Why Chemical Weapons Use Should Be Your Only Consideration Re: Syria

[WooWooWoo]

--snip--

It was 21-hour days for months on end working to secure our outpost. That was in addition to the occasional defensive firefight that would erupt from the Taliban attacking the outpost while it was still being completed. Fittingly, this would happen in the mornings, usually right when I had just come off guard duty and had only 3-hours to get sleep before I had to get ready to go back on guard.

It made for physically exhausting days. Psychologically, however, it paled in comparison to what happened when I crossed the gates and went on missions:

•Step on the wrong spot – an IED could go off.

•Roll into town and all the children run and hide instead of coming out to beg for candy and pens (Afghan children wanted pens more than anything) – something bad is about to happen.

•Hear a loud whistle out of nowhere – the Taliban just shot an RPG at you and you better get down.

•That noise that sounds like baby birds chirping – those are bullets passing feet from your head.

All of those examples makes for stresses the average person will thankfully never experience. Interestingly, however, what I found to be most stressful about my time in combat wasn’t the bullets or RPGs or IEDs, but the swiftness and suddenness and stealth that preceded it.

Speaking from my own experience, I could never identify a single Taliban fighter during any combat engagement I was involved with in Afghanistan, and I was involved in somewhere between 50 to 60 in the summer of 2010. They were obviously firing at me, and I was firing back at them. But I never saw them. I just had an idea of where the bullets were coming from and I fired back. If we did manage to hit any Taliban, or any Taliban managed to hit us – it was by pure accident and not as a result of any refined sharpshooting on either side.

That, and not the glorified charge-the-hill images of old John Wayne movies, is what combat is really like.

And that unseen enemy is why many older veterans have told those of us from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that they don’t envy the wars we fought in. Fighting phantoms and shadows. Never knowing where the enemy is or if the farmer you just passed 200-meters back was really a Taliban informant helping plot an ambush.

Not knowing and not being able to properly prepare yourself is one of the most psychologically damaging aspect of being in combat. You learn to deal with the sound of gunfire and artillery at distances way too close once the engagement begins. On a foot patrol, you watch every step you take as if you were searching for a dropped contact lens. Each footfall and the microseconds before and after are an endless cycle of dread and relief.

It is through the backdrop of the psychological aspect of combat that I would like to discuss, from the viewpoint of someone who has seen it in both a conventional (bullets and rockets) and unconventional (IEDs) sense – that certain weapons and certain methods of combat, while not deadlier – are actually worse than others.

Now, chemical weapons were never used in Afghanistan while I was there, neither by us or the Taliban. I was in a mortar unit and some of our mortar rounds were white phosphorous, but they were never used in combat. I’m not even entirely sure why we brought them.

But we did. And we also brought gas masks.

--snip--

http://thesterlingroad.com/2013/09/06/why-chemical-weapons-use-should-be-your-only-consideration-re-syria/

[bemildred]

1. More emocom twaddle. nt

[WooWooWoo]

2. if you're going to just make a blanket insult

with no depth behind it, at least spell all three words correctly.

[bemildred]

3. The analogy is with the slur "emoProg", "emoCon, see?

Because the OP, like all propaganda, is just full of emotional twaddle, and attempts to arouse emotion rather than thought.

[WooWooWoo]

5. except Syria is not a liberal or conservative issue

which would be obvious when you look at who's lining up where and why.

And I do not believe using a personal experience as a conduit for my overall feelings on a particular current event is propaganda. By that standard, John Kerry's testimony after returning from Vietnam can be considered propaganda.

I know my position on this issue is in the minority - the extreme minority here - yet I posted it anyway because I thought even if you didn't agree with the overall premise, just the story itself would give people pause and hopefully open a few eyes that we're not just talking about a regular civil war here.

[bemildred]

6. All I see is another piece of professional propaganda telling me not to pay attention or think. nt

[WooWooWoo]

7. well, since the author (me) doesn't get paid, at best its amateur propoganda

and secondly, it's a personal story that explains why I personally support Syrian intervention. I'd ask you at least read the whole thing before calling it propaganda.

[bemildred]

8. Well it's well done, Sir, if you don't get paid, you should. nt

[WooWooWoo]

9. thank you

and I have to say, it does feel weird to be taking a pro-intervention (or pro-war) stance. The timing of this absolutely sucks considering I protested the Iraq war before it started (with DUers, btw - some of whom are still here, like Will Pitt and Lynsin) and was certain that Obama would be the president to end these stupid foreign engagements.

I really, honestly, 100-percent mean it when I say I wasn't expecting something I thought would be a "just" cause to pop up so quickly. It does make me look like someone who should be standing with the Dick Cheneys and the Bill Kristol's when in reality, all I want to do is spit on those people.

By all rights I should be opposed to this. But the article above articulates, the best I can with my damaged brain, why I'm not.

If that's propaganda, then I guess I'm a propagandist. But thank you for the compliment.

[bemildred]

10. Nothing good will come from more bombing, regardless of the reason.

It is the wrong tool, and it will punish the victims, not the perpetrators. Just because you are upset, it doesn't give you some right to lash out at whomever is handy.

[WooWooWoo]

11. the victims are those tens of thousands dead and the hundreds of thousands who are refugees

as well as the innocent people in Syria who aren't on either side in the civil war and will be punished regardless whether we intervene or not.

The only reason I support this is because it would be unethical to stand by and do nothing. The UN was created to solve problems like this - why aren't they?

You're absolutely right nothing good ever comes from bombs being dropped. But in real life, you never get the "best" option to pick from - you get the least "not-good" option.

[bananas]

4. "Last I heard he was living on 100% disability from the Veterans Administration."

Laying in his bed was a young soldier who had gone through the chamber yesterday, but, with his mask not fully secured like the rest of us. He awoke this particular morning with half of his face paralyzed from the condensed exposure. He was medically separated from the Army before I was even halfway done with Basic Training. Last I heard he was living on 100% disability from the Veterans Administration.

Keep in mind, this expose was not to the type of chemical weapons being talked about in Syria, or the type used by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. This was “normal” tear gas, used by police departments as riot control.

Knowing that, and having lived through a year of absolute hell in Afghanistan, it speaks to the psychological power of gas exposure that I was more terrified of going through the gas chamber a second time, a few months after my re-deployment back to the States, than I was of being shot, blown up or killed while in in combat.

We were told two weeks before that another round in the gas chamber was coming up. I knew I would not die from this experience. I knew I would go home later that night, sleep in my bed, and wake up the next day like nothing had happened.

And it still terrified me every day until the time came I had to experience it a second time. And when this time came it was just as horrible as the last time. By the time the experience was over I was so blinded by the gas in my eyes I ran the wrong way coming out the exit and slammed face-first into a tree. The instructors had a good laugh at that.