Desert Shield / Storm 1990 – 1991
The end was just the beginning??
Then we came home… oh, sure… we got the hero’s welcome that America knew in their guilty heart belonged to their Vietnam vets, but since there ain’t no going back, Desert Storm vets got a shower of love.
Nice – if a little late, America!
Enter the mid-90s and Saddam is up to all kinds of shenanigans. He’s flying jets into no fly zones and kicking UN inspectors out of his country for trying to determine if he has WMDs.
How many times did DS vets have the conversation with American civilians when they were asked, “Why didn’t you guys go through Baghdad and kick his ass when you were there?“
For the hundredth time I explain that we were part of a coalition of forces that went in just to see the Iraqi army removed from Kuwait. Egypt and many other Middle Eastern countries were part of that coalition and we would have lost their support had we overstepped our bounds during the first Gulf War.
“Well, he’s a jackass and you guys should have kicked his butt.”
“I’m not disputing the fact that he’s a jackass, but we could not do that.”
Enter September 11, 2001.
Every American who is old enough to remember that day has a story about where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.
Every God Damn American was Red blooded with anger – White hot for revenge – and Blue fisted to grab a rifle and get some pay back!
The Stars and Stripes flew from car windows, the backs of trucks, houses, and was painted on children’s faces. We wanted blood and George Doubleya was there to give it to us.
We went into Afghanistan and immediately began to Jack shit Up! … and get jacked up (Operation Anaconda). But we were tearing into the Teliban like the Russians wish they had been able to.
We were stackin’ bodies and takin’ souls, but did any of that stop Saddam from FA & FO?
Sure, he said he didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction, but could we believe him when he was also tossing UN inspectors out of his country?…
…and maybe we were fed a little false information…
Too bad, so sad – and in 2003 we brought pain back to the desert sands of Iraq and this time we weren’t messin’ around. This time we went straight through Baghdad and kept on going. This time we drug his sorry ass out of a spider hole and handed him up to his own people who hung him up by the neck until he was dead, dead, dead.
“But where are the WMDs?” America asked.
“Defuq you say? Weren’t you the same mother trucker who was just saying we should have gone through Baghdad and kicked his ass the first time? Did you forget the words that came out of your own mouth not twenty minutes ago?
Look, America… it would be nice if you remembered history like how much sacrifice and blood it took to make this nation back in 1776, but I’m not really expecting any of you geniuses to know who Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton were.
The least you can do – for your troops – is to remember your own history… the things you said your friggin’ self!”
Okay, but here we are, Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and we’re in the grind. Year after year… deployment after deployment.
You couldn’t help but lose friends. You couldn’t help but know someone who got blown up, divorced, lost limbs, eyesight, hearing, time with children, time with aging family members, sacrifice after bloody sacrifice… on two fronts.
We were in two full out bloody wars at the same time for… years.
Obama is up for reelection… Enter 2011.
He and Mitt get together for a debate.
Obama says… and I’m paraphrasing, “Let me be clear, if you elect me, the first thing I will do is pull our troops out of Iraq.“
Mitt says, “You can’t say that, Barack. Even if that’s what you’re planning to do – you can’t say it because all the insurgents will just keep their heads down until you’re elected. They’ll wait till you do what you say, and then they’ll come out of the woodwork like rats.”
“Well, that’s what I’m gonna do.” says Barack, and he wasn’t lyin’.
The very first thing dude did when he stepped through the door of the Oval Office was to pull every swingin’ Richard (as well as our female troops) out of that sand box.
And what happened, but exactly – what – Mitt – said would happen.
The insurgency took a second to scratch their collective turbans in wounder at the stupidity of it all. Then they consolidated into what we call ISIS or the Islamic State and proceeded to kill, rape, murder in horrible ways hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens who were accused of helping the Americans during our occupation.
At first Barack couldn’t have been prouder of himself. “I won the war in Iraq. I pulled the troops out of Iraq. I brought our boys home.“
Then, when things started to go seriously sideways, he was like, “Who said I was responsible for pulling our troops out?“
You did!
And who had a front row seat to that mess? Who was sitting right beside Obama as he made those decisions? Yep… Vice President Joe Biden.
Enter 2021 and Biden does the exact same thing in Afghanistan. I mean, he literally handed the control of that country to the very people we went there to slaughter.
Where is your sacrifice now? What did each of you leave in the sand over there? The sand that now belongs to the very people we went there to fight?
Kuwait is safe, so there’s that, but otherwise the Middle East is back in the hands of tyrants. Not a bit of ground, that soaked up so much of our blood, was held.
Am I a little salty? Maybe just a little… so when folks end the story sometime around April 1991, I pick it right up for them and make sure we bring it up to 2026 because America isn’t done chiming in.
“We couldn’t have stayed there forever. We had to pull out sometime.”
Like we did in Germany? Like we did it Japan? Like we did in Italy and South Korea?
We stayed in those countries to stabilize the region. We knew that if we left, they would revert right back to being jackasses, like they did between
World War 1 and World War 2. Eventually, those places just became good strategic locations for us to hold, as the Middle East would have, but more importantly, we would have stabilized a region that desperately needed to be stable for the safety of the world,
buuut we left.
Hey, we’re still getting drunk in
Germany and buying strippers drinks in Korea, so it’s all good, right??
Rant complete…
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