BC: VIEW FROM THE FOXHOLE
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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 hand held, 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.
I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my
boot on his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel-plated Bowie
knife through his frontal lobe. 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 ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS so that people here will really
know what is going on over there.-
A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank
check made payable to 'The United States of America ' for an amount of 'up
to and including my life.' That is Honor, and there are way too many people
in this country who no longer understand it.' |
