The weekly BS report.

BS1, Troop Withdrawal Drama

Army Times posted this article on their website. If you can't pull it up (I was logged in when I read it, so I don't know if you have to be) the basic gist is that Pres. Obama said he plans to begin a drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan in 2011, because, "We cannot be there in perpetuity." While I have not been impressed with the Obama administration over all (health care bill, anyone??) they could seriously redeem themselves if they manage to do this, and do it RIGHT. There are already rumors swirling around Battalion about deployment dates being pushed back, and troop drawdowns. I personally think it's way too early to even speculate. This brigade is designated for testing until 2012, so one cannot really have any idea about when or what their deployment will be, because this is the Army, and nobody knows anything that far away. We don't even know what's going on next month, far less 2-3 years from now. (OK, what Thak and I know is that we don't CARE what happens 2-3 years from now because we'll have no part of it!)

Anyhow, the BS of it all is that a lot of people are flipping out about this troop withdrawal plan, and saying, "Oh the US better watch out!!" and stuff. For one thing, with our troops back home, we won't be so unguarded on the homefront, and for another, how on earth were we supposed to contain this crap in Afghanistan indefinitely? Are we going to add another branch to the military, "The Afghan Babysitting Service", and then all the people who want to deploy every other year for the rest of their lives because they enjoy blowing every tax-free dollar possible, can join that branch? Suuuure. Let's get right on that. Hell, we'll even attach a double-wide trailer to the Pentagon as that branch's HQ.

I better not get any nasty-grams over this either. Anyone who's got any experience at all with the military knows that there are thousands of people who love deploying because of the money. Does that cheapen the sacrifice of those who went for the right reasons (whether volunteered or randomly ordered)? To an extent, I believe it does, but the fact remains that there are TONS of soldiers (and their psycho wives) who use deployments as a cash cow, and don't actually give a crap for the mission. Funny thing is they're the main ones complaining about this Afghanistan drawdown being set for next year. I say it's right on time. Why should we devote OVER 10 years to something that's improving marginally, but not markedly, with each year we're there? Why should we continue to make a great many soldiers be deployed all the time, get injured in droves, and occasionally die, for something that's not turning out significant gains? So that some Specialist can drive a brand new BMW? So that the Sergeant's wife who blew all his pay on fast food and clothes for her ever-expanding ass can pay off her credit card? Not a chance in hell.


BS2, Spice

The anti-drug lobby slays me. They always have. How on earth can we have legal alcohol consumption in this country, yet people can technically go to jail or lose their job for taking a bong hit at their friend's party last weekend. No matter how hard I try, I cannot find the logic in that. I was reminded of this again this week as I was reading conversations on the biggest military wives' (and supposedly, although not really, female soldiers') community, which I am NOT actually a member of, but read occasionally just to keep current on the dirt. In the debate section of that site, I found this conversation.

From what I can gather, Spice is "fake pot" that doesn't show up on a drug test. I also get the idea that it does absolutely nothing, and is the kind of thing every young soldier is going to want to try, but will never waste money on after the first time because, like I said, it doesn't do anything. That's not surprising, considering that awful alternatives to pot have been around forever, and soldiers have been trying them out for as long as the Army's been drug testing. We had something when I went through which we all tried, and I swear it was made of basil. We didn't get caught, and if we had, I would fully have expected our NCO's to laugh at us for being stupid and wasting money on that crap, and make us do push-ups until our arms fell off, but nothing more. This Spice thing is different, though. Everyone is getting all up in arms about it, and apparently, it's become more popular to try, so more commands have seen it.

I just find a lot of hypocrisy in the anti-drug arguments. "Soldiers must be deployment-ready all the time!" Yes, please stand outside any given bar within 10 miles of any Army post, at 0200 hrs on a Saturday, and tell me how many of the soldiers you see stumbling out you would trust to defend your freedom and maybe your life. If you have ever run in formation on a Monday (and every soldier has), please tell me what you smelled to your left and right. If you said your entire platoon smelled as if they had whiskey oozing out their pores, you would be absolutely correct! Does that sound particularly combat-efficient? More importantly, does it sound any worse than what would have happened if those same people who were getting drunk in the bar had instead stayed in the barracks and smoked some pot instead? I can tell you with 100% certainty that I'd rather serve with part-time potheads than part-time drunks. I think if the Army would look at this objectively, they would find that they agree.




There, now you have your weekly BS report from the Army. Now stop being a money-hungry deployment fiend and a sheeple anti-pot buzzkill. Hooah?