Bluestardad Out!
It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and
shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Dar 'yoi Pomir
River watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake
out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.
I also glance at the area around me every ten to fifteen seconds
to avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the
chiggers and sand fleas, but them scorpions give a jolt like a cattle
prod. Hurts!!. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid
but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not,
they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water.
That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me
comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and
storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the coordinates
up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the
hardware, we bash some heads for a while, then I track and record the new
movement.
It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers
yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but
days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to
begin.
I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my
boot on his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel plated
Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. But you know me. I'm a romantic.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: This country blows, man.
It's not even a country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure,
there's no government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit ruled by
eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know
jobs.
Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join
the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I
forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened,
crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu if
that's your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the
walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully
scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmen and even a
couple of Pashtuns for over a month and a h alf now and this much I can
say for sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns Actual, living Huns. They
LIVE to fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect
for anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves.
They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves
and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the
family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on
each other's barbarism Cavemen with AK47's. Then again, maybe I'm just
cranky.
I'm freezing on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is
running out of juice and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a
few hours
Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre.
Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful,
sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.' They
are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are
looking for is 'cunning.' The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and
hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted,
cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and
destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're really smart.
They've spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a
very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be
products of the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic
lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is
like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets
frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.
OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon so I have to get back to my
hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice but I'm good
at it. Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and
Move on with your lives.
The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is
designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you
glued to the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under
control The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around
analyzing what we're doing over here because you have no idea what we're
doing and, really, you don't want to know. We are your military and we are
doing what you sent us here to do.
You wanna help? Buy Bonds, America.
Saucy Jack
Recon Marine in Afghanistan
Semper Fi
Posts
