I think if someone asked a contemporary Frank Capra to do a version of "Why We Fight" for today, they'd go insane. But, today we do not ask for universal sacrifice, and the difference between these young men and the guys playing in the Super Bowl boils down to this: they are paid incredibly less money to do more than Eli Manning ever imagined; few people can comprehend what they do and why; and ultimately, they end up alienated because they think no one cares. And, at times, I think they may be right...
One night while watching a scene from HBO’s
“Rome” in which a Roman soldier tells a slave he wants to marry her, a
soldier asked which century the story was set in. “First B.C. or A.D.,”
said another soldier. The first shook his head: “And they’re still
living like this 800 meters outside the wire.”
Absolutely awesome article in the Times. This is reality, and it sucks. Crusader AXE lived throughthe Army
shift from an austere warrior approach to a concern for quality of life in combat, and I think that the Petraeus doctrine which reduces the impact of "quality of life" is more likely to succeed than the other, especially in a counter-insurgency. That said, the impact on the soldiers of that kind of isolation in situations that are not necessarily counter-insurgencies so much as a kind of island-hopping between village and village is not clear. I deal with people with PTSD every day. Contrary to what a lot of people outside think, I believe that PTSD is not so much caused by what is done to you as by what you see done to your friends and how you react to that. The more it happens, the worse it is, the longer it lasts, the more incredible the damage -- and, at a certain point, you have to ask as a citizen and a human being is the ultimate goal worth the cost? Afghanistan should be over, but due to diversion of forces, wealth and intellectual capital as well as the absurdity of the entire mess, our people are still struggling there. As Hillary and Batboy and Batshit occupy the minds of the nation and the mortgage mess continues and we wonder why anyone would pay $70K for a Nissan, we ask this of our young men and women.
The next day I climbed up to the KOP and found Specialist Giunta, a
quiet Iowan lofted into a heroism he didn’t want. His officers were
putting him up for a medal of honor. Giunta told me the story of that
night, how they’d barely moved 300 yards before they were blasted.
Giunta was fourth in the file when it happened, and he jumped into a
ditch. He couldn’t figure out why they were getting hit from where
Joshua Brennan and baby-faced 
Franklin Eckrode should have been leading
up ahead. He knew it must be bad, but as he leapt up to check he got
whacked with a bullet in his armored chest plate. It threw him down.
They were taking fire from three sides. He grabbed some grenades: “I
couldn’t throw as far as Sergeant Gallardo. We were looking like
retards and I decided to run out in front of the grenades.” ...
He
couldn’t figure out who they were. Then he realized they were hauling
Brennan off through the forest. “I started shooting,” he recalled. “I
emptied that magazine. They dropped Brennan.” Giunta scrambled up to
Brennan. He was a mess. His lower jaw was shot off. “He was still
conscious. He was breathing. He was asking for morphine. I said,
‘You’ll get out and tell your hero stories,’ and he was like, ‘I will,
I will.’ ”...
They were still taking fire. No one was there to help.
Hugo Mendoza, their platoon medic, was back in another ditch, calling:
“I’m bleeding out. I’m dying.” Giunta saw Brennan’s eyes go back. His
breathing was bad. Giunta got Brennan to squeeze his hand. A medic
showed up out of the sky. They prepared Brennan to be hoisted to the
medevac in a basket. Soon he would be dead.
As the medevacs
flew out, Sergeant Sandifer had talked in air cover: Slasher, the
AC-130. The pilot was a woman and, Sandifer later told me, “It was so
reassuring for us to hear her voice.” She spotted guys hiding and asked
if she was clear to engage. “ ‘You’re cleared hot,’ I told her. And we
killed two people together.” But, at this point, the killings were no
consolation to Sandifer.
As Giunta said, “The richest,
most-trained army got beat by dudes in manjammies and A.K.’s.” His
voice cracked. He was not just hurting, he was in a rage. And there was
nothing for him to do with it but hold back his tears, and bark — at
the Afghans for betraying them, at the Army for betraying them. He
didn’t run to the front because he was a hero. He ran up to get to
Brennan, his friend. “But they” — he meant the military — “just keep
asking for more from us.” His contract would be up in 18 days but he
had been stop-lossed and couldn’t go home. Brennan himself was supposed
to have gotten out in September. He’d been planning to go back to
Wisconsin where his dad lived, play his guitar and become a cop. (Emphasis added.)
Recent Comments