September 18, 2003- Sudden Death Overtime

Last weekend, we were treated to these rousing patriotic images on the TV news of the American troops coming home from the War On Terror and the War In Iraq. There were heartwarming images of soldiers kissing and embracing their parents or wives or girlfriends or kids, and of soldiers holding an infant child of theirs for the first time. There were tears and smiles and declarations of gratitude from the soldiers that they were back home again and stirring stories of how an entire division of soldiers came back alive and all this shit. The Pentagon used the occasion to announce that they have devised a plan for the rotation of soldiers in Iraq, one that they claim will be a very efficient use of troops, and one that they say will inform the troops of the exact date of the end of their tour of duty from the beginning, so that morale will be high because the soldiers will know precisely when they get to go home again. In theory, this will make the American forces a better organization, because people will know when they are going to be able to call it quits, and they will be happier and thus more efficient. So goes the theory. However, that theory is one that is much appreciated by the American people, for they have had concerns as of late about just how the whole effort is going over Iraq way. So when they see stuff like they saw last weekend, it pleases them greatly, and convinces them that maybe the situation on Iraq is not a hopeless one after all. The Pentagon and the White House want the American people to think that for sure. So they have loudly touted all this in the media. However, there has been another story concerning the troops over in Iraq in the media lately. That one was about how many of the American troops currently stationed in Iraq were told that they would definitely not be going home anytime soon. They were informed that their tour of duty had been extended "indefinitely". That could mean anything from a few more months to another full year over there for these soldiers. That announcement was met with anything but cheers and enthusiasm from the soldiers affected and their families. It was met with much frustration and anger from those affected. The soldiers were none too thrilled about being told that they were going to go into more sudden death overtime, with the sudden death part being very real, not just a sports cliche. For sudden death has been part and parcel of the whole iraq experience ever since the war was declared to be over. With ever increasing frequency, American soldiers are meeting a sudden and violent end in Iraq. Some of them are from the accidents that are an inevitable part of a huge operation like this, such as soldiers crashing jeeps and other such vehicles or soldiers slipping and falling into a river or other such accidents like this. Those kind of deaths are unavoidable and the soldiers accept that, things like that can happen in civilian life too and bring you a sudden end. But in Iraq, sudden death is brought on not by accident in most cases, but by design. Assassins of every kind prowl the land these days, going after American soldiers. Car bombs are becoming all too commonplace in Iraq, they being a favorite method of killing American soldiers. It is all too easy for a fanatic to rig a car up with explosives and detonate them in the presence of American troops. This has become a very efficient method of killing Americans. The conventional wisdom about these bombings has been that they are the work of some organized group of some kind of fuckers, like ex-Ba'athists or Saddam loyalists and the like.That made it easier to justify continuing the presence in Iraq, because this organization that is targeting Americans must be dealt with. So America sent in their bomb experts from the FBI, the people that worked on cases like timothy Mc Veigh and the Unabomber and the like, and were deemed top-flight experts in determining the origin of a bomb, the ingredients used to make it and who made it and so on. If they could piece together the threads that these bombs were made of, then they could stop this organization. Well, they did do that, and they had some really bad news for the Pentagon. They could find no common characteristics in the bombs at all. What that meant was that no one organization was behind these bombs that were targeting American soldiers, but that all sorts of people were making these bombs and trying to do that. This meant that it was virtually open season on Americans in Iraq, that anyone could be the next bomber or assassin. For obvious reasons, the troops stationed there wanted to get the fuck out as soon as possible. When they were told that they were going to be stationed there for much longer, they were not happy. Morale, which was low as hell amongst these troops already, got even lower with that announcement. Suicide, which had already become a problem amongst the troops, has continued at alarming levels. That all comes from being thrust into the middle of a shooting gallery every day, a gallery where they are usually the intended targets. More and more, the troops are starting to question the reasons that they were sent there in the first place. Many of them are coming to the realization that they had been lied to, that they had been told that they were going there to establish a democratic government in Iraq, and liberate the Iraqi people, and instead they have found themselves doing a questionable mission, one that has resulted in the very people that they were supposed to be liberating doing all that they can think of to assassinate them instead. So telling them that they had to stay there and endure all this for another indefinite period of time has not helped the situation any at all. The soldiers over there are a demoralized, angry, frustrated bunch of people that realize that they were duped into all of this and cannot get themselves out of it now, only the same men that created this mess can do that. They don't give a fuck about much of anything except trying to survive this all and get the fuck out of there alive.

Putting them in this situation has made everything worse. The fact that these bombings and shootings are being committed by all sorts of different people makes it very tough for the Americans to have any idea of who is actually on their side except for themselves. We have seen evidence of this as of late in the incidents where American soldiers are shooting and killing the Iraqi Pigs, the ones that they trained and who are supposed to be on their side. There are stories of American soldiers firing on these Pigs without even trying to ascertain their identities. It stands to reason that if America is training these Pigs, that they are teaching them ways of identifying themselves to the American troops, and that these would not be complicated ways, they would be ways that would take merely a few seconds to do, like say a definitive phrase or show a badge or ID or whatever. However, the problem is that the American soldiers are so jumpy that they are gunning these Pigs down before they can even start to do whatever they were trained to do to identify themselves. All this shows is that the American troops have adopted a mentality of every Iraqi is an enemy that wants to kill them. Being shot at and bombed from all sides will do that to you. So the American soldiers are just seeing some armed Iraqis and shooting them down post-haste. This is not the way to spread goodwill amongst the people that you are supposed to be liberating. That just gives the zealots and fanatics fuel to get these ideas about how to assassinate Americans, and reasons to justify that to the messes and to get those masses to act with them on that. The Iraqis feel that they are being lied to and oppressed by the Americans, because they are the ones that tell them that they need to have Pigs in order to achieve a peaceful state, and that these Pigs need to be armed because the situation is so volatile, and then the Americans shoot down these same Pigs that are supposed to be with them. This just makes Americans look like imperialistic fuckers that are there to conquer Iraq and subjugate its people, not liberate them or help them in any way. So they are now much less likely to assist the Americans in anyway. That gives you a situation of these stressed-out, demoralized American troops taking on the duties of occupiers instead of liberators. Instead of nation-building, they are just shooting and killing the Iraqi people. But America cannot do anything about the situation now, there is no turning back, there has been none for a long time. The fact that there was no coherent plan going in except to make lots of money for Mr. Businessman is rearing its ugly head now. While the Generals fumble around at the Pentagon and try to craft a plan on the fly, their underlings (the soldiers) are getting killed every day. Those that are not getting killed are slowly being driven insane by being continually surrounded by the worst that man has to offer. As their sanity erodes, so does their commitment to their task. They continually question just what the fuck they are really doing. Having troops with this sort of mentality is not the way to build a nation at all. The longer that The Pentagon keeps these troops there, the worse that it will get. No matter what happens, the American troops will get worse, not better as time goes on. They will continue to do shit like shoot Iraqi Pigs and kill Iraqi civilians in increasing numbers. This will fracture any and all efforts to build any kind of coalition to govern Iraq. As reports of Americans murdering Iraqis and Americans being assassinated by Iraqis, it will become less and less a country in a rebuilding phase, and become more and more a country caught up in the grips of a civil war. Anyone that has a grudge against anyone else in Iraq will take matters into their own hands, this is happening already. The only thing that these factions will have in common is that they hate the American occupiers, so The US will not be able to count on any of these people to be with them. That will just lead to an escalation of the attitude that all Iraqi are against the Americans. Then the soldiers will have no thoughts of helping others or being a humanitarian or any of that, they will just think of everyone as their enemy that wants them dead,and they will not lend anyone a hand for fear of having that hand shot. That is not going to make it easy for any future replacement troops, because they will walk right into this volatile situation where they are targets and adopt the siege mentality right away. Any troops that are ultimately sent into the Iraqi theater are never going to leave when they are supposed to. The Pentagon is going to realize that they have to keep the same troops there, because the other troops will want no part of going there and thusly be of no service to them. If they keep the same ones trapped there, they will have no choice except to keep on attempting to achieve the objectives (whatever they were in the first place) because they will have to just to survive. Incoming troops might just refuse to do much of anything, and let the whole thing fall apart from indifference. So the Pentagon is probably going to have to choose between having demoralized, jumpy, angry troops stationed in Iraq indefinetly, or bringing in a fresh contingent of troops that will not give a fuck from Day One and not do much of anything. Either way, that does not bode well for any American effort.Whether they keep the existing troops there forever or bring in new ones that doubt and question the whole thing, that means that nation-building is going to be impossible. Iraq seems to be doomed to be a country rife with lawlessness and anarchy for years to come. The sudden-death overtime is not going to be confined to the troops that are in Iraq now, it is going to apply to America as a whole, because the time that they will have to spend in Iraq is going to be much longer than what any governmental body says. America is going to be in Iraq for many,many years, and sudden death will be a continuing plague for those Americans that will be unlucky enough to be there. The situation that we see in iraq now is not going to change significantly anytime soon, so America better get used to being in sudden-death overtime for a long, long time.