LONGEST WAR
IN OUR HISTORY
CONTINUES
WITH NO END INSIGHT
TAGS:
WAR ON TERROR, 9/11/01, MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS,
JSOC,
SPECIAL FORCES OPERATIONS, UNSHARED BURDENS OF SERVICE,
THE
LETHALITY OF ARMED CONFLICT, REMEMBERING OUR
KIA’s,
MILITRY COMMENTARY, EDITORIAL, OPINION
(Monday May 30th, 2016
Pier 86, NYC) The retired vintage WWII aircraft carrier turned museum, the USS
Intrepid is permanently moored to Pier 86 at W 46th St & 12th Ave. on the
Westside of Manhattan and stands as an impressive piece of naval hardware. To walk her flight deck though, it is not
hard to imagine just how small a vessel it was out in the often raging open
seas. It is dwarfed in sheer size and technological capability by the nuclear powered “Super Carriers” of today. Today’s carriers are literal floating cities
boasting well trained crews of over 5,000 sailors while serving as home base
for up to 75 various types of aircraft. The superior advancement in technology
and science in all disciplines as evidenced in our daily lives is also on
display in the military machinery from our aircraft, warships, and field
artillery and infantry equipment, to our aircraft, satellites, helicopters and
drones. From the development of Stealth
aircraft architecture to radar, sonar, “smart” bombs and other munitions
technology has revolutionized modern warfare so totally that most of what is
taken for granted today could not have even been dreamt of a few decades ago.
What has never changed about
warfare is its lethality. Sure, our
weapons can be launched from afar to deliver death quickly and
efficiently. Unmanned drones are
controlled by “pilots” half a world away from the battle fields. Our Army Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps
boast the best trained and equipped troops the world has ever seen but death,
to most the main goal of meting out death to our “enemy” is as old as our
species.
We seem to now expect our
battles to be served up cold. We are
willing to engage whomever where ever provided we can do so with as few “boots
on the ground” as strategically and technologically possible. This is, of course, naïve and, as a practical
matter, it is simply not realistic.
Military conflict be it of the “conventional” strategy and tactics
fielded for centuries, or the newfangled “asymmetrical warfare” we confront
today, still requires putting members of our military into “harm’s way”. There is no way around it if the mission is
to be successful.
Now, in our 15th
year of perpetual war on many far-flung “battle spaces” as they are
euphemistically called, we have time and again asked our military to serve
multiple deployments, to do “more with less” as was the credo of the
Cheney/Bush era failed Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and his “neo-con”
acolytes, as we continue to spend our precious blood and diminishing treasure
in so many ill-defined battle spaces where tangible “victory” may never be
realized. Still our troops fight
on. According to a recent status report
by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) there are currently Special
Forces including Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Delta Force, USMC Maritime Raid
Force (MRF) operating in over 100 countries.
Let that sink in; we have some of our most elite troops spread around
the world in over 100 countries.
Our troops are doing what they
have always done. They are fighting,
largely anonymously, and dying in the same manner. Even their own families, their closest next
of kin have scant information regarding where their sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters, mothers and father are fighting and dying. Since the inception of an “all-volunteer”
force the once shared sacrifice of military Service is borne by less than one
tenth of one percent of our population.
And on this day more so than any other, we are compelled to mourn our
unknown, unseen, “anonymous” dead.
There is something lost in
translation regarding Memorial Day.
Billboards and placards displaying “Happy Memorial Day” are missing the
mark. There should be no “happiness” in
Memorial Day. It is, after all, a day
specified to honor our military dead, those who perished on land, sea and in
the air in all our collective wars.
Included also are those who succumbed to battlefield injuries after the
fact. This is not to suggest that this holiday be a dour time for the families
of those lost during our military conflicts.
Not at all. This is the time to remember who they were and what they did
for the greater good. The time for
“happiness” in celebration is Veterans Day for that is the day we honor and
yes, celebrate, all those who have and are currently serving in all branches of
the Military. The distinction between
these two national holidays is not simply a matter of description but an
important point of order.
Death is our great
equalizer. We all will die one day of
causes from the mundane to the unexpected and every condition and circumstance
in between. Those who are called to
fight our wars live with death, the unlikely combination of man’s fragility and
resolve; of that which motivates those we call our enemies and what it takes
for our Military to defeat them. The
battlefronts of today are like none before.
Terrorism, the rabid, radical Islamic stock in trade presents challenges
for our Military and domestic Law Enforcement the likes of which remain
relatively new and novel. But that harsh
reality is but a side bar to the truths that have always defined warfare.
In the earliest days of our
continuing war against radical Islamic extremists, a large percentage of our
standing Military Forces had enlisted primarily to earn the right to aide for
their higher education. Most of those
enlistees having joined during a period of peace for the United States had
never really considered the fact that they might one day see combat action in some
far off land. For many of them serving
in the Reserves and National Guard it was only due to the attractive financial
incentive that motivated them to enlist.
Little could any of us imagined up to September 11, 2001, that our
nation would be thrust into an asymmetrical war with a terrorist element, a
network of Muslim jihadists, the vanguard of which would deliver a devastating
blow in the form of four suicide attack hijackings that brought down the
formidable Twin Towers in NYC, severely damaged The Pentagon, with the last
plane crashing into a remote field in Pennsylvania as the doomed passengers
fought the hijackers. Yes, our world,
and our role in it was forever altered by the events of that clear blue sunny
Tuesday in September of 2001.
Our young service men and
women more than rose to the challenge.
As the rightful battle campaign in Afghanistan quickly vanquished the
Taliban and cornered Osama bin Laden and the surviving cadre of al Qaeda in the
rugged mountainous region of Tora Bora it appeared that total ‘victory’ was at
hand. But, our troops were betrayed by
the Cheney/Bush neo-con agenda determined to attack Iraq and topple the brutal
regime of Saddam Hussein. This shift of
focus has proven to be disastrous. Had
we finished the mission in Afghanistan and began to assist them in finding
their own tribal ways towards peaceful coexistence without the iron-handed rule
of the Taliban and their misguided interpretation of Sharia law, the mission
would have wound down perhaps as early as 2003 or 2004.
But, true to form and in the
proud tradition of the United States Military, our troops adapted and responded
to the task at hand. They had no way of
knowing that the ill-conceived incursion into Iraq would spawn an insurgency,
internal conflict, and ferocious resistance to the US Military presence. Some of the battle grounds will go down in
history as so many other battlefields from our past have. Places like Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul, Tikrit,
Baghdad, and more anonymous stretches of desert and land will become part of
Army Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps lore.
We are right to memorialize
our war dead on this day. There are
plenty of other days to raise a fist, wave a flag, apply some patriotic bumper
sticker, or generally boast about what a bad assed country we are ready to open
a can of whuppass on any one who dares cross us. This is the low brow idealism of those who
have never worn the uniform, who have never known the brutality of combat, who
have never been indoctrinated to sacrifice their life for that of a fellow
brother in arms. And, perhaps, that is
just fine. The military is certainly not
everyone’s calling. But there is the
tremendous distinction between patriotism and service, between love of country,
life and liberty and the bonds formed in the white hot heat of combat for it is
from those bonds that cohesion among our troops is forged.
We mourn those killed in
action and should pause for a moment during the backyard barbecue, shopping
spree at the mall, or whatever activity we choose on this three-day weekend to
recognize the sacrifices of our young men and women who went to war and never
came back.
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2016 © All
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