MRFF INBOX: I Can Safely Say We Are Completely And Totally Screwed
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This post was created on the previous version of the MRFF website, and may not be fully accessible to users of assistive technology. If you need help accessing this content, please reach out via email.THE FOLLOWING OVERWHELMINGLY POWERFUL COMMENTARY IS MADE BY A DEVOTED MRFF CLIENT; AN EXTREMELY DEVOUT (EVANGELICAL), CHRISTIAN U.S. COMBAT SOLDIER FIGHTING FOR HIS COUNTRY AND HIS LIFE EVERYDAY AND NIGHT IN AFGHANISTAN….HE RESPONDS TO THE SHOCKING NEWS STORY BROKEN BY MRFF (See link) CONCERNING THE USMC’S “OPERATION SWORD OF THE SPIRIT” WHEREINWHICH THE USMC RECENTLY PUBLICLY HIGHLIGHTED THE BAPTIZING OF 29 US. MARINES ON THE BEACH OUTSIDE OF CAMP PENDLETON IN SAN DIEGO, CALIF……THE CEREMONY WAS OFFICIATED AND LEAD NOT BY THE UNIT CHAPLAIN, BUT BY THE MARINES’ BATTALION COMMANDER, A LT. COL…..MIKEY
Mikey,
Sorry for the delay in responding. Things have been heated in my (combat area withheld) and they’ve had me running nonstop missions left and right….I think we just got rocketed again too.
If it’s been said once, it’s been said a million times. THE TALIBAN IS THE KING OF PUBLIC RELATIONS. Mikey, when the U.S. runs a PR campaign, most people pass it off as bullshit, whether it’s true or not. When the Taliban runs a PR campaign, 9 times out of 10, it’s also bullshit, BUT IN THIS COUNTRY, LOCAL NATIONALS WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY SAY. The Taliban, Haqqani Network, Hesbol Islami-Gulbuddin, Al-Qaeda, etc, LIVE off stupid PR moves like this one.
A bunch of U.S. Marines lead by a Lt. Col. Getting baptized before going to war? Calling it “Operation Sword of the Spirit?!! Mikey, you know me. I’m a man of faith and I wouldn’t hesitate to share it with others if they asked me to out of curiosity. Having been through my share of firefights and insurgent attacks, I believe there is a God and I have a good feeling He’s got my back. But that’s not why I’m here in Afghanistan. I’m not here on some Christian or Jewish crusade to rid the world of Muslims. I’m here to do my part ridding the world of religious whack jobs that want to convert the world to their distorted view of faith in order to gain power. I’m here to fight insurgents who once ran this country by a distorted view of Sharia law and had no idea what “human rights” meant.
But to every thesis there’s an antithesis. The Taliban tells the people here that we’re Christian and Jewish crusaders looking to rob their land and establish a puppet government. I get reports of this all the time (yes, the Taliban has a website and I research it frequently). Every now and again we find “night letters” from the Taliban nailed to people’s homes as recruiting posters stating exactly that. Now, as ridiculous and farfetched as it sounds, people over here, from my experience speaking to local nationals, actually believe this is true. And when idiots pull stunts like this (Operation “Sword of the Spirit…yea, that’s some powerful stuff). Making public spectacles of their faith and drawing ties between state/military and their church, the Taliban jumps on it. It’s how they run their PR op. They use this to fuel anti-western sentiment and recruit others to their cause. What this Marine officer has done is basically LEGTIMIZED WHAT THE TALIBAN HAS BEEN CLAIMING.
I honestly don’t know how else to explain it! Mikey, we are NOT raging a religious war here! The Coalition Forces are NOT an invading army on a crusade! But as long as people keep painting this picture of a “Christian Nation” on the march against Islam, from an experienced infantryman and intel analysts point of view, I can safely say we are completely and totally screwed.
This is an asymmetric fight against an insurgent force on their home turf (the “home field advantage”). The ONLY way to succeed here is by convincing people that we are NOT here to fight Islam and spread Christianity or destroy Islam; we’re here to rebuild their country and allow them to live freely and safely without the violent influence of the Taliban (an insurgent force that came from Pakistan during the Soviet Afghan War and has destroyed this country almost as bad as the Soviets). Mikey, last time I was out at the outpost, I was talking to an Afghan national Army (ANA) sergeant. I asked him what he thought of Jews and Christians. His response: “HA! I don’t care what religion you are. I came here to kill Taliban and protect my people. I believe you came to do the same. We are both soldiers!” Mikey, Can you explain to me how an ANA non-commissioned officer and a Muslim understands this better than a U.S. Marine Corp O-5?
We’re not here for religion, we’re not here for Oil (there isn’t any here anyways, just zinc, raisins, lithium, and hash), we’re here to rid this country of evil men who wish to rule the world like they’ve ruled this country since the Afghan civil war; by distorting faith as a means to gain power. The sooner commanders and Americans in general understand this concept, the sooner we can actually start winning the counter-insurgency fight.
Respectfully,
(name and U.S. Army rank withheld)
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“…we’re here to rid this country of evil men who wish to rule the world like they’ve ruled this country since the Afghan civil war; by distorting faith as a means to gain power.”
There’s no evidence that the Taliban or al Qaeda have the means or the intent to ‘rule the world’; their goals have always been considerably more provincial, if you will, concerned with ridding their world of Western influence and practice. That they make for bad governance is unquestioned. It would be closer to the truth to say that the Americans are fighting a civil war on behalf of the Afghans who don’t particularly care to fight that war.
More important to America is that we have evil men here distorting the Christian faith in order to gain power and enforce their brutal and ugly variants of their religion on the entire country. The battle to protect and save America is here, in the streets and towns and cities and institutions of American society and government; that battle is not in Afghanistan, and to be fighting a provincial civil war there is to push America closer to what you claim to be fighting against over there.
There has never been a good reason to go to war in Afghanistan, and there is less reason to fight there now. The September 11 attacks were committed by a small group of violent fanatics, evil men, if you will, but not by Afghanistan (and certainly not Iraq). Al Qaeda and friends can make their plans to attack us, or anyone else, in London or Paris or Peoria, Illinois; they can train in any of dozens of countries, including the United States, alongside violent American ‘militias’ if they wish. To send our armies after the leaders and survivors was frankly a stupid move, wasteful of life, money, and time. We had better and more effective and efficient tools available, and chose not to use them.
We, as a country, as a people, would be better served by giving the Afghan people guns and ammo, telling them that if they want to be free of the Taliban they should fight them themselves, and that we are going home to deal with our own evil men, a good many of whom are apparently holding high rank in the American military, or shouting lies and deceit on the floor of Congress, or perverting the freedom of the press and the airwaves to spread their propaganda and lies to a gullible public that is too easily incited to violence.
If you want to fight the ‘noble battle’ then start fighting it for America and Americans in America. Rid the military of fundogelicals who would distort it and turn it toward evil purposes. Stand up against the purveyors of hatred and bigotry and lies on radio and television and in the Congress and in local government. Keep your religion in your home and your church and don’t let it pollute good governance.
Burke said that all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Add the corollary to that: All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to be off doing trivia while their homeland burns.
Whoever name withheld is, he’s got a world class sense of humor and bonhomie! I’d go anywhere with him at my back.
I am not intelligent enough to formulate an American-Afghan policy, but I’d like to remind poster #1 that if the US had pulled out of Afghanistan immediately after the ouster of the Taliban/Al Qaeda government, they would have very quickly reconstituted themselves with the help of the Pakistani military, especially the ISI. The idiotic policy in the subsequent years has led the US into the ‘fine mess’ in which it now finds itself.
KFritz –
Would that Afghanistan were that simple. But the real point is that the anonymous poster sought to justify our presence in Afghanistan on simplistic grounds that simply don’t hold water. He’s using the same sort of thinking that the fundogelicals use to justify their actions, not only on the scale of national and world politics, but within the military itself. Black and white, good versus evil. It may work in kindergarten, but in the real world it kills people – it destroys the good, the evil, and everything in between. Applying the ‘They’re evil, we’re good’ school of thinking to the hugely complex issues we face in the world guarantees, as you put it, the fine mess. But the real issue is just that – how we think. Until we value true, factually-informed critical thinking in our daily lives, in our political lives, in our nation, in our actions, we will continue to have the sort of evil that the fundogelical mindset propagates.
Ric Gerace – When men are in battle and fighting a fanatical enemy with global ambitions to rule, “true, factually-informed critical thinking” demands that they approach their task with clear focus. The anonymous poster showed strong signs of just such thinking, and I appreciate his brave service, having lost a son of my own in Iraq. The fact is that global jihadism financed mainly from Saudi Arabia is a threat to democracy and peaceful men and women throughout the world. It IS an absolute evil no less dangerous than Naziism or the doctrine of the Yamata Race were in World War II, and must eventually be neutralized by any means necessary until its intellectual and fiscal supporters cease working for the enslavement of every human on Earth to their distorted worldview and intolerant form of Islam. This is an objective analysis based on what the jihadists and their supporters insist is the only acceptable outcome of the Global War on Terrorism – conversion of the world’s population to Salafist Islam. And in my humble opinion, our world leaders should consider this a strategic threat that may well justify the use of strategic weapons on the focus of support for jihadism.
Yes to all these comments. But I would like to comment on one aspect of the comment by loupgarous above. In line #4 he says: “The fact is that global jihadism financed mainly from Saudi Arabia is a threat to democracy and peaceful men and women throughout the world” I would add to that statement so that appears as: “The fact is that global jihadism financed mainly from Saudi Arabia, WITH OIL REVENUES GENERATED MOSTLY BY THE UNITED STATES, is a threat to democracy and peaceful men and women throughout the world.” The most effective way to reduce or eliminate this threat is to move from an oil-based economy to a non-oil-based economy! Let the Saudis drink the oil!! The problem in the US military with high level officers spewing the fanaticism of the Christian Evangelicals and their political ilk is deeply rooted in the US Military and Government, especially the Congress. It was in place to some degree when I retired from the Army in 1980 and has grown like a cancer at an ever increasing rate. Just step back and look at the political climate in the country. The Evangelical Christians are no better than the Taliban. If they gain power in the United States we would experience the same horrors as the Taliban inflict on their people. The current political atmosphere in the United States is similar to the atmosphere in 1860 just prior to the Civil War. All of this must change!! How do we accomplish that monumental task??
My thanks to loupgarous for illustrating and making the salient point that a failure of critical thinking leads to hysterical overreaction. The United States has already slaughtered, directly and indirectly, tens of thousands of Iraqi innocents, made millions of Iraqis, literally, homeless, and continues to spend billions of dollars a month in Afghanistan (and Iraq) to respond to 50 to 100 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Loupgarous now expresses his belief that we should use strategic (nuclear) weapons on a third country, Saudi Arabia, because he believes, apparently, that millions of pissed-off Muslims are ready to mount an attack on the United States because some tiny number of them have said they want Islam to rule the world. Of course loupgarous conveniently ignores the fundogelical Christians who would do the same thing, violently force their religion on the world. Perhaps we should nuke a couple of cities in the American Bible Belt, since that is where much of this stupidity originates, though they have no exclusive claim on it.
@ Ric Gerace, hey buddy, last time my outpost got hit, it was with about 25 to 30 Taliban fighters. Your figures are slightly off.
guy –
Read it again. Your own government says there are only 50 to 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Taliban is not al Qaeda. Not that it matters too much when they’re firing on you.