This has been going around for quite a while. Great read, albeit I cannot validate it was actually written from where he says. But it sounds like something a Recon Marine would write. It would be funny if it were not so true.
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
Pamir 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, and 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, and 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 Pashtu’s, for over a month-and-a-half now, and this much I can say for sure: These guys, 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 a cranky young bastard.
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, Bizarro. 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! Bullshit! 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 so you will watch 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 only doing what you sent us here to do.
From a 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 there will really know what is going on over here.
GOD BLESS AMERICA.
Originally posted 2016-02-21 15:27:35.
