If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
-- Sun Tzu
I am in a Signal unit. That means our mission is to provide all / any communications to other units and bases. We are not intended to engage the enemy. But we convoy.
We must convoy from base to base to take supplies, operational materials, and to repair things. That is my job, I am in charge of a C&E (Communications & Electronics) team. I volunteered to be on a convoy team for many reasons, but operationally it makes good sense to have a C&E rep present as much as possible.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, it dawned on me recently that my attitude is more of an infantry soldier. I don't fear being outside the protective bounds of the FOBs. I don't fear interaction with the locals. I do fear ignorance, indecision, and the fear of other soldiers. I want to face the situations and know my threats. This became clear to me during the Anaconda convoy when I interacted with 'Fish Man'.
Understand that we had been trained repeatedly and extensively how to engage the enemy, what drills to do when a crisis occurred, how to realize that when you are off base you are vulnerable. A healthy dose of paranoia keeps us all alive, or does it. I realized right when some other soldier on the convoy said he would have just shot Fish Man. I can only think it would be fear that would motivate that decision.
A week or so ago, SGT Siler from the Tennessee's 278th was killed in a HMMWV rollover incident. He was the gunner and was crushed by the truck. That is the biggest danger to gunners today. I lived right across from him when we first arrived. There is now a memorial to him outside his CHU. I walked past there today and they added a picture of him. He was sitting, wearing full battle rattle, with 2 Iraqi boys apparently teaching them something he held in his hand. The 278th is responsible for engaging the enemy, clearing roads, and securing the eastern part of Iraq. He showed no fear of being out in the local towns, interacting with the locals and children.
One of our companies was convoying further north. A sergeant was on gunner duty passing through an Iraqi checkpoint. Our sergeant opened fire on an ING (Iraqi National Guard) killing the ING and a civilian that stood nearby. Apparently the ING raised his weapon as our sergeant drove by and it was interpreted as a sign of aggression. I don't know the outcome of the situation, it may still be going on. My point though, is the contrast between the two scenarios.
We fear what we don't know. We react to fear. As a signal unit, we must constantly be mediating that ignorance of our surroundings and the locals because we are not given the opportunity to build the bridges we need to become familiar with them. If we could become familiar, we would stand a better chance of discerning an insurgent from Fish Man. We just keep our heads low, unfortunately, and hope we complete our convoy missions. I fear the ignorance that is innate to our situation, I work to personally overcome that constantly.
I am in a Signal unit. That means our mission is to provide all / any communications to other units and bases. We are not intended to engage the enemy. But we convoy.
We must convoy from base to base to take supplies, operational materials, and to repair things. That is my job, I am in charge of a C&E (Communications & Electronics) team. I volunteered to be on a convoy team for many reasons, but operationally it makes good sense to have a C&E rep present as much as possible.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, it dawned on me recently that my attitude is more of an infantry soldier. I don't fear being outside the protective bounds of the FOBs. I don't fear interaction with the locals. I do fear ignorance, indecision, and the fear of other soldiers. I want to face the situations and know my threats. This became clear to me during the Anaconda convoy when I interacted with 'Fish Man'.
Understand that we had been trained repeatedly and extensively how to engage the enemy, what drills to do when a crisis occurred, how to realize that when you are off base you are vulnerable. A healthy dose of paranoia keeps us all alive, or does it. I realized right when some other soldier on the convoy said he would have just shot Fish Man. I can only think it would be fear that would motivate that decision.
A week or so ago, SGT Siler from the Tennessee's 278th was killed in a HMMWV rollover incident. He was the gunner and was crushed by the truck. That is the biggest danger to gunners today. I lived right across from him when we first arrived. There is now a memorial to him outside his CHU. I walked past there today and they added a picture of him. He was sitting, wearing full battle rattle, with 2 Iraqi boys apparently teaching them something he held in his hand. The 278th is responsible for engaging the enemy, clearing roads, and securing the eastern part of Iraq. He showed no fear of being out in the local towns, interacting with the locals and children.
One of our companies was convoying further north. A sergeant was on gunner duty passing through an Iraqi checkpoint. Our sergeant opened fire on an ING (Iraqi National Guard) killing the ING and a civilian that stood nearby. Apparently the ING raised his weapon as our sergeant drove by and it was interpreted as a sign of aggression. I don't know the outcome of the situation, it may still be going on. My point though, is the contrast between the two scenarios.
We fear what we don't know. We react to fear. As a signal unit, we must constantly be mediating that ignorance of our surroundings and the locals because we are not given the opportunity to build the bridges we need to become familiar with them. If we could become familiar, we would stand a better chance of discerning an insurgent from Fish Man. We just keep our heads low, unfortunately, and hope we complete our convoy missions. I fear the ignorance that is innate to our situation, I work to personally overcome that constantly.
posted by Dorman at 03:38
19 Comments:
OMG. Don't tell me you've delved past the first layer of my pysche. I thought we were supposed to be diametrically opposed on everything? Really, I am glad to be able to be understood to a better degree.
I do hate insurgents,always will. Still have no better way to distinguish between insurgents and civilians. Still believe what turns one into the other is as little as $1. I am not changing my tune, just fine tuning my view.
But to clarify, I am constantly striving to overcome ignorance at all levels in all situations. The gulf in this situation is not within me, I am within it.
I agree with you that we need to understand our foe better as a whole. But then it wouldn't be backdoor imperialism then would it? I have made sveeral points about the media and the truckloads of shit they feed the sheep of America, hoping that the astute citizens would be able to overcome that mindset and make the right things happen. There are movements started with that intent. I put up a new linkcalled Operation Truth. I encourage everyone to check it out and get involved. I am not alone.
As for humanitarian involvement here, please,let's get real. What level of expectation are we working at? What is the goal here? What can you expect froma society based in the stone age, juxtaposed with fairly modern cities like Baghdad? Are we expecting to suddenly bring the whole of rural iraq into the industrial or information age? Not realistic. So we need to allow SOVEREIGNTY take hold and let these people have their land and do whatever it is they will do with it. basically out of respect and common sense.
I also fear trigger happy soldiers motivated by fear. Friendly fire accidents happen because of people like that too.
And, finally, give me my props. Tell me that you are truly proud of me for not killing Fish Man....you know you are ;)
I remember not so long ago you were portrayed as a Muslim hating, Iraqi killing machine. Looks like all this blogging is softening you up a little;)
The article you referenced rips my heart out. I hate reading about kids that lose their mom's & dad's due to this damn conflict.
Stay safe!
Well, there are more layers to me than one assumes apparently. I am an Iraqi hating muslim killing machine. More accurately an Islam hating insurgent killing machine. Only when I have to be, only when the privelege arises. That's my job. I don't back down from that just because I can see the other side. Not all of them have succumbed to the evils of islam yet.
But really. I haven't changed my opinions. I just love kids.
2 very quick things.
1) I hate Islam because it is a factor. Way to obvious and blatant for me to ignore it, still surprise how the rest of the world does, maybe it is fear since that islamic mindset is so far spread. Refer to The Hitchhiker's Guide for how it is a factor. I didn't trust Fish Man because he was most likely muslim, and not a soldier of either army. Had a hindu walked up to me, would have been a different story. It is just a factor.
2) Insurgents exist because WE do. Circular argument pushed oin us all by our gov't to justify our presence. Al-Qaida In Iraq did not exist before we were here for a year.
no bait. warm fuzzies.
We really shouldn't be afraid of the Iraqis. I was in OIF 1 when the war was actually going on. I had the honor of "parading" through the streets of Baghdad; actually the unit I was supporting only went through Baghdad to get to our next location. The reason I used parading is because the whole city was on the streets celebrating and cheering.
I don't remember if I posted this before but, a good 80% of the people actually like or are indifferent to us being here. The insurgents are the people who use to be in power, and were benefiting when Saddam was in power. There are three groups in Iraq: The Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds. The Shiites make up the majority of the population; they were the ones who were oppressed during Saddams reign they lived more in the southern areas of Iraq. The Sunnis are what we are fighting. The Kurds want their land back, which happens to be where the oil is located. They make up the minority in Iraq. The Sunnis and the Kurds had the power and the money.
Statistically only 5% of the attacks are a result of religious fanatics. The Sunnis and Kurds are hiring people locals and foreigners to fight for them. They pay locals a lot of money to strap bombs to them and to dig the holes that the insurgents put the IEDs in. They hire foreigners I.E. Russians, Syrians etc. to fight and to train them how to shoot and develop some sort of tactics and to show them how to develop more complex IEDs.
Most people won’t know this but during the war 264 people who died on our side (more than half died in accidents). We killed 50,000 of their army personnel. I had the privilege of supporting the supply general of OIF 1.
My point is it’s not the Iraqis as a whole that we have a fight with. I do believe that the US is doing a good thing for a change regardless of our intentions. Operation Iraqi Freedom may have been a cover up for our initial intentions when we got here; it does me good to see that we have affected something in a positive way. Insurgents do exist because we do, that is because we took away the power that they were accustomed to having.
I understand you have a job to do but as a civilian I can only feel for the innocent victims who get in the way.
Let's hope things don't go on for much longer.
All the best
I'm am thankful that you were able to remain level headed and not take the fish guy out. I don't know that I would have been able to do the same...you know I'm easily excitable. I think, as with all cultures, we interact differently. That is important information to know whether you are visiting a foreign country or fighting a war there. To hate simply because of those differences is inappropriate. Do you really believe you can say you "hate Islam" in a general way? You would never like anyone that is a Muslim?
It seems that the humanitarian efforts need to remain separate from those efforts going on in "the battlefield". If you don't I would imagine the casualties would be greater.
For a group of people that were kept under the thumb of their leader for many years, how were they to develop beyond anything but a stone age way of living? Moving beyond that would have been a huge threat to those in power and there surely would have been more murders at the hands of the government.
Pedophilia.
What's your reaction to that way of thinking?
Satan Worship.
Again, your reaction?
Paganism.
My point is this that several of you have seemed to miss. I HATE ISLAM. I hate its effects, its use, its veiled annihilistic teachings. But islam is not muslims. I don't believe I ever said I hated all muslims. I hate what they do in the name of islam. I figure this is a basic concept. But back to the nazi thing, how a flip flop in opinion changes when discussing that group. Islam is the fuel, like nazism was.
Humanitarian efforts should be done by the UN or greenpeace. What the heck do they do anyway?
Here's some info for you all on the 'humanitarian efforts of the millitary'.....we will beginning an operation called Flintlock '05 to Niger. Look it up. Green Berets in a preemptive peacekeeping mission. Sounds strangely inappropriate, but I don't make those decisions.
Wow! Thank you for joining the fray. I appreciate your point of view, too. I agree mostly except for circumstances that I am in that make my views different than if I was sitting civilian at home. Beautiful run-on sentence there. I don't think these folks, insurgents or not, deserve our pity. Pity is a dangerous state of mind to have when dealing with any type of enemy. Pity is condescending. I agree the insurgents may be doing it out of fear, but let's look at the facts (or as close to facts as we can get). They don't call themselves the Islamic Army by accident. Or the other group, the Mujahadeen, which means muslim holy warrior. They name themselves, so what do you think their motivation is based on then?
As for the basis and scope of my hate, please look here. It has been discussed at length. Hate in my position is necessary, you can't pull the trigger when you feel anything but. Someday I may need to do that, indecision is death.
I have friends of many different faiths too, even muslims, but the islam factor remains. People in nthe army convert and grenade command tents, no coincidence. Dining facilities are bombed, what is the commonality? Islam. They tell us this constantly, it is us who deny it. Why?
(I feel a little funny, the first several times I read your post, I missed the last 'l' in your name)
Crys, she accomplishes all that with you in one post and I have been tryin g for months now. No fair. Remember this too, we can educate ourselves all we want, but who needs it more? It is they who need to know that the whole world doesn't behave like they think it should. We can understand them all we want, but that won't change *their* minds.
I am warm and fuzzy all over, really. Besides this conversation, I have a fever and a sinus infection. :)
I guess I should restate this once more for clarity because I think we are all circling the drain of understanding. I hate Islam. I do not prejudicially hate muslims. Hate the sin, love the sinner sort of thing. That is why I can have friends who are (unfortunately) muslim. I have said before to many people that Islam is the seed, the platform, the common flaw. Islam and muslims are very very different here than in TX or PA. There, islam is more of just a belief. Here it is infused with politics and culture. There is no religion or politics here, it is all mixed into one homogenous mix. That is why it is dangerous.
InterstellarLass, you are right about the madmen but wrong about their numbers. That is why I find it hard to call these people 'extremists' because they don't represent a fringe, they represent a large portion. Look at Palestine where 10,000 people turn out to volunteer for suicide missions. No joke. Islam is used to teach these people to send their kids to martyrdom. There was a recent article in the NCO Journal, which stated there are increased numbers of women volunteering, banding together to form militias, because of Islam. No other reason, they want the rewards of the religion. They send their children to die and are shamed when they are only injured. See if there is an online version of this magazine, an eye opening read.
So, for all the talk about my hatred, I hope I have raised some awareness of why we soldiers, many not all, feel frustration about our situation. We see it as Islam, as was Nazism, being the problem, the vehicle for violence. Once the thought process can be stopped, the violence will follow. I am not alone in what I have said, many soldier read this blog and agree. I just have the ability to put it into words better than some.
The solution, IMHO, is sovereignty. That is generally my foreign policy. Let nations do whatever they want within their borders. Humanitarian violations? Send in Green Peace or Amnesty International, or the UN. Any organization purposed to do that job.
I really am happy right now. Thank you both for making this blog worthwhile.
Oh, actually thank you all who read and post here. Didn't mean to leave you out :)
I swear, I must have the most intelligent readers that the blogsphere has ever seen. You all rock!
Now some things to point out. There are many nations that are sovereign and do things other countries don't like, many are inhumane. Sure, as a human, I think something should be done to help those folks, but it is not military action.
Saddam was elected. They just couldn't get rid of him after he was in office.
Many, namely Sunni muslims, liked Saddam, backed him, didn't want him gone. Not every Iraqi was repressed, oppressed, or depressed. (Sorry, the medicine is making me talk like Don King now).
Internal genocide pretty much ceased with the first Gulf War...along with possession of WMDs.
I asked before, not rhetorically, what really has been done here for reconstruction. Some schools have been built. Some small electric plants and maybe some water processing plants. But literally, 80% of this country is rural and stone age. I think every voting American should hold our government accountable or disclosing the goals and progress.
and lastly, Crys, why not hate the sin and love the sinner. Or more secularly; hate the act and love the actor.
Michael Yon has an enviable position IMHO. I would switch with him in a minute. Reading his blog makes me feel like he also sees what I have seen, and more, more of what I and the world need to see.
And there are the validations to my position that Islam is the dangerous factor, that no matter how we try to spin it, Islam is what we need to overcome simply because it is the motivator and perspective of our enemy. In his article, Killing for God the evidence is again overwhelming to the point of not understanding how people refuse to accept this obvious fact.
We must attack how the message and use of Islam is spread to break the cycle. Otherwise, we will be killing an almost endless string of Islamic martyrs.
11. I WANT TO BE...
emphasis on WANT. Yes, those comments were for me, so send me fudge :) Remember a long while back I made the comment that I am a hopeless romantic. A currently unrequited, lonely, romantic. One without fudge.
You can send certain foods, nothing perishable, as long as they are properly contained. Gobstoppers are a favorite :)
And thanks for the vote of confidence on the 11. B thing. Time will tell.
You feeling better yet? My fever finally broke today.
I like this quote a lot better by Sun Tzu "Winning 100 battles out of 100 battles is outstanding, but to subjugate your enemy without firing a single shot is a true sign of excellence"
Baker, nice quote, wish it applied.
Crys. Long personal story that I am not comfortable discussing on my blog, email me sometime if you want to know the scoop.
I got ya, but I wasn't directly equating islam with sin and muslims with sinners. Just the concept. Islam is a mind virus, a dangerous one at that IMHO, that as you point out frames peoples' perceptions of the world. That is the danger of it. That is the danger of literalist Christianity, color, or any other belief system that is held higher than one's own humanity. If I am white and I hold that as an identity higher than the human commonality, then I have separated myself with filtered perceptions that lessen everyone not in my group. For me, my hierarchy is that I am a human male straight italian. So I principly see things on the human scale first whereas a black male straight human may see everything as a racial descrimination. These dangerous folks here are Islamic terrorists. Islam first, terror second, humanity not present.
I think peopel today excuse the obvious problem of Islam, from its beginnings, by blaming 'extremists' or 'fundamentalists' in an effort to shade these beliefs and actions as marginal, performed by a tiny group of radicals. Not so. From yet another news story about Sean Penn visiting Iran....
"Last week, Penn attended Friday prayers at Tehran University where worshippers gave the well-known chant of "Death to America." "
So, I suppose Iran as well as Palestine are now extremists. Entire countries. When do extremists become the majority and therefore the norm? I imagine all the peaceful muslims you may know are not the norm but the 'passivists'.
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