TRAITORS! (Letter from USMarine in Iraq)

Grab yourself a cup of coffee, a beer, or whatever floats your boat. I, for one, am pining for a Jim Beam and some crushed ice, but unfortunately that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Take a quick restroom break. This is going to take a while. Be forewarned, it’s a long read, but it isn’t a Bill Whittle piece. Expect digressions, unfinished thoughts, and polysyllabic profanities aplenty. It’s a true challenge for me to begin writing without rambling, blundering around until I find a starting point; keeping myself from constantly digressing is a far tougher chore.

I’ll make the obvious play and tell you it’s hot. Extremely hot. Spelled S-U-R-F-A-C-E O-F T-H-E M-O-T-H-E-R-F-U-C-K-I-N-G S-U-N H-O-T. There was a recent Fox News headline about a deadly heat wave in Arizona, windshields cracking and falling out, dogs burning the pads of their feet, that sort of shit. At only 117 degrees. Average daily temp here is reported as 117, but that doesn’t take into account actually being in the sun. Hold a thermometer in your hand out in the open for two minutes and watch how quickly the mercury soars toward 130. We’ve spent forty years fighting wars in fetid jungles and searing deserts. Why can’t we invade a nice, cool, temperate country for once? France, anyone?

Live in a GP tent, minus the luxury of a consistently functional air conditioner, it pushes 140. Human shields should burst into flames at 140, (one can always hope). Come to think of it, that’s a worthy subject for an 8th-grade science project. Anyone care to let their kids give it a shot? I’m sure I can find and chloroform some patchouli-scented lab rats for them to play with. Unfortunately, those tin-pot camel-fucking dictator apologists mysteriously reappeared at home before the shooting started. Worse, I’ve heard that some of those clowns want to return to “watchdog” our troops, who, media smearing campaign aside, are doing a damned fine job in the face of constant supply shortages, literal snail mail, constantly changing homecoming schedules, and asinine second-guessing by armchair generals, smirking reporters, and Democratic presidential hopefuls seeking a coherent, viable ’04 campaign issue.

Fuck the human shields and the camels they ride in on; Their mates with the ISM as well; It takes a rare, blinkered specimen of humanity to camp out, burn flags, and sing along with Palestinian murderers in Gaza. “Kumbaya, My Lord, Rout the Imperialist Yankee Pigdogs….Loot Their Women and Rape Their Camels…” etc. I’m surprised the ISM hasn’t dedicated a shrine yet to their patron saint, Rachel Corrie, Our Lady of Splattered Roadkill and Pancaked Peaceniks.

We soldiers and Marines haven’t busted our asses for the last, gee, nearly two years to be second-guessed by some trust-funded, Birkenstock-shod, brain-bereft academic fuckheads who haven’t the foggiest idea of the definition of loyalty, much less hard work or personal hygiene. The Fascist-enablers are blissfully ignorant of who this country’s “best and brightest” really are, and scoff at the mere thought that the “baby-killers”, the “jackbooted thugs”, the “fascists” in torn, dirty desert utilities busting their asses to put Iraq back together, are the ones carrying the torch for our generation.

The peaceniks are probably beside themselves, wetting their pants, absolutely pissed off that the soldiers and Marines they despise out here are succeeding and, Oh The Horror, enjoying the respect and admiration of a grateful nation. We are up against a culture that has been bred and raised (thank you, public schools) to loathe not only our country and its fighting men, but also the straightforward, clear-cut, unambiguous ideals they stand for. You know, the whole freedom and free enterprise bit that throws today’s modern, fashionable young socialists into bouts of nervous twitching and incoherent screeching on Indymedia.

It has been argued by some writers that there is an ever-widening gulf between the military and civilians. Those who posit this, and quote it as fact, must either a) live on another fucking planet, or b) live in a major coastal city (which amounts to the same anyway) where attitudes are largely set against us in the first place. In Flyover Country, I have hardly ever felt out of place or distant from the local populace. I happen to believe that the widening gulf that DOES exist is that between the teeming population centers and the rest of the country. Remember seeing the election map from 2000? The coasts out of touch with the heartland?

Vietnam is behind us; we have risen from the shallow grave the radical Left dumped us in thirty years ago to become the most professional, highly trained, and dedicated warriors ever to raise our banners on foreign soil. We have put up with ton upon metric ton of utter bullshit, and will tolerate more, until our job is done. No “Quagmire”-parroting reporter, no arrogant Berkeley-(in)bred activist, no Ba’athist holdout can stop us.

Much has been made of several 3rd ID soldiers on record complaining about the hardships here. Reporters have failed to grasp that men in uniform ALWAYS complain. Shitty food, no beer, families 7000 miles away, no air conditioners, that sort of thing. You want sour grapes, we have vats full of them. We bitch a lot, but we clench our jaws and do the damn job; it isn’t a warning sign that our morale is tanking and that the sky is falling over the “quagmire” we’ve “blundered” into. We don’t need, much less want, your feigned sympathy, you camera-toting, blow-dried, manicured pricks. Don’t you have car chases and Qwik-E-Mart holdups to cover?

Sympathy with our plight would be welcome if it didn’t reek of a political agenda. I’ve seen solicitude for our plight and us when, and only when, the media and the Donks think they have our Commander-in-Chief by the balls. We “bog down” to rest and refuel within sight of Baghdad; the howling Moonbats squeal in delight at a perceived golden opportunity to bend us over the barrel. A week later, Saddam’s most prominent statue is torn down and dragged through the streets, at which point they mumble to themselves and stare at their shoes. A vastly hyperbolized museum looting story helps them rodeo-clown attention away from our glory-fest.

Bush throws down a gauntlet by landing, at unbelievable peril, on the deck of one of his Navy’s carriers; they piss and moan and lament his recklessness. Now, every time a soldier is killed by a sniper’s bullet, an RPG from a rooftop, or a roadside bomb, the press giddily reports, “Today the **th soldier to be killed since President Bush declared an end to hostilities on May 1st (emphasis mine) died in a (shooting) (bombing) (ambush). Headlines are as canned as New York Times obituaries. Equally appalling, with that preface to casualty reports, the media are shamelessly grinding twisted political axes with the bones of our brothers. Reporters wonder why we stinky-palm them.

Now, men are dying to hold this country together, in small numbers yet each irreplaceable beyond all cost, and the dipshits with the cameras and the mikes roll out the “quagmire” playbook again. Hell, now that we’ve offed Uday and Qusay, all you hear is, “Why didn’t you arrest them?” How utterly pathetic. Particularly in the case of Charles Rangel (D-Bellevue). That excuse for a legislator has the gall to propose a reinstitution of the draft, based solely on racial motives tainted by false data, and then months later to call the demise of U. and Q. an “assassination”. Put him in the recall bin with Gov. Whatshisface, that squirrelly sonofabitch on the Left Coast with the financial management problems. You know a politician is worthless when Larry Flynt considers running for his soon-to-be vacated office.

The Armed Forces been tasked with a tall order, keeping this country from flying apart at the seams; we receive extremely short shrift for doing so. The press plasters its front pages with stories of tanking morale; discontent in the ranks; an untenable peace; a Vietcong-esque Guerrilla war in the making. Journalists circle about like buzzards, waiting gleefully in the wings to sign our toe tags, live and in color. They don’t know us, nor do they understand the situation, well enough to see the reality that lies beyond their lower colons. They have failed miserably to grasp that their irresponsible coverage is only encouraging further attacks, or to put it bluntly, (as I prefer):

THEY ARE PROVIDING AID AND COMFORT TO OUR ENEMIES. I need to hit the books and look it up, but I am pretty damned sure that that makes them TRAITORS. By unleashing a tidal wave of coverage on each and every attack, they encourage our enemies to hit again and again, confident in their own minds that the constant screeching and bleating in the press will unnerve and worry our families to no end, and little by little dent our national resolve to keep up the fight. At which point they hope internal pressures will cause us to pull our presence out and let a reconstituted Ba’ath flood back into the vacuum, much like the endgame in Vietnam.

Most of us, those blessed enough to live in Flyover Country, know this to be total bullshit. We finish what we start, and we’re glad to do it, politicians and protesters or no. Don’t even try to pass that thought in the Gore States. You’ll be bound, gagged, and institutionalized for saying that the quagmire isn’t before your eyes, as palpable as your morning coffee or the computer monitor you stare into now. For sheer believability, it’s up there with Barney, the Toothfairy, and Santa Claus. Of course, those blue patches on the map are where they hold the keys to all the doors behind which information is vetted, edited, embellished, fabricated, and reprocessed, much like an Oscar Meyer frank, into the short, meaningless sound bites that end up on the six o’clock news.

Speaking of gathering and processing information, I will say, up front, that I don’t believe embedded reporters were a bright idea. Geraldo Rivera’s acts of idiocy provided a shining example of irresponsible battlefield reporting, but thankfully instances like that weren’t common. It was awfully polite and patient of us to be open and up front with reporters, but it went too far and, besides, they didn’t have a fucking constitutional right to be there, de-constructing our every move and piss-break along the way. The arrangement only facilitated their round-the-clock coverage and mad dash for ratings. It led, from what I saw, to many, many stories that had to be retracted or seriously amended when the press took the first slivers of incomplete information and ran with them, only to stand, embarrassed, in front of the cameras hours later, as they tried to change their stories while the big picture became clearer. Some reporters (Arnett and Fisk come to mind with little effort) never bothered with accuracy or truth, and became the Iraqi Information Ministry’s propaganda whores. Those weren’t sweat stains on Arnett’s shirt in front of the cameras. It wasn’t milk, either.

Many times, so it seemed, the “Breaking News” and “News Alerts” lines that popped up with annoying frequency were little more than wild-assed rumors and incomplete information. If the news agencies had fielded fewer reporters, and made them stay in the Rear with the Gear, they could have had all the time in the world to check their facts and get their shit together before running stories that would have necessitated sheepish retractions hours later. Sorry, folks, that’s my cynical 2 cents, take it any way you like.

The newsies are doing such a wonderful job of making us responsible for problems we did not create, and somehow they expect us to fix all the damned boo-boos. Deficiencies in utility services, communications, unemployment, all that shit that you hear the whiners bleating about when they aren’t slamming the administration. Look, you socialist nanny state assholes, we aren’t social workers. Some of the locals are complaining, but you don’t see many of the whiners actually working to put their own country back in order.

There are many Iraqis who are doing their best to pick up the pieces and make their land a better place, and they are doing the best job they can with what little is left after more than two decades of Ba’ath Party squandering. They aren’t waiting for State handouts, they’re seizing the initiative and accomplishing far more than many people here have in well over 20 years. I’m talking about policemen, former soldiers, doctors, and shopkeepers; the very Bourgeoisie the radical left despises, the hardworking, enterprising men and women who have been the very foundation and lifeblood of prosperous democracies throughout history. They’re all over the place here, and they will ultimately be this land’s political and economic salvation.

Don’t give me any of that whiny bullshit about how we should clean up the mess, this place was a shambles when we got here. Much of this country’s infrastructure slipped through the cracks while Saddam and his late, unlamented offspring built lavish palaces and spent money earmarked for humanitarian aid on every luxury they could lay their blood-stained hands on.

Time ran an article about deplorable conditions at Baghdad’s international airport, stories of looting and general wanton destruction of the airport. Much of the equipment at Baghdad International Airport is so old and dilapidated I’d be surprised if any of it has actually worked anytime in the past decade. Yeah, we pot-holed the runways with bombs aplenty, and a bunch of soldiers picked the duty-free store clean, (which in my opinion the boys fucking well earned) but the field has been repaired and it’s now in better shape than it has been in many years.

Utilities? Go flying out here at night, you see mud hut villages that are as well-lit as any small town back home. I shit you not. If these dilapidated hamlets and villes have power, then the major cities can’t be in such poor shape.

Many items the media reports as potential trouble must be viewed in the context of Iraq’s middle eastern neighbors. There are protests against the American occupiers. Big Fucking Deal. Only in Iraq are people assembling and protesting without being summarily dispersed, beaten, arrested, and/or imprisoned (See Iran). Also seen only in Iraq are hundreds of independent newspapers being printed and circulated absent the watchful, censoring eye of the state. Pro- or anti-coalition, they come off the presses and onto the streets without a Ba’athist Bureaucrat vetting them and shooting the dissenters. Iraq now has a fledgling government of its own, supervised of course, for the moment, but lacking crooked, Wahabbi-bribing royals and power-wielding theocrats.

Sure, if you are in this country and physically attack soldiers and Marines, they will certainly detain you, and if you’re firing on them they will definitely cap you. That’s called self-defense, and it makes perfect sense if you reside anywhere outside the loony havens on our East and West Coasts. But of course, many of those assholes would rather see us die by the thousands than succeed at our efforts here. They can’t stand to watch the people they’ve been raised to loathe win an unprecedented victory and rightfully earn the support and respect of the nation. I love it. Soldiers and Marines are seen as positive role models and it makes the loony left shit bricks.

This country was raped and pillaged for 2 ½ decades by Saddam, his now-defunct sons, and the Ba’ath Party. The bastards built themselves magnificent palaces, bought the priciest cars, the very best in food and wine, and spent less than the bare minimum on sustaining their people, even as sanctions tightened the country’s belt. Where was the indignation at the Iraqis’ plight then? Wait a minute. The cameras were fixed on wall-to-wall “No Blood for OOIIIIILLLLLLL” bullshit and airhead, mealy-mouthed celebrities running their mouths on subjects well beyond their collective depth (i.e. a 7-Eleven parking lot puddle).

There was also the daily Kofi and Hans Happy Fun Hour at the UN, that theatre of the absurd where wrong magically becomes right and the most brutal dictatorships in the world are allowed to chair the Human Rights Commission. What a fucking sitcom.

The UN is also that wonderful, happy place where countries with proven inabilities to defend themselves are not only voting, veto-power members of the Security Council, they get to tie it up with all kinds of “Fuck America” backbiting. Hey Jacques, Dominique, don’t bite the hands that freed you. And don’t stand idle when your nutless citizens deface the graves of the American heroes who spilled their blood, who forfeited their families and futures, to make sure that Horst Wessel didn’t remain long as your piss-puddle country’s national anthem. I hope you also like that tricolore that flies on your masts when you’re not hoisting white flags in the faces of invaders. We put it back up for you. These days, with all your synagogue bombings and anti-Israel sentiments, you seem better suited to those swastikas we drove out of your country for you nearly sixty years ago.

Don’t bite the hands that keep you free either. We labor to make the world a safer place for our nation and its ideals, safer also for our friends abroad and for those who live under the boots of our enemies, yet the press tramples on us; they second- and third-guess our work; deem some to be heroes who do little while many who sacrifice all remain obscure and uncelebrated; lastly, they misquote, fabricate, deceive, and vilify us at will, while conveniently forgetting that we make possible their ability to shit on anyone and anything they see fit. Because of us, the press can live out their delusional fantasies of being a power unto themselves. Their “Le Etat, C’est Nous” megalomania is not amusing and I don’t believe I am alone in being utterly sick of it.

Makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap.

Thank you all for your patience, goodwill, and prayers for our safety and health.

Tommy. By Rudyard Kipling, 1892

I went into a public- 'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls behind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play-
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you Mr Atkins," when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian roo, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fighting', Lord! They'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins," when the trooper's on the tide-
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins," when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll-
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's " Thin red line of 'eroes," when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy fall be'ind,"
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind-
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck 'im out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

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