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Obama's Trap: Bullets, Bodies But No Sign of Taliban
THERE was an eerie echo of wars past at the weekend, as American and Afghan troops launched what is being billed as the showcase opening of Barack Obama's new strategy to win in Afghanistan.
Map locating Marjah and Nad Ali, where the US-led offensive is at its height. Twelve Afghan civilians were killed Sunday during a major US-led offensive against Taliban in southern Afghanistan, as commanders said booby traps and snipers were slowing progress.
(AFP/Graphic) In the hours before dawn on Saturday - local time - the first units of a 15,000-strong assault force were on their haunches in mud in the pivotal southern province of Helmand, set to pounce on the Taliban forces holed-up in a mud-walled town called Marja.
But the time difference meant it was still Friday evening in Washington. There, a sell-out audience trudged through snow and slush to get to the E Street Cinema for the opening of an Oscar-nominated new film - The Most Dangerous Man in America.
This is the engrossing story of Daniel Ellsberg and how, in 1971, he changed the course of the Vietnam War by leaking the 7000-page Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg outfoxed efforts by an enraged President Richard Nixon to thwart publication - by slipping segments of the highly-classified document to a succession of editors who could publish piecemeal before each was injuncted by the White House.
It was Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state, who dubbed Ellsberg a dangerous man. But when the lights went up after Friday's screening, the 78-year-old who emerged on stage for an audience Q&A was welcomed more as a spirited grandfather from whom a new American generation might learn, than as a threat to national security.
Oddly, there was no answer for a question that had a profound impact on his audience.
Posed by Ellsberg himself, it was this: How could one of Obama's key men in Afghanistan appear before Congress and not be quizzed on his spectacular conversion from prophet of doom to cheerleader-in-chief for the new Afghan strategy?
As the President mulled the military's plea for tens of thousands of new troops last year, his ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, cautioned Obama: "[Afghan] President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner."
Warning that Karzai wanted to see the US bogged down in Afghanistan for ever, Eikenberry seemed to be warning Obama of a deliberate Afghan trap.
His cable, subsequently leaked, left nothing to the imagination: "The proposed counterinsurgency strategy assumes an Afghan political leadership that is both able to take responsibility and to exert sovereignty in the furtherance of our goal ... [But Karzai] and much of his circle do not want the US to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further."
When he appeared before Congress in December, Eikenberry assured lawmakers that all was well, that his worries had been allayed and Obama's plan to rescue himself and the people of Afghanistan had his full support - and nobody pressed him on how the road from Kabul to Washington now seemingly passed through Damascus.
Similarly, Obama's military chief in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has had a dramatic change of heart.
His plea for extra troops last year was couched in remarkably defeatist language on the scope of the challenge in Afghanistan. Without additional troops within a year, he warned that the war effort would likely result in failure.
Fast-forward to the first week of this month and McChrystal was in Istanbul to meet NATO officials. Only 4500 of the additional 30,000 troops authorised by Obama had landed in Afghanistan, but McChrystal was remarkably upbeat: "I'm saying that the situation is serious but I think we have made significant progress in 2009, and beginning some progress and that we'll make real progress in 2010."
These are the men directing the civil and military assault on Marja.
Explaining the options for insurgency fighters in Marja before the assault on the town, McChrystal explained to reporters that they could stand and fight or lay down their weapons and take the side of the Afghan government.
He did not offer a third option which has been standard Taliban MO - to melt away, to regroup to fight in another time, in another place.
That seemed to be borne out by reports from embedded reporters during the first 48 hours of the assault - the adjective ''intense'' was used a couple of times to describe gunfire; but more often the word used was ''sporadic'' or ''scattered''.
"Actually, the resistance is not there," the Afghan defence minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, said. "Based on our intelligence reports, some of the Taliban have left the area - but we still expected there to be several hundred."
Centres like Marja have been cleared of Taliban fighters before. But because the US and Afghan troops have then moved on, the Taliban has been able to circle back to retake the towns.
This time, McChrystal and Eikenberry are offering something different, what McChrystal describes as ''a government in a box'' - a newly minted Afghan governor, a team of Afghan administrators and a 2000-strong police force are on standby to "take and hold" the town within days.
Yesterday US and Afghan forces in Marja were still doing a house-to-house search for Taliban fighters and their weapons and explosives caches, but an Afghan general briefing reporters claimed that the whole area was now under allied control.
However, before the government in a box can be airlifted into Marja, McChrystal has to address a public-relations challenge that deals with bodies in boxes. When his forces called for a heavy hit on a nest of Taliban gunmen on Sunday, the rocket was almost 300 metres off target and as many as 10 people, five of them children, died when a different compound was hit.
Suddenly, all the media briefings about how well the assault on Marja was going sounded like so many that we have heard in eight years in which the Taliban has been a more convincing enemy than the Karzai government has been a convincing ally.
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54 Comments so far
Show AllOne discrepency, Karzai has continually and is currently requesting that the USA negociate peace with the Taliban, even though the Taliban asssassinated his father.
Omar is also willing to negociate for Peace so long as the act of negociating " does not extend the foreigners occupation".
The USA intends to continue to slaughter Afghans until they have dominion over the TAPI pipeline.
I still think Obama's better then John Mc Cain
I know when they tell Obama its an unwinable war theres a small chance he might listen.
Mc Cain would say "Not this Fucking time" and continue it for another 50 YEARS
Obama hasn't listened the "unwinnable war" message to date. Why would he suddenly start listening ????????
The blood on Obama's hands keeps creeping further up his arms.
thats the flaw with the 2 party system.
You have to pick between evil and more evil.
To be fair Bush started this war, I don't agree with Obama's way of handling it, but we all know its FAR easier to START a war then to end it...
Even if obomber is "better" than mc cain that doesnt mean he is good or acceptable, he is just another mass murderer period.
They wont ever tell him any war is unwinable, for their concept of winning is different.... if the war goes on and on and on in their minds they´ll always be "winning".
Meanwhile people suffer and die at the hands of the cowardly usa military whose "soldiers" (mercenaries more likely) are paid to eliminate not only fellow humans but also their own conscience.
This Australian writer has defined the central fallacy of the military strategy for prevailing over the Taliban in Afghanistan: the "seize and hold" strategy. The seizing part loses all meaning when the enemy simply fades away, to return again another day. Ah yes, but the difference this time from the last time Marjah was "seized": would-be returnees are confronted with the "government in a box" that was delivered to Mudville, where mighty McCrystle will not this time strike out. Problem is: that "government" is a figment of the General's wishful thinking. Either it's the "government" of Hamid Karzai, sitting in Kabul and castigating NATO for assaults just like this one; or its a magically fabricated American one, with functionaries trained and paid from the never-empty coffers of the Uncle Moneybags known as the United States. In whichever of these boxes the "hold" merchandise is to be delivered, it won't work, the insurgency will leak through its walls, and it probably can't even be returned to Wal Mart for a replacement. Ah the genius of the "war planners" who planned this monstrosity!
And the chief pawn in the box is Governor Mangal, which a previous CD article claimed was a mass raper of little boys.
Is it possible that the Taliban might have studied the American Revolution and be taking their lessons from those rebels who refused to 'fight fair' in accordance with the established imperial rules.
Up the rebels! Down with the tyrant! -- Oops, sorry. Like all other human activities, rebellion against imperial tyranny is only good when Americans do it.
RV: yes, I suspect they did study the American revolution and any number of other "guerilla" operations that frustrated the dominance of those who expected insurgents to "stand and fight" and carry out real battles just like they do in the war novels and movies: you know they way they did it on Omaha Beach or the Battle of Bulge: now that's REAL war, that's wrong with you guys? Imagine, a "counter-insurgency" operation that doesn't even understand the nature of an insurgency!
You guys must be kidding, right? Over 2300 years ago, the people of Afghanistan stood up to and defeated one on the greatest fighting forces (relative to his time) ever assembled--Alexander the Great. They kicked his ass.
Twice in the 19th century, the mighty army of the British Empire invaded Afghanistan, and twice it got defeated. In between those two invasions, there were others that met the same fate.
In the 20th century, the mighty Red Army (that kicked Hitler's butt, period, regardess of US and British lies) got booted out of Afghanistan, and now the most powerful military force ever assembled is realizing that it will have to do like the rest, and get the fuck out.
Compared to most of those invasions, the US civil war was a family bitch slap. For the Afghans to 'study' that, would be like Peyton Manning 'studying' a grade-school flag football team. Get serious.
getreal: Because we don't happen to use the same examples as you of successful insurgencies doesn't mean we have to "get serious." I couldn't be more serious if you added a hundred other examples of the same point.
Actually I read some where the favourite book over there was Gen Yap's memoirs.
The story of how he defeated the French at Dien Bien Phew. Same story line though..
It's all lies and spin, all of it. An economy of death and bullshit, supply and demand. Violence is our only commodity now.
It will end someday.
"....standard Taliban MO - to melt away, to regroup to fight in another time, in another place."
Straight out of Mao Zedong's playbook: "When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue."
Mao Zedong pilfered that from Sun Tzu's 'Art of War'. Which is supposedly still used as a standard text in West Point.
Too bad they don't seem to have learned a damn thing from it.
Deja vu all over again. The Taliban are native Afghans. We are seen as FOREIGN invaders. When will learn that imperial wars against native people are not winnable.
Imperial wars are winnable provided you know what you want, and you know what you are doing, and you have the means to do it.
The USA lacks all three elements, especially the second.
And the Romans, for example, may have lied to others as they often claimed they were there to "liberate" the new territories, but they never lied to themselves.
When will they ever learn? When hell freezes over (a result of global warming, no doubt).
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
To refer to the U.S. as following the "Roman model" of enforcing our so-called civilization to the ends of the earth is an insult to the effectiveness and military efficiency of the Romans who were actually talented at spreading military empire and whose so-called civilization lasted well over 1100 years. Our form of global empire is spread first by economic hit men who are reinforced by, first, CIA economic and political subversion, assassination of specific rulers or presidents, and lastly by outright military invasion if certain regimes won't comply with our corporations' resource and market price goals.
The Romans would sometimes first offer a given country's ruler the economic and "national security" benefits of protection under the imperial defense umbrella and then invade directly if the offer was refused. More often they just invaded. But the Romans would immediately co-opt the merchant and ruling classes by making all the important movers & shakers full fledged Roman citizens with all accompanying rights to use secure trade routes and make court appeals (all the way to the emperor if necessary). The Romans would actually make civic improvements like building roads and insuring adequate clean water supplies with aqueducts as well as constructing other civil infrastructure. The Romans tended to generally improve the knowledge of medicine and the education of the foreign ruling elites and merchant classes whom they conquered with a few exceptions.
Contrast that with Bush II's Amurka and our "shock & awe" destruction of civil infrastructure in Iraq and parts of Afghanistan (that hadn't already been blasted to rubble in the preceding 20 years prior to 2001); the fact that the U.S. invoked laws not to extend U.S. citizenship or legal protections to Iraqis or Afghans but to place mercenary armies ABOVE Iraqi and Afghan law; Team Bush's radical "economic shock therapy" to Iraqi markets throwing them wide open to foreign imports while the war was still raging with insecure borders, and the fact that every time our attention is drawn elsewhere, the old ethnic and sectarian enmities in Iraq flare up and keep providing the Pentagon with excuses to stay there in force.
Compared to the Romans our record overseas since WWII is a tragicomedy at best.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
There are plenty of dissimilarities in consequences as well and as regards how "final" they have been.
Can't agree.
Your record in Canada is much more benign.. ah what does our fearles liberal leader Iggy call it... Empire Lite! (Machiavelli would be proud!)
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Please specify what you are talking about.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Get rid of this McChrystal guy and pull out of Afghanistan!
(don't even ask why we're there--it makes no sense.)
Surge, Mr. Obsma, is as senseless as the rest of your Wall Street and Pentagon approach is.
Dr Wu, as to why we are in Afghanistan. The US Geological people camped out there for a few years have disclosed a mineral and oil reserve worth over a trillion dollars. Next question.
I have read of that sometime ago -- but it's vague in my memory what the details were. but one thing seems certain:
that Afghanistan and pakistan are rich in COPPER - and maybe one can presume it ought to be rich in other minerals too. already this seems borne out by the fact that china has taken risks to invest in copper -- in afghanistan (as copper seems to be an important mineral in china's domestic economy...or seemed to always have been and maybe this was long the case for centuries).
but of course, another reason is that taking Afghanistan or/and pakistan basically "completes" the USA/NATO "encirclement" or "isolation" of China and Iran and of course Russia...and can become a US staging point for future "scenarios" right into those three countries.
Lumping the popular national resistance in Afghanistan as Taliban is very disingenuous to say the least. The more atrocities the US and its assorted NATO puppets commit the greater the resistance. The French in 1960's employed similar propaganda sweeps against the FLN freedom fighters in Algeria to no avail. Vietnam went through similar pacification delusions until the NVA rolled their T-55s into the Saigon presidential palace in 1975. Karzai will fare no better. This whole charade in Helmand will end up costing the strapped US taxpayer billions more while having zero impact on ground realities in Afghanistan. It is time rational people everywhere speak out against these idiotic delusions of grandeur.
This is all Theater for the folks back home who are being plundered by the Merchants of Death.
Another Nobel Cause for our Noble Peace Prize president. Dead women and children and all.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
We've seen this pointless bloody shell game before in Iraq where U.S. forces would have to take and re-take and re-take a city because of insufficient troop strength and a wary circling enemy.
But, soft, what distant rumor of more excuses to stay longer in Iraq (that will also be copied in Afghanistan, no doubt) doth I hear?
Back in Iraq - Ethnic Cleansing of Christians and More Civilians Killed.
http://firedoglake.com/2010/02/14/back-in-iraq-ethnic-cleansing-and-more-civilians-killed/
Damn, this is all straight out of Orwell's '1984'.
We are winning blah blah blah.
We will conquer blah blah blah
We will continue blah blah blah
We are the greatest blah blah blah
Our allies eurasia blah blah blah
Stay tuned to the ministry of truth's blah blah blah
It's all in day's war.
No one does something for nothing.
The Al Qaeda threat has targeted the USA but they are now largely a pirated brand-name used because Osama bin Ladin bloodies the USA and it as a word has magic power.
The Taliban is not a political organization but means "fundamentalist reaction to modernity" and is not a threat to the USA, and is actually often MILDER than the Wahabist Saudis.
And just selling weapons, although nice, ain't enough.
Why is this huge pinchers movement being done regardless of popular or academic opinion?
WHO IS GETTING WHAT out of this. It can't be just policy inertia.
--
“the ancient destructive urges in, us, that grow more deadly as our populations approach in size and complexity those of ancient Mars. Every war crisis, witch-hunt, race riot and purge…is a reminder and warning. We are the Martians. If we cannot control the inheritance within us…this will be their second dead planet!”
quote: Dr. Bernard Quatermass of the The British Experimental Rocket Group
The BBC TV serial miniseries version of "Quatermass and the Pit" 1957.
there are allegations that the Bush Administration declared war in Afghanistan, not necessarily to combat terrorism, but to make it possible for U.S. oil interests to construct gas and oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to Pakistani harbors on the Indian Ocean. The first phase, now accomplish, was to install a friendly "puppet" regime in Kabul.
"When [McChrysal's] forces called for a heavy hit on a nest of Taliban gunmen on Sunday, the rocket was almost 300 metres off target and as many as 10 people, FIVE OF THEM CHILDREN, died when a different compound was hit.
This is what gets me every time.
One has to be brain dead and heart dead to enthuse about going to war for some nebulous end.
I have the kind of brain that immediately translates that upper-case portion of the quoted paragraph into vivid images and sounds and memories of my own children when they were so young and vulnerable. I know how I felt when a child of mine was threatened by something or someone. To imagine their little bodies bloodied and dead in my arms is a nightmare image. Think of the parents of these children ... so many of them in so many parts of the world.
What the hell are we doing again and again and again?
Take a look at a picture of the audience at the president's State of the Union address. That audience is predominantly prune faced, middle-aged to old white men with green-back-lined pockets, who dither around with their self-importance and phoniness, and many have no problem being destructive for the sake of being destructive to potential legislation that might truly help the people of the country they represent.
They also have no problem sending young, mostly poor, people off to these foreign wars for filthy lucre when the vast majority of these old farts have never set foot on a battlefield or served at a time of war.
To be fair, the worst examples for me are the women, such as Sarah Palin and her adoring female followers who are out for blood. Sarah's eyes glitter, but there is nothing in them or behind them, and I don't think, with her bizarre interpretations of Christianity and the clear teachings of her Savior, she would have any problem initiating massive bombing attacks on those who follow Islam, including the children.
Where are we in this deformed and crippled country of ours that rots from the inside out and contaminates The People, so many of whom who have lost their moorings or maybe never understood and still do not understand what those moorings, those principles, are?
In the meantime, the beat -- the beatings and the bombings -- goes on.
/cm
Cee Miracles -- you are a miracle of a person. :-).
but if you need to see the actual photos of those children ...you can try Antiwar.com..and other sites...
US Tax Dollars at work.
Teddy,
I'll speak for my friend.
She is not in any way being poetic.
She, as I, not only see the ripped flesh,
we hear the scream, twist in their
horror, smell the burnt flesh.
Our mind is alive, photos are dead,
as is America, by and large.
Is it that you can not also feel?
Or is it that you choose not to?
i have no idea what you are trying to insinuate. i was admiring CEE Miracles actually. and simply pointed out that - in contrast to not seeing too many of the pictures here of the consequences of these bombings - Antiwar often puts them up.
I can simply tell you this:
i grew up in a province where dead bodies due to bombings or battles were not so uncommon...sometimes with headless corpses.
it does not mean I have no feelings. on the contrary - it means I KNOW what it LOOKS like and how horrific it is. and I KNOW what my own dead brother looked like as a result of dying by Torture under the Regime of the dictator Marcos in the philippines .
I do not rely on IMAGINING them - i HAVE seen them.
many haven't,
in America, teddy.
peace.
"He did not offer a third option which has been standard Taliban MO - to melt away, to regroup to fight in another time, in another place."
Yes, and that used to be called guerilla warfare. It's a standard tactic of that type of war. It was used by the Vietcong and, before that, by Mao Zedong in his war agsinst Chiang Kai-shek. The Taliban probably have read Mao's writings on guerilla war.
It was also used by General George Washington against the British and probably hundreds of times before. Interesting that all these generals don't seem to know that. Why do they still have jobs?!
Because they all say "yes sir", iron their underwear every morning and go to church every Sunday. Original thinkers need not apply.
Yes. Mao Zedong was not an original thinker. He studied Sun Tzu. His opponents wasted their time on Clausewits.
Greetings from xglampf and rglorpf who watch the earth from afar
We don't understand the map heading. Why don't the NATO forces just grow their own opium poppies someplace else? How hard could it be?
Your war? When you watch your dog fighting seagulls on the beach, don't you sort of start to catch on? We get sound bites from McChrystal and Obama and many others about the Afghan situation. Our translators are having some trouble with these statements. Our best guess as to their meaning is: "bark bark bark bark bark!"
rglorpf and I are avid war buffs. We can sit and watch other creatures duke it out hoof claw and tentacle all day long. Your war on terror sounds especially exciting. Will it be starting soon?
@+
x&r
It interesting to note that in other articles , while there no where near the Number of Taliban that were expected, fighting is described as intense and US marines were forced to retreat twice from the Market Square in Marjah due to enemy fire.
The US then called on helicopter and Airstrikes on these unseen targets.
Yet the Taliban are outnumbered by 100 to one and facing the "finest Military" and the "best trained soldiers in the History of Man" in the form of the US Military.
Seperating the hype , sloganeering and "Advertising" from the facts will prove difficult.
here it's easy:
it is all hype. there.
the goal is to impress
and motivate the subjects.
i'm not impressed, are you?
I don't know if anyone else is as nauseated as I am by stories like this by our embedded 'lap dog' KAs.
U.S. Marine Walks Away From Shot to Helmet in Afghanistan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703562404575067550355712126.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular
Not any in depth reporting about the grief caused by the 25 or so non-combatants inadvertently murdered as 'collateral damage'.
But I guess, we told'em to stay inside so we could bomb'em.
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
MARJAH, Afghanistan—It is hard to know whether Monday was a very bad day or a very good day for Lance Cpl. Andrew Koenig.
On the one hand, he was shot in the head. On the other, the bullet bounced off him.
In one of those rare battlefield miracles, an insurgent sniper hit Lance Cpl. Koenig dead on in the front of his helmet, and he walked away from it with a smile on his face.
View Full Image
BULLET
Bryan Denton for the Wall Street Journal
Lance Cpl. Andrew Koenig shows the spot on his helmet where a Taliban bullet struck, almost centered, between the eyes.
BULLET
BULLET
"I don't think I could be any luckier than this," Lance Cpl. Koenig said two hours after the shooting.
Lance Cpl. Koenig's brush with death came during a day of intense fighting for the Marines of Company B, 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment.
The company had landed by helicopter in the predawn dark on Saturday, launching a major coalition offensive to take Marjah from the Taliban.
The Marines set up an outpost in a former drug lab and roadside-bomb factory and soon found themselves under near-constant attack.
Lance Cpl. Koenig, a lanky 21-year-old with jug-handle ears and a burr of sandy hair, is a designated marksman. His job is to hit the elusive Taliban fighters hiding in the tightly packed neighborhood near the base.
The insurgent sniper hit him first. The Casper, Wyo., native was kneeling on the roof of the one-story outpost, looking for targets.
He was reaching back to his left for his rifle when the sniper's round slammed into his helmet.
The impact knocked him onto his back.
"I'm hit," he yelled to his buddy, Lance Cpl. Scott Gabrian, a 21-year-old from St. Louis.
Lance Cpl. Gabrian belly-crawled along the rooftop to his friend's side. He patted Lance Cpl. Koenig's body, looking for wounds.
Then he noticed that the plate that usually secures night-vision goggles to the front of Lance Cpl. Koenig's helmet was missing. In its place was a thumb-deep dent in the hard Kevlar shell.
Lance Cpl. Gabrian slid his hands under his friend's helmet, looking for an entry wound. "You're not bleeding," he assured Lance Cpl. Koenig. "You're going to be OK."
View Slideshow
[SB126626513766546365]
Bryan Denton for The Wall Street Journal
Marines took cover after coming under attack during the Marjah offensive Monday.
Lance Cpl. Koenig climbed down the metal ladder and walked to the company aid station to see the Navy corpsman.
The only injury: A small, numb red welt on his forehead, just above his right eye.
He had spent 15 minutes with Doc, as the Marines call the medics, when an insurgent's rocket-propelled grenade exploded on the rooftop, next to Lance Cpl. Gabrian.
The shock wave left him with a concussion and hearing loss.
He joined Lance Cpl. Koenig at the aid station, where the two friends embraced, their eyes welling.
The men had served together in Afghanistan in 2008, and Lance Cpl. Koenig had survived two blasts from roadside bombs.
"We've got each other's backs," Lance Cpl. Gabrian said, the explosion still ringing in his ears.
Word of Lance Cpl. Koenig's close call spread quickly through the outpost, as he emerged from the shock of the experience and walked through the outpost with a Cheshire cat grin.
"He's alive for a reason," Tim Coderre, a North Carolina narcotics detective working with the Marines as a consultant, told one of the men. "From a spiritual point of view, that doesn't happen by accident."
Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Shelton, whose job is to keep the Marines stocked with food, water and gear, teased the lance corporal for failing to take care of his helmet.
"I need that damaged-gear statement tonight," Gunnery Sgt. Shelton told Lance Cpl. Koenig. It was understood, however, that Lance Cpl. Koenig would be allowed to keep the helmet as a souvenir.
Gunnery Sgt. Shelton, a 36-year-old veteran from Nashville, said he had never seen a Marine survive a direct shot to the head.
But next to him was Cpl. Christopher Ahrens, who quietly mentioned that two bullets had grazed his helmet the day the Marines attacked Marjah. The same thing, he said, happened to him three times in firefights in Iraq.
Cpl. Ahrens, 26, from Havre de Grace, Md., lifted the camouflaged cloth cover on his helmet, exposing the holes where the bullets had entered and exited.
He turned it over to display the picture card tucked inside, depicting Michael the Archangel stamping on Lucifer's head. "I don't need luck," he said.
After his moment with Lance Cpl. Gabrian, Lance Cpl. Koenig put his dented helmet back on his head and climbed the metal ladder to resume his rooftop duty within an hour of being hit.
"I know any one of these guys would do the same," he explained. "If they could keep going, they would."
Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com
"He's alive for a reason," Tim Coderre, a North Carolina narcotics detective working with the Marines as a consultant, told one of the men. "From a spiritual point of view, that doesn't happen by accident."
Oh, so when the Afghan little children are killed, somehow they are spiritually undeserving? or "their" God doesn't care about them?
You're right, Curmudgeon99, this is a saccharine, rah-rah piece for the Home Front that for this bogus "war" is as disgusting as it gets, although I'm glad for the young soldier and his family back home that part of his brain was not blown away, and he was killed or perhaps worse, was sent home as a vegetable. He doesn't know any better; otherwise, he wouldn't be there in the first place.
Just think, Lance Cpl. Andrew Koenig was born around 1988-89 at the beginning of Desert Storm, the romantic name for our decimation of the raggedy Iraqi army, and George W.H. Bush was president, and sanctions were put in place, and eventually 500,000 to 600,000 Iraqi children died from malnutrition and disease.
And from there he may have picked up in school that the next president named Bill Clinton got impeached for lying about sexual play with a young female aide in the White House pantry off the Oval office. And then he would have learned that the next president named George W. Bush, was the son of George H.W. Bush, and he had a ranch and cut up brush with a chain saw and wore cowboy hats and talked tough, and then some very bad people called Muslims flew planes into big buildings in New York City and killed a lot of Americans, and after that it's been war, war, war to kill more of these bad people who are called Terrorists, and they are fanatics, who if they are not stopped will come over here and kill us, U.S. citizens.
I don't imagine he learned much more about current events, other than Katrina in New Orleans, and the heavy news coverage stories of the scandals about and pecadillos of music, film, and sports celebrities. In school, he learned the basics, as above, about the presidents, but likely nothing was explicitly discussed about the reason president clinton was impeached.
He may be in the army because he couldn't get a job, and he knows there's something going wrong with the economy.
But aside from those very basics, he likely doesn't know much more. He certainly doesn't know that he's the cannon fodder of his generation, and he's where he is to secure territory so some very rich people can cash in on pipelines being built on Afghan territory in the north because those pipelines will be conveying oil and gas for export and profits for some mega-corporations.
Maybe if he lives long enough, he may get to understand that, not think about that too much, or if he's severely injured and he's achieved a certain level of knowledge about why he's there with the inevitable cynicism about it, Lance Cpl.Andrew Koenig will be an angry man for a long time to come and maybe for the rest of his life.
And I suppose, the very young soldiers who are in Afghanistan are entitled to feel-good stories because they just walked into hell to inflict some more hell, and they don't quite know that yet.
what's it gonna' take?
peace, cm
"what's it gonna' take?"
i don't know cee, and an infowar isn't the answer either.
since leaving the ashram of jerry's place, i've been more
in the "prepare for war here" crowd.
being not-two, war has always been here, ya know?
beautiful to see you again, here and now. peace two :-)
Is a pattern about to emerge in which following a months long propaganda campaign (replete with retired generals & admirals making like military experts on MSM) that highlights some Taliban controlled area that's about to be "liberated" by U.S. supported Afghan soldiers, whereby the Taliban are to be given two choices, fight and die or surrender, after which the area is to be transformed into a model village of prosperity and contentment? Except it looks like the only people who are going to die are women and children? So what will the ever popular generals McChrystal & Petreaus do, call the "battle" a big Win and proceed to hand out medals to all the troops, then pick out another Taliban controlled town for "liberation", rev-up the PR, send in the troops to kill a few more women and children, then repeat again and again, each time doing the same thing and expecting the outcome to be different (the definition of insanity)? And how many "Wins" before, back in the homeland, doubt sets in as to the nature of a war in which the only casualties are women and children?
The best way to defeat the Talibums is to back off militarily and offer a cease fire in exchange for medical and social help for all Afghan women (and their children).
That's their weak spot. The Talibums treat women like crap and women are at least half of the population.
The reason that USAcorp can't use this wedge is because USAcorp is just as backward and bigoted as the Talibums that they oppose. Talibaptists and Talibangelists won't help poor people or oppressed women any more than the Taliban will.
Gee,
According to the Pat Tillman book, we are fighting ourselves over there. Explains why (the author of "Where Men Seek Glory" says) we have a forty percent friendly fire causality rate. Unfortunately, USArmy bullets fragged Pat before he could get back here and blow the whistle on this crap.
Guess who loans money for most of these Vietnam-type goat-rope wars? Kellogg Brown and Root the old bushmonkey family bank. Just like the Federal Reserve Bank it's board is wall-to-wall Skull and Bones men.
We can't stop the wars if we don't go after the banks who caused them.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson