The easy way to kill American soldiers
If you want to kill as many American soldiers as possible just attack them outside a “combat zone.” As a soldier and former marine, I’ve thought about this issue for many years because I am effectively deprived of my right to self-defense about 98% percent of the time I am in uniform. All it takes to slaughter American troops currently is a little willpower, access to weapons and enough intelligence to find troops on maneuvers around their home base anywhere inside the United States or anywhere outside a so-called combat zone. Just ask Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. He managed to kill 13 and wound 42 with two pistols inside the biggest Army base in the United States. And here you were thinking soldiers have guns. You were wrong. Soldiers mostly have paperwork these days.
Imagine what would happen if a professional cadre of determined aggressors armed with sniper rifles and the right training and experience actively started attacking the hundreds of unarmed military convoys that travel on U.S. highways daily. Just this weekend, I was traveling in such a convoy and I thought about exactly this scenario. We had rifles, to be sure. But they were locked up and we had no ammunition. My personal concealed carry pistol, an H&K .45 USP, is prohibited on base or when in the field even though I am a staff sergeant with combat experience. I carry this pistol every single day as a civilian and take my responsibility to defend my own life and the lives of those around me very seriously. The Army doesn’t believe in my right to defend the lives of myself and my fellow citizens. Except when a bureaucrat says it is OK, of course. The circumstances of my ability to engage an enemy with years of training are dictated by the faceless and the nameless. Men and women unknown to me decide whether I might live or die based in irrational criteria and flawed thinking.
A gun free zone is only gun free until someone ignores the rules and brings a gun into the so-called zone. There is no such thing as a safe zone. We live on a tiny little ball of matter spinning wildly through a universe filled with danger. That doesn’t mean we should live paranoid existences filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth. It does mean that we should encourage human beings to think. It means that we should understand our own infinitesimal fragility. It means that those of us who can should carry fire extinguishers, first aid kits, emergency food rations and guns and ammo at all times. These are basic survival tools and may be needed at the drop of a hat. No one locks up firefighters’ axes while they are off duty. That would be silly. Yet soldiers who are not actively engaged in security operations are deprived of weapons and ammunition. That makes our domestic military installations the biggest targets in United States. Sure, there are quick reaction forces. They are small and if there really were sleeper cells in the U.S. as we’ve been told it would be easy to attack and overwhelm these forces.
In the name of political correctness, we have murdered our own protectors by depriving them of their second amendment rights. This should shame us. The very people we train to protect us are disarmed by our own political class because of cowardice and mistrust. Do not give a man a gun if you do not trust him. Maybe you shouldn’t give him a uniform either. God didn’t design snakes with removable fangs for a reason. An Army that uses the motto “train as we fight” but disarms it soldiers the majority of the time might be broken. Is anyone going to step up and ask that we fix this? I am.
If you are a member of the “armed services” you should be armed. At all damn times. That way, when a psychopath is loose in your midst and is also armed, you don’t have to die running away from the danger.
How do we avoid another massacre such as the one perpetrated by Nidal Malik Hasan? We do the following:
- Encourage all officers and NCOs to carry loaded weapons at all times
- Train all uniformed servicemembers to respond to enemy shooters in domestic environments
- Begin training enlisted troops regarding the serious responsibilities they are being entrusted with (carrying a firearm at all times) beginning with basic training/boot camp – by the time they are NCOs 99.9% of them will be completely adjusted to the idea and comfortable with it
- Encourage retired military to be armed at all times wherever they are
- Create widespread awareness of these programs in the media
Ideas are always more powerful than weapons. Ideas kill people every single day on this planet. Bad ideas like gun free zones kill more people than they save. Stupid ideas like disarmed military population clusters are so asinine that I would quit the military if I didn’t need health insurance and supplemental retirement income to offset my huge tax burden, without which I could be paying for all the health care I need while saving for rainy days and my “golden years.” Thanks Congress. Thank you entrenched career busybodies in Washington, D.C. Thanks for nothing.
Sincerely,
An idealistic staff sergeant
P.S. If you think I’m just a nutjob read what other veterans and servicemembers are saying:
Criminally incompetent oversight of incompetent criminals
A lot of dollars are being wasted and stolen in Iraq and Afghanistan. The amounts are staggering. One of the primary avenues for theft, waste, fraud and abuse of these funds which may eventually have to be paid back by your children and grandchildren is that much of the day to day war effort is being undertaken by private contractors who under perform and over bill the government. Since the government forcibly passes the costs of the wars on to the public taxpayers end up footing the bill for frittering away billions of dollars to ship people from all over the world to dusty guard towers where they can sleep in uncomfortable chairs.
Demand for contractor services is heavy, while oversight of their work isn’t. That means problems often aren’t discovered until long after the payments have been made.
A major trouble spot is the business systems and procedures that companies use to bill the government. The numbers are eye-popping. Defense auditors have found at least $6 billion in questionable charges generated by sloppy accounting or, worse, contractors trying to bilk the military.
Yet, the Pentagon has done a poor job of recovering the money and forcing companies to improve, according to the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting. The panel cites dysfunction among auditors and contract managers, a shortage of personnel and a failure to be more confrontational with contractors who don’t measure up.
To be fair, I never saw a guard sleeping when I was in Iraq from 2005-2006. I did, however, see lots and lots of examples of money being wasted on ridiculous projects. Retrofitting conference rooms that were perfectly serviceable at a cost of millions per room is one example that immediately springs to mind. I sat in several meetings where we discussed spending money just to keep budgets at their current levels or to justify increasing them in the coming fiscal year. This is how government thinks.
In late 2007, the military belatedly began paying attention. Numerous contract violations were found, several of them serious, leading to a flood of what contracting officials call corrective action requests. Last fall, the Army Criminal Investigation Command opened an inquiry to determine if Combat Support Associates overbilled the government. The case is ongoing.
While the army says it is breaking up many of the abused private contracts into smaller more manageable pieces maybe the key is to minimize the use of private contractors to fight America’s wars. It might also be helpful if the government considered reducing the size of the war fighting machines it has created in the first place. I’m pretty sure Obama has been a great disappointment thus far to those who hoped for any change in foreign policy regarding how we win wars. After all, you are still paying for contractors to collect money and build nothing in return while empty job sites are guarded by imported private contractors being paid six figures to sleep in uncomfortable chairs. Open your pocketbook and smile at the man with one hand out and the other hand resting lightly on his gun.
Chew them up and spit them out
Why anyone would want to wage war on behalf of his or her country is beyond me. I’ve done it and certainly don’t look forward to any repeat performances. Military service is a Catch-22. They tell you you’re a hero and then treat you like a criminal. They tell you the martial profession is honorable and then treat you like scum.
Sergeant Jermaine Nelson is pending court martial at Camp Pendleton for murder. He could receive life imprisonment.
This is all over speculation, innuendo and testimony from events that happened in Fallujah more than four years ago. Let me ask you this. Why would anyone sign up for the Marines and volunteer for combat missions if they have a high chance of being charged with murder after the battle? I sure as hell wouldn’t. If someone has been shooting at me all day and killing those around me it is highly unlikely that they are going to survive close contact with me.
Yes, there are rules of engagements. Yes, prisoners should be treated humanely. But this is war. War cannot be won without warriors. If you treat your warrior class like your peasant class your chance of winning conflicts declines on a rapidly sliding scale. This should make every American in uniform ask him or herself who is going to get their back when they have bullets coming downrange at them? What sort of welcome are they going to receive when they get home? How many years later will it be when the same people who started the war they fought in come to arrest them for fighting in it?
Bureaucrats make the rules that soldiers live and die by. Bureaucrats judge how the rules were followed. I’d like to all hand to hand missions in America’s next war fought by bureaucrats. They’ve earned the honor.
Freedom in Iraq, as measured by academia
The state of intellectual and academic freedom in Iraq can be used to measure forward progress. That’s assuming any forward progress is happening. EDIT: Arif has weighed in down in the comments section and he seems to think there is positive progress happening in Mosul, at least. I spent a week in Mosul in mid-2006 and the city felt dangerous as hell from where I stood (I was in uniform and an occupier). It would be nice to be invited to go back and see how things have changed for the better. I would welcome an opportunity to see higher education as it exists in 2010 and to participate in any civic activities going on.
Scholars in Iraq are still relatively isolated from the outside world, Kadhim said, citing the pertinent example of the difficulty of securing a visa for foreign research. Domestically, he added, most have severely limited and unreliable Internet access, if they have access at all.
Though not to the extent that it was during the Saddam regime, Kadhim said, academic freedom is still constrained in Iraq. Inside the classroom, he said, the free flow of ideas between student and professor is limited by former customs. For example, he noted that many Iraqis consider the questioning or challenging of a professor publicly an “act of hostility.” Even the wider academic curriculum cannot offer a diversity of interests or values to students, he said, noting that degrees are “cookie cutter” by design and leave no room for electives.
Scholars are similarly constrained by administrators and government officials, Kadhim said, calling the university just another “mini dictatorship.” Though Saddam has been deposed, he said many “Saddamists” still exercise their control over academe. He noted that many unfairly awarded degrees were given to some academic administrators now in control in Iraq. Some, for example, wrote their dissertations on topics such as the “economic genius” and the “eloquence of the speeches” of Saddam Hussein.
The United States’ failure to grant academics visas is tragic and short sighted. Discourse, visitations and relationships between academics and intellectuals should be encouraged, not discouraged.
Encouraging to some is the increase in educational opportunities for Iraqis. Amal Shlash, director of the Bayt al-Hikma Research Centre in Baghdad, described higher education as the “only achieving activity in the country.” In 2002-3, the academic year of the United States invasion of Iraq, there were 19 public universities and three private universities in major towns throughout the country — four of which were in Baghdad. Now, the country hosts 23 public universities and 23 private universities. The country went from educating 322,000 students in 2002-03 to educating around 370,000 students this year.
Shlash said that, during the Saddam era, universities were only allowed to be built in cities with populations greater than one million. Now, she said, universities can be built anywhere in the country. This has resulted in a higher number of female enrollees than ever before because many young women now no longer have to leave home to attend a university. At Baghdad University, the enrollment is 57 percent female. Even more striking, in the southern city of Nasiriyah, the university’s enrollment is 71 percent female.
Long term, Iraq may see more intellectual freedom, but only if the more radical Islamic fundamentalists are restrained. Iraq is a long way from being a good place to raise a family, and a long way from most other desirable measures of quality of life. Educational choices are one key measure of quality of life. The fact that Iraq has more universities is hopeful.
I will say that Iraq has become free when I can book a ticket to Baghdad on the Internet to attend a fine arts photography class at one of the city’s universities. Hopefully by the end of the century.
