Afghanistan: A Gathering Menace

[EFerrari]

Traveling with U.S. troops gives insights into the recent massacre
By Neil Shea

The soldiers around me were barely visible, but I could smell them. They had not washed for days, and a sharp musk of sweat and sleeplessness, tobacco and chemically mummified food, wove through the fields and orchards. It was after midnight, moonless, the stars brilliant but unhelpful. The soldiers wore night-vision goggles, but I did not, so I stumbled after their scent along the remote edge of a fading war, envisioning things I could not see.

Up ahead, in the stream of black shapes, were the American soldiers I had come to fear. They were men who enjoyed demolishing Afghan houses, men who shot dogs in the face. The pair who had embraced like lovers, one tenderly drawing the blade of his knife along the pale, smooth skin of his friend’s throat. There was a guy who’d let the others tie his legs open and mock-rape him, and there were several men who had boasted of plans to murder their ex-wives and former girlfriends.

We paused in the darkness. A line of Afghan soldiers shuffled past, also nearly blind without night-vision equipment. They moved into position for the coming raid, clumsy as boxcars, trailing their own earthy stink. I thought back to what an American Army sergeant had told me hours earlier.

“This is where I come to do fucked-up things.”

http://theamericanscholar.org/a-gathering-menace/

Democracy Now! Interview today:

Afghan Massacre Sheds Light on Culture of Mania and Aggression in U.S. Troops in Afghanistan

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/16/afghan_massacre_sheds_light_on_culture

[leveymg]

1. This reminds me of things I read about how the VietCong could smell US troops from a long way off

pinpointing their location and numbers before they could be seen in the jungle.

Who knows how many GIs died because of the smell of Marlboros and Aqua Velva in the morning.

[xchrom]

2. i think i'm not a fan of the volunteer army any more.

and i think it's been a developing suspicion that this is happening that makes me want to return to a draft -- one with a lot of loop holes closed.

and be done with mercs altogether.

[leveymg]

3. So many atrocities of these wars result from professional frustration, not mutinous fraggings

of officers seen in previous wars. I agree that there's a different psychology at work in a professional military as opposed to a conscript army. Most of the extreme acts of unauthorized aggression are directed outwards, not upwards.

[xchrom]

4. +1

it has a resemblance to the 'bad cops' problem.

[EFerrari]

5. The boyfriend of my late teens was just back

and he lived in a big house with about 10 other guys who were also just back, all from the valley. They were all about ten years older (physically, anyway) and protected me from a lot of stuff they said among themselves but to a man, they loathed the Army, the war, the Vietnamese and the brass. The way they talked about the Vietnamese was my first brush with virulent racial hatred. The house was tense most of the time; it felt like there was a live bomb in the next room and, there probably was. Their friends still in theater sent them back all kinds of stuff. They spent a lot of time diffusing fury with pot, hash and liquor, endless games of gin and watching television.

[leveymg]

6. The MPs had the best (and the most)

drugs. One part of my education about how the world really works, worked, doesn't work, works according to different rules depending on who you are, was to know some Military Police/civilian law enforcement/intel guys and to listen to them describe how they brought large quantities back into the U.S. on military aircraft, who else got paid off in the process, and how high up this went. Very high. This continued for years after Vietnam. Same thing on the Floor of the NYSE. Everyone was very high.

[cbrer]

7. Mr. Shea

Presents a microcosm of war in general since time immemorial. Without seething hatred, brutality, and moral blindness, victory at such a loathsome activity becomes problematic.

...But then we begin the discussion of what constitutes "victory".

[kenny blankenship]

8. I know SOMEONE who won't be invited back "to do fucked-up things" for a long time!

Mr. Shea, you were invited to be a guest of our wonderful troops (God Bless Our Troops, God Bless America!). But you aren't acting like one! Where did you learn such manners?