Where is the Love?

Where is the love
You said you'd give to me
Soon as you were free
Will it ever be
--Where is the Love?,
Roberta Flack

We shall not cease from our exploring
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time
--Little Gidding, T. S. Eliot

Ranger Question of the Day:
If a MANPAD is fired by a female soldier,
does it then become a FEMPAD?
_________________

One must wonder, is anyone is watching the military stores?

In Iraq, the U.S. had no plans to secure the munitions, ASP's after the shooting stopped. The result of this negligence supplied the wherewithal for an entire armed response to the U.S. occupation of the country.

Our soldiers died because our command structure failed to foresee this problem. This was a colossal screw up often called by the Church, a "sin of omission".

MANPADS are man portable air defense, shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missiles. When the Soviets left Afghanistan the Central Intelligence Agency bought back all the red-eye type anti-aircraft missiles that we so obligingly once gave them. Accordingly, the millions that we spent on this buy-back program was instrumental in financing the Taliban's campaign to dominate Afghanistan.

Here we are in 2011 after a lot of sand has passed under the bridge, and we find ourselves coming full-circle. The U.S. / NATO has just helped the Libyan revolutionary movement overthrow the Big Bad Wolf Moammer Qadaffi, without considering the ASP's and stored weaponry of the dictator's regime. After blindly providing the muscle to depose Qadaffi, the U.S. is having to pay for the privilege by buying back all the MANPADS (or worrying where they have gone, which is probably into the hands of terrorists -- our own Big Bad Wolves.)

Why didn't any of the himbos on any major staff consider this eventuality? Where was the Central Intelligence Agency and the DIA? Do the personnel of these agencies inhabit the same universe as the rest of us mere mortals?

The failure to address this issue us unforgivable, and brings yet another issue to the fore. Let us think "capabilities and intent" once again. Is it possible that the U.S. is being sold a bill of goods with the hullabaloo of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), and the "facts" are merely hyperbolic propaganda aimed at keeping Army Strong going?

With Iraq, if Saddam was such a bad customer, then why did he not use weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against U.S. troops in either Gulf War I or II? Why does no one ask the question? U.S. troops were clustered and ideal targets for all the supposed WMDs that United Nations Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said Saddam did not possess. Where was the dictator's malevolence? Was it a lack of intent or a shortage of capability? Both, or neither?

In Libya, if Qadaffi had all of these reported MANPADS, why did he not use them reactively? Why did he not send teams to commit international mayhem, teams that could shoot down commercial aircraft? Did he lack these contingency plans? Did he lack intent or capability? In both the Iraqi and the Libyan scenarios, the supposed threats do not hold up to a realistic appraisal.

In the world as it exists, there are MANPADS on the loose that are capable of attacking the major airways of the world. The only requirement is a gunner and a weapon on the flight path of a commercial aircraft. Another analysis will see them infiltrated to the Afghan skies and utilized to depredate U.S. tactical flights. This is a likely course of action.

Whatever the outcome of this scenario, the troubling question of incompetence continually raises its ugly little head in our endless war.

It is strong-armed robbery when the U.S. provides free bombing support and then and is then extorted to pay for the destruction of MANPADS. Someone is embezzling someone here.

Leaving Las Vegas

Sometimes you're the windshield
Sometimes you're the bug
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you're just a fool in love
--The Bug, Mary Chapin Carpenter

I move around a lot,
not because I'm looking for anything really,
but 'cause I'm getting away from things
that get bad if I stay

--Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Everybody knows
this is nowhere.
Everybody, everybody knows
Everybody knows
--(Everybody Knows) This is Nowhere,
Neil Young
________________

This is about a movie and an entry from my life. It was called The Vietnam War, and our exit from Iraq has been gut-wrenching for me.

The Vietnam War could have been subtitled, "How to Lose a War in Ten Easy Years". Change the Republic of Vietnam to Iraq and my movie is the same as the one that just played out in Baghdad. Try as I may, there is no way to make sense of it, either then or now. And we now have a sequel in which only the name of the country is different.

On March 2, 1971, the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) left RVN and became one of the first major units to exit the war. We left that war much as we started it -- gradually. It was an inexorable build up followed by the inexorable denouement.

The 5th re-deployment was the first time that an entire Special Forces group redeployed from a war zone. This must have been a practice movement foreshadowing the Baghdad embarrassment. The U.S. left Saigon under enemy pressure, the last visuals being U.S. helicopters beating a hasty exit from the North Vietnamese conquerors. The last photo was of a U.S. employee punching a small Vietnamese dude in the face to get a seat out.

Nice way to end a war. 58,000 of us died and 300,000+ were wounded, and the last image is one of our citizens punching a local in the face; what a cosmic joke! December 18, 2011, the U.S. left behind a Trillion+ dollar war, and this time we got the punch (Last U.S. Troops Leave Iraq). As one trooper wryly observed, they'll be having one hell of a yard sale over our left behind materiel.

For this and more we would like to tell Mr. Bush et. al -- Heckuva job, Georgie! How can we retain as nation any dignity following episodes like this?

It is a sad day when one is embarrassed to call himself an American.