Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

MY GENERATION

The days grow hotter and longer in this, my generations war.  The heat rises, without mercy, by dawn as the sun engulfs the darkness of the night it burns away my hope for manageable temperature, the heat moves in so fast it is as if the night itself retreats from it.  Two days ago I rose from my dreamless sleep to venture into the morning calm, a breeze blew past me and it chilled me.  For the first time in months I was cold, the gentle caress of the breeze put a smile on my face for the first time in days. 

I just wanted to say thank you all for the emails of hope and encouragement I have received from you.  They were most welcome and indeed comforting.  Our loss and sense of it is enormous.  Our hearts are still heavy from it.  For the past few weeks I have been in grim spirits, on this day I awoke with a refreshed sense of purpose.  It is easy to quit, and to give up hope and to stop caring.  For weeks I had given up, and stopped caring, not just about our mission here but about Iraq as a whole.  Then my thoughts went back to a little girls smile, a girl I will never see again but one I will remember for the rest of my time on this earth.  My sense pf purpose for our task here born anew.

There is so much that can and has gone wrong here, so much beyond my ability to control.  Caring about that which I cannot change is pointless, I realize this.  Mentally I had been allowing myself to wallow in pity.  I couldn't help this, I am the center of my own universe.  Yet I am not a greedy man, so this realization was doubly bothersome to me. Again I forced myself to realize that despite how important I am (in my own mind), I had to again come to understand that the mission here in Iraq is bigger than any one person.  This is in fact a world war, even if the rest of the world won't admit it.  I am walking through the first pages of the first chapter of the 21st century. 

     "There is no right or wrong in our profession.  The present changes from the past from moment to moment.  Only pray for the future to vindicate your action."

This fight is larger than you or me, what is at stake here is a clash of civilizations, of the progress that mankind has made against those that would see the world repressed by their own intolerance for change.  The historic irony here is not lost upon me, this is the cradle of civilization, and the people we are fighting are fighting  their own history.  Some of the greatest advances in the history of our species were made in this very region. Those that oppose the changes that cannot be stopped by bullet or bomb, are beyond reason, thus beyond comprehending the very way of life they strive to re-establish disappeared by the desire of man to advance. 

In the heart of all mankind is a desire to be free.  It is one of our most primitive instincts.  Throughout history, we (humanity) have fought against oppression with such fervor that it cannot be anything short of instinct to do so.  Many people are calling my generation the next great generation, I wish that was the case.  Yet, the silver lining upon these accolades is this, we are great not because of the generation that now fights this war, we are great simply because our nation demands it of us.  We are here not fighting for`Iraq`but for freedom itself.``Roosevelt`called it The fourth freedom.  Freedom from fear, anywhere in the world. 

It is indeed better to fight here.  If Iraq has become a training ground for terrorism, so be it.  It is then fortunate that the best military in the world just happens to be here ready to locate, close with, and destroy them before they spread.  Here in Iraq we are a target for terrorism.  Good!  They know where to find us, and we invite them to do so.  We are wining this fight.  One shot at a time.  One block at a time, one pair of shoes on a child's feet at a time, one vote at a time, one free election at a time.  To a soldier this is simply duty, nothing more.  To the Iraqis, this is a gift, paid with the blood of youth, paid for in missed anniversaries, paid for in bitter combat, paid for in the hopes and dreams of Americans being forever extinguished on streets called, Haifa, and 60th, in towns called Dora, and Karadda.  In a country called Iraq,  in a place once called the cradle of civilization.  We are the light by which the new democracy of Iraq will traverse through the darkness.  We are Americans!

Rusten D Currie

TO OUR HONOURED DEAD

 

MAJ K, Thunder6 and I are all well. We had a costly week. We lost a brother, and the sorrow that has consumed us has left me in darkened spirits. There was no period of denial, only the realization that a soldier, a man, a husband, father and a brother is no more. Today was his memorial, and the emptiness and grief I feel hs again consumed me. There is no lonelier sound I can comprehend then the sound of dog tags clanking in the wind. This past week has shattered any pretense of “reduced” activity in our Area of Southern Baghdad. Monday morning I awoke to the sound of war. The sound of thunder ripped me from my slumber, not one, not two but three enormous explosions shattered the still morning air. Before I knew it I was running at full speed to the Operations Center, and as expected it was alive with activity.

     In combat the first reports are usually wrong, but we knew that the arhabi had come out to play. We actioned our response and collected as much information as we could. That day ended, thankfully with no killed or wounded. Tuesday saw more activity as well, but nothing we weren’t' capable of dealing with. Wednesday I went into work a little early as the constant warning of enemy activity were now more readily accepted, and taken a little more seriously. The events leading up to why are not important, what is relevant here is that a single shot rang out and it found its mark. I knew nearly at once that it was bad, no one could say where the shot had come from and no one heard it. My single greatest fear here is not IEDs, VBIEDs, or mortars. My worst fear is a sniper. Not the typical misuse of the word; namely any would be Tom, Dick, or Mohammed with a rifle here that shoots at us from far away, but from a trained sniper. One who selects his targets, with patience, discipline and skill from a concealed “hide”.

     The “shooter” was all of that and displayed characteristics of a trained and seasoned “professional”. In the Op Center I was literally screaming for them to get the hell off of that objective, there was a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, I knew that beyond hope that our men were in his kill box, and they had to get out as fast as they could as far away as they could. The feeling in the pit of my stomach was that of hopelessness. Our man never had a chance, there is no consolation in that he didn't suffer, there is only the realization that we paid a heavy price to learn a lesson I have been trying to convey for some time now. Snipers are a real threat here. This shooter brazenly took a second shot, to add further insult to our loss, amazingly the second soldier (who took a bullet in his neck) is here with us. He returned to duty less than 24 hours later. His only thought was to get his men back; he even ordered them to stay back. True to the character of our military his men ignored that order and did not leave him behind, the rushed out and recovered him. Today at the memorial I shook the hand of some of the most courageous men I have met in years.

 

     Today at the memorial men wept openly, men spoke of their friend, and gave fond remembrances of him. He was another soldier who volunteered to come with us. Today was filled with memories of lost friends, of my wife, of home, and forever burned into my mind is the sound of “Taps” being played by a lone horn, burned into my memory is the bitter sound of silence at “roll-call”. There is so much that has gone wrong here, we have lost three soldiers here, and that is three to many. All I can think of is the sniper out there who lies in wait for us to come. June 22^nd belongs to him. Tomorrow the day will be ours, and when this murdering scum falls (and he will fall), I will mark that date on my calendar and celebrate his death for the rest of my life.

I have been watching with must disgust our politicians blathering on about how this war is too costly and the human toll is too high, and that we should set a date for withdrawal. To coin a phrase from the 101^st at Bastogne “NUTS!” We quit they win, not on my watch ladies and gentleman who have never served and haven't the slightest clue what it means to risk your life daily for something larger than your own career. We leave before this job is done and the lives lost, and the lives that will be lost are in vain. Sorry ladies and gents, I know this an election year (I am well aware of that!), but you using the sacrifices of our military as s spring board to further divide the American people is reprehensible. As you all know I will seek office when I return, and I do plan to come back to Iraq if elected (and if not then I'll probably be back here anyway). Should I come back as a Congressman, I will leave the confines of the Green Zone, and walk the streets with the grunts. A politician doesn't see Iraq, he sees the US Embassy, and the relative cleanliness of the safety behind the walls. That isn't a glimpse into the war. That is literally a facade of progress. The real progress can't be measured in Power Point, it can't be fluffed with spreadsheets. The real progress is in the faces of the average Iraqi. The real progress lies in not the road behind us but in the fact that there is a road ahead of us. Sorry if it is an uphill climb that many of you have grown to complacent and lazy to travel; so don't worry about it we (the military) will do it. Comparing this to “the Nam” is ridiculous. Especially if you never served, let alone in Vietnam. We have the mightiest nation on Earth. Our military is the mightiest the world has ever seen. Let us do our job. “Iraq has become a training ground for Al Queada.” A US Senator Said that. Well good, then we can drop them before they get good at this insurgent thing. It is better that we are fighting this game with our away jerseys.

     Diane from CA, I have this for your offering. Firstly, thank you for reading and posting. However our military is a representative cross section of our nation. At the micro level, and at the micro level we are also held to a higher standard of accountability. So, if you think that the military is at the root of the evil at Gitmo, think again. It speaks about all Americans, and when you look at those awful pictures of the horrible abuses at Gitmo, allow me to send you a video of about 70 beheadings done by men like these poor detained individuals whose rights are being violated. I have no sympathy for the people at Abu G, or Gitmo. The only reason I care to understand their motives is not to extend the hand of freedom to them (they'd just cut it off, or say I was being condescending. My desire to understand them lies in my desire to end as many of them as we can so we can leave Iraq AFTER we are done here. If you support us then do so... Quietly. We get enough “support” from the press. We don't need any more of that kind of support. I thank you for your words, and respect your opinion, that isn't just me being PC. I promised Father Bob to clean up my language so I won't respond to anything you have said with the colourful explicatives I used to use. I think I am a little more disturbed not with the treatment of people who have been sent to a maximum security military detention facility. I am more disturbed with the murdering scum that run rampant in Baghdad. You mentioned your friend that is so upset with our attempts to bring Iraq out of the darkness. I meet with Iraqis daily and if you ask a group of them how long Saddam was in power, it is like a synchronized event they all reply in unison, “35 years.” I appreciate what you and those like you are attempting to do. If you got me out of here tomorrow, I'd buy you a drink!

     Nevertheless, Ma'am, if you think the pics of Abu G and Gitmo are bad, I sat through about 30 beheading videos, and a video of insurgents sniping our sons and daughters, all screaming God is great. I don't want to sound cold hearted but war tends to do that, I sat at a memorial of a soldier today who had a thousand reasons to live, yet he came here voluntarily to serve with his brothers. I won't let, no I won't sit by idly while our detractors claim the moral high ground over us. We have problems here, SERIOUS problems, and treating detainees poorly is one of them, and there is no excuse for it, and I hope those guilty are punished to the maximum extent of our laws. Will that satisfy the leftist sharks circling? I doubt it. I am not going to waste my time trying to change your mind, frankly I don't really care. Yet I will say this, if you believe in what you are doing trying to end this, then follow your heart. Just be careful what you wish for. Some of these dirka dirka's get let loose, then they become my problem again because they will be in Iraq as soon as they can beg borrow or steal enough to get here. Again, follow what your heart tells you. Here I don't have that luxury.

     My heart is still filled with grief, my resolve to make a real difference is rising from the ashes of my sorrow, born again anew is my conviction to move ahead I am reminded once again of the reason we left home all those months ago. That this land and her people have a chance to breath as a free nation.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” Von Goethe

     My invitation still stands to any politician, and celebrity who has ever spoken out against us here in Iraq, and our mission here. Please feel free to come out with us and gain a real life first hand account of why the hell we are here. Not in the green zone, but in real honest to god, I could get killed here Iraq. To date, of course I have no one taking me up on this offer. Don't worry though we'll be here for a while so whenever you want to come out. I'll arrange the tour.

RDC

 

 

 

 

 

AGAINST ALL ENEMIES

I am sorry for the lengthy gap in my postings, I have been rather absorbed in my own thoughts, and the magnitude of my station is beginning to weigh heavily upon me.  I seem to be in an ever increasingly sour mood and despite my best efforts to the contrary I am being smothered by it, and cannot break the surface to fill my self with a breath of a positive thought.  In my last post I mentioned rising above the negativity that seems to be directed by the MSM at the military.  Now a US Senator is comparing us to the Nazis and to Pol Pot.  I beg your pardon sir!  I take great exception to your irresponsible slander.  Do you have even the slightest bit of common sense, can you fathom for a millisecond the meaning of what the Nazi's stood for?  Obviously you are old enough to remember Pol Pot, and the heinous crimes against humanity he committed.  Yet you still throw those words in our face, because you are not calling the President a Nazi, surely you cannot be that bent on political suicide.  So, you are calling my fellow service members Nazis.  I just have a question for you sir.  Are you out of your damn mind?  How dare you!  And to not say you are sorry, again HOW DARE YOU SIR! 

The Nazis systematically murdered millions of INNOCENT people.  Pol Pot slaughtered a million of his own people.  Yet because a few (insert foul foul foul foul negative language here) people have been treated poorly, you say that we are all Nazis?  Have you lost your mind, or did you lend it to Representative Waters on her tilt with the White House.  There seems to be something going on in Washington, it involves a lot of whimpering by the left side of the isle.  You lost the White house. You lost the Senate. You lost the House of Representatives.  LET IT GO...  All the whining in the world and all the finger pointing in the world is not going to change 2000, nor will it dent 2004.  If you keep attacking the Republicans and picking weak fights, then you will keep losing and the American Communist Party will be taken more seriously than the Democrats.  Yet to remain equitable, I'd like to see my Republican friends in the House stop thumbing your noses at the Democrats.  There are some real problems this nation needs to focus on fixing.  Yet when our elected Congressional officials decide to march on the White house to issue a petition, well I'd ask this; don't you have anything better to do?  Going to the White house with your petition Mrs Waters (In the pic she is first on foot and right of the line.  Shouldn't she be voting or doing something remotely resembling the job she was elected to do?)  is like Don Quixote tilting a wind mill, it begs insanity.  It is like me putting dog waste in a brown bag and lighting it on fire when I was a kid to see my neighbor step on it thus in it.  It is funny, yet pretty annoying if it is dropped on your porch.

I am disgusted with what I see in DC, more so in the name calling, and finger pointing.  There are so many careerist politicians that need to bow out gracefully, and step aside.  They have become the forest that cannot be seen because of the trees.   I look forward to November 06.   
 

What so Proudly we Hail

Trust.  Trusting someone here can get you killed,  yet it is who we as Americans are.  We are an open and trusting society.  We have our share of faults, just watch the news, our detractors are all too willing, and ready to broadcast our shortcomings.  So be it.  We are Americans, we rise above it, and no matter what the media portrays on television or on radio we rise above it.  No matter how much our allies proclaim our actions to be unjust, and how they will not support this or any other unilateral US action.  We rise above it, and when they call us we are there.  As Mr. Colin Powell proclaimed all we ask for in exchange is a plot of land to bury our dead.  That is who we are.  We also have our detractors at home.  People who call us murders, and say that we are targeting Innocent women and children.  They have absurd websites such as "Forsake the Troops", they use their celebrity status to elevate their own personal agendas and to sway the masses to champion their causes.  They call the President of the United States "idiot", they slander the very nation that affords them the freedom of speech to do so.  Still, we rise above it, and to the death I swore to defend them.  Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  And so we do.  We soldier on, and every day we don our armour and load out into armorured vehicles and drive out into it.  Providing the men who are trying to kill us with a Target, so that if trouble may come, it comes our way.  Not to a little girl coming home from school killed by a mortar round, because the man who sent this weapon made in China, to end her life.  because he was so blinded by ignorance and fanatical bastardized religious vomit, he can't even comprehend that he is the pawn, and when he dies he is not a martyr just one more victim of the Global War on Terrorism.  Do, I respect him?  No.  Do I pity him?  No.  Will I honor him?  No.  I'll forget all about him, and though I don't pray, the loss of this life even one who murders innocents is tragic.  I am a soldier, he is my enemy.  At the end of the day it was him or me, here I am, I hope his journey to hell is a short one. 

Betrayal here is to be expected.  Being lied to, also expected.  Yet when it was one who you trusted, and sought to protect his helpless ones and he turns around and betrays that trust, it is devastating.  Not that I didn't expect it, but nonetheless I am more American at times that this job can allow.  My trust has been shattered by someone who doesn't get the gravity of the game he choose to play.  He will be punished, by his own people, so be it.  If he is guilty, he deserves his punishment.  We are Americans and we rise above it.  We are often called arrogant, and self-righteous.  Guilty as charged, we are called meddlesome, and charged with interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.  Again guilty as charged.  We are reckless cowboys who are ethnocentrists and try to impose our standard of life on cultures and nations that don't want our help.  Ask the average Iraqi, you know the ones never seen on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, or Al Jezerra, ask them if they'd prefer to be back under the reign of Saddam and family.  If you pull all of your unbiased information from the MSM, you may be surprised to find that the average Iraqi, would rather die than go back to that. 

Do I want to be here? No.  I have other designs for the rest of my days, but in the end if these people here realize even 1/10th of what can be achieved in a free society, then my year here was not in vain.  Are we heroes? I don't think so, this is our job, for some of us this is not a job, it is our chosen profession.  This is what we do.  It is who we are.  For the last 16 years of my life it has been who I am.  I have never murdered an innocent civilian, I have never tortured a prisoner of war, I have never treated the Muslim holy book with disrespect.  I have treated all of my enemies humanely.  As well as about 99% of the rest of our Armed Forces.  Some detractors say we are fighting an immoral war and stealing the oil from Iraq, some say this is the President's illegal war.  I invite them to come here and walk a mile in my shoes.  In 60lbs of armour, and ammunition in the 120 degree heat of the cradle of civilization.  I invite them to come here to Iraq, and stare down the highway looking for IEDs in a HHMMWV that has no AC and the very water in your canteen literally is to hot to drink.  I  invite them to come here and remove the body of an innocent man assassinated in his car (shot in the head) simply for taking a job with the Americans (We have a tendency here to overpay).  I invite them to realize that being an American has great benefits, but with those benefits also comes great responsibility. 

I love my country, and I am here because she called me to service.  I am not a hero, I don't consider my comrades in arms heroes either.  This is our duty, and despite the hardship of being away from my home, my wife, and everything I love; this is (for now) who I am Citizen, Soldier, Patriot.

RDC

IF YOU HAVE NOTHING NICE TO SAY

Today was one of those days.  Sat in a rather lengthy meeting designed to "focus" our efforts against the insurgents.  It was largely a snoozer.  Learned a few things, like I was probably the shortest person in the  room.  Other than that, the way things are going for this National Guard battalion, I'll just say this.  I have nothing nice to say.  So with that, have a better day than I did.  217 days 12 hours 31 minutes, and 10 seconds, but who's counting.

Russ

And Suddenly Nothing Happened...

It's quiet here...too quiet, yeah I know this is cliche.  But lately things in the "Nightstalker" AO are real quiet.  We have made some "arrests", rather we have empowered out Iraqi allies to snatch some rather nasty individuals.  Suffice to say the infantry types are getting antsy.  As far as I'm concerned the quieter the better.  It was a cool 111 today, not as hot as it is going to get, but about as hot as it has been.  I am looking forward to it being above 125.  The kind of heat that makes the thermometer quit.  Like trying to breath fire, the kind of heat that quite literally brings a war to a grinding halt.  Neither side wants to have to fire and maneuver if there is even the slightest possibility of having to run more than a few inches.  I for one am glad I am no longer infantry, don't get me wrong I am proud that I served as an infantryman in the Corps, but those days are long gone, and the infantry is a younger man's game. 

I am back on a steady diet of near beer, and canned soup, ravioli, and assorted fruits and veggies.  Food has lost its luster after leave.  When I was on Leave DJ and I ate at some great restaurants, great memories, that have left my desire to eat in the mess hall flat.  No complaints though... well not many.  I can't wait to eat good food again.  If you are ever in Marina Del Rey, I highly encourage you to try Akbar, on Washington and Lincoln.  Excellent!!!  Now, if you'll excuse me I have to eat my cheese burger, and cold onion rings.