From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan
From the Sand Pit. It's freezing here. I'm
sitting on hard cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the
Hindu Kush Mountains, along theDar'yoi Pomir River, watching a hole
that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my friend, and
no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.
I also glance at the area around my ass every ten
to fifteen seconds to avoid
another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers
and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod.
Hurts like a bastard. The
antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps
for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that,
believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat
food and drink water. That requires couriers and that's where an old
bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the
tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the
handheld, shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the
air commanders where to drop the hardware. We bash some heads for a
while, then I track and record the new movement.
It's all about intelligence. We haven't even
brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what
they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and
allowing the eradication to begin. But you know me, I'm a romantic. I've said it before and I'll say it again:
This country blows, man. It's not even a country. There are no
roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an
inhospitable, rock pit shit hole ruled by eleventh century warring
tribes.
There are no jobs here like we know jobs.
Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support
his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those
are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp
and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a
goose with stomach flu, if that's your idea of a party. But the smell
alone
of those 'tent cities of the walking dead' is
enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for
eighteen hours a day.
I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks, and
Turkmen and even a couple of Pushtuns, for over a month-and-a-half now,
and this much I can say for sure: These guys, all of 'em, are
Huns...actual, living Huns.. They LIVE to fight. It's what they do.
It's ALL they do. They have no respect for anything, not for their
families, nor for each other, nor for themselves. They claw at one
another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force
their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family
honor.
Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who
feed on each other's barbarism. Cavemen with AK-47's. Then again,
maybe I'm just cranky.
I'm freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because
my lap warmer is running out of
juice, and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.
Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre.
Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful,
sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.'
They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a
dictionary because the word they are looking for is 'cunning.' The
Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines.
They are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted,
cowardly. They are hateful,
malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything
else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart.
They've spent their entire lives reading only one
book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and
indoor plumbing to be products of the devil.
They're still figuring out how to work a Bic
lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of
life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he
just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it. OK, enough.
Snuffle will be up soon, so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my
tracks in the snow
takes a lot of practice, but I'm good at it.
Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn
off the TV sets and move on with your lives. The story line you are
getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bullshit and designed
not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen through
the commercials. We've got this one under control The worst thing you
guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over
here, because you have no idea what we're doing, and really, you don't
want to know. We are your military, and we are doing what you sent
us here to do.
Saucy Jack Recon Marine in Afghanistan Semper Fi
"Freedom is not free...but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your
share".
Send this to YOUR FRIENDS so that people here will
really know what is going on over there.