http://www.counterpunch.org/
Remember Kent State
May 4, 2006
Message from a Vet of My Lai Time
"Our Descent Into Hell Has Begun"
By TONY SWINDELL
A few weeks ago we got a friendly letter from Tony Swindell, a newspaper editor in Sherman, Texas. "Begin paying attention," Swindell urged, ''to stories from Iraq like the very recent one about U.S. Marines killing a group of civilians near Baghdad. This is the next step in the Iraq war as frustration among our soldiers grows -- especially with multiple tours.
''I served with the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, and My Lai was not an isolated incident. We came to be known as the Butcher's Brigade, and we also were the birthplace of the Phoenix Program. The brigade commander and a battalion commander were charged with murdering civilians (shooting them from helicopters, recorded in some of my photos), although both skated. If you recall from his autobiography, Colin Powell served briefly with the 11th in Duc Pho before going to division HQ in Chu Lai.
''The atrocities against Iraqi civilians are slipping under the media radar screen, but they're going to explode in America's face not too long from now and dwarf the Abu Ghraib (sic) incident. That was a fraternity beer bust by comparison. The Ft. Sill episode [described in JoAnn Wypijewski's piece in our last issue] is another one of the same storm clouds on the horizon. I sincerely fear for our country.''
We asked Swindell to expand these thoughts. Here's his powerful response. AC/JSC
In Iraq, our descent into hell, our "Apocalypse Now" moment, has begun. First there was Gitmo, then the global rendition program, then Abu Ghraib, then the pulverizing of Fallujah, and now trigger-happy raids that are filling multitudes of sandy graves with men, women and children. Has "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" become the mission in Babylon? Can't anyone remember Vietnam, where we left behind more than a million dead civilians? In Iraq, we've way past the half-million mark, probably the million mark, if you count the 1990s sanctions. Are the American people as blind and deaf as they seem? Don't we see ourselves walking through the gates of hell and can't we hear the doors clanging shut on our country?
Who am I to say all this, you might ask. Fair enough, I reply. So let me tell you a story about monstrous crimes and tragedies from my generation about to be repeated in Iraq in front of the whole world. First, understand that a single soldier can't be expected to grasp the total criminality of war because his whole universe is a tiny place right in front of his nose. So he can stay alive. If he knew everything that was going on, he would be heartbroken, and if he also knew why, he would go insane.
The narrowness of his vision is exactly how even the best and most humane soldier unwillingly becomes a monster, and the people who create war know this. Out of grief and rage, with the stench of his buddy's shredded flesh in his nostrils, the soldier stops asking questions and then begins making up his own rules with a rifle. He has touched the heart of darkness and there's no going back ever. Embracing the whore called war destroys morality, and doing all this in a dishonorable cause compounds the damage.
That's why we who have been there must speak out forcefully. If it requires a stiff punch in the mouth to jump-start some addled neocon brains, so be it. And for anyone who gets their political truth from self-inflating whoopee cushions like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, it will come none too soon. To remain silent this time risks the loss of everything that our country stands for.
The story I want to tell you begins on a miserably hot day in February, 1969, as I watched U.S. Army Col. John W. Donaldson put a cup of rice wine mixed with blood to his lips and drink deeply. No matter that the concoction was alive with heartworms, Donaldson never flinched. At the time, I was serving as an army combat correspondent attached to the 11th Light Infantry Brigade and my job that day was to follow Donaldson around, snapping picture after picture of the macabre festivities unfolding in front of my eyes. He was the brigade commander at a bloody punching bag called LZ Bronco next to the village of Duc Pho. The brigade base camp was part of the Americal Division, headquartered to the north in Chu Lai.
The colonel and a large contingent of other brigade and division officers were guests of honor at a Tet festival in the Montagnard village of Ba To in the central highlands southwest of Chu Lai. Nearby was a Special Forces A Team camp, an ominous triangular fortress bristling with 105 mm cannon at each corner firing flechette rounds. A snake couldn't have crawled through the maze of sharp barbed and razor tape wire surrounding the compound, and dozens of claymore mines were set in the walls. A claymore at close range will instantly render you into your constituent molecules.
The Montagnard village and A Team camp had been hit hard by concentrated North Vietnamese forces earlier in the week, and Donaldson's presence was in part a thumb in the eye to enemy commanders licking their wounds in nearby triple canopy jungle. The landscape gave me chills, because the beautiful, green-dappled hills all around the village were pockmarked with hundreds of fresh artillery and bomb craters exposing the bright red soil. I couldn't get the image of the Jolly Green Giant with a bad case of acne out of my mind. While topless Montagnard women spruced up the area with totems and bright banners to cover attack damage, a sacrificial water buffalo calf was slowly being prodded to death with a spear by the local village chief. It took about half an hour before the calf sagged to its knees in exhaustion, at that point too weak to even cry out. The chief then cut the calf's throat above a large earthen jug to catch the pulsing blood while another villager poured rice wine and stirred.
Unknown to the visitors, the Montagnards had earlier tortured to death three North Vietnamese captives and partook of their blood in the company of Special Forces A Team troopers. These unfortunate had been impaled through their anuses with bamboo poles and given the same spear prodding. Later, their bodies were staked out along enemy infiltration trails as a mortal warning to the enemy.
This day became my own personal "Apocalypse Now" moment, a full decade before the Francis Ford Coppola's movie was released. Not long before, we became personally aware that soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, had rampaged in My Lai when military police ransacked our hooch looking for evidence and then hauled Rusty Calley off in handcuffs. Meanwhile, Tiger Teams were creating ruthless, bloody havoc across the Batangan Peninsula against suspected enemy cadre. Brutality against civilians was standard operating procedure. Because of the Pacification Program mass relocations, entire swathes of the countryside began to resemble the Missouri Burnt District during the Civil War.
The Phoenix Program was in full swing, and it was the horror to end all horrors. I had earlier tagged along on a Phoenix mission directed by the ARVN National Police, and will spare you the details. Trust me, you do not want to know what was being done. Standing there and watching Donaldson drink from the cup, the profound symbolism of all that was wrong in this place hit me like a blow in the face. Ironically, an anti-war rag called the Overseas Weekly or Overseas latched onto one of my pictures and captioned it, "Army Brass Drinks Blood In Pagan Ceremonies".
By February 1969, morale in the brigade had hit rock bottom because of horrific casualties caused primarily from booby traps, and an entire battalion had been stood down as non-functional. The North Vietnamese were endlessly blasting our firebases with 122 mm rocket artillery, and LZ Bronco was soon to be hit more than 200 times during a famous assault that came to be called "Duc Pho Burning". Mutinies, insubordination and fragging of officers became commonplace. Soldiers cracked and a few committed suicide. One grunt over the edge opened fire into the POW compound, killing a number of captured enemy. Col. Donaldson and a battalion commander, two of the highest-ranking officers in the brigade, were charged with murdering civilians from helicopters while the My Lai investigation was still underway. A young Major Colin Powell assigned to the 11th Brigade who was well acquainted with Donaldson wrote in his autobiography about being stunned by what he saw going on in the 11th. Perhaps, he had experienced his own "Apocalypse Now" moment.
There's a numbness in my guts as I see the same nightmares becoming reality again in Iraq, and I wonder what's happened to America's soul. Is this what we want, another generation suckled on the poison of another renegade leadership? Gooks have become ragheads, every adult male is an insurgent eligible for torture, and every Iraqi home filled with men, women and children is a free-fire zone. Even places of worship get flattened. Once again, we've been marched into another lunatic asylum in the Twilight Zone.
How did it happen? Why did we sit on our hands and let our leaders initiate an unprovoked proxy war? A mushroom cloud over Cleveland delivered by a pipsqueak Iraq that couldn't even get an airplane in the air or a dilapidated tank outside its own borders without throwing a track? Gimme a break. How could the average John Doe let himself be deceived into believing that Saddam Hussein was really a threat?
With Iran now in the crosshairs, I pray that our national amnesia is wearing off. I know that from coast to coast a growing number of people especially many combat veterans like myself feel helpless, confused, frightened, and completely out of the loop. Three years into Iraq, why do we still keep hearing the same refrain, pre-emptive war into the next generation? On and on and on it goes, but unfortunately our emperors in Washington treat middle Americans asking hard questions like bill collectors at a funeral or, publicly skewer them as extremists and traitors. And don't even think about asking about Israeli involvement in the disaster that Dubya calls a Middle Eastern policy.
I listen in vain to hear the voices of young Americans who will be directly and immediately affected. Current events in the Middle East should be a paramount issue, but, inexplicably, the kids are completely nonchalant. Raised on the Internet and X-Boxes, maybe Iraq is just another Hollywood-style media production to them. But, I'm going to make a prediction. Our salvation will come when Selective Service notices begin arriving in mailboxes, and make no mistake, they are coming. I predict that young voices will soon become the loudest against empire as the hip-hoppers, the teeny boppers and the slackers rudely discover that involuntary combat means no video games or boom boxes, no marathon beer busts, and certainly no teenaged girls in thong bikinis.
We in the older generation can help things along. First, turn off the televisions and study a little American history, like the parts repeatedly warning us about foreign entanglements and passionate attachments. Really think about what kind of America we're handing to our children. Organize geezer squads to buttonhole politicians, and enlist a slacker cavalry to rain e-mail on every bureaucrat in sight. Let them all know we don't care about the new world order and its Manifest Corporate Destiny. Tell Washington that unprovoked, pre-emptive wars go against the grain of everything that's American, and we're no longer going to give it the Good Homicidal Seal of Approval.
While we're at it, let's make a sincere effort to tell elected representatives, loud and clear at every opportunity, that we want our government back from the political and corporate lobbies. Give the entire bureaucratic structure the message that we want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on anything that affects our lives fast, before another bullet is fired or bomb dropped in anger. The U.S. State Department especially needs this message drummed into their heads until they all have tinnitus.
Don't leave out the Billy Grahams, Jerry Falwells, and Pat Robertsons, (comma) and their legions of religious robots. Ask these Bible thumpers a simple question: brother, who would GEE-zus bomb, torture, rape and murder? While they choke on their own hypocrisy, direct them to the Book of John in the New Testament for a theology refresher. Christ wasn't called the Prince of Peace for nothing.
Constantly remind anyone who'll listen to you that the American Revolution blossomed with a ferocious commitment to keep a new continent free from two thousand years of empires, monarchies, feudal dictatorships, and armed religious institutions held in power by brute force and the doctrine of might makes right. People like Washington, Jefferson and Franklin instead shouted no, RIGHT makes might. That timeless concept was an invincible weapon against King George's Redcoats and it is just as powerful against nuclear weapons and carrier battle groups.
Yes, it will take guts, but what's our alternative? Either we start living up to our own ideals or the world will very soon compel us to do it. If, that is, they even think we're worth saving.
FYI, my unit was given an entire chapter in the Time Life Vietnam War collection about combat photos and correspondents. In a nutshell, we went everywhere with grunts, recon, Special Forces, combat engineers, artillery, wherever combat was anticipated. We pretty much served as the army's eyes, kept track of action and casualty info and passed it along, etc. As a result, we had a good handle on things. Our unit was almost totally made up of experienced combat soldiers who joined the unit after service in the bush. It takes a little sand to be able to concentrate on your camera while people are shooting at you with automatic weapons or high explosive rounds. I got shot down once on a combat assault against the North Vietnamese in the 1st Huey into a landing zone so I could take pictures of the grunts coming in. In all, I participated in more than 30 full-scale combat missions, and several more aboard Medevac flights. My buddies in the unit had equally harrowing experiences, with one taking an AK round through the lens of his camera. I think all of us each earned four battle stars in 11 months, which gave a 4-week early release from Vietnam. We all had nicknames, and mine was Torch.
Tony Swindell can be reached at: phoenixtexoma@550access.com
Full Version: Message from a Vet of My Lai Time
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > U.S. Military Issues > U.S. Military Issues Archive
I'd suggest he report immediately to the Haige and spill his guts before the war crimes court. I'm sure they will help him rid himself of this guilt.
QUOTE(Snuffysmith @ May 4 2006, 10:27 AM)
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Remember Kent State
May 4, 2006
Message from a Vet of My Lai Time
"Our Descent Into Hell Has Begun"
By TONY SWINDELL
A few weeks ago we got a friendly letter from Tony Swindell, a newspaper editor in Sherman, Texas. "Begin paying attention," Swindell urged, ''to stories from Iraq like the very recent one about U.S. Marines killing a group of civilians near Baghdad. This is the next step in the Iraq war as frustration among our soldiers grows -- especially with multiple tours.
''I served with the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, and My Lai was not an isolated incident. We came to be known as the Butcher's Brigade, and we also were the birthplace of the Phoenix Program. The brigade commander and a battalion commander were charged with murdering civilians (shooting them from helicopters, recorded in some of my photos), although both skated. If you recall from his autobiography, Colin Powell served briefly with the 11th in Duc Pho before going to division HQ in Chu Lai.
''The atrocities against Iraqi civilians are slipping under the media radar screen, but they're going to explode in America's face not too long from now and dwarf the Abu Ghraib (sic) incident. That was a fraternity beer bust by comparison. The Ft. Sill episode [described in JoAnn Wypijewski's piece in our last issue] is another one of the same storm clouds on the horizon. I sincerely fear for our country.''
We asked Swindell to expand these thoughts. Here's his powerful response. AC/JSC
In Iraq, our descent into hell, our "Apocalypse Now" moment, has begun. First there was Gitmo, then the global rendition program, then Abu Ghraib, then the pulverizing of Fallujah, and now trigger-happy raids that are filling multitudes of sandy graves with men, women and children. Has "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" become the mission in Babylon? Can't anyone remember Vietnam, where we left behind more than a million dead civilians? In Iraq, we've way past the half-million mark, probably the million mark, if you count the 1990s sanctions. Are the American people as blind and deaf as they seem? Don't we see ourselves walking through the gates of hell and can't we hear the doors clanging shut on our country?
Who am I to say all this, you might ask. Fair enough, I reply. So let me tell you a story about monstrous crimes and tragedies from my generation about to be repeated in Iraq in front of the whole world. First, understand that a single soldier can't be expected to grasp the total criminality of war because his whole universe is a tiny place right in front of his nose. So he can stay alive. If he knew everything that was going on, he would be heartbroken, and if he also knew why, he would go insane.
Well stated. As I hear the drumbeat of how we don't know how great things are going in Iraq because the media doesn't report it, in the back of my mind I see this soldier with the tunnel vision that is part of his place on the "team". From his small perspective maybe things are fine where he is, but he can't see the big picture.
The narrowness of his vision is exactly how even the best and most humane soldier unwillingly becomes a monster, and the people who create war know this. Out of grief and rage, with the stench of his buddy's shredded flesh in his nostrils, the soldier stops asking questions and then begins making up his own rules with a rifle. He has touched the heart of darkness and there's no going back ever. Embracing the whore called war destroys morality, and doing all this in a dishonorable cause compounds the damage.
That's why we who have been there must speak out forcefully. If it requires a stiff punch in the mouth to jump-start some addled neocon brains, so be it. And for anyone who gets their political truth from self-inflating whoopee cushions like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, it will come none too soon. To remain silent this time risks the loss of everything that our country stands for.
My concern is that we already have. Many of us are speaking out, but our words are falling on deaf ears and a whole new brainwashed generation of what is now called soccer moms (was housewives), NASCAR dads, and old men who will keep doing exactly what they have done before. I truly believed that after Vietnam was revealed in the many books and documentaries that brought out the truth that this country would steer very carefully this ship of state.
I was so wrong. I am watching as the Limbaugh mothers send their sons off to Iraq with some trepidation, but proudly the first time, suddenly begin to see a glimmer of light the second time the son goes. No gathering of boxes of goodies this time, a descent into potential madness if he doesn't return. I haven't met the ones whose sons have gone 3 times. What is particularly sad to me is that they send them off without even realizing that there is another side to this story. It's the old "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."
There's a numbness in my guts as I see the same nightmares becoming reality again in Iraq, and I wonder what's happened to America's soul. Is this what we want, another generation suckled on the poison of another renegade leadership? Gooks have become ragheads, every adult male is an insurgent eligible for torture, and every Iraqi home filled with men, women and children is a free-fire zone. Even places of worship get flattened. Once again, we've been marched into another lunatic asylum in the Twilight Zone.
I can't help but insert here the poem from David Maraniss's They Marched Into Sunlight.
Into sunlight they marched,
into dog day, into no saints day,
and were cut down.
They marched without knowing
how the air would be sucked from their lungs,
how their lungs would collapse,
how the world would twist itself, would
bend into the cruel angles.
Into the black understanding they marched
until the angels came
calling their names,
until they rose, one by one from the blood.
The light blasted down on them.
The bullets sliced through the razor grass
so there was not even time to speak.
The words would not let themselves be spoken.
Some of them died.
Some of them were not allowed to.
--Bruce Weigl, 'Elegy'
How did it happen? Why did we sit on our hands and let our leaders initiate an unprovoked proxy war? A mushroom cloud over Cleveland delivered by a pipsqueak Iraq that couldn't even get an airplane in the air or a dilapidated tank outside its own borders without throwing a track? Gimme a break. How could the average John Doe let himself be deceived into believing that Saddam Hussein was really a threat?
Here I have to admit to my own guilt. In the weeks leading up to this war there were 3 very long specials on PBS dealing with Saddam and Iraq. There was no indication that there was another side to this, and it was PBS! It was very frightening to say the least. Add to this the release about that time of the movie The Sum of All Fears and you have a captive American audience. It wasn't until I read Suskind's book on Paul O'Neill that I realized what was going on. Had I not seen his BookTalk on CSPAN I'd never have even had that opening to "the rest of the story." We had all been in a state of shock after 9/11 and went willingly into Afghanistan because it made sense, but we had to be propagandized into Iraq. It worked.
With Iran now in the crosshairs, I pray that our national amnesia is wearing off. I know that from coast to coast a growing number of people especially many combat veterans like myself feel helpless, confused, frightened, and completely out of the loop. Three years into Iraq, why do we still keep hearing the same refrain, pre-emptive war into the next generation?
I know there are those who see conspiracies at the top, but I have the empty feeling you get when you hear Bush speak, that "...innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm." (Graham Greene, The Quiet American.) I do believe he is that stupid and that misguided and there are legions like him that follow him.
I listen in vain to hear the voices of young Americans who will be directly and immediately affected. Current events in the Middle East should be a paramount issue, but, inexplicably, the kids are completely nonchalant. Raised on the Internet and X-Boxes, maybe Iraq is just another Hollywood-style media production to them. But, I'm going to make a prediction. Our salvation will come when Selective Service notices begin arriving in mailboxes, and make no mistake, they are coming. I predict that young voices will soon become the loudest against empire as the hip-hoppers, the teeny boppers and the slackers rudely discover that involuntary combat means no video games or boom boxes, no marathon beer busts, and certainly no teenaged girls in thong bikinis.
I have wondered often about this myself. I have come to the conclusion that as a group they don't feel they can do a damn thing about it under the circumstances and are just living for the moment. Besides, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam are just words on a page in a history book they are forced to read. It has no personal meaning. Every generation deals with that issue of not learning from history. Just as South Korean young people want to see a unified Korea, it is because they have no idea what they are asking for. That lack of being in touch with reality was mentioned in Kerry's speech April 22 aimed specifically at the leadership but fits the young people as well who have no idea what awaits:
"The former top operating officer at the Pentagon, a Marine Lieutenant General, said 'the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results.'"
While we're at it, let's make a sincere effort to tell elected representatives, loud and clear at every opportunity, that we want our government back from the political and corporate lobbies. Give the entire bureaucratic structure the message that we want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on anything that affects our lives fast, before another bullet is fired or bomb dropped in anger. The U.S. State Department especially needs this message drummed into their heads until they all have tinnitus.
Yes, it will take guts, but what's our alternative? Either we start living up to our own ideals or the world will very soon compel us to do it. If, that is, they even think we're worth saving.
FYI, my unit was given an entire chapter in the Time Life Vietnam War collection about combat photos and correspondents. In a nutshell, we went everywhere with grunts, recon, Special Forces, combat engineers, artillery, wherever combat was anticipated. We pretty much served as the army's eyes, kept track of action and casualty info and passed it along, etc.
Tony Swindell can be reached at: phoenixtexoma@550access.com
Remember Kent State
May 4, 2006
Message from a Vet of My Lai Time
"Our Descent Into Hell Has Begun"
By TONY SWINDELL
A few weeks ago we got a friendly letter from Tony Swindell, a newspaper editor in Sherman, Texas. "Begin paying attention," Swindell urged, ''to stories from Iraq like the very recent one about U.S. Marines killing a group of civilians near Baghdad. This is the next step in the Iraq war as frustration among our soldiers grows -- especially with multiple tours.
''I served with the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, and My Lai was not an isolated incident. We came to be known as the Butcher's Brigade, and we also were the birthplace of the Phoenix Program. The brigade commander and a battalion commander were charged with murdering civilians (shooting them from helicopters, recorded in some of my photos), although both skated. If you recall from his autobiography, Colin Powell served briefly with the 11th in Duc Pho before going to division HQ in Chu Lai.
''The atrocities against Iraqi civilians are slipping under the media radar screen, but they're going to explode in America's face not too long from now and dwarf the Abu Ghraib (sic) incident. That was a fraternity beer bust by comparison. The Ft. Sill episode [described in JoAnn Wypijewski's piece in our last issue] is another one of the same storm clouds on the horizon. I sincerely fear for our country.''
We asked Swindell to expand these thoughts. Here's his powerful response. AC/JSC
In Iraq, our descent into hell, our "Apocalypse Now" moment, has begun. First there was Gitmo, then the global rendition program, then Abu Ghraib, then the pulverizing of Fallujah, and now trigger-happy raids that are filling multitudes of sandy graves with men, women and children. Has "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" become the mission in Babylon? Can't anyone remember Vietnam, where we left behind more than a million dead civilians? In Iraq, we've way past the half-million mark, probably the million mark, if you count the 1990s sanctions. Are the American people as blind and deaf as they seem? Don't we see ourselves walking through the gates of hell and can't we hear the doors clanging shut on our country?
Who am I to say all this, you might ask. Fair enough, I reply. So let me tell you a story about monstrous crimes and tragedies from my generation about to be repeated in Iraq in front of the whole world. First, understand that a single soldier can't be expected to grasp the total criminality of war because his whole universe is a tiny place right in front of his nose. So he can stay alive. If he knew everything that was going on, he would be heartbroken, and if he also knew why, he would go insane.
Well stated. As I hear the drumbeat of how we don't know how great things are going in Iraq because the media doesn't report it, in the back of my mind I see this soldier with the tunnel vision that is part of his place on the "team". From his small perspective maybe things are fine where he is, but he can't see the big picture.
The narrowness of his vision is exactly how even the best and most humane soldier unwillingly becomes a monster, and the people who create war know this. Out of grief and rage, with the stench of his buddy's shredded flesh in his nostrils, the soldier stops asking questions and then begins making up his own rules with a rifle. He has touched the heart of darkness and there's no going back ever. Embracing the whore called war destroys morality, and doing all this in a dishonorable cause compounds the damage.
That's why we who have been there must speak out forcefully. If it requires a stiff punch in the mouth to jump-start some addled neocon brains, so be it. And for anyone who gets their political truth from self-inflating whoopee cushions like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, it will come none too soon. To remain silent this time risks the loss of everything that our country stands for.
My concern is that we already have. Many of us are speaking out, but our words are falling on deaf ears and a whole new brainwashed generation of what is now called soccer moms (was housewives), NASCAR dads, and old men who will keep doing exactly what they have done before. I truly believed that after Vietnam was revealed in the many books and documentaries that brought out the truth that this country would steer very carefully this ship of state.
I was so wrong. I am watching as the Limbaugh mothers send their sons off to Iraq with some trepidation, but proudly the first time, suddenly begin to see a glimmer of light the second time the son goes. No gathering of boxes of goodies this time, a descent into potential madness if he doesn't return. I haven't met the ones whose sons have gone 3 times. What is particularly sad to me is that they send them off without even realizing that there is another side to this story. It's the old "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."
There's a numbness in my guts as I see the same nightmares becoming reality again in Iraq, and I wonder what's happened to America's soul. Is this what we want, another generation suckled on the poison of another renegade leadership? Gooks have become ragheads, every adult male is an insurgent eligible for torture, and every Iraqi home filled with men, women and children is a free-fire zone. Even places of worship get flattened. Once again, we've been marched into another lunatic asylum in the Twilight Zone.
I can't help but insert here the poem from David Maraniss's They Marched Into Sunlight.
Into sunlight they marched,
into dog day, into no saints day,
and were cut down.
They marched without knowing
how the air would be sucked from their lungs,
how their lungs would collapse,
how the world would twist itself, would
bend into the cruel angles.
Into the black understanding they marched
until the angels came
calling their names,
until they rose, one by one from the blood.
The light blasted down on them.
The bullets sliced through the razor grass
so there was not even time to speak.
The words would not let themselves be spoken.
Some of them died.
Some of them were not allowed to.
--Bruce Weigl, 'Elegy'
How did it happen? Why did we sit on our hands and let our leaders initiate an unprovoked proxy war? A mushroom cloud over Cleveland delivered by a pipsqueak Iraq that couldn't even get an airplane in the air or a dilapidated tank outside its own borders without throwing a track? Gimme a break. How could the average John Doe let himself be deceived into believing that Saddam Hussein was really a threat?
Here I have to admit to my own guilt. In the weeks leading up to this war there were 3 very long specials on PBS dealing with Saddam and Iraq. There was no indication that there was another side to this, and it was PBS! It was very frightening to say the least. Add to this the release about that time of the movie The Sum of All Fears and you have a captive American audience. It wasn't until I read Suskind's book on Paul O'Neill that I realized what was going on. Had I not seen his BookTalk on CSPAN I'd never have even had that opening to "the rest of the story." We had all been in a state of shock after 9/11 and went willingly into Afghanistan because it made sense, but we had to be propagandized into Iraq. It worked.
With Iran now in the crosshairs, I pray that our national amnesia is wearing off. I know that from coast to coast a growing number of people especially many combat veterans like myself feel helpless, confused, frightened, and completely out of the loop. Three years into Iraq, why do we still keep hearing the same refrain, pre-emptive war into the next generation?
I know there are those who see conspiracies at the top, but I have the empty feeling you get when you hear Bush speak, that "...innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm." (Graham Greene, The Quiet American.) I do believe he is that stupid and that misguided and there are legions like him that follow him.
I listen in vain to hear the voices of young Americans who will be directly and immediately affected. Current events in the Middle East should be a paramount issue, but, inexplicably, the kids are completely nonchalant. Raised on the Internet and X-Boxes, maybe Iraq is just another Hollywood-style media production to them. But, I'm going to make a prediction. Our salvation will come when Selective Service notices begin arriving in mailboxes, and make no mistake, they are coming. I predict that young voices will soon become the loudest against empire as the hip-hoppers, the teeny boppers and the slackers rudely discover that involuntary combat means no video games or boom boxes, no marathon beer busts, and certainly no teenaged girls in thong bikinis.
I have wondered often about this myself. I have come to the conclusion that as a group they don't feel they can do a damn thing about it under the circumstances and are just living for the moment. Besides, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam are just words on a page in a history book they are forced to read. It has no personal meaning. Every generation deals with that issue of not learning from history. Just as South Korean young people want to see a unified Korea, it is because they have no idea what they are asking for. That lack of being in touch with reality was mentioned in Kerry's speech April 22 aimed specifically at the leadership but fits the young people as well who have no idea what awaits:
"The former top operating officer at the Pentagon, a Marine Lieutenant General, said 'the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results.'"
While we're at it, let's make a sincere effort to tell elected representatives, loud and clear at every opportunity, that we want our government back from the political and corporate lobbies. Give the entire bureaucratic structure the message that we want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on anything that affects our lives fast, before another bullet is fired or bomb dropped in anger. The U.S. State Department especially needs this message drummed into their heads until they all have tinnitus.
Yes, it will take guts, but what's our alternative? Either we start living up to our own ideals or the world will very soon compel us to do it. If, that is, they even think we're worth saving.
FYI, my unit was given an entire chapter in the Time Life Vietnam War collection about combat photos and correspondents. In a nutshell, we went everywhere with grunts, recon, Special Forces, combat engineers, artillery, wherever combat was anticipated. We pretty much served as the army's eyes, kept track of action and casualty info and passed it along, etc.
Tony Swindell can be reached at: phoenixtexoma@550access.com
*********************************
As for Marine's snide remark, it's clear this person is not in need of your seal of approval nor expiation for guilt. What happened, happened. He is just trying to see that it doesn't happen again.
QUOTE(Teacher in SC @ May 6 2006, 07:39 PM)
*********************************
As for Marine's snide remark, it's clear this person is not in need of your seal of approval nor expiation for guilt. What happened, happened. He is just trying to see that it doesn't happen again.
As for Marine's snide remark, it's clear this person is not in need of your seal of approval nor expiation for guilt. What happened, happened. He is just trying to see that it doesn't happen again.
Wait a second sister. I thought you folks were all gung ho about war crimes being punished, or is it you only want them punished when it gives you a political zinger? I don't guess you need to bother answering that since you think saying he ought to be punished for murdering civilians is snide, eh?
That was a different Army and a different war. Just because some fellow from a different war want's to draw conclusions based on facts from a different Army which no longer apply it won't make them apply here.
Since the article appears in counterpunch I seriously doubt if it's even true. Most likely just a left wing nut fable.
QUOTE
I was serving as an army combat correspondent attached to the 11th Light Infantry Brigade
Marine, I got the impression he was a photographer and reporter in Vietnam. How did you come up with charging him with war crimes? Does this come under the banner of "shoot the messenger?"
Did you read his message at all? Were you in Vietnam?
As to the truth of the article, I have no idea. I like to read whatever Snuffy posts, because I can be certain it will be very informative.
QUOTE(Teacher in SC @ May 6 2006, 08:55 PM)
Marine, I got the impression he was a photographer and reporter in Vietnam. How did you come up with charging him with war crimes? Does this come under the banner of "shoot the messenger?"
Did you read his message at all? Were you in Vietnam?
As to the truth of the article, I have no idea. I like to read whatever Snuffy posts, because I can be certain it will be very informative.
Did you read his message at all? Were you in Vietnam?
As to the truth of the article, I have no idea. I like to read whatever Snuffy posts, because I can be certain it will be very informative.
Well, with counterpunch involved it's a safe bet to be skeptical. And this time was no exception.
Tony Swindel is not the editor of the Sherman Herald Democrat, he's the Texoma reporter, as in Lake Texoma.
You want to read some dandy fishing reports? http://www.heralddemocrat.com/
I read his report and some of it is true and some of it sounds untrue. You know I did not go to Vietnam but virtually every superior and peer I had did. I know a lot of what happened in Vietnam was because we used a draftee Army, the Marines never used draftees so nothing happened like he describes in Marine units.
Since they embellish his credentials why not embellish a bit more, eh?
Marine, I honestly did not know you hadn't served in Vietnam. I asked because I wondered at your immediate dismissal of something lengthy that a veteran had reported. That he isn't the editor of the local paper does not change anything he wrote. Perhaps Counterpunch misunderstood his letter to them and the way he listed himself. I have no idea. What is important to me is WHAT HE SAID. I would guess that the age he'd have to be now he'd be retired and maybe writing for that paper for the heck of it. Remember he was a correspondent, according to his letter. Maybe he likes to continue writing in his local community.
As for the site, I still don't know if they are legit, but I found their article on the Phoenix Program to be interesting.
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine.html
It mentions that among those participating was ForceRecon. Are there ForceRecon units in other branches of the service besides the Marines?
As for the site, I still don't know if they are legit, but I found their article on the Phoenix Program to be interesting.
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine.html
It mentions that among those participating was ForceRecon. Are there ForceRecon units in other branches of the service besides the Marines?
Another piece from a former Marine who served in Nam:
By Henry Allen
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — “In war, we have to win,” said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.
This was on television about 20 years ago, a PBS series about the war in Vietnam. Giap was sitting behind a desk, as I recall, a picture of lethal ease. He seemed amused to think he knew something that the Americans still hadn’t figured out. He added: “Absolutely have to win.”
For me, a former Marine corporal who’d heard some Viet Cong rounds go past at Chu Lai, Giap spoke and the heavens opened — a truth seizure, eureka. I finally had a useful, practical explanation for why we had lost after the best and brightest promised we were going to win. And nowadays, thanks to Giap, I have a theory, no more than that, about why winning is so elusive in Iraq.
I suspect that the people who run our wars, particularly the best and brightest, know when we fight a war that:
We have to be fighting for freedom and national security.
We have to get the will of the country behind the war.
We have to maintain a strong economy to pay for the war.
We have to have allies.
We have to have God, freedom, the inevitability of history or some other philosophic entity on our side.
We have to have well-trained and motivated troops armed with the latest weapons.
Sure enough, we started out with all of that in Iraq, as we did in Vietnam.
But do our high-ranking leaders believe, like Giap, that we have to win?
America is getting used to loss, futility and fiasco — amid some small successes, we had stalemate in Korea, the loss in Vietnam, the botched Iran hostage rescue mission and the embarrassments in Lebanon, Haiti and Somalia. One wonders if we even expect our leaders to win the fights they start. Certainly we don’t punish them when they lose. Years later, former secretary of defense Robert McNamara announced that he’d known in 1966 that we couldn’t win in Vietnam, but he kept on sending Americans to their deaths in a doomed cause. For this he was rewarded with the top job at the World Bank, a job held now by Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the war in Iraq.
Why fault them? As all of our war planners are quick to point out, they had the best of intentions, although they forget to mention that good intentions don’t win wars. Certainly intellectual acuity has abounded, too. Who is smarter than Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice or Dick Cheney, all of them with graduate degrees and the sort of quick thinking we began to admire during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who said, “There’s nothing like brains. You can’t beat brains.” As it happens, you can, or we would have won in Vietnam. Strange: This has become an age in which intelligence is seen as a moral virtue, like courage or perseverance — two elements of winning. Of course, intelligence is just a tool, it has no more moral virtue than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bicep or the ability to ace the SAT, but we honor those who possess it. Could we be confusing intelligence with the skill of winning?
Some possibilities about the people running our wars:
One: Winning isn’t the point to them — they use the military as an instrument of policy, and winning or losing anytime soon is irrelevant. Their consequent fine-tuning of political and diplomatic niceties leads to complaints of micromanagement.
Two: They don’t worry about losing because winning to them is a foregone conclusion, as it has been to a lot of Americans since World War II, despite our history during the past half-century. Besides, all the way through school, graduate programs, internships, and corporate and political bureaucracies, they’ve always been winners. How could they lose?
Three: They know we have to win, but they don’t know how to win. Do they know that winning is a skill in itself, a skill that stands apart from tactics, equipment and righteousness?
It gets a little mystical, this talent that foundation analysts can’t quantify for a PowerPoint display, but it’s real.
Great competitors of all kinds have this skill, the ability to “finish” as they say in boxing. If you recall the first fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns, you know that Hearns knew how to hit, but Sugar Ray knew how to win. In 1864 Ulysses S. Grant took on Robert E. Lee with the same army that had been losing to Lee for years, and he finished him — he was a winner who’d won for years throughout the western theater, too. In World War II, America produced a stable of winners who won the war for us.
Nowadays is it possible that our leaders don’t have that skill? Worse, is it possible that they may not know that they don’t have it? I wonder what they’ve gotten into in the way of passionate sports or fistfights. (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a star wrestler at Princeton, but just about none of them have been in combat.) I would be reassured if I knew they understood what athletes mean when they say, “We couldn’t win for losing.” And the old expression: “You make your luck.” We are not making much luck in Iraq.
This war is not working out the way our leaders thought it would. We could lose. If we lose, we’ll be humiliated, we’ll be the schoolyard hotshot who picked a fight and then got whipped. I’m tired of our leaders putting me and my country in this position.
I’m not saying I want to fight no wars, or even saying I want to win more wars — I’m just saying that I want us to win the wars that we fight. And I’m worried that Iraq was never one of them because it was started by people who knew everything except how to win — who have yet to learn that in war we absolutely have to win.
By Henry Allen
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — “In war, we have to win,” said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.
This was on television about 20 years ago, a PBS series about the war in Vietnam. Giap was sitting behind a desk, as I recall, a picture of lethal ease. He seemed amused to think he knew something that the Americans still hadn’t figured out. He added: “Absolutely have to win.”
For me, a former Marine corporal who’d heard some Viet Cong rounds go past at Chu Lai, Giap spoke and the heavens opened — a truth seizure, eureka. I finally had a useful, practical explanation for why we had lost after the best and brightest promised we were going to win. And nowadays, thanks to Giap, I have a theory, no more than that, about why winning is so elusive in Iraq.
I suspect that the people who run our wars, particularly the best and brightest, know when we fight a war that:
We have to be fighting for freedom and national security.
We have to get the will of the country behind the war.
We have to maintain a strong economy to pay for the war.
We have to have allies.
We have to have God, freedom, the inevitability of history or some other philosophic entity on our side.
We have to have well-trained and motivated troops armed with the latest weapons.
Sure enough, we started out with all of that in Iraq, as we did in Vietnam.
But do our high-ranking leaders believe, like Giap, that we have to win?
America is getting used to loss, futility and fiasco — amid some small successes, we had stalemate in Korea, the loss in Vietnam, the botched Iran hostage rescue mission and the embarrassments in Lebanon, Haiti and Somalia. One wonders if we even expect our leaders to win the fights they start. Certainly we don’t punish them when they lose. Years later, former secretary of defense Robert McNamara announced that he’d known in 1966 that we couldn’t win in Vietnam, but he kept on sending Americans to their deaths in a doomed cause. For this he was rewarded with the top job at the World Bank, a job held now by Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the war in Iraq.
Why fault them? As all of our war planners are quick to point out, they had the best of intentions, although they forget to mention that good intentions don’t win wars. Certainly intellectual acuity has abounded, too. Who is smarter than Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice or Dick Cheney, all of them with graduate degrees and the sort of quick thinking we began to admire during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who said, “There’s nothing like brains. You can’t beat brains.” As it happens, you can, or we would have won in Vietnam. Strange: This has become an age in which intelligence is seen as a moral virtue, like courage or perseverance — two elements of winning. Of course, intelligence is just a tool, it has no more moral virtue than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bicep or the ability to ace the SAT, but we honor those who possess it. Could we be confusing intelligence with the skill of winning?
Some possibilities about the people running our wars:
One: Winning isn’t the point to them — they use the military as an instrument of policy, and winning or losing anytime soon is irrelevant. Their consequent fine-tuning of political and diplomatic niceties leads to complaints of micromanagement.
Two: They don’t worry about losing because winning to them is a foregone conclusion, as it has been to a lot of Americans since World War II, despite our history during the past half-century. Besides, all the way through school, graduate programs, internships, and corporate and political bureaucracies, they’ve always been winners. How could they lose?
Three: They know we have to win, but they don’t know how to win. Do they know that winning is a skill in itself, a skill that stands apart from tactics, equipment and righteousness?
It gets a little mystical, this talent that foundation analysts can’t quantify for a PowerPoint display, but it’s real.
Great competitors of all kinds have this skill, the ability to “finish” as they say in boxing. If you recall the first fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns, you know that Hearns knew how to hit, but Sugar Ray knew how to win. In 1864 Ulysses S. Grant took on Robert E. Lee with the same army that had been losing to Lee for years, and he finished him — he was a winner who’d won for years throughout the western theater, too. In World War II, America produced a stable of winners who won the war for us.
Nowadays is it possible that our leaders don’t have that skill? Worse, is it possible that they may not know that they don’t have it? I wonder what they’ve gotten into in the way of passionate sports or fistfights. (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a star wrestler at Princeton, but just about none of them have been in combat.) I would be reassured if I knew they understood what athletes mean when they say, “We couldn’t win for losing.” And the old expression: “You make your luck.” We are not making much luck in Iraq.
This war is not working out the way our leaders thought it would. We could lose. If we lose, we’ll be humiliated, we’ll be the schoolyard hotshot who picked a fight and then got whipped. I’m tired of our leaders putting me and my country in this position.
I’m not saying I want to fight no wars, or even saying I want to win more wars — I’m just saying that I want us to win the wars that we fight. And I’m worried that Iraq was never one of them because it was started by people who knew everything except how to win — who have yet to learn that in war we absolutely have to win.
Both Gen. Giap and Mr. Allen sound too much like Hitler for me. I don't think Americans really function that way. That's why they go nuts when fighting an enemy who has no morality. Our culture does not teach us to win at all costs. We have constraints on what we allow ourselves to do and our hearts and minds to accept our fellow Americans doing in our name.
As for Robert E. Lee, I don't normally find myself defending the South in a Civil War discussion, but anything I've read of Lee tells me that he was certainly a winner. There were many reasons for the loss of that war and his ability was not one of them. As I recall, Lincoln first asked Lee to lead the Union troops. Lee, who was from Virginia, declined.
***********
Note to Marine: I looked over the Douglas Valentine article in Counterpunch again and found it to say:
As for Robert E. Lee, I don't normally find myself defending the South in a Civil War discussion, but anything I've read of Lee tells me that he was certainly a winner. There were many reasons for the loss of that war and his ability was not one of them. As I recall, Lincoln first asked Lee to lead the Union troops. Lee, who was from Virginia, declined.
***********
Note to Marine: I looked over the Douglas Valentine article in Counterpunch again and found it to say:
QUOTE
So in an attempt to bring greater effectiveness to its secret war, the CIA started employing Navy Seals, US Army Special Forces, Force Recon Marines, and other highly trained Americans who, like Bob Kerrey, were "motivationally indoctrinated" by the military and turned into killing machines with all the social inhibitions and moral compunctions of a Timmy McVeigh. Except they were secure in the knowledge that what they were doing was, if not legal or moral, fraught with Old Testament-style justice, rationalizing that the Viet Cong did it first.
QUOTE(Teacher in SC @ May 6 2006, 09:55 PM)
Marine, I honestly did not know you hadn't served in Vietnam. I asked because I wondered at your immediate dismissal of something lengthy that a veteran had reported. That he isn't the editor of the local paper does not change anything he wrote. Perhaps Counterpunch misunderstood his letter to them and the way he listed himself. I have no idea. What is important to me is WHAT HE SAID. I would guess that the age he'd have to be now he'd be retired and maybe writing for that paper for the heck of it. Remember he was a correspondent, according to his letter. Maybe he likes to continue writing in his local community.
As for the site, I still don't know if they are legit, but I found their article on the Phoenix Program to be interesting.
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine.html
It mentions that among those participating was ForceRecon. Are there ForceRecon units in other branches of the service besides the Marines?
As for the site, I still don't know if they are legit, but I found their article on the Phoenix Program to be interesting.
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine.html
It mentions that among those participating was ForceRecon. Are there ForceRecon units in other branches of the service besides the Marines?
If Alexander Cockburn was involved I seriously doubt there was any misunderstanding, I suspect it to be an outright fabrication and distortion of the truth. Such as the story you posted concerning Marine Force Recon.
You see, I know a little bit about Force Recon because I spent about 10 years on and off in a very similar and lessor know unit called ANGLICO. We trained to the same or higher standards as Force Recon and our mission was fundamentally very similar as Force Recon.
We found the enemy and made them pay, meaning, we do not attack the enemy ourselves, that is not our job. I would make a radio call to someone who would put some serious hurt on to them to take care of it for us. ANGLICO is the acronym for Air & Naval Gunfire Liason Company, my weapon was my radio. Most Marines could only put a 5.56mm round on target, I got the opportunity of delivering a 16 inch projectile on occassion.
Let me tell you a little secret, if the enemy found us it meant we had screwed up. The last thing in the world an ANGLICO or a Force Recon unit ever wants to get into is a firefight. Like I said, my primary weapon was my radio.
YOU DON'T GO AROUND KILLING CIVILIANS IF YOU WANT TO REMAIN UNKNOWN TO YOUR ENEMY.
Cockburn's stories turn out to be fables on a regular basis.
This is a good article. Thank you for posting it.
quote=dggfwtx,May 7 2006, 04:59 AM]
Another piece from a former Marine who served in Nam:
By Henry Allen
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — “In war, we have to win,” said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.
This was on television about 20 years ago, a PBS series about the war in Vietnam. Giap was sitting behind a desk, as I recall, a picture of lethal ease. He seemed amused to think he knew something that the Americans still hadn’t figured out. He added: “Absolutely have to win.”
For me, a former Marine corporal who’d heard some Viet Cong rounds go past at Chu Lai, Giap spoke and the heavens opened — a truth seizure, eureka. I finally had a useful, practical explanation for why we had lost after the best and brightest promised we were going to win. And nowadays, thanks to Giap, I have a theory, no more than that, about why winning is so elusive in Iraq.
I suspect that the people who run our wars, particularly the best and brightest, know when we fight a war that:
We have to be fighting for freedom and national security.
We have to get the will of the country behind the war.
We have to maintain a strong economy to pay for the war.
We have to have allies.
We have to have God, freedom, the inevitability of history or some other philosophic entity on our side.
We have to have well-trained and motivated troops armed with the latest weapons.
Sure enough, we started out with all of that in Iraq, as we did in Vietnam.
But do our high-ranking leaders believe, like Giap, that we have to win?
America is getting used to loss, futility and fiasco — amid some small successes, we had stalemate in Korea, the loss in Vietnam, the botched Iran hostage rescue mission and the embarrassments in Lebanon, Haiti and Somalia. One wonders if we even expect our leaders to win the fights they start. Certainly we don’t punish them when they lose. Years later, former secretary of defense Robert McNamara announced that he’d known in 1966 that we couldn’t win in Vietnam, but he kept on sending Americans to their deaths in a doomed cause. For this he was rewarded with the top job at the World Bank, a job held now by Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the war in Iraq.
Why fault them? As all of our war planners are quick to point out, they had the best of intentions, although they forget to mention that good intentions don’t win wars. Certainly intellectual acuity has abounded, too. Who is smarter than Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice or Dick Cheney, all of them with graduate degrees and the sort of quick thinking we began to admire during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who said, “There’s nothing like brains. You can’t beat brains.” As it happens, you can, or we would have won in Vietnam. Strange: This has become an age in which intelligence is seen as a moral virtue, like courage or perseverance — two elements of winning. Of course, intelligence is just a tool, it has no more moral virtue than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bicep or the ability to ace the SAT, but we honor those who possess it. Could we be confusing intelligence with the skill of winning?
Some possibilities about the people running our wars:
One: Winning isn’t the point to them — they use the military as an instrument of policy, and winning or losing anytime soon is irrelevant. Their consequent fine-tuning of political and diplomatic niceties leads to complaints of micromanagement.
Two: They don’t worry about losing because winning to them is a foregone conclusion, as it has been to a lot of Americans since World War II, despite our history during the past half-century. Besides, all the way through school, graduate programs, internships, and corporate and political bureaucracies, they’ve always been winners. How could they lose?
Three: They know we have to win, but they don’t know how to win. Do they know that winning is a skill in itself, a skill that stands apart from tactics, equipment and righteousness?
It gets a little mystical, this talent that foundation analysts can’t quantify for a PowerPoint display, but it’s real.
Great competitors of all kinds have this skill, the ability to “finish” as they say in boxing. If you recall the first fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns, you know that Hearns knew how to hit, but Sugar Ray knew how to win. In 1864 Ulysses S. Grant took on Robert E. Lee with the same army that had been losing to Lee for years, and he finished him — he was a winner who’d won for years throughout the western theater, too. In World War II, America produced a stable of winners who won the war for us.
Nowadays is it possible that our leaders don’t have that skill? Worse, is it possible that they may not know that they don’t have it? I wonder what they’ve gotten into in the way of passionate sports or fistfights. (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a star wrestler at Princeton, but just about none of them have been in combat.) I would be reassured if I knew they understood what athletes mean when they say, “We couldn’t win for losing.” And the old expression: “You make your luck.” We are not making much luck in Iraq.
This war is not working out the way our leaders thought it would. We could lose. If we lose, we’ll be humiliated, we’ll be the schoolyard hotshot who picked a fight and then got whipped. I’m tired of our leaders putting me and my country in this position.
I’m not saying I want to fight no wars, or even saying I want to win more wars — I’m just saying that I want us to win the wars that we fight. And I’m worried that Iraq was never one of them because it was started by people who knew everything except how to win — who have yet to learn that in war we absolutely have to win.
[/quote]
quote=dggfwtx,May 7 2006, 04:59 AM]
Another piece from a former Marine who served in Nam:
By Henry Allen
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — “In war, we have to win,” said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.
This was on television about 20 years ago, a PBS series about the war in Vietnam. Giap was sitting behind a desk, as I recall, a picture of lethal ease. He seemed amused to think he knew something that the Americans still hadn’t figured out. He added: “Absolutely have to win.”
For me, a former Marine corporal who’d heard some Viet Cong rounds go past at Chu Lai, Giap spoke and the heavens opened — a truth seizure, eureka. I finally had a useful, practical explanation for why we had lost after the best and brightest promised we were going to win. And nowadays, thanks to Giap, I have a theory, no more than that, about why winning is so elusive in Iraq.
I suspect that the people who run our wars, particularly the best and brightest, know when we fight a war that:
We have to be fighting for freedom and national security.
We have to get the will of the country behind the war.
We have to maintain a strong economy to pay for the war.
We have to have allies.
We have to have God, freedom, the inevitability of history or some other philosophic entity on our side.
We have to have well-trained and motivated troops armed with the latest weapons.
Sure enough, we started out with all of that in Iraq, as we did in Vietnam.
But do our high-ranking leaders believe, like Giap, that we have to win?
America is getting used to loss, futility and fiasco — amid some small successes, we had stalemate in Korea, the loss in Vietnam, the botched Iran hostage rescue mission and the embarrassments in Lebanon, Haiti and Somalia. One wonders if we even expect our leaders to win the fights they start. Certainly we don’t punish them when they lose. Years later, former secretary of defense Robert McNamara announced that he’d known in 1966 that we couldn’t win in Vietnam, but he kept on sending Americans to their deaths in a doomed cause. For this he was rewarded with the top job at the World Bank, a job held now by Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the war in Iraq.
Why fault them? As all of our war planners are quick to point out, they had the best of intentions, although they forget to mention that good intentions don’t win wars. Certainly intellectual acuity has abounded, too. Who is smarter than Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice or Dick Cheney, all of them with graduate degrees and the sort of quick thinking we began to admire during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who said, “There’s nothing like brains. You can’t beat brains.” As it happens, you can, or we would have won in Vietnam. Strange: This has become an age in which intelligence is seen as a moral virtue, like courage or perseverance — two elements of winning. Of course, intelligence is just a tool, it has no more moral virtue than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bicep or the ability to ace the SAT, but we honor those who possess it. Could we be confusing intelligence with the skill of winning?
Some possibilities about the people running our wars:
One: Winning isn’t the point to them — they use the military as an instrument of policy, and winning or losing anytime soon is irrelevant. Their consequent fine-tuning of political and diplomatic niceties leads to complaints of micromanagement.
Two: They don’t worry about losing because winning to them is a foregone conclusion, as it has been to a lot of Americans since World War II, despite our history during the past half-century. Besides, all the way through school, graduate programs, internships, and corporate and political bureaucracies, they’ve always been winners. How could they lose?
Three: They know we have to win, but they don’t know how to win. Do they know that winning is a skill in itself, a skill that stands apart from tactics, equipment and righteousness?
It gets a little mystical, this talent that foundation analysts can’t quantify for a PowerPoint display, but it’s real.
Great competitors of all kinds have this skill, the ability to “finish” as they say in boxing. If you recall the first fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns, you know that Hearns knew how to hit, but Sugar Ray knew how to win. In 1864 Ulysses S. Grant took on Robert E. Lee with the same army that had been losing to Lee for years, and he finished him — he was a winner who’d won for years throughout the western theater, too. In World War II, America produced a stable of winners who won the war for us.
Nowadays is it possible that our leaders don’t have that skill? Worse, is it possible that they may not know that they don’t have it? I wonder what they’ve gotten into in the way of passionate sports or fistfights. (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a star wrestler at Princeton, but just about none of them have been in combat.) I would be reassured if I knew they understood what athletes mean when they say, “We couldn’t win for losing.” And the old expression: “You make your luck.” We are not making much luck in Iraq.
This war is not working out the way our leaders thought it would. We could lose. If we lose, we’ll be humiliated, we’ll be the schoolyard hotshot who picked a fight and then got whipped. I’m tired of our leaders putting me and my country in this position.
I’m not saying I want to fight no wars, or even saying I want to win more wars — I’m just saying that I want us to win the wars that we fight. And I’m worried that Iraq was never one of them because it was started by people who knew everything except how to win — who have yet to learn that in war we absolutely have to win.
[/quote]
QUOTE(Marine @ May 6 2006, 09:04 PM)
Well, with counterpunch involved it's a safe bet to be skeptical. And this time was no exception.
Tony Swindel is not the editor of the Sherman Herald Democrat, he's the Texoma reporter, as in Lake Texoma.
You want to read some dandy fishing reports? http://www.heralddemocrat.com/
I read his report and some of it is true and some of it sounds untrue. You know I did not go to Vietnam but virtually every superior and peer I had did. I know a lot of what happened in Vietnam was because we used a draftee Army, the Marines never used draftees so nothing happened like he describes in Marine units.
Since they embellish his credentials why not embellish a bit more, eh?
Tony Swindel is not the editor of the Sherman Herald Democrat, he's the Texoma reporter, as in Lake Texoma.
You want to read some dandy fishing reports? http://www.heralddemocrat.com/
I read his report and some of it is true and some of it sounds untrue. You know I did not go to Vietnam but virtually every superior and peer I had did. I know a lot of what happened in Vietnam was because we used a draftee Army, the Marines never used draftees so nothing happened like he describes in Marine units.
Since they embellish his credentials why not embellish a bit more, eh?
I hate to break it to you like this but...
QUOTE
I know a lot of what happened in Vietnam was because we used a draftee Army, the Marines never used draftees so nothing happened like he describes in Marine units.
...you CANNOT know any such thing.And where do you come up with the Marines didn't use any draftees? Many people who were about to be drafted joined, not because they wanted to, but because it was inevitable and many chose the USMC as a forced option.
I know criminals who were told to join the military and they'd get a break on their crimial record. Going into the military..Marines included..was a form of alternative sentencing.
If you are going to hide behind being a morality officer get your facts straight first.
I am sorry to come down so hard on you (I am sure being a Marine you can take it in stride) but
I am tired of seeing some people who served act like they are the only experts on all things military. (not saying you are one) The old tactic of saying "I served therefore I know" "so you shut up" is tired.
We have a civilian command over the military just so we won't have a martial class.
The experts in many fields military, are warrant officers and civillians.
QUOTE
That was a different Army and a different war. Just because some fellow from a different war want's to draw conclusions based on facts from a different Army which no longer apply it won't make them apply here.
I will remember this the next time any conservative or GOPer tries to hang the actions of yesterday's Democratic party on the Democratic party of today.
QUOTE
Since the article appears in counterpunch I seriously doubt if it's even true. Most likely just a left wing nut fable.
Do you prefer your fables be another flavor?and where did the author claim to be guilt ridden over his own actions? maybe I misread you but it seemed to me you implied so.
QUOTE(70sliberalism @ May 7 2006, 02:06 PM)
I hate to break it to you like this but......you CANNOT know any such thing.
And where do you come up with the Marines didn't use any draftees? Many people who were about to be drafted joined, not because they wanted to, but because it was inevitable and many chose the USMC as a forced option.
I know criminals who were told to join the military and they'd get a break on their crimial record. Going into the military..Marines included..was a form of alternative sentencing.
I am tired of seeing some people who served act like they are the only experts on all things military. (not saying you are one) The old tactic of saying "I served therefore I know" "so you shut up" is tired.
and where did the author claim to be guilt ridden over his own actions?
And where do you come up with the Marines didn't use any draftees? Many people who were about to be drafted joined, not because they wanted to, but because it was inevitable and many chose the USMC as a forced option.
I know criminals who were told to join the military and they'd get a break on their crimial record. Going into the military..Marines included..was a form of alternative sentencing.
I am tired of seeing some people who served act like they are the only experts on all things military. (not saying you are one) The old tactic of saying "I served therefore I know" "so you shut up" is tired.
and where did the author claim to be guilt ridden over his own actions?
Thanks for joining in the fray. I was alone for a long stretch there with Marine, and as a former Marine myself, this was not a pleasant experience. We do see things differently. My personal opinion of all the horror stories about what the various groups did included a heck of a lot of propaganda and little actual evidence. My Lai happened as we know because someone stopped it. That soldiers would lose their grip and shoot innocent people in Vietnam was within my sense of possibilities because so many of the women and children were VC plants carrying explosives. But the use of terror for propaganda purposes by the other side has not been proven to my satisfaction. So the reaction to this by such groups as the Phoenix Program or whoever makes me wonder if our own guys were set up to do horrific things even when the other side hadn't. I was not there but married to it for 10 years. I heard more than I needed to know.
As for not using Force Recon for those missions spoken of in the Valentine article and dismissed by Marine, it seems to me that if they got the Navy Seals to do it then they could just as easily get Force Recon to do the same thing. They probably recruited these guys because they were trained way beyond what the average guy is trained and could sneak in, do the job, and sneak out. While it might not have been the normal mission for Force Recon, I doubt it was the normal mission for the Seals either. Just my opinion.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.