I just came across this blog of an American military guy that the Pentagon has not yet shut down called "Army of Dude."
Here are some choice entries:
Stupid Shit of The Deployment Awards!
Working with 1920s
— A Sunni insurgent group we’ve been battling for months, responsible
for the death of my friend and numerous attacks, agreed to fight Al
Qaeda alongside us. Since then, they’ve grown into a much more
organized, lethal force. They use this organization to steal cars and
intimidate and torture the local population, or anyone they accuse of
being linked to Al Qaeda. The Gestapo of the 21st century, sanctioned
by the United States Army.
The Surge — The
beefing up of ground forces in Iraq at the beginning of the year,
started by the 82nd Airborne. Unit deployments were moved up several
months to maintain a higher level of boots on the ground to quell the
Baghdad situation. What most don’t realize is the amount of actual
fighting troops in a brigade, something in the area of 2,000 soldiers
in a brigade of 5,000 depending on what unit it is. So for every 2,000
fighters, there are 3,000 pencil pushers sucking up resources in every
brigade that was surged. A logistical nightmare that, surprise, failed
miserably. The increase of troops in Baghdad pushed the insurgents to
rural areas (like Diyala), hence our move here in March. The surge was
nothing more than a thorn in the side of nomadic fighters having to
move thirty five miles while the generals watched Baghdad with stubborn
eyes.
This occupation, this money pit, this smorgasbord of superfluous
aggression is getting more hopeless and dismal by the second. It’s
maddening to think that more than a year’s worth of blood, sweat and
tears will lead to little more than a pat on the back and a hideously
redundant speech from someone who did none of the bleeding, sweating or
crying.Despite being in a meaningless situation, my life has
never had this much meaning. I watch the backs of my friends and they
do the same for me. I’ve killed to protect them, and they’ve killed to
protect me. For friends and family, being deployed is like being
pregnant or surviving a car wreck; everyone is nice to you all of a
sudden. People I don’t even know send me kind words and packages from
all over. They came out of the woodwork knowing my plight and shared
with me heartfelt hope and luck.The fact that you’re reading this now,
dear reader, is a testament to that. Would you have cared about what I
thought, felt or did two years ago? This position I’m in, shared by
less than one percent of the U.S. population, has given me the distinct
privilege of sharing my experiences and ruminations of this war,
observations undiluted by perpetually delirious officials like General
Petreaus and mainstream media sirens. I have felt every extreme of the
human condition, physically, morally and emotionally. I’ve never
laughed so hard, cried so long or felt more ashamed of myself in all of
my life. In a matter of weeks it’ll be over, and I’ll have just the
memories of enduring 130 degree heat, and poker games lasting well into
the night.I’ll look back on the hysterical laughter during fifteen
hour Baghdad clears, the terror of being pinned down by machine gun
fire, the sight of a Stryker on its side and the unfolding of a body
bag under the flames of a nearby school, unzipped tenderly to fit the
body of Chevy as RPGs screamed overhead. Soon this place will all be in
the past.
The Enemy of My Enemy of My Enemy of My Enemy…
Fourteen months into this deployment and things are taking a turn for the surreal.
Throughout Mosul and Baghdad, we were fighting what could best described as an insurgent cocktail: parts of Islamic State of Iraq, Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, 1920 Revolution Brigade and simple, pissed off farmers. Shia and Sunni. Organized militias and rag tags. All they had in common was a shared goal: a total withdraw of occupational forces.
This seems like a blogger in the field that The New Republic should have hired — or at least added to its team.
12 comments on “In the Twilight of His Deployment”