365 Bottles of Beer, Part the Second

--A license to do something

--I help people with problems
--Problem solver?
--More of a problem eliminator
--License to Kill (1989)

How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart
and let me live again
--How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,
The Bee Gees

We are here to help the Vietnamese,
because inside every gook
there is an American trying to get out
--Full Metal Jacket (1987)

And the day came when the risk to remain
tight in a bud was more painful than the risk
it took to blossom
--Anais Nin
________________________

[continuation of 1.10.11 post . . .]

Following the normal administration shuffle betwixt and between and after more in-country training, Ranger found himself once again at Square One, stepping off yet another airplane on my way to unit assignment and yet more in-country combat training.

If training alone could win wars, the U.S. Army could've planted a flag in my asshole and declared victory, much as we actually did before we turned tail. That declared victory could have saved many good men on both sides who were still extremely combative and killing the hell out of each other.

After graduating from Studies and Observations Group (SOG) in-country training, I was assigned as an assistant to an assistant, which meant I was an afterthought waiting to blossom into an actuality. Whether I was an adviser or a troop is still something I cannot figure out; after all, this was UW/GW and the rules are different there.

My counterpart was a Vietnamese Special Forces Captain, Phu, with whom I had a warm and beer-drenched experience since we did not know that drinking tea was actually the solution to all our problems. Instead, we took the less kind, less gentle route of Ba Mui Ba Bier 33, since that is what real men in real COIN environments did back then. We drank beer and I dealt with Vietnamese officers daily, but I never once spoke to a VN enlisted man nor broke bread in their fly-ridden mess hall. Round eyes ate in air conditioning.

I helped provide food, training and all the other goodies, but never learned one thing about their lives, their dreams or their fears. That was not my concern, and my indifference was echoed by most of the other officers assigned to my unit. We simply did not care, which is kind of odd considering SF mouthed all the platitudes about living with the indigenous, winning hearts and minds (H & M), and the whole crock.

Under my direct supervision were Engineers, Armor support, ammo storage and the motor pool, but I never spoke to anyone but the direct supervisor of the section in question. This is how the U.S. Army runs, but is it sufficient to win H & M? In 40 years, has anything really changed, what with Pepsi and Pizza Hut vendors providing grub?

Extreme sadness overtakes me when I consider these futile realities and the memories of many good men intrude upon my brain. Why did we execute this imbecile task back then, and why do we do so today? Do we think that drinking tea will bridge a cultural chasm? Why do we perpetuate these follies on the weakest of pretenses with the frailest hope of success?

Sad is the overarching feeling that saturates memories of the days of my young manhood. It is sad that we waste good young soldiers in logic-defying situations, and the sadness is undiluted after 40 years. There are those who point out the reduced number of casualties in today's wars, but how do you quantify a casualty of the spirit?

And that's all I have to say about that.

365 Bottles of Beer

--Preparing for a day on the town?

Manliness is not all swagger and mountain climbing.
It's also tenderness
--Tea and Sympathy (1956)

There is only one way to win hearts
and that is to make oneself
like unto those of whom one would be loved
--The Painted Veil, Somerset Maugham

We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe!
--Rudyard Kipling

Day will break and I'll wake
And start to bake a sugar cake
For you to take for all the boys to see
--Tea for Two, No, No Nanette
__________________

[The 1st of 2 parts]

As an older man, it is hard to look back upon the absurdities of one's life, even harder looking back at the absurdities of one's professional life, which happened to correspond to those of the nation.

Ranger's young manhood was devoted to the U.S. Army, an institution which owned his body if not mind, and he was fine with this since his goal was to be an unconventional warfare specialist.

Since that time the U.S. has fought many unconventional / guerrilla warfare (UW/GW) type scenarios. Most are unfamiliar to the average citizen, who relies on an increasingly entertainment based media for information. That media determines that fictions like "Three Cups of Tea" are more palatable depictions of what counterinsurgency means -- COIN-as-teatime. It's simply a matter of getting them to see we are all on this ball of dirt together and that we all want the same things. Except when we don't.

Fiction is fine when you're enjoying a nice, bold beaujolais and Salad Nicoise at the book club. The problem enters when everyone from General Petraeus down to the youngest rifleman based their assumptions and their beliefs in their actions upon such faulty premises. Somehow, the Army came to believe that drinking tea with locals was the tipping point that would win hearts and minds. (Oh, yeah -- tea and a lot of moolah.) The Gods of War and the locals must be laughing themselves silly.

Ranger has not been involved in Afghanistan, but can share his ancient history with COIN and UW/GW while a young Infantry branch officer in Vietnam serving with the 5th Special Forces on his Southeast Asia holiday rampage.

Stepping off the aircraft at Ton Son Nhut airport, I was as naive as a young soldier could be. I was also as well-trained as any Infantryman that ever deployed under the battle flags of the U.S. Army. Not just Ranger-qualified but Special Forces Officer-qualified after serving in a line Infantry Division. Back then, young officers were given four months of troop duty before being sent to the Big Show, which Ranger later learned was the SE Asian version of Disneyland for soldiers.

Like every other soldier, whether draftee or enlisted, he was fully prepared to do whatever my Army required to win the war. Every last one of us were willing to kill or be killed in the process of doing what our country required of us, but therein lies the crux of the biscuit: What was required?

When I stepped off that airplane wearing jump boots, crossed rifles, junior jump wings and a Ranger tab with a Green Beret on my high and tight head, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing on the ramp of that airplane, stepping into a war that almost everyone knew was lost (it was 1970). What I did possess was every infantry skill required to kill people, be it on an organizational or personal level.

After I stepped off that plane, 18,000 soldiers died for a policy that was as dead as an old man's dick, but we soldiered on because that is what soldiers do. We are not quitters.


[Tomorrow: 365 Bottles, Part 2]