A Marine’s View Of What Is Really Going On
This
young man is articulate and has a flare for colorful language, and
descriptive prose....Scorpions, Chiggers & Sand Fleas/great letter,
must read!
From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan
From
the Sand Pit. It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard cold dirt between
rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains , along the
Dar'yoi Pomir River, watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads
to a cave. Stake out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of
miles.
I
also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to
avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the
chiggers and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle
prod. Hurts like a bastard. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid,
but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The
one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they
are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water.
That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me
comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and
storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the
coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where
to drop the hardware. We bash some heads for a while, then I track and
record the new movement.
It's
all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet.
These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days
away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to
begin. But you know me, I'm a romantic. I've said it before and I'll say
it again: This country blows, man. It's not even a country. There are
no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an
inhospitable, rock pit shit hole ruled by eleventh century warring
tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.
Afghanistan
offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade
or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you
can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle
paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu, if that's your idea
of a party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the walking
dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape
bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
I've
been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks, and Turkmen and even a couple
of Pushtuns, for over a month-and-a-half now, and this much I can say
for sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns...actual, living Huns.. They
LIVE to fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect
for anything, not for their families, nor for each other, nor for
themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo
with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human
cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage,
heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism. Cavemen with
AK-47's. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.
I'm
freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is
running out of juice, and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a
few hours. Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor,
Bizarre. Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that
awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban
'smart.' They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary
because the word they are looking for is 'cunning.' The Taliban are
cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and
ruthless, and when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent
parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft.
Yeah, they're real smart.
They've
spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good
one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be
products of the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic
lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of
life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he
just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it. OK, enough.
Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my
tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice, but I'm good at it.
Please,
I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on
with your lives. The story line you are getting from CNN and other news
agencies is utter bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather
to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials. We've got this
one under control The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit
around analyzing what we're doing over here, because you have no idea
what we're doing, and really, you don't want to know. We are your
military, and we are doing what you sent us here to do.
Saucy
Jack Recon Marine in Afghanistan Semper Fi "Freedom is not free...but
the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share". Send this to YOUR
FRIENDS so that people here will really know what is going on over there
