My Soldier Of The Decade

[Gary Sisco]

Since Monte continues to insist that my experience with vets is that they, and many conservatives, share my views against the war in Iraq, capturing Hussein or no, "doesn't square" with his vast experience with "military people," perhaps he'd like to argue with General Zinni about it:

So, here we go. Merry Chritmit, Monte:

Subject: Four-Star Marine General: Iraq Strategy "Screwed-Up">
>
> Editors Note | Retired General Anthony Zinni is a decorated Vietnam
> War veteran, four-star Marine general and former Central Command
> Chief in Charge of all U.S. Forces in the Persian Gulf Region. In
> addition Zinni Was Selected Personally by George W. Bush as U.S.
> Special Envoy to the Middle East in 2001. His comments come as a
> stark reminder that White House war plans face opposition even at
> the highest levels.
>
> Four-Star Marine General: Iraq Strategy "Screwed-Up"
> By Thomas E. Ricks
> Washington Post Staff Writer
>
> Tuesday 23 December 2003
>
> Anthony C. Zinni's opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq began on the
> monsoon-ridden afternoon of Nov. 3, 1970. He was lying on a Vietnamese
> mountainside west of Da Nang, three rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle
> in his side and back. He could feel his lifeblood seeping into the
> ground as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
>
> He had plenty of time to think in the following months while
> recuperating in a military hospital in Hawaii. Among other things, he
> promised himself that, "If I'm ever in a position to say what I think
> is right, I will. . . . I don't care what happens to my career."
>
> That time has arrived.
>
> Over the past year, the retired Marine Corps general has become
> one of the most prominent opponents of Bush administration policy on
> Iraq, which he now fears is drifting toward disaster.
>
> It is one of the more unusual political journeys to come out of
> the American experience with Iraq. Zinni still talks like an
> old-school Marine -- a big-shouldered, weight-lifting, working-class
> Philadelphian whose father emigrated from Italy's Abruzzi region, and
> who is fond of quoting the wisdom of his fictitious "Uncle Guido, the
> plumber." Yet he finds himself in the unaccustomed role of rallying
> the antiwar camp, attacking the policies of the president and
> commander in chief whom he had endorsed in the 2000 election.
>
> "Iraq is in serious danger of coming apart because of lack of
> planning, underestimating the task and buying into a flawed strategy,"
> he says. "The longer we stubbornly resist admitting the mistakes and
> not altering our approach, the harder it will be to pull this chestnut
> out of the fire."
>
> Three years ago, Zinni completed a tour as chief of the Central
> Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East, during
> which he oversaw enforcement of the two "no-fly" zones in Iraq and
> also conducted four days of punishing airstrikes against that country
> in 1998. He even served briefly as a special envoy to the Middle East,
> mainly as a favor to his old friend and comrade Secretary of State
> Colin L. Powell.
>
> Zinni long has worried that there are worse outcomes possible in
> Iraq than having Saddam Hussein in power -- such as eliminating him in
> such a way that Iraq will become a new haven for terrorism in the
> Middle East.
>
> "I think a weakened, fragmented, chaotic Iraq, which could happen
> if this isn't done carefully, is more dangerous in the long run than a
> contained Saddam is now," he told reporters in 1998. "I don't think
> these questions have been thought through or answered." It was a
> warning for which Iraq hawks such as Paul D. Wolfowitz, then an
> academic and now the No. 2 official at the Pentagon, attacked him in
> print at the time.
>
> Now, five years later, Zinni fears it is an outcome toward which
> U.S.-occupied Iraq may be drifting. Nor does he think the capture of
> Hussein is likely to make much difference, beyond boosting U.S. troop
> morale and providing closure for his victims. "Since we've failed thus
> far to capitalize" on opportunities in Iraq, he says, "I don't have
> confidence we will do it now. I believe the only way it will work now
> is for the Iraqis themselves to somehow take charge and turn things
> around. Our policy, strategy, tactics, et cetera, are still screwed
> up."
>
> 'Where's the Threat?'
>
> Anthony Zinni's passage from obedient general to outspoken
> opponent began in earnest in the unlikeliest of locations, the
> national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was there in
> Nashville in August 2002 to receive the group's Dwight D. Eisenhower
> Distinguished Service Award, recognition for his 35 years in the
> Marine Corps.
>
> Vice President Cheney was also there, delivering a speech on
> foreign policy. Sitting on the stage behind the vice president, Zinni
> grew increasingly puzzled. He had endorsed Bush and Cheney two years
> earlier, just after he retired from his last military post, as chief
> of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in Iraq.
>
> "I think he ran on a moderate ticket, and that's my leaning -- I'm
> kind of a Lugar-Hagel-Powell guy," he says, listing three Republicans
> associated with centrist foreign policy positions.
>
> He was alarmed that day to hear Cheney make the argument for
> attacking Iraq on grounds that Zinni found questionable at best:
>
> "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has
> weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said. "There is no doubt that he
> is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and
> against us."
>
> Cheney's certitude bewildered Zinni. As chief of the Central
> Command, Zinni had been immersed in U.S. intelligence about Iraq. He
> was all too familiar with the intelligence analysts' doubts about
> Iraq's programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. "In my
> time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never -- not once --
> did it say, 'He has WMD.' "
>
> Though retired for nearly two years, Zinni says, he remained
> current on the intelligence through his consulting with the CIA and
> the military. "I did consulting work for the agency, right up to the
> beginning of the war. I never saw anything. I'd say to analysts,
> 'Where's the threat?' " Their response, he recalls, was, "Silence."
>
> Zinni's concern deepened as Cheney pressed on that day at the
> Opryland Hotel. "Time is not on our side," the vice president said.
> "The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action."
>
> Zinni's conclusion as he slowly walked off the stage that day was
> that the Bush administration was determined to go to war. A moment
> later, he had another, equally chilling thought: "These guys don't
> understand what they are getting into."
>
> Unheeded Advice
>
> This retired Marine commander is hardly a late-life convert to
> pacifism. "I'm not saying there aren't parts of the world that don't
> need their ass kicked," he says, sitting in a hotel lobby in Pentagon
> City, wearing an open-necked blue shirt. Even at the age of 60, he
> remains an avid weight-lifter and is still a solid, square-faced slab
> of a man. "Afghanistan was the right thing to do," he adds, referring
> to the U.S. invasion there in 2001 to oust the Taliban regime and its
> allies in the al Qaeda terrorist organization.
>
> But he didn't see any need to invade Iraq. He didn't think Hussein
> was much of a worry anymore. "He was contained," he says. "It was a
> pain in the ass, but he was contained. He had a deteriorated military.
> He wasn't a threat to the region."
>
> But didn't his old friend Colin Powell also describe Hussein as a
> threat? Zinni dismisses that. "He's trying to be the good soldier, and
> I respect him for that." Zinni no longer does any work for the State
> Department.
>
> Zinni's concern deepened at a Senate hearing in February, just six
> weeks before the war began. As he awaited his turn to testify, he
> listened to Pentagon and State Department officials talk vaguely about
> the "uncertainties" of a postwar Iraq. He began to think they were
> doing the wrong thing the wrong way. "I was listening to the panel,
> and I realized, 'These guys don't have a clue.' "
>
> That wasn't a casual judgment. Zinni had started thinking about
> how the United States might handle Iraq if Hussein's government
> collapsed after Operation Desert Fox, the four days of airstrikes that
> he oversaw in December 1998, in which he targeted presidential
> palaces, Baath Party headquarters, intelligence facilities, military
> command posts and barracks, and factories that might build missiles
> that could deliver weapons of mass destruction.
>
> In the wake of those attacks on about 100 major targets,
> intelligence reports came in that Hussein's government had been shaken
> by the short campaign. "After the strike, we heard from countries with
> diplomatic missions in there [Baghdad] that the regime was paralyzed,
> and that there was a kind of defiance in the streets," he recalls.
>
> So early in 1999 he ordered that plans be devised for the
> possibility of the U.S. military having to occupy Iraq. Under the code
> name "Desert Crossing," the resulting document called for a nationwide
> civilian occupation authority, with offices in each of Iraq's 18
> provinces. That plan contrasts sharply, he notes, with the reality of
> the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation power, which
> for months this year had almost no presence outside Baghdad -- an
> absence that some Army generals say has increased their burden in > Iraq.
>
> Listening to the administration officials testify that day, Zinni
> began to suspect that his careful plans had been disregarded.
> Concerned, he later called a general at Central Command's headquarters
> in Tampa and asked, "Are you guys looking at Desert Crossing?" The
> answer, he recalls, was, "What's that?"
>
> The more he listened to Wolfowitz and other administration
> officials talk about Iraq, the more Zinni became convinced that
> interventionist "neoconservative" ideologues were plunging the nation
> into a war in a part of the world they didn't understand. "The more I
> saw, the more I thought that this was the product of the neocons who
> didn't understand the region and were going to create havoc there.
> These were dilettantes from Washington think tanks who never had an
> idea that worked on the ground."
>
> ;And the more he dwelled on this, the more he began to believe
> that U.S. soldiers would wind up paying for the mistakes of Washington
> policymakers. And that took him back to that bloody day in the sodden
> Que Son mountains in Vietnam.
>
> A Familiar Chill
>
> Even now, decades later, Vietnam remains a painful subject for
> him. "I only went to the Wall once, and it was very difficult," he
> says, talking about his sole visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on
> the Mall. "I was walking down past the names of my men," he recalls.
> "My buddies, my troops -- just walking down that Wall was hard, and I
> couldn't go back."
>
> Now he feels his nation -- and a new generation of his soldiers --
> have been led down a similar path.
>
> "Obviously there are differences" between Vietnam and Iraq, he
> says. "Every situation is unique." But in his bones, he feels the same
> chill. "It feels the same. I hear the same things -- about
> [administration charges about] not telling the good news, about
> cooking up a rationale for getting into the war." He sees both
> conflicts as beginning with deception by the U.S. government, drawing
> a parallel between how the Johnson administration handled the
> beginning of the Vietnam War and how the Bush administration touted
> the threat presented by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. "I think
> the American people were conned into this," he says. Referring to the
> 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the Johnson administration
> claimed that U.S. Navy ships had been subjected to an unprovoked
> attack by North Vietnam, he says, "The Gulf of Tonkin and the case for
> WMD and terrorism is synonymous in my mind."
>
> Likewise, he says, the goal of transforming the Middle East by
> imposing democracy by force reminds him of the "domino theory" in the
> 1960s that the United States had to win in Vietnam to prevent the rest
> of Southeast Asia from falling into communist hands.
>
> And that brings him back to Wolfowitz and his neoconservative
> allies as the root of the problem. "I don't know where the neocons
> came from -- that wasn't the platform they ran on," he says. "Somehow,
> the neocons captured the president. They captured the vice president."
>
> He is especially irked that, as he sees it, no senior officials
> have taken responsibility for their incorrect assessment of the threat
> posed by Iraq. "What I don't understand is that the bill of goods the
> neocons sold him has been proven false, yet heads haven't rolled," he
> says. "Where is the accountability? I think some fairly senior people
> at the Pentagon ought to go." Who? "That's up to the president."
>
> Zinni has picked his shots carefully -- a speech here, a
> "Nightline" segment or interview there. "My contemporaries, our
> feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam,
> where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," he
> said at a talk to hundreds of Marine and Navy officers and others at a
> Crystal City hotel ballroom in September. "I ask you, is it happening
> again?" The speech, part of a forum sponsored by the U.S. Naval
> Institute and the Marine Corps Association, received prolonged
> applause, with many officers standing.
>
> Zinni says that he hasn't received a single negative response from
> military people about the stance he has taken. "I was surprised by the
> number of uniformed guys, all ranks, who said, 'You're speaking for
> us. Keep on keeping on.' "
>
> Even home in Williamsburg, he has been surprised at the reaction.
> "I mean, I live in a very conservative Republican community, and
> people were saying, 'You're right.' "
>
> But Zinni vows that he has learned a lesson. Reminded that he
> endorsed Bush in 2000, he says, "I'm not going to do anything
> political again -- ever. I made that mistake one time."

[Gary Sisco]

What, no comment, Msr Monte?

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
What, no comment, Msr Monte?

Gary, your first post was at 5:49 AM Monte-time on Xmas day. I'm sure you'll have your response in due time.

[patricia]

Monte's customary knee-jerk response is probably coming, Gary. I would like to say though that Zinni is probably the only one who has said, much more elequently than I could, what I have been trying to for two years.
I'm no expert in Middle Eastern politics, but I do know something about their culture and I fear that the neo-cons who have launched this ill-advised action know nothing of the region and don't care that they know nothing of the region.
No good for the Iraqi people can come of this. This, IMO, is purely a power and greed play and it sickens me.
I have always thought that if the Bush Administration had truly thought that the Iraqis had nuclear power and chemical weapons, which were a genuine threat to the U.S., they wouldn't have gone in. I think that they knew full well that they didn't and thought that the inevitable victory after a short period of constant bombing would bring victory and glory for the adminstration. I don't think that they had any idea what they would do if guerilla tactics, which would be the logical alternative for a country that had a depleted army and arms from the Russion era to take were used. It amazes me that nobody seems to have been surprised at the lack of resistance of a country which knew it was going to be attacked by the U.S. and offered little beyond old weapons and angry scowls.
Countries don't take kindly to occupation and future exploitation so the "small attacks" don't surprise me. They don't want us there. Why does that puzzle so many??
I believe that that is how Iraqis view the invasion. What would we do if another country invaded ours? This will go on for the forseeable future, if nothing changes in the way that Washington views the Middle East, IMO.

I'm sure that Monte disagrees with me, but he always does.

[Uli]

Originally posted by Pete C
Gary, your first post was at 5:49 AM Monte-time on Xmas day. I'm sure you'll have your response in due time.

He mite be converting. That's gonna take an hour or two.

[Monte Smith]

Gary: I don't ever recall insisting that your experience with vets meant anything.

I do recall stating, on your insistence, when was the last time I "hung" with vets. Hardly ever would be and was my answer, as everyone I know in the service, almost, is active duty. And I also said that I know a few, if not plenty, of active duty types that regard President Bush with something less than lockstep awe.

Zinni and Wesley Clark might be among those retired Army who disagree with the Commander in Chief. If so, they are not alone. If so, it doesn't rock my world. This is America and not the the Republic of Bush Supporters.

By the way, I was talking to a Lt. Col. the other day (Pigfucker), and was talking politics. I brought up some of the points you regularly make, and was unable to answer Pigfucker's question, "What branch of the service was Gary in?" It occurs to me that I have never asked after all these years and frankly do not know. Army, I assume. What branch of the service were you in, Gary?

Merry Xmas--sorry for being away from the keyboard so long.

[Gary Sisco]

USCG, ET3 (E-4), in the days when it controlled the (then) state of the art electronic navigation system, Loran-C, all over the world. I worked on, and eventually oversaw the timing of, the chain's signal for nearly all of the Pacific north of the equator (apart from the extreme northern Pac closest to the Alaska or Siberia, however you look at it, and the section east of Hawaii to the west coast of the US), which was used in those days by all ships and planes, including very much the bombers destroying several thousand years of civilization in SE Asia, thanks. Enlisted. The draft wasn't an issue with me, as sailoring is a family tradition on both sides, going back as far as anyone knows, with the exception of the Civil War, in which I had ancestors on both sides, in the infantry. In my mom's generation, the women were all Navy, officers, nurses. My mother met my father whilst caring for and watching many wounded Korea vets die. And, yes, the USCG was in Vietnam, and Thailand, and, in those days, everywhere in the northern hemisphere, because it ran and controlled the Loran-C system worldwide, and the Loran-A system before that, going back to the days immediately following WW2. Indeed, it served and fought in every US war with the exceptions of Korea and Gulf War 1. It has a major presence, for the smallest but oldest American armed service, in the Gulf and Iraq today.

My rifle-carrying days were later on, circa 1984-85, age 30 and 31, in Nicaragua, in an FSLN militia, along with my best friend (US Army, E3, combat engineer, Mekong Delta, class of 1968) -- service of which I am as proud as the former, thanks, and which is where I saw fire, as a relative geezer (the average age in Nicaragua then was 16), instead of merely making sure the bombers knew precisely where they were to within 50' whilst destroying hospitals in N Vietnam and several millenia worth of dike systems (and manual human labor) in Cambodia.

I also served COMADRES (Committee Of The Mothers Of The Disappeared) at their request, circa 1987-88, as a writer, witness and (unarmed) security for one of their leaders, who was on the death-squad hit list, and was not "legally" (whatever that meant in El Salvador) allowed in the country at the time. That unarmed service, in those years and circumstances, is the one I'm most proud of, as I got to spend considerable time with some of the bravest people on the planet, who put their lives on the line every day, and often died for it. I'd still today follow any of those women (many of whom were grandmother-aged but tougher than any of us will ever be) through the gates of hell, if that's what they wanted me to do.

That's my service record, all honorably discharged.

As for the subject of the thread, please note the what organizations constituted the *audience* which delivered General Zinni sustained applause as well as standing ovations. Hundreds of retired Navy officers was one, and the Marine Corps Association another. If you think those aren't some damned conservative organizations, hardly noted for their pacifism, you're from another planet for sure. If the Marine Corps Association gives views identical in all ways with mine to one of their own in the form of sustained applause, that rather tells you something about how widespread are his (and my) views among the nation's warriors, thanks. What one guy told you or asked you hardly matters much by comparison.

Please also note his credentials as an early Bushist and Commander of all Gulf forces, with access to all Mid-East intelligence including the highest classifications, right up the very eve of the Iraq invasion.

And please also note that he was a fighting general, and a fighting officer in Vietnam, where he was severely wounded. Aligning a man like Zinni with a bureaucrat like Clark is a disingenuous ploy on your part, at best. Bush, the deserter during wartime, and most of his administration, share a lot more in common with guys like Clark than they do with fighting Marines like General Zinni. If you don't want to accept my take on that, ask your one military opinionmaker what he thinks.

And if you'd like to have a taste of what active-duty guys and gals as well as many vets of many wars think about all of this, all you have to do is go to Hackworth's site and check it out.

And Hack, I might add, is the most decorated officer of the Vietnam War.

In the end, it matters not, true, because, like you say, this is still, at least technically, a republic, and hence the truth and reality will, as it always eventually has, trump ideology, partisanship, and CNN soldiering, every time.

[Monte Smith]

Now how did I get the impression all these years that you were an Army veteran of Vietnam? My apologies. You served honorably in the Coast Guard. I had a friend from high school, now deceased I am sad to say, who was in the Coast Guard. He had a bizarre reaction from some drugs he was prescribed and went just like that.

As to the sustained applause that this article gives to General Zinni, well I'm prepared to believe it may be so. I, of course, can't gauge how widespread beliefs are (I lack the metrics, as Rummy might say) or refute anecdotal evidence I wasn't present to witness. All I can tell you is that the people I talk to in the Army, at Ft. Lewis and elsewhere, understand what this war is about. They may have one degree or another of reservation about the way it is being conducted, but I'd guess--just guess--that having a Howard Dean making policy would not instill greater confidence than they have today. I'll always leave open the possibility that I could be wrong and that the American military will vote Dem to the man come November. Even the Coast Guard.

[shrugs]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
I'll always leave open the possibility that I could be wrong and that the American military will vote Dem to the man come November. Even the Coast Guard.

They'll be voting for Bush again. They seem to forget that Bush Sr. shut down all the bases in the 90's and that it was Clinton who gave them the biggest pay raise since Reagan's first years in office.

[Gary Sisco]

I'd not count on it, Monte. When one is a soldier, the way they decide to conduct a war has a lot more importance to one's thinking than the reasons why they're waging it. Believe it or not, when you're being shot at, you don't think much about the reasons why you're where you are. You just try very hard to stay alive, if possible, and to keep your immediate buddies in the same state, to the best of your ability. The rest is left to the guys watching you kill and die on CNN.

There were many, many more Americans of all services in Vietnam than there were Americans in the infantry, there. In fact, the ratio was ten support troops for every one combat troop. And many of the combat units saw little if any significant action. It all depended on the unit in question, not the service. There were many more refridgerator repair guys and such than there were combat troops, never mind the "special forces," or the cats who claim to have done three tours. Almost everyone now who claims to have done more than one tour, or to have done any time in the special forces (who blew nearly every mission in 15 years in any case), is a liar. I've heard more people make that claim than even served in special forces en toto, one of the bizarre aspects of the Vietnam legacy. Of all the vets I know, which are many, I've known only three who did two tours, and only one who did three, and none of them were special forces.

By the way, the USCG Loran-C Station, Con Son, "Republic" of South Vietnam, was the last functioning American station in Vietnam. Not the Embassy, as is too often said, and not the Marines who helped evacuate it. The USCG was the last still on duty and still working, and the very last to leave, bar none. Con Son (if you consult a map you'll see the island off the Mekong delta) was still on the air, April 29, 1975, as usual, not having received any orders to do otherwise. An Air America (a CIA proprietary "airline") chopper showed up out of nowhere and the pilot told the crew he was leaving in a half hour and no one (American) would be coming after that. Since the island was also the location of the famous "tiger cage" POW camp, entirely controlled by Mr Charles, there was some frantic back and forth on the teletype between Con Son and Seasec (Southeast Asia Section hq) about what to do, since one can't abandon one's duties and station without orders or relief (unless you're Junior, in which case you can entirely blow off the last seventeen months of your alleged National Guard hitch, and hence be a deserter during wartime).

I still have the teletype traffic roll upstairs in my library. After about twenty minutes of frantic back and forth between Con Son and Bangkok, Seasec ordered the skipper to destroy the equipment and anything else of note and to get the crew on the chopper for evacuation. The plug was pulled on the station, everything blown up enough to be rendered useless, buildings included, and that was that for the US presence in Vietnam (though not in Thailand, from where the B-52s, with the continued assistance of the CG's Loran sailors in Udorn and Sattahip, continued to bomb Cambodia for another year or so, until the Thais ordered the American military to leave the country, not wanting to have to deal with the Khmer Rouge as angry neighbors, which no one but the Vietnamese were willing to do, and thank goodness they did, in my book). A bit of little-known history for youse.

As for who's supporting what today and who's going to vote for who, all you have to do, Monte, to put your finger on the vets' pulse is have a beer at your local Legion Hall. Oh, excuse me. I forgot. You can't. Scratch that. You need to have a DD-214 in your pocket to drink there.

Another little-know fact of military history: At the time of my enlistment, the USCG was an elite outfit, because, with only 30,000 or so members (it's more or less the same size, still, today), it could afford to be. At the time I served, it demanded by far the highest intellectual standards of all the services, and also maintained the highest physical standards, in basic training and in general, of all the services with the single exception of the USMC. I can't vouch for it today, as all the services are softer now than they were then. In those days, the USMC, alone, could legally use corporal punishment in boot camp. I doubt if they can still do that (legally) today. They weren't (legally) allowed to use corporal punishment on us in the CG, but they came up with other, more imaginative ways to do the same thing and accomplish the same results: teamwork and esprit de corps.

I have a soft spot still for jarheads because the MC and the CG maintained a mutual animosity toward the Navy, that drew us together in many ways, especially partying and fucking with the Navy guys. In those days, the CG wore the same sailor suit as the Navy, except we had a shield on the left sleeve of our blues (or whites) that the Navy did not, which inspired our informal motto, "Cover your shield and blame it on the Navy."

[Salvador Dali Lama]

for what its worth, my (iwo jima survivor) grandfather did two tours in vietnam. pushing pencils. i think he just re-upped to get away from his family though.

[Monte Smith]

Elite outfit! OK, Gary. No one is disparaging the Coast Guard or the Air National Guard or anything. No need to get defensive. As you know, I neither am nor have ever said I am in a position to judge your war heroics, exploits well known to the readers of this board.

[Tom Storer]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
I worked on, and eventually oversaw the timing of, the chain's signal for nearly all of the Pacific north of the equator (apart from the extreme northern Pac closest to the Alaska or Siberia, however you look at it, and the section east of Hawaii to the west coast of the US), which was used in those days by all ships and planes, including very much the bombers destroying several thousand years of civilization in SE Asia, thanks. Enlisted. The draft wasn't an issue with me [...]

My rifle-carrying days were later on, circa 1984-85, age 30 and 31, in Nicaragua, in an FSLN militia, along with my best friend (US Army, E3, combat engineer, Mekong Delta, class of 1968) -- service of which I am as proud as the former, thanks, and which is where I saw fire, as a relative geezer (the average age in Nicaragua then was 16), instead of merely making sure the bombers knew precisely where they were to within 50' whilst destroying hospitals in N Vietnam and several millenia worth of dike systems (and manual human labor) in Cambodia.

Gary, I note you say you are equally proud of:

a) serving in the USCG helping bombers destroy several thousand years of civilization in SE Asia

b) serving in an FSLN militia, combating US-trained and -supported militia

Isn't there some contradiction? Wasn't some change of heart or philosophy necessary to go from assisting in the destruction of North Vietnamese hospitals to defending the Sandinista revolution? And wouldn't that change of position lead you to be less proud of your USCG stint than of your FSLN stint?

[Gary Sisco]

Tom -- Not in my book, no. Like I've always said, guys in the military don't get to choose their wars; others do that for them, normally people who don't have to fight them or anything else. And in any case, what one does at 19 (never mind who one is) is often different than what one does at 30 or 30+. And also, the job I did provided (at the time) state of the art navigation for *all* ships and planes, civilian or military, American or other. It was (and is) available for use to anyone with a receiver, whether a lobsterman in Maine or a B-52 navigator finding his way from Okinawa to East Humbug, North Vietnam. Would it have been better to just not provide navigation for everyone because the bombers used it too? So did the manned space shots. So what? At the time it was as or more widely used for navigation as GPU is today. It wasn't only for the military. If you flew on any airline until recent times, you got where you were going because of that system, and if you've eaten lobster since WW2, the lobster pot was found with the same device.

One of the reasons I chose the CG instead of the family tradition of the Navy, in fact, was the CG has reasons other than death and destruction to exist, although it is an armed service. It's also lots of other things. Nor would I trade any of the experiences, for any reason, political or otherwise. I had the privilege of serving with a lot of great, interesting guys (four of whom are still up-to-date friends, since we were all 19), working our asses off together doing incredible things, and partying like mad dogs when we weren't.

And there is also the rather more mundane reason: The real left (before it got confused with pacifism in the 60s) was always in favor of doing military service, even if it was opposed to the war, politically, because it provided an opportunity for revolutionaries to receive military training and experience that would, they hoped, be used later for revolutionary purposes. I spent much of my adult life studying tactics, strategy, etc., and preparing myself mentally and physically, for that, as well. Nicaragua and El Salvador were as close as I had an opportunity to use the study and training I'd had up til then, and provided more at the same time that I didn't get to use. I still study these things, if only out of habit and intellectual curiosity, of course being too old now for any of that, and that time in history is passed, now, too.

Also, as you know, I'm in favor of universal military service for all, male or female, no exceptions. if you want choice, enlist. If not, well, take your chances.

As for the US-trained "militia" known as the contras in Nicaragua in those days, it wasn't a militia. It was a terrorist army made up, primarily, of remnants of Somoza's National Guard, one of the most vicious and repressive of all such institutions in Latin America's long and bloody history -- and so of course it enjoyed the total support of the US, both parties, including Jimmy "Mr Human Rights" Carter. And secondarily of reactionary Catholic soldiers of the Pope (as were, say, the Carlists in Spain; little difference, really, politically speaking). On top of the 50k civilian dead or so they murdered during the anti-Somoza struggle, they went on to murder another 45 or 50k or so under the Reaganists' (illegal by US law) auspices. Its real leadership was entirely American, although they continuously lied about it. I guess they didn't want to admit the truth about themselves and I can't blame them, really, with the amount of blood that's all over them and their karma. The fact that many of them are back again under Junior (Negroponte, Elliott Abrams, et al) makes my blood run hot again, to tell the truth.

So, no, I see no contradiction. I'd fight against their like again, any time, without compunction. But, in any case, I defended myself while under armed attack. I didn't go out looking for adventure. I went out looking to help make revolution and if someone attacked, we defended ourselves, not being suicidal. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, those days still seem more real and more recent to me than last Tuesday does. And, again, I got to do incredible things with great people, from Nicaragua, of course, but also many other countries. Nor was I alone there as an American vet. There were quite a few there, actually, for the same reasons as I.

And only one who chooses sides with the death squads in El Salvador would find anything to be less than proud about, working beside the (mostly) women of COMADRES. Those were by far the bravest people I've ever met, anywhere.

Sal -- I salute your grandfather wholeheartedly. Iwo Jima was one of the most intense and bloody battles in human history. He's a hell of a man just for having been there. I didn't say that no one did two tours. But a lot fewer did than people claim, now, is all, particularly if they spent their first tours in combat. I had a high school friend who couldn't wait to get to Vietnam, and after his first tour, he came back all smiles about what a great time he'd had and how good the pot was, and all that, so he volunteered for another tour. Apparently his second tour was a little different from his first, as he hasn't said more than 10,000 words, to my knowledge, since. And he never talks about Vietnam anymore, even the pot. He doesn't talk about much of anything. It's my guess that Mr. Charles gave him something more to do and think about on that second tour than smoking weed.

By the way, Iwo Jima was my last Loran station. I spent 365 days on that island, so I'm pretty intimate with it, and also have studied that battle quite closely, and know all of the terrain, etc. Your grandfather is a hell of a man, as is anyone who fought there. You should know that (though I'm sure you already do) and be very proud of him. Six thousand Marines died on that rock, and 30,000 or so Japanese defenders. One of my father's best buddies left his right arm there.

[Gary Sisco]

Yes, Monte, elite. As in choosey. As in elite university, a concept from back in the days when one's talents determined one's acceptance, not one's family connections or money. During Vietnam, the CG had about 30,000 people, total. My father's aircraft carrier had more than ten percent of that number for its crew, on one ship. There were only 600 people in the world who did my job. Fewer now, because most of it is automated now. Also at the time of my enlistment, because of Vietnam and many people on the smarter end of things wanting to avoid the infantry, if possible, particularly when it was clear that the US was withdrawing and surrendering (who wants to die while retreating?), but who still wanted to serve -- another concept from back in the days when people served something other than their own little asses -- before your time, I know -- it had a waiting list many thousands long. But I scored so high on entrance exams that they signed me up right there on the spot and my ass was in boot camp the next day, waiting list or not. The electronics "A" school I attended -- the same curriculum as the Navy's -- we did in ten months, with make-or-break exams every ten days. Ask Christmas or Shrugs how they'd have liked that, since they both attended the same training course.

And you can mock your fearful leader's alleged service, the Air National Guard, if you want to, but the VT Air Guard has been flying 24/7 since 9/11, and, unless you have the balls to strap yourself into an F-15, alone, and play all day at supersonic speeds, strapped to what is essentially a very fast high explosive device, I'd not mock if I were you. Maybe after you've actually done something in the world, but not right now, speaking of "supporting our troops," buck, er, dude.

Indeed, if it were not for Guard units today, the US would be entirely un-combat ready. Half of the US's combat-ready forces are National Guard units, and many of them are already deployed, and have been, in Afghanistan and Iraq, never mind, still, in Bosnia. Indeed, the country's most elite tank force is stationed up the road from about 20 miles, or was, before it was deployed to Iraq. It's a National Guard unit, too, not regular Army. It's been winning every competition for years and years, and this is the second time it's fought in the Gulf.

You might also want to consider the balls it takes for a teenaged USCG sailor to board a coke cartel ship on the open seas, to conduct a search with a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other, or you can ask a friend of mine who became a lifer (now retired), who was shot in the belly doing just that.

Or you might, more mundanely and routinely, try taking a search-and-rescue trip on a 40' small boat with two other guys, during a storm that has everyone else scurrying for port, which only means it's time to go to work, to those guys. I guarantee you that you'll find out what watery bowels and sheer terror feel like, then. And then you can remember that that's what those (mostly) kids do for a living, along with, I might add, guarding your port of Seattle while you sleep or serve nothing but your own ass while awake.

Yes, you will -- you're gonna have to serve somebody...

The great thing is that guys who've actually done shit in the world don't have to give a fuck what yuppies like yourselves think about it, or anything else. The only guys whose estimations matter to me are other guys who have. Not guys who have not. The latter simply don't count for anything, in my world, and why should they?

Cats like Christmas, or Shrugs, during the first minute of their very first dive showed more balls than you'll show anyone but yourself admiring yourself in the mirror, if you live to be 110.

[Monte Smith]

I'll reiterate, Gary: no need to get defensive. No one is questioning what is obviously of great importance to you. I figured you were in something other than the Coast Guard, but that is perfectly respectable.

[bobetterblues]

Yeah Monte. That essay wasn't directed at you because Gary doesn't care what you think.

Come on Gary.

[Uli]

They don't make em like that anymore:

[Tom Storer]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
The great thing is that guys who've actually done shit in the world don't have to give a fuck what yuppies like yourselves think about it, or anything else. The only guys whose estimations matter to me are other guys who have. Not guys who have not. The latter simply don't count for anything, in my world, and why should they?

Gary, there are a few points I'd like to make here.

1) If "doing shit in the world" means risking one's life in combat, the vast majority of humankind hasn't done shit.

2) Nobody has to give a fuck what anyone thinks about anything, regardless of who's done shit in the world and who hasn't.

3) If serving in the armed forces makes one's opinion more certain to be correct, we should be glad to accept a military junta and get over this voting nonsense once and for all.

4) You can be proud of what you've done in life without holding it to be the sole experience that's worthy of respect.

5) I don't think Monte earns enough money to be a yuppie.

[Monte Smith]

Oh now that last assumption (#5) is cutting. If I was a man of action who had done shit in the world, I should demand satisfaction, Storer. Things being as they are, however, I shall contend with that accusation (and my watery bowels) in meekest docility. You, Tom, are a cad.

[Monte Smith]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco

Cats...showed more balls than you'll show anyone but yourself admiring yourself in the mirror, if you live to be 110.

By the way, I have to ask: why, exactly, am I supposed to be admiring my balls in a mirror? That's kind of a peculiar statement from ET3 Sisco.

[Alex]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
By the way, I have to ask: why, exactly, am I supposed to be admiring my balls in a mirror?

http://tcrc.acor.org/

[Salvador Dali Lama]

yeah Gary, my dad used to show me books that had (amongst other things, they were usually books about specefic battles) lists the names of marines who died in combat. But he would go through the lists and read out loud all the people that his father knew, or that he knew from just living on bases. He had a particularly grusome book like that about Iwo Jima. I'm amazed anyone can ever go into something like that, come out, and be "normal" again. Not that I know many (like 3) but all the vietnam vets I know who were actually in-country refuse to talk about it now. Or at least they refuse to talk to me about it, and I guess I really don't blame them.

[Monte Smith]

If we're relating family history:

My father and my father-in-law were both in Vietnam. My father-in-law had the worst job I have ever heard of in the Army. He was first lieutenant, a medic working with a group that was trying to cut down on diseases communicated by insects. He would get dropped in the back country with a glass jar and his mission was to collect mosquitos. Ay carumba. Bad enough hunting Charlie, but hunting Charlie's goddamn skeeters! Yet surely worth it, as the goal was the defeat of global communism, amen. Bzzzzzzz.

Tom may get a kick out of what happened with my dad. He's the son of a man who fought in France in WWI and his brother Lee was killed in France in WWII. (All the guys went in their foxholes and then the mortars came in. After the explosions stopped, everyone called out to each other and Lee didn't answer). But my dad was way too young himself for WWII. He got drafted for Korea. And there he served under terrific difficulty and hardship at one of the real shit posts of the Korean conflict: Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Paris.

Sounds cushy, but my dad knew that France in his family's memory meant pain, difficulty, struggle, and death. So he never relaxed. Every afternoon at the Cafe Dome was an exercise in survival. And Dad traipsed thru the Paris bordellos like a man stalked by an enemy unseen. Yet he survived his tour, and learned some invaluable skills in the Army that he would use throughout his career. And I don't mean how to pick up a French woman with a smile and a stick of bubblegum. I mean he was a cryptographer. Glory to all Smiths: he made corporal.

While he spent his Army career fighting for Korean independence in the boulevards of Paris, France, Dad was a civilian (of sorts) when he was sent to Saigon in 1967. Talk about getting things ass backward. He was there until 1969, and he left to marry my mom who was working in Japan at that time, monitoring East Asian (Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Russian) signals.

Dad doesn't talk about Vietnam much. He does still gush about a particular variety of fish soup. But the missile attack on his hotel, the street bombs, the dead people--he's less keen on elaborating about.

My father-in-law won't talk about Vietnam much either. But the man is a psychopath about tikki torches, citronella, flypaper and Raid.

[Tom Storer]

Reading between the lines, it seems clear that by the late 60's, Smith Sr. was a spy! And Mrs. Smith Sr. too! Right out of John Le Carre. Impressive.

My old man had a similarly grueling experience in the Korean War. He was drafted and feared he would be sent over to do battle in the emergency, but they discovered he was a skilled typist. "We need clerics!" they cried, and assigned him to an office in the Pentagon, where he served his stint providing clerical support at home for the troops overseas. The only war story I recall him telling is the time he wised off to an officer in the mess hall and was ordered to stand on the table and repeat, "I will eat all my mashed potatoes! Sir!" to general hilarity.

[Gary Sisco]

Whatever, guys. The point is what the general has to say, and that he's right, and that many people agree with him who also are vets, soldiers, sailors, and also conservatives. That's all.

Tom -- There are obviously other ways of doing shit in the world besides humping a rifle -- indeed, I said that the thing I'm most proud of was the unarmed time in El Salvador -- but to me, the phrase means doing things for someone other than oneself, for reasons that are larger than and more important than one's self, and which require one to take a real stand in life that matters and most times, requires some sort of sacrifice for a goal that isn't merely personalistic or even familial. In short, to be something more than a spectator or "fan," as too many Americans have become, especially when it comes to politics, but not only. Cheerleaders, or booers, but spectators, either way, often even in their own lives.

What I can't understand and never will -- and I'm directing this remark not so much at Monte alone, as I've encountered many Montes in my time, but much of a generation that seems to be consumed with life as passive receptors of paychecks that allow them to be passive receivers of manufactured entertainment, and then they die -- is what it might mean to "support" an armed struggle that one isn't willing to participate in, if able and of age. Such support is too abstract a concept for me to get my head around, unless I understand it in terms of mere fandom, like choosing baseball teams. I mean, even Rosie The Riveter had to put off her own life for a time and go to work in a war factory. And if the support is particularly vocal, I wonder even more what it might mean. To me, it's shit to a tree. Verbiage. Not even rhetoric.

On its most glorified level, such support oozes from the huge majority of mouths in DC that very carefully avoided having to do anything at all, themselves, to put their bodies where their mouths are, or even their (own) money, far's that goes. Kerry the other day lent his own campaign 6.4 million dollars. Note, the word "lent." Apparently he doesn't "support" his own campaign enough to spend his own money on it. Lend it, sure. Spend it, no. Which leaves the question: If he's not willing to support his own campaign, why should anyone else be? It's not like he's a dirt farmer or something (who wouldn't be in a position to lend his campaign money to begin with, in any case).

I'm reminded of something that Bronwyn once told me about her ex-husband, who liked to think of himself as pinko politico, but his political activity took the form of talking back to a talking head on television, while he watched the news. That's not politics (of any kind) or "support" or "dissent" (of any kind). That's watching television, like the couch potatoes who like to watch war shows on the Discover channel. His real life amounted in every way to being a bureaucrat pushing paper at an insurance company, year after year -- in short, the most mundane and pedestrian of petit bourgeois existence. I suppose that's a struggle of sorts -- at least against boredom -- but certainly not a political one (unless he'd at least organized a clerk's insurrection a la that hysterical Monte Python short).

And no, I don't think that being a soldier or a vet makes one politically superior, so your remarks about juntas (which I have no problem with, actually, as the word only means "council," as in junta municipal) are way off target. The point I'm making is that soldiers and vets do have more insight into the fighting of a war than others do, and so, yes, I take what they have to say on those subjects more seriously than people who haven't. Not much different, actually, than taking my mechanic more seriously about automobiles than a guy who's never lifted a wrench or got his hands greasy inside a hood. What's surprising about that? Who would consult about your car, the Pope?

And in any case, the initial dispute was over whether or not my personal experience talking with vets and soldiers *in this case, now,* and finding that they overwhelmingly share my position on the war in Iraq, even if they don't trumpet it all day, like my father didn't (though he'd respond if asked). Monte on either the Dean thread or the Junior's Gone thread had said that my experience simply "doesn't square" with his experience with military guys and what they think. The article was meant to show what a USMC general (freed now to talk politics, now that he's a civilian) and *hundreds* of Navy and Marine officers thinks, in public. Zinni's receiving "sustained applause," and even standing ovations, from such audiences ought to tell us something, I'd say. These are not audiences that are pacifists, let's face it, nor could you possibly find a more conservative discreet group of people, if you searched the country, high and low (or high or straight). And if a valid sampling requires, what, 400 responses, well, that's what hundreds of Navy and Marine officers think to the point of sustained applause.

And certainly General Zinni, having been the Commander of all US Gulf forces, and having had regular access to any and all intelligence reports or even rumors, knows at least as much about what's going on there as anyone here, let's face it. And certainly more than Junior, because at least the General can and does read things more complex that Junior's stated favorite book, *The Little Train That Could.*

In any case, it's only the educated and articulate sections of the population who's ideas and politics matter (whether or not I share them), and that's a rather small section of the American populace, very unfortunately. The NYT recently ran a wire story showing that just prior to the Iraq invasion, 85% of Americans tested couldn't locate Iraq, Afghanistan, or Israel on a map. People like that are just a grazing herd of hominids, to me, and what they think or support matters not a whit, since it's clear that thinking isn't an activity that takes up much of their time.

*************

I had already surmised from Monte's cryptic hints in the past that his family's past was in the murkier aspects of one American bureaucracy and form of imperial control or another. State Department, CIA, CIA fronts, whatever. It's all the same crew, different departments. I'm familiar with the sort; there were many in Central America, of course. Even a couple of renegades who went native and switched sides. I'd have more respect for him, on this level, if he'd followed suit and family tradition. That would be doing shit in the world, even if it's shit I oppose. It's another form of choosing sides, at least, and staking something on it other than pixels on a screen.

**************************

Bo -- Clever but irrelevant. Don't ask and I won't tell. Ask and I will.

[Uli]

[Tom Storer]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
I had already surmised from Monte's cryptic hints in the past that his family's past was in the murkier aspects of one American bureaucracy and form of imperial control or another.

Gary, I hear what you're saying about the value of committed action versus television-watching. But as per the above comment, isn't your own family's past, and parts of your own, in one of the less murky aspects of American imperial control?

[Monte Smith]

God preserve us all from *political activity.* Somewhere between grubbing for a paycheck and sedating myself with electronic entertainment, I do manage to find satisfaction in life. Maybe, like all real happiness, it is mundane and not heroic.

And yes, my parents are nothing if not murky.

But as for Zinni's super conservative, former military Williamsburg audience, interestingly it was a retiree in Williamsburg, Colonel Ed Jones, whose arguments convinced me to vote for Chuck Robb (D) against Ollie North (R) for Senator. It is not unheard of for ideological diversity to blossom even in the former capital of the Old Dominion.

[bobetterblues]

I think that if there were a poll among active and inactive military guys, we would find that they were spli right down the middle. Maybe swaying to one side ar the other, but not too much. That's the bottom line.

I think its convenient that the general agree with Gary, but there are a lot high ranking people in the military who don't. Are they wrong, even though they have a better working knowledge of war, etc? I'm glad the general has come out criticizing and using his brain, instead of goosestepping, but in the end its just another man's opinion to me.

Now, If one of them lit themselves on fire, I may be moved.