27 December 2010 We don’t want it but you can’t have it!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122602622.html?hpid=artslot

U.S. troops battle to hand off a valley resistant to Afghan governance


By Greg Jaffe

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 27, 2010; 12:00 AM

Cassi Creek:

Tell me again, please, and help me to believe, that the Afghani and Iraqi wars haven’t become another copy of the Vietnam War; a tragic, hopeless clusterfuck, driven by opposing ideologies, incapable of being won, meat-grinders consuming our troops for no valid reason.

This article documents the same failure to define and maintain any goal beyond a body count that existed in Vietnam. We take ground that we don’t want to deny it to an enemy. We have neither tactical nor strategic reason to expend the lives of our troops in these hellholes. Take away the tropical forests and increase the elevation. Only the face of the enemy remains unknown. The enemy wants the ground we try to control even if they deny wanting it. They want it as a proof of power to contest the will of NATO and the U.S. They want it because they know they can force any populace into compliance by trumpeting ideology and xenophobia, as the Vietnamese did and the Afghanis do. It matters not whether the ideology is driven by religion or nationalism.

We find our troops caught in the demand to win a war that is ill defined, ill chosen, and most likely incapable of being won. We demand that our volunteer troops die on foreign soil for reasons that they will never truly know. Our leaders have yet to realize that money spent building infrastructure and schools in Afghanistan and Iraq should be spent educating Americans and building new infrastructure inside our borders. We won WWII. We are not required to fight every new war that we blunder into as if the continued existence of the world depends upon our next victory. However, there’s little likelihood that we will change our use of troops when diplomacy would by much cheaper. And for the troops who fight and die while we show our support by buying bits of yellow plastic that almost no civilians understand the significance of will find no relief in sight.

This bit of verse written in 1992 seems incredibly timely still.



No Relief in Sight - rewrite 7 November 2009



There's only one more klick to hump today,

How many times they've fooled me with that lie.

We'll have to hump back out, because it's raining,

The clouds too low to let the choppers fly.



Of course, it's only a klick or five,

Of course, I know it'll keep us alive,

But I've been doing this for months,

And there's no relief in sight.



The other squads all took their turns at ambush

Your squad will have to go again tonight.

We know they’re somewhere out there, just can't find em,

So go, the Colonel's spoiling for a fight.



Of course, you know you can sleep in late,

We'll just tell Charlie he has to wait.

Hey, don't you know there's a war on,

And there's no relief in sight.



Hey, Doc, you wanna help me write some letters, man.

To the families of the troops who just got killed.

I know you're feelin' bad you couldn't save 'em

But, Doc, you know we had to take that hill.



And it doesn't matter, not even a bit,

That we hadn't a single use for it.

We killed some soldiers and flew away,

And there's no relief in sight.



I sit and think of the boys who fell that morning.

Who died when the choppers were tasked to another fight,

Who might have lived if only we could have evac'ed 'em,

Who might be writing their own notes home tonight.



It was dragging the wounded down off the hill,

Tagging and bagging them dead off the hill,

Dragging the bodies off some nameless hill

And there's no relief in sight.





So what did we do, we denied the enemy shelter,

And what did we win; well we took contested ground,

And what of the two platoons we left to follow us off the hill,

Well, they're shaking the trees to knock the dog tags down.



Cause some of the boys are MIA,

Only reported in yesterday,

(They were only cherries, anyway)

I know you lost some friends, but, Hey!

There's no relief in sight



We only assaulted eleven days,

Count up the wounded and KIA's

We won a hell of a victory,

And there's no relief in sight