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Posted on 04/08/2003 11:38:26 AM PDT by Pokey78
To puke was the only proper reaction to the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, of the US Army's 50th Maintenance Company, as April Fools' Day dawned in Iraq last week. "To puke" has just the right abrupt, dismissive note to it - "to vomit" and "to regurgitate" both have too much Latin gravity at their roots, "to heave" and "to retch" the false gentility of euphemism, but plain puke, good enough for Shakespeare, is onomatopoeic to perfection. Say "puke" and relish the sound.
It is not that I have any ill-will towards the girl - I have none for any young soldier, of any race or religion, engaged in any cause - it is just that I believe women to have no business to be anywhere near the front line in any campaign, other than, perhaps, as doctors and nurses. I am certain that no such effort would have been made to rescue a young man of her age and inexperience.
Jessica Lynch is 19, blonde, 5ft 4in, and weighs rather less than the equipment carried by a British paratrooper on the yomp. Driving across the desert with other US servicemen unable to read a compass or take direction from the sun, she was separated from a convoy, ambushed, injured, captured by Iraqis and taken to a hospital in Nasiriyah, on the Euphrates, nearer Basra than Baghdad.
There she lay, both legs and one arm fractured, attended by the few members of staff who had not fled, a pharmacist the only man of any qualification.
How these injuries occurred we do not know, but General Tommy Franks, commander of the allied forces, knew of them and knew where she was, knowledge attributed to " intelligence" until the truth was revealed - that a sympathetic Iraqi had trudged for miles across the desert until he found a US officer to tell.
General Franks it was who ordered Jessica's rescue, perhaps sharing her family's anxiety over the possibility of rape, perhaps recognising what a propaganda coup could be made of it. To effect the rescue, US marines staged diversionary attacks in Nasiriyah, on a bridge, a telecommunications relay station and the local headquarters of the Ba'ath party; and with these under way, two transport helicopters landed in the hospital grounds, with the protection of four attack helicopters hovering overhead and two patrolling tankbuster aircraft - all this by dead of night, in pitch darkness and with the appalling safety record of US forces.
How many soldiers were involved and at serious risk in this escapade? Six helicopter crews, two aeroplane crews, medics, stretcher-bearers and all the men engaged in the decoy attacks on the other side of the town.
Would so many men and so much expensive machinery have been risked for the rescue of a jar-head marine of 19, a black boy of 19, a homosexual boy of 19 or a poor white boy of 19 from the same incestuous hills of West Virginia among which Jessica was born?
I doubt it. This girl was rescued not because she was a heroine, not because she was brilliantly qualified and not because she was in possession of information and skills that must on no account be betrayed to the enemy.
She was rescued for no other reason than that she is a girl, and the all-American blonde to boot. The rescue of Jessica Lynch was portrayed even in our most sober and sensible broadsheets as an exploit of extraordinary derring-do, of heroism, valour, audacity, chivalry and chutzpah.
Sane men, however, able to assess the risks involved on such a moonless night, must count this rescue a work of sheer insanity, unless those ordering it put into the equation the publicity inevitable with success. Was it done to hearten the male troops?
Again I doubt it, for these, weary, cold by night, sweating by day, now long unshaven and unshowered, stinking with the stale odours of the body, know perfectly well that no attempt would be made to rescue them were they in the same predicament as Private Lynch and through the same incompetence.
"America doesn't leave its heroes behind, it never has, it never will," were the weasel words of a US army spokesman - and to such nonsense the only possible response is "Tell that to the marines." The objective of this cynical exercise was to fortify the folks at home, and there can be no doubt, so deep is the naivety of the provincial American, that the ruse worked.
In West Virginia, Jessica's rescue is attributed not only to the army, but to God in equal measure, God invoked by the power of prayer. It has occurred to none of them that if God had anything to do with it, he would have stayed the hands of Bush and Blair and sent no one into battle.
The point that everyone has overlooked is that Jessica Lynch should not have been sent to Iraq until active hostilities are over.
I don't care a damn what feminists say, the front line is no place for women. It is where men are ripped apart by shells and bullets, where they are incinerated in tanks, the burnt meats of sacrifice, so, to speak, where men lay down their lives for noble sentiments and causes - forgive me, but what bollocks the euphemisms are.
If a soldier's mind is not wholly engaged in battle, he is a risk to himself and his immediate mates - the last thing a soldier needs is a corporal of poetic mind or a philosopher for a sergeant, the one reciting Horace, the other musing on the nobility of man; he needs, instead, mates driven by adrenaline and the unintellectual antidotes to fear that we call courage and exalt as heroism. But the last thing a soldier needs in battle is a woman by his side, her mere presence a diversion from the matter in hand, a tug at his primeval sense of chivalry.
As, from the safety of Central Command, US Brigadier-General Vince Brooks said of Jessica's rescue, "Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen." And so they did, but they should not have been required to do so.
If women feel compelled, in their absurd pursuit of equality, to join the armed forces and cannot, will not, see that in the front line they pose a menace to all men, then the forces must draw the line for them, no matter how great a political incorrectitude it may seem to outsiders.
Women should be the army's clerks, cooks and bottlewashers, its doctors and nurses, its counters of beans and buttons, but never - even though I can imagine nothing more terrifying than a battalion of bearded lesbians - bearers of arms, never frontline soldiers.
Did you have any intelligence on the prison Scott O'Grady was being held? Different situation!
No jackass. The point is, he was injured and behind enemy lines, and we risked lives to go in and get him.
We have pilots still being held prisoner in Iraq, did anyone dare go get them?
Speaking of intelligence about enemy prisons, perhaps you can tell me where they are being held. If the military knew, and had a reasonable chance to extricate them, they would launch an operation in a minute.
Now pick up your lip Jackass!
I guess that made sense to you when you wrote it. No wonder you find yourself thirteenth grade, Einstein.
Yes.
On the other hand, no one should expend as much as a dime to save Sewell.
this author makes me really angry.
That's a lie. An outrageous, insulting lie. I stopped reading right there.
That she's become something of a mascot is a matter for building morale.
I'd like to punch this guy a good one.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2656705.stm>Art 'too good' for Northerners
Art lovers in the North are not sophisticated enough to appreciate a new exhibition due to open on Tyneside, it is claimed.Controversial London-based art critic Brian Sewell says the exhibition, by a group of post-war artists, should be on display in the capital. .......
Almost as scarey as British pansies pretending to be writers. The only part he got right was the "puke" part.
This guy hates 19 year olds.
I don't think these are "weasel words", this is the memory of the MIA's of Vietnam. Leaving no one behind has long been a tradition of the US military. The lessons of Vietnam have made this policy a political one as well, which it wasn't in the 60's.
Jessica Lynch, for all the questions regarding her situation, is a little blonde memorial to those we did leave behind, and a reminder to the brass that they should be thoughtful of who, and for what, when they send soldiers into harms way.
In the same circumstances, with the information brought to our guys by a local, yes we would have done it and it would still be a morale booster and a PR coup though without the pizzazz of rescuing the girl.
There is some question as to whether an Iraqi lawyer would have felt the same distress at the mistreatment of a male soldier.
All in all it is a good argument for removing our girls from the battlefield and from the ships and from the combat aircraft.
On a more humourous note, I can't wait for this bloke to go home to the 'trouble and strife'... because once she's read this drivel she's sure to kick him right in the curly bits! (Not to mention it will be a l-o-n-g time before he has any further marital 'privileges'!)
Saw something interesting the other day. A British analyst they have on Sky News was discussing the Lynch rescue and made some remarks to the effect that this is very much American military tradition - but that Britain has no such tradition and would, in fact, not try and rescue POW's.
The guy has no idea what the hell he is talking about.
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