whereaminow (73.73)

Peas and Carrots, Pancho Villa, and a Degree from the University of Phoenix

August 20, 2009 – Comments (11)

Or alternatively titled, the most hated post in CAPS history.  Rec if you love it, even rec if you hate it, but read on Fools, and welcome to the twisted world of David in Qatar. (They call it Desert Madness.)

Hey, he's not a pea and neither am I

I hate peas. I really do.  I won't ever eat them.  I don't even like to look at them.  Occasionally someone will mix peas into my carrots and that really gets my panties all in a bunch.   So I throw them all out.  But hey, those carrots didn't do anything to me so maybe I should have taken the time to separate them first.  Those crappy diced carrots are not much better than peas.  They're pretty awful, but you're right, they're not the same thing.  Heck, even the broccoli knows that.  That broccoli is probaby sitting there thinking, "look at this dumbarse. He treats carrots the same as peas, just because they're vegetables, dumping them in the trash and calling them evil.  What a second, I'm a vegetable and I happen to live here too.  How long before a few peas end up in my neighborhood?  Is that fruit going to come over here and kill me too?"

These ridiculous talking vegetables might have a point.  You may not be aware of this, but the Taliban never attacked America.  That's a fact.  They didn't perpetrate 9/11, the USS Cole, Dar es Salaam or Nairobi, the Marine barracks in '83, or the flight over Lockerbie.  Contrary to what the television cretins tell you, the Taliban is not Al Qaeda.  You may wish to believe they are the same thing, but you know who thinks you're wrong?  The other people living in Afghanistan.  The broccoli.  They've lived in that once beautiful country (see The Kite Runner for a time when Afghanistan was wonderful, ya know, before the Soviets) their whole lives.  They know that the Taliban is not Al Qaeda.  Now along comes this cocky American officer/bureaucrat and his spooks in the intelligence service haughtily informing him that "sorry, but according to America, they are one in the same.  They lived together, so that's that."  That doesn't give the rest of the Afghanis a whole lot to consider.  "How soon before the Pashtuns are Al Qaeda according to Americans? How can I trust people that don't recognize the differences between us," says the broccoli.

Are you starting to understand now why the Taliban is getting stronger?

Can you give me a letter of recommendation to the University of Phoenix

Back in the mid 90's, I was sitting in a platoon squad bay in Camp Hansen, Okinawa (Land of the Hand.)  The platoon sergeant was a tough son of a bitch that volunteered for Army Ranger school even though he was in the Marines (they keep slots open for other services every year), just to show those Army wimps how it's done. (I have great respect for Army infantry. Don't read that the wrong way.)  He stood before us and asked, "how many of you joined the Marines for the education benefits?"  Every hand went up.  He continued, "for how many of you was that the primary consideration?"  90% of the hands stayed up.  It was a small sample size experiment, so I copied it every where I went.  The answer was always the same.  It's even more pronounced in the other services (for reasons that should be obvious but maybe they aren't.)

"There's a sucker born every day." - P.T. Barnum

These kids may have been suckered in with cheap education benefits, but they get smart quickly.  How long do you think they stay motivated when they compare the dregs of war with the prospect of a worthless piece of paper from the University of Phoenix in an ever spiraling economy?  You can only bribe people for so long.

This isn't the Marine Corps I joined

Several years back, on a Marine Corps base in the middle of nowhere, a few senior enlisted Marines (salty veterans of Vietnam) took their seats to be judges for an enlisted promotion board.  Three hard core, dedicated, and excellent young Marines stepped before them.  The first to speak was perfect.  He made no mistakes, answered every question, maintained a flawless uniform, etc.  The board judged him to be perfect, indeed.  The second was nearly as good, as was the third.  They were all excellent candidates, but the second and third each made one clear mistake.  So the board excused the Marines and deliberated.  Each member agreed that the first candidate was perfect and all but one agree that he should get the promotion.  That one member argued for candidate number three.  After all, candidate number three was a black female, and it just wasn't fair that the Marine Corps had so few black females in the NCO ranks.  Others started to waver, and eventually the board ruled in his favor.  When this happened, a 28 year veteran Sergeant Major stood up and said, "Gentlemen, I retire.  This isn't the Marine Corps I joined."  And he did, putting in his papers that day.  His action made the board ruling invalid, but it hasn't prevented the Socialist takeover of the military.

(That story is 100% true btw, but no, don't get your hopes up. It didn't happen to me. I had a great, and lucky, career which I am thankful for.)

I'm often confused by the reality I see, and the reality of others.  In America, conservatives hail the military as the savior of all humanity.  Yet, it's the most Socialist institution in the world.  If only Hannity and Limbaugh knew!  All standard armies become Socialized.  They suffer from bureacratic malaise.  They get stale, they grow too large, and they start to stink.  Eventually they rot from within due to intellectual apathy, the type that invites weak religions like social justice and equality in without questioning.  

Those of you that are American history buffs know the story of conservative founder William Buckley.  He traded his passion for liberty for temporary safey against the Reds.  He postulated that to beat the Communists, America had to become temproarily Communist.  America, he thought, could always change back.  Oops.

Anyway, it's too late now Republicans. The Socialists already own every service outside of the Army infantry, some of the calvary units, a few Marine Division units, and the scattered Ron Paul supporters.  The rest of the entire military went Socialist twenty years ago.  

Pancho Villa Attacks Texas

That headline is probably unlikely, since he's been dead for about 75 years.  But Pancho Villa or Osama Bin Laden, what's the difference?  We chased each one around for decades.  The locals hid him and laughed at us.  The tyrannical nature of our police actions turned the independent observers into allies of the enemy.  Then they died and we kept looking for them

Bin Laden is dead.  He's been deader than dirt for 2-3 years now.  Everyone in the Middle East knows this, except Americans.  It's quite a joke to them.  Here is the mighty America, superpower of the world, the self proclaimed greatest nation, combing the desert at the cost of $100 billion a year looking for a ghost.  That's uproariously funny to them.

The only mention of Bin Laden's death I've ever seen was by that nitwit crook Benazir Bhutto.  When the American State Department (apparently already having forgotten that the Pakistanis chased her family out of Islamabad for stealing millions from the people), tried to put her back in power, she gave an interview on BBC (?) in which she nonchalantly mentioned that Bin Laden is dead.  Two days later, she was blown up.

It's too bad that the FBI never put Bin Laden on the America's Most Wanted list before he died.  They said they didn't have enough evidence, even though it was clear that Al Qaeda was behind the attack.  I don't disagree, but how about putting some effort into the proceedings.  Hmmm, I wonder why they can't get the evidence they need....

Take this money or I'll blow up your garage

In the late '90s I was stationed as an embassy guard at the American Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan.  For my facebook friends, that picture of me geting promoted is taken there, and that fella pinning on my rank is the former Ambassador, Bill Milam.  He was a nice guy.  Honest man.  So was the CIA station chief.  He was kind enough to speak to us from time to time.  They liked the Marines.  We were tough.  That kind old station chief was replaced in 2000 with a young go-getter.  In his early 40s, he pretended to superhuman energy and perfection in every mannerism.  He was the first person in the air when the Council on Foreign Relations gave Bush the green light to invade Afghanistan.  This young CIA station chief started throwing money all over the country, lining the pockets of every warlord.  Here's $50,000. take it or leave it.  No?  You won't join us?  The next day you'll find your garage and guest home blown to pieces and an offer for $25,000.  

But that money doesn't last forever. You can only bribe people for so long. 8 years later and the war rages on.  Buying warlords today has suffered from some .. ahem.. inflationary effects.  It's no longer feasible.  To the warlords, the Americans are capitalist scum, hoping to buy them when they need them and happy to discard them when they don't.  Are you starting to understand why the Taliban is getting stronger?

The contract on Bin Laden's head is equally ridiculous. I mean, even when he was alive.  In 1999, I asked my Pakistani house servant, a good young man with a great deal of compassion, if he would report Bin Laden (the U.S. had already put a million dollar price on his head for the Embassy bombings.)  He said absolutely not.  "Where would I go?  Everyone knows everyone.  Everyone knows my family, my cousins and their cousins.  They would find me."  "Yes," I replied, "but you'd have a million dollars to move everyone away."  This was a man that lived off $500 per year.  He could not comprehend a million dollars or what it would possibly buy him.  He knew what he knew, that Bin Laden could reach his family. Case closed.

America is not going to beat the Taliban. Americans are too arrogant, the military has gone Socialist, and the boogeyman is dead.  We're left with a colossal, out of control, bureaucratic maze, running around the Middle East with its head up its ass, stomping and destroying everything in its path.  Eventually, it's going down, drowned out by the cheers of the revolting masses.  

Most Muslim bad guys are real, and Muslims don't deny this.  But now they are waking up to a simple idea, "Perhaps it would be better if we took care of our bad guys, rather than letting those unruly and arrogant Americans come over here and make a mess of things."

At least, I hope they're learning their lesson, because Americans sure aren't.

David in Qatar