Date: 11/03/2013
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! Infantry, where the action is,
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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 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
"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
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