The Real
Afghanistan
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 from a Recon Marine in Afghanistan.
Scorpions, Chiggers & Sand Fleas.
Great letter 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 Pamir 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.
at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains, along the Dar'yoi Pamir 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, and 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, and 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 Pashtu's, for over a month-and-a-half now, and this much
I can say for sure: These guys, 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 young bastard.
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! Bullshit! 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 so you
will watch 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 only doing what you sent us
here to do.
From
a Jack Recon Marine in Afghanistan. Semper Fi.
"Freedom is not free, but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share".
"Freedom is not free, but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share".