Thank God for the Marines! This came from a friend who is the father of two Marines (one just returned from Helmand Province). The origin of this piece is not known to me so I asked a retired Marine (who has first hand knowledge of such things based on personal experience) to comment on the words of this Recon Marine in Afghanistan. His take on the assessment of the situation in the Hindu Kush is posted immediately below.
From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan
No one in America knew what they had gotten into in Vietnam except the guys who were there. No one in America knows what a hell hole Afghanistan is and what we are getting ourselves into....this Marine kind of gives you an idea.
++++++++++++++++++++++
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.
No take out or 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 them 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.
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, 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."
Here is the comment I requested on the above from a retired Marine Officer:
The young Marine has captured the essence of every past and probably future view of the world from the hardened view gained through real world experiences. Smelling, hearing, feeling the places only experienced by others through the miracle of internet and TV. My experience in Bosnia and Kosovo was exactly the same as the young Marine. The vision given to the American people by the media was not near being accurate in their transmission of the news.
These observations could well have been written by Hannibal or some young Russian in the 1980s. This part of the world has not changed in hundreds, thousands of years.
Some other young man in a future time will be writing about his insights and they will read similarly.
H/T: Dcarr and Rtaylor
