Honor and Acts of Congress

December 2, 2005:

Wednesday, ten more in Iraq. Marines, walking on a god-damned road. GOD DAMN IT! People, we need some truth! Let's hear from those "embedded" (or does it mean "in bed with?") reporters some specifics. Stuff that will let people with a little more brains than the kind who listen to the Laci Peterson-Natalee Holloway stuff and read the "Christ-is-back-on-earth-disguised-as-an-alligator" tabloids decide for themselves whether guys like me know what we're talking about.

Specifics, please. Like, what kind of "improvised explosive device" was this? The bursting radius of a given artillery shell like those used in these things is known and certain data, you know. Tell us about that. It can tell us some other things, some things we ought to know. How far from the road was the thing planted? That would let people ask questions like "How the hell did somebody manage to bury two, three, or even four big - 105mm, or even 155mm, for instance (the kind, size, and distance from the road determines everything) - without being seen?

Why in all that is holy would anybody with brains enough to put boots on and tie the shoelaces walk down a road an enemy like the Iraqi "insurgents" has had access to for long enough to dig a pit and plant a bomb that big? WHO IS MAKING THE RULES HERE?

In short, my friends, we need facts. No more of this Pasteurized, homogenized, sanitized, and laundered-for-political-purposes crap. Tell the people what all the weapons all do. Talk to them about tactics. Explain to them the 'why-fore' and wherefore of doing things, and for Christ's sake stuff the kind of experts CNN, Fox, and the rest prostitute for White House purposes where the sun doesn't shine and where they belong.

I WANT TO KNOW WHY SOLDIERS ARE DRIVING DOWN ROADS IN THIN-SKINNED VEHICLES DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR OFF-THE-ROAD USE, ROADS THEY KNOW MAY BE MINED WITH FOUR OR FIVE HUNDRED POUND BOMBS. I WANT TO KNOW WHY THE HELL THEY ARE WALKING DOWN THE SAME KIND OF ROAD. Nobody is this f------ stupid!

And if you're bright enough to suspect that I smell politically-correct orders - more of that "rules of engagement" horse manure - you're mighty well told.

God damn it (again - I'm in a damned, awful foul mood this morning), we have known how to explode mines harmlessly for damned near a century. Hasn't anybody seen World War Two newsreels and the tanks and armored vehicles with the rotating flails ("Hobart's Funnies") out in front? WE NEED AN EXPLANATION OF WHY THIS IS HAPPENING, AND IT HAD BETTER BE BETTER THAN THE BULLSHIT WE GOT FOR EXPLANATION ABOUT WHY WE'RE IN IRAQ IN THE FIRST PLACE. Better than the nitwit nostrums being bloviated by "Colonel Hunt" and the rest, too.

Every life that is lost in Iraq, both Coalition Forces and Iraqi, is being thrown away. Anyone with a brain as good as that of a cat is smart enough to know the United States will be rid of this war as soon as it's rid of this president and his military industrial complex cabal (oh, the latter won't be long in coming up with another excuse, even if they have to bomb Red China, but we'll have at least a brief respite). For one thing, we simply won't be able to pay for it. There are a hundred things for which we need the money we're spending now (even government like ours can't just print more, you know). Like New Orleans, for instance. Like Social Security. Et cetera. This war was too compulsively stupid, too miserably planned, for anything else to happen. We're not going to "succeed" in Iraq, because it was never possible, and the people who started this never intended that kind of "success." It was only business for them. Weapons sales.

As to all those fearless "leaders," well, face it - this was red-neck, Texas football stuff. "Support our troops" is NOT like "Support the Dallas Cowboys." This is not drink Budweiser, sit in the stands, and cheer. This is not touchdowns and field goals, and guys trying come up with their own, super sexy version of a bump and grind in the end zone. This is planes, tanks, and guns. This is massive destruction, maiming, and death. Women and kids' deaths (and a helluva lot more of that than Saddam ever did, too). The dead are not back next Sunday, or on the next installment of the story. Their wounds were not put on in the make-up department, and their missing limbs are not "special effects."

Everything about this clusterfuck operation smacks of traditional Texas politics, even to the revelation by foreign media (sometimes, our own newspeople are dragged - kicking and screaming - to a story) of news orchestrated and planted in Arab news media to show our occupation of Iraq in a favorable light. Have we all forgotten how the same thing happened during the first campaign for president waged by this president? Modus operandi never changes.

But there's "cut and run," you say. We can't "cut and run." What's this "WE" shit? WHO can't 'cut and run?" Why the hell can't "we?" What, really - I mean in plain, clear, and no uncertain terms - would happen if we did? Do you mean that we would be less able to defend ourselves? How? How would the biggest, best equipped, most capitalistically ruthless military - and that by several times - in the history of man - be more vulnerable? What does having 150,000 of our best soldiers days, weeks, from home do to protect us from foreign "terrorism" here at home? Tell me in specifics, not bullshit generalities, slogans, and pseudo-patriotic horseshit.

While you're at it, tell me how the people being added to the poverty roles by the massive inflation resulting from the mountains of money being spent - money being transferred from the public's cash and currency accounts to the real, property and power accounts of Halliburton and the industrial military complex - will recover. Tell me about that, redneck - if you have even the faintest idea about what's really doing on.

SUPPORT? Save the kind you're giving for people who give a shit for it. Cheering is for cheerleaders. Save the yellow ribbon, car stickers for the local football team. This isn't football, and this isn't a goddamned pep rally. IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS, GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY OF THE LUNATICS - BOTH THE ONES WHO PLANT THE I.E.D.S AND THE ONES WHO PICKED THIS FIGHT FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF OBSCENE PROFIT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

One more thing. Strange, isn't it, that the people who wanted to stay out of war, and who are wanting to get out now, are mostly veterans of war. That's while all the "hawks" who want "us" to stay have never served a day in a uniform, much less "seen the elephant." Just out of morbid curiosity, I did a little research. Here's a summary of all those "hawks," the gunslinger wannabees who have evaded military uniform like it was the plague:

Of course, and appropriately, our Vice-Fuehrer Mr. Cheney leads the list. That's with five - one, two, three, four, five (do you wonder how the hell you get away with that) - deferments during Vietnam.

Then, there's this stellar list (put "did not serve" behind each one):
George Will
Chris Matthews
Bill O'Reilly (hid in England, from what I gather)
Paul Gigot
Bill Bennett
Pat Buchanan
Rush Limbaugh (how about that - 4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst' on his chicken ass!)
Michael Savage (aka Michael Alan Weiner)
Pat Robertson (claimed during 1986 campaign to be a "combat veteran." In reality, was a "Liquor Officer.")
Sean ("The Great American") Hannity
Michael Medved


And the list goes on. Savage, incidentally, is really a piece of work. His real name is Weiner. Can't you just hear it? "The Whiner (Weaner?) Nation!" How about - that from 'whiner' or 'weaner' to "savage.' That tells you more than a little, right there - doesn't it?

These are the guys calling guys like Congressman Murtha a 'cut and run' coward. Ann Coulter - the flesh-and-blood sneer with the bitch-in-heat eyes - has the Brobdingnagian (yeah, I know, inadequate - best I could come up with on short notice) nerve to imply the Vietnam-era hero's two purple hearts are tainted. The woman takes chutzpah to a whole, new level, doesn't she?

You know, at the risk of sounding trite, even stooping to their same level, I can't help wondering why these great and famous people - if they are so damned determined that we should not 'cut and run,' and so eager to "free the Iraqi people" - don't volunteer for combat there. Hell, with all that greatness, all that fervor and genius, they'd be invaluable; and, superior beings that they are, that in a manner far disproportionate to their numbers. Yeah, that's it: man, what rag-head Arab would stand against a charge by the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael (Weaner) Savage, and Ann Coulter?

Yeah, yeah - I know. Well, hell - how about helping with the cleaning up in New Orleans? Or is it that "patriotism" and "public service" are attractive only in terms of how much money it makes? How much self-aggrandizement it lends? Yeah, maybe that's it.

Want to talk "cut and run?" Let me, one who has been in more fights both judo competition and lethal-with-guns, than any of you can even imagine, tell you something - that since the closest you've ever been to a real fight is one of those logomachy television debates you sell to your hog-fat, Budweiser-swilling, wannabee warrior audiences:

Very often - more often than not, matter of fact - it takes a damned site more courage to walk away from a fight than it does to start it. True, I fought, most of the time, for practice. Yeah, and with time, fun (at first, I hated it). But when finally it came to having to hurt somebody, I would - could; it was hammered into me like the temper in steel - only repair to my upbringing. That was by an old, German nobleman who insisted that while killing would always be necessary in life, the rules by which it was decided and done were absolutely rigid, and laws of god. A thing of honor. When I killed my first game, a jackrabbit, I paid it the required ritual respect with the "Letzterbissen," a "last bite" morsel of food placed in its mouth. I have never taken life without doing that, even if only in spirit. I have never counted, either. Oh, where men - and that one woman - were involved, I could. I just haven't. You don't do that. Not with honor.

Silly? Maybe, but a formative ritual as old as German history. For men of honor - and my grandfather would tolerate the company of no other - even the life of a rabbit demands respect. When it is men, women and children, it demands, far, far more.

It demands an act of Congress. It demands the commitment of all the people whose sons and daughters will take, and give, it. It is not a political thing. It is not a matter of rhetoric or philosophy. It is not a matter of economics, or filthy capitalist profit. IT IS NOT DONE LIKE THIS! Not by people of honor.

My country had honor, once.