viet Nam. As I read more about the war and Viet Nam, I realized that there was no reason for us to be there. It seemed so obvious to me that I found it hard to understand what the government was doing. All the terminology used to rationalize waging war was either an obvious lie or a far-fetched theory without basis.<br />
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At first, I was confused that the ‘adults’ who were making critical decisions to plunge thousands of American kids and untold numbers of Vietnamese into the butcher shop of war using the most tenuous of reasons could be so deluded. I soon concluded that not only were they out of touch with reality, but they knowingly were deceiving and betraying Americans, as well.<br />
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Eighteen months later, in early 1969, I was an infantryman with the Fourth Infantry Division in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. Since that time my life has been discretely segmented into three time periods: before Viet Nam, during, and after. Such is the awful power of war.<br />
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Now, with the Iraqi war of betrayal and deceit still unfolding, President Obama is deciding the future of this country and South Asia in his councils of war. Any order that puts more American troops into Afghanistan will be more disastrous than our misguided and criminal militarism in Viet Nam. Further recklessness will destabilize South Asia, will drain us of much needed resources in this country for infrastructure, mass transportation, education, health care, social and economic security. This is an example of what we spend our money on now: <a href="http://www.defpro.com/news/details/10946">http://www.defpro.com/news/details/10946</a> Well, I guess we could bomb the Moon. Naw. This blog isn’t supposed to be sarcastic.<br />
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If we pursue this war it will cost us billions of dollars and, most of all, the lives of thousands of America’s children. As fast as we became a preeminent world power, we will fall even faster. For what reason? Our security? Al-Qaedda, the stateless, many headed hydra, has metastasized into a both a ‘state of mind’ and magnet for the most disaffected of Muslims. Suicide bombers who target innocent men, women, and children, the great majority who are fellow Muslims, are the most extreme of criminals. Does anyone really believe that an increase of 10,000 or 100,000 thousand American troops will stop the suicide bombers or Al-Qaedda? There are far more effective methods of hunting down and decapitating the leadership of these loosely connected criminal syndicates. Al-Qaedda is no different from the Mexican narco-terrorists who control significant territory in northern Mexico, or FARC in Columbia. Mexico is close to losing control of several of its states. It could easily be argued that the Mexican drug cartels are a far more dangerous threat to our national security than Al-Qaedda or any of its mutations.<br />
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What if someone with ties to a Muslim country does succeed in setting off a bomb in Los Angeles, as was done Madrid in 2004 (191 killed) and London in 2005 (56 killed), how would the United States react? Would we invade or bomb every Muslim country the bombers may have had ties to? What would we do? Send more troops to Afghanistan or invade Pakistan? Impeach President Obama? Jail Janet Napolitano?<br />
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Just as President Johnson had to make a defining decision for his presidency, the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and the United States, so does president Obama. Johnson made the wrong choice.<br />
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Late this summer I was having a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee at the local Barnes & Noble with my old friend Capt. Omphalos (ret) who also served in Viet Nam. As we talked, I happened to look up and saw a brightly colored book, and for a few minutes I didn’t know where I was, or what year it was. I was stupefied. After I put my head together, I jumped up to get the book and noticed it was in the travel section. I brought the book back to where we were sitting and paged through it, angry, amused, disgusted, and, for a brief moment, interested. I put it back on the shelf behind the travel books about Paris.<br />
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Relationships between countries are always in a state of flux. Once a son, husband, sister, daughter, brother, friend is killed before their lives are lived, they are gone forever. A memory frozen in time; for as long as memory lasts, a ghost of what might have been.<br />
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</div>Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-91116246998885362662009-10-26T16:11:00.000-04:002009-10-29T00:09:27.037-04:00BLOOD AND NOMENCLATURISM, PART ONE<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What is Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan? What will more troops do? What will a ‘surge’ of US troops Afghanistan accomplish?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The war in Iraq is far from over, it is still simmering and could spiral out of control again. The “surge” was preceded by the ‘Anbar Awakening,’ a coalition of tribal and religious groups who had grown weary of the endless killings, and began to strike back at the extremists whose goals ranged from revenge killings to seeking Shia or Sunni dominance. The “surge” of American troops was preceded by a massive influx of money for weapons, civilian reconstruction and infrastructure projects, and personal payoffs for those tribal war lords in Anbar Province, who agreed to take the battle to the militias, and Al-Qaedda in Iraq.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The strategy included paying Iraqis who fought for the extremist militias and Al-Qaedda in Iraq to come over to the Americans, and fight for us and the Anbar Awakening, or, at the very least, remain neutral. Four-thousand Marines had their tours extended in Anbar Province and 16,000 Army troops were added to Baghdad by July 20007.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In January 2007 President Bush announced the surge, and it goals were to:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1. Let the Iraqis lead;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2. Help Iraqis protect the population;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. Isolate extremists;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">4.Create space for political progress;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">5.Diversify political and economic efforts; and</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">6.Situate the strategy in a regional approach.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Iraqi civilian casualties decreased from 24,354 in 2007, to 9,225 in 2008. US troop KIA’s decreased from 83 in January 2007 to 23 in December 2007. Whether this decrease was a result of the Anbar Awakening, the US surge of 16,000 troops in Baghdad and the 4,000 Marines held over in Anbar is arguable, but a welcome relief from the carnage of the prior five years. The reasons for the decrease in US and Iraqi casualties in 2007 and until late 2008 is far from clear. Iraq is still a very fragile area, ready at anytime to burst into open civil war, and spin into chaos.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>“AFGHANISTAN ISN’T IRAQ”</b></span><br />
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</div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Petraeus has that right. Click on the first entry of this blog on the phrase, “Eastern Afghanistan Tribal Areas,” and you will see a slideshow of the numerous and discrete tribes in eastern Afghanistan located in mountains ranges from 9,000 feet to 18,000 feet set deep and isolated valleys. Now it is winter in Afghanistan, even further complicating military incursions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">President Obama: “Security and humanitarian concerns are all part of one project.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There is no government in or even a historical tradition of a central government in Afghanistan. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We are told over and over that there can be no economic development in Afghanistan until the country is stable, and that’s why we have to destroy the Taliban. Legitimate government, root out corruption, accountable governance; only when Afghanistan is secure can it prosper; when Afghanistan is secure we are secure; counter-insurgency and/or counter-terrorism; we need to destroy the Taliban to build a state; without a legitimate state we will again create a breeding ground for terrorists, Taliban and Al-Qaedda; to build a state we need to eliminate poverty, human rights, eliminate corruption, and create an infrastructure; but before we can do that we must destroy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We are fixated on ‘policy speak’ that comes from thousands of consultants, ‘white papers’, think tanks, consultants, pundits, politicians, self-described experts, and political science PhD’s. We hear it so often in so many venues that it must be true. But when the iconic boots on the cold ground meet flying metal, blood flows, and soaks the hard ground, what is gained? If we can articulate what is worth the death of one American kid in this cause, I want to hear it. I want to hear it in the context of the death of one kid on the other side of the world, alone, except for his brother troopers. If we are struggling to articulate the definition of ‘win’ then we already have lost. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We rarely have the chance to see dead American kids in places we have never heard of, in countries that most of can’t even locate on globe. What country borders Afghanistan on the east? What countries border it to the north? The west? During the American War in Viet Nam the evening news would often have video of wounded and killed Americans, as well as Viet Cong, and North Viet Namese. The mainstream media even covered the execution of a bound Viet Cong prisoner, and the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk protesting the war. Today, it is an ethical and constitutional basis for discussion among media experts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We have become so mesmerized with the nomenclaturism of war and foreign policy speak which serves to obfuscate critical decision making, that we don’t even know what reality is anymore. There is no shared sacrifice, there are only bumper stickers. There is little sense of loss; there are only vague concepts such as our national security.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yet, we continue to do the same things that have sent former young generations of Americans, Soviets, and British soldiers to the same forgotten oblivion for an illusive cause. We haven’t learned from history. We have spit in its face, as proof that we are exceptional. We perceive our culture and mores as superior to theirs; that they should adopt our rule of law over theirs [even though we are invading their country]; and then, and only then will security and peace will flow from a socio-economic partnership between us. But first the nettlesome Taliban and their comrades, the Al-Qaedda, must be destroyed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In 1994 the Taliban rode into Kabul on their Soviet made tanks and took control of the country and its loose confederation of tribes. Not all tribes fell to them, however, and a lengthy and brutal civil war broke out, until the insurgent tribes joined the NATO attack on the Taliban in October 2001, ending with the Taliban leaving their last stronghold in Kabul in December 2001. Most of the fierce on the ground fighting was done by the Northern Alliance, whose tribes had been at war with the Taliban since 1994. Over the three-month campaign many Taliban fighters deserted and crossed over to the NATO and Northern Alliance fighters. Most Afghan fighters find glory and prestige to be on the winning side, and have no overarching political ideology. They find democracy a strange form of governance, far preferring the Loya Jirga, Pashto for “Grand Assembly,” where important regional decisions are made by tribal leaders, war lords, and elders. The concept that a vote of an 18 year old would have the same weight as that of a tribal leader or war lord is both laughable and stupid to Afghanis. The idea that "all politics is local" is far more applicable to Afghanistan than it is to the United States.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So why do we need troops to fight a protracted guerilla war in Afghanistan? Why not have some NATO special forces, Air Forces, drones, disaffected Afghan tribes, and the CIA do what they did so successfully in 90 days in 2001? There were no large, unwieldy infantry units on the ground to be supplied by an incredibly difficult logistical operation in terrain that precludes the movement of large military forces in 2001. What has changed? There are not hordes of Taliban pouring out of the mountain villages, caves, and ravines, about to overrun Kabul or any other major city. Now, the Taliban have the Pakistani Army in large numbers on their eastern border, and some one is provoking Iran on their western border.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What’s up? Al-Qaedda could go anywhere, and have. They could train in Chicago, or California, or at a flight school in Florida. They can plan and train in many places that have far less scrutiny than Afghanistan or Pakistan. They could go to a “failed state” such as Yemen, Sudan, or Somalia. Of the nineteen hijackers of 9/11, one was Egyptian, three were from the United Arab Emirates, and 15 were from Saudi Arabia, as is Osama bin Ladin. It is believed the majority of the hijackers had been to training camps in Pakistan and/or Afghanistan, but that is not completely clear. Certainly the hijackings were planned by Al-Qaedda, where at least some of their leadership might have been at the time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Why a large scale war is now to be waged in Afghanistan is not clear to me. Has President Obama been trapped by his own campaign rhetoric or has he ever met a general who doesn’t want more troops to wage war?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">More to follow...</span><br />
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</span>Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-16338367538371252632009-10-18T15:19:00.000-04:002009-10-18T16:21:31.081-04:00THE TALIBAN ARE REPUBLICANS, AL-QAEDDA IS AL-QAEDDA<div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">From 1994 until 2001 the Taliban controlled Afghanistan with the support of Pakistan. Pakistan’s ISI guided the Taliban. They assisted the establishment in the lucrative poppy and opium trade, they protected and provided much of the Taliban’s arms, allowed the madrassas to form and flourish in Pakistan territory, and enabled the Taliban to grow into the brutal, dictatorial, supernumerary warlords of Afghanistan. The Taliban, in effect, became the dominant warlords of Afghanistan.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The mujahideen’s victory over the invading Soviets filled Muslims throughout the Arab world with pride over the ability of Muslim forces to destroy the invaders of Afghanistan, especially over a perceived world superpower. The Taliban picked up the splintered mantle of a resurgent Islamic alliance, unified it, and brought it to fruition in Afghanistan. During the 1994-2001 period Al-Qaedda and numerous mujahideen used the friendly Taliban regime as a place to train and plan for a global jihad. Pakistan turned a blind eye to the activities of Al-Qaedda in both Afghanistan and in Pakistan itself. There was no reason to alienate the Taliban, their creation. The U.S., aware of the potential of Al-Qaedda, but lulled into inaction by the notion that potential doesn’t mean reality, was, at best, slow to respond to the global threat that Al-Qaedda was becoming. The Taliban were willing enablers Al-Qaedda but had no global plans. They were happy running Afghanistan and the growing poppy trade.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then 9/11 happened and the Taliban were easy targets of a justifiably enraged America and western world. Most of the Arab dictatorships recognized the threat of Al-Qaedda, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia who saw in Al-Qaedda a mortal threat. The Taliban were threatened by the “Northern Alliance” led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the “Lion of Panjshir,” but he was killed on September 9, 2001 by either agents of the Taliban or Al-Qaedda. He and the Northern alliance represented the only real threat to the Taliban and Al-Qaedda. The die was cast.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Taliban of 1994-2001 are not the Taliban of today, anymore than the Republican party of 1865 is the Republican Party of today. They are the same in name only. Today the Taliban enjoy the support of the mujahideen who deconstructed the Soviet Army between 1979-89. We have become the Soviets to the Afghanistanis, or the French to the Viet Minh, or the Chinese to the finally unified Vietnamese. We are another in the long list of foreign invaders of a country that has withstood the most powerful of empires for a thousand years.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Al-Qaedda is a stateless, murderous organization whose stated aim is to destroy western influence in the Muslim world. They are more a state of mind than any physical location. Al-Qaedda operates in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries. They have metastasized into isolated cells throughout the world. “The Looming Tower,” by Lawrence Wright, provides one of the best historical analysis of the roots of Al-Qaedda from its beginnings in the 1920’s until today.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Taliban of today will not leave Afghanistan; Afghani history and culture prides itself on autonomy and independence. With the support of the ISI and a nuclear Pakistan we are cutting away at the branch we are on, hoping the tree will fall. There is no defined mission and no defined strategy for our troops in Afghanistan; if we have no strategy, we have no tactical plan of operations. What about the Taliban in Pakistan? The last time the Taliban hooked its wagon to Al-Qaedda they ended up living in caves. The new Taliban doesn’t need Al-Qaedda anymore than Al-Qaedda needs the Taliban. There is now a new Taliban, one cloaked in the mantle of the mujahideen.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The names we use to describe events and groups makes it easy to define the characteristics inherent in each thing. The use of nomenclature helps us understand complexity. Yet, simplifying complexity into one or two words also allows us to lose sight of reality. The reality of events on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan is extraordinarily complex and fluid. The Pakistanis are fractured: the ISI is in conflict with senior Pakistani army officers, the government is at odds with many of the Pakistani people, and its relationship with the U.S. is hardly perceptible. Pakistani control of the territory within its borders is tenuous, at best. The Taliban, and their secure madrassas in Pakistan still provide a steady stream of new recruits to wage war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is in to this morass that President Obama is now preparing to commit more American troops to Afghanistan. Make no mistake about it, this is a war of choice, not necessity.</span><br />
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</div><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;">“Tell me how this all ends?” General Petraeus to Rick Atkinson, March 2003</span><br />
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</div>Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-48059204164803728452009-10-14T22:50:00.000-04:002009-10-14T22:54:56.626-04:00WHO ARE THE TALIBAN, ANYWAY?<div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 25.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #660000;">The Soviet Union invaded</span><span style="color: #660000;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #660000;">Afghanistan in December 1979, and left in utter defeat in February 1989. It is believed that 1.5 million Afghanistanis were killed. Soviet losses were estimated to be 15,000 killed. It was an extremely brutal war, marked by the largest use of anti-personnel mines since World War Two, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians.</span></span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 25.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Soviets were defeated by a combination of mujahideen [a loose confederation of Afghanistani tribes], with massive covert support from the US, Pakistan, China and a number of Arab states. The mujahideen held to no particular ideology prevalent in the west, but rather were united by a desire to repel the invaders, and, generally, adhere to Islam.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 25.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Soviet defeat and withdrawal left a huge power vacuum in its wake. Afghanistan was ruined. Almost immediately the tribal warlords began to contend for power and domination, but nine years of war left the country exhausted. Anarchy prevailed. A small group of tribal leaders formed the Taliban, who were initially perceived by the weary Afghanistanis to be “Robin Hoods.” At first they brought a degree of relative stability, peace, and the rule of law to Afghanistan after they destroyed the last of the warring tribal leaders.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 25.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Between 1989 and 1994 they emerged as the new rulers of Afghanistan. Afghanistan fell off the radar of the US as we reveled in the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and the vaporous feeling of a new world of American hegemony. But, other countries and other people did not share our feelings of the end of almost forty years of Cold War.</span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 25.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Pakistan began to see the Soviet defeat and anarchy in Afghanistan as an opportunity to gain strategic dominance over Afghanistan and a shift in the geopolitical power equation in South Asia. Control over Afghanistan would give the Pakistanis and edge over its historic enemy, India. In the period before and after 1994, Pakistan supported the Taliban in very way possible: training, arms, schools, sanctuary, money, and cover. It fair to say that the Taliban that emerged after 1994 was a creation of Pakistan’s Interservice Intelligence Agency [ISI], known as Pakistan’s “CIA.” Except the ISI is deeply embedded within Pakistan’s army which runs the country. During this time the Prime Minister of Pakistan</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Grande';"><span style="font-size: medium;">, </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;">Benazir Bhutto, led the army and ISI in its support of the Taliban. </span><br />
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</div><div style="font: 12.0px Georgia; line-height: 25.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Cold War may have ended, but peace was as illusory as ever.</span><br />
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</div>Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-7216411199763256812009-10-13T09:38:00.001-04:002009-11-03T14:13:23.188-05:00YESTERDAY IS TODAY, TOMORROW IS TOMORROWI was watching a four minute video clip of a few American infantry men in the mountains of Afghanistan struggling as they carried about 120 pounds of equipment in on their backs, helmets, and arms. In 1969, as an infantryman, I carried about 60 pounds of equipment in the field.<br />
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The Afghanistan video clip was taken with a hand held cam. As I watched everything blurred, and the sudden sound of explosives, automatic weapons, and screams, punched my eyes, ears, and body. The screen went black, and dead quiet. The next brief images were of a dead Taliban fighter, and a dying American infantryman. The American soldier's 120 pound pack was awkwardly attached to his lifeless body, as if it has no reason to be there.<br />
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President Obama will soon make the most important decision of his presidency. Most important because it will effect the lives of untold American soldiers and their families; young men will die, be horribly maimed for the rest of their lives, and carry the psychological scars of war until the day they finally die many years from now as the twenty-first century nears its end. We will spend billions in a war effort that this country can ill afford. This excludes the future cost of veterans care, and the refitting of our armed forces, ground down by over seven years of war.<br />
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The over-arching questions regarding the continuation of the American war in Iraq, and a continuance and/or further escalation of our war in Afghanistan are several. What are we now attempting to accomplish in the two countries? What price do we have to pay in human lives? What has been the human toll in Iraq and Afghanistan to date? What are the probable outcomes of our misbegotten war in Iraq, and what does further combat portend for the US and the Afghani people?<br />
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According to the latest figures available from the Department of Defense [DoD], we have suffered 4349 dead and 31,527 wounded in Iraq. Iraqi civilian deaths as of 1 September 2009 were 102,371. That is a firm number and leaves out Iraqi military and police deaths. There are few reliable sources for estimates of total Iraqi dead and wounded since our invasion on 20 March 2003.<br />
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US and NATO military operations began in Afghanistan on 7 October 2001. The most recent figures released by the DoD list 872 American troops dead, and 3321 wounded.<br />
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</div>Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-87562056359790488772009-10-11T20:28:00.000-04:002009-10-13T10:14:56.495-04:00AFGHANISTAN ISN'T VIETNAM, VIETNAM IS AFGHANISTANBRIAN WILLIAMS: You're -- famously, you have a Master's and Ph.D. from the Wilson School at Princeton and, famously, for your Ph.D. you wrote about Vietnam. How often is that in your mind? How often is it referenced as you sit down now to talk about the fight in Afghanistan?<br />
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GENERAL PETRAEUS: Very little in our internal councils, frankly.<br />
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WILLIAMS: Should it be?<br />
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PETRAEUS: Well, I think, you know, again, this is one of those cases where Afghanistan is not Vietnam; it's Afghanistan, and that's hard enough. Iraq was not Vietnam. Iraq was Iraq. In some cases, you can say, well, the context is different because we went through Vietnam or we went through some other experience.<br />
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October 2nd 2009, "First Draft of History," Sponsored by Atlantic Magazine, The Newseum, Washington, DC.Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2427880225025058676.post-60106902134258816312009-10-11T20:19:00.000-04:002009-11-11T14:44:21.140-05:00Map of Afghani Tribal Areas Bordering Pakistan<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" quality="high" width="320" height="200" align="" src="http://www.zenfolio.com/zf/code/slideshow.swf" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="id=751351727&background=0xffffff&delay=5&transition=2&loop=1&allowfs=1&allowthumbs=1&showlink=1&allowtitles=0&showtitles=1&autostart=1&allowtopbar=1&allowcontrols=1&transparent=0"></embed><br />
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Slide show of Eastern Afghanistan discrete tribal areas. Each tribe, is divided into clans, then sub-clans, and finally, large extended families.Adinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11201217204530255752noreply@blogger.com2