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Letter from Afghanistan-A must read!

The Lawn Ranger

Gunny Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Oct 11, 2009
1,254
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Northern Kentucky
This is pretty harsh sounding, but probably nearer to the truth than what we are hearing on our national news.

This young man is articulate and has a flare for colorful language, and descriptive prose....Scorpions, Chiggers & Sand Fleas/great letter, must read!

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 the Dar'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 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.
 
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I haven't read Matterhorn. To date the best Vietnam account I've read is Dispatches but I've ordered Matterhorn now. I'd be very interested in reading anything else by 'Saucy Jack'mic your dad had them to send.

Thanks again.
 
Not meaning to rain on any of this, but this letter went around about 5 years ago. It was a little more relevant then, than it feels to me today. My brother in law just came back, so I am up to date.

The Matterhorn is a phenomenal read.
 
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.

Unfortunately, it's like telling to a drug addict that drugs are harmful.
 
That read was great, I enjoy a point blank, the way it is narrative. We need more of that.


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I haven't read Matterhorn. To date the best Vietnam account I've read is Dispatches but I've ordered Matterhorn now. I'd be very interested in reading anything else by 'Saucy Jack'mic your dad had them to send.

Thanks again.

Also, look up "In Pharaoh's Army". I think I have read this book 4 times. Phenomenal.
 
You have got to love the unbridled truth when it comes from the guys that are actually fighting the war from the ground level. The press, when they go to Afghanistan, may go to Bagram or Kandahar and maybe go to a little lower like Jalalabad, but they normally just cover Karzai's words of wisdom. Nothing to see here; just a cranky old man that is propped up by the U.S. but won't last a year after we leave.

There will be oodles of books coming out on Iraq and Afghanistan for years just like after Vietnam from soldiers on the ground. I remember when I was in my teens that I read lots of Vietnam books as it was truly fascinating. I sure that is what got me to go in the Army in the first place.