Anniversary of 9/11

[Gwaithmir]

I was at work when the first airliner hit the WTC. One of my fellow employees, who had a radio in his work area, told me what happened. At first, I thought it was a tragic accident, not a terrorist attack. Around noon, the boss closed the shop so everyone could go home and watch the ongoing events on TV. I was very depressed that evening and couldn't eat any supper.

[The Grand Nudger]

I ate like a king. Shrimp and steak that day. Winner Dinner. Like the navy, they were prepping us for Bad News™. Nobody there wanted to hear that we were going to war. We were a (then small) group of committed peacekeepers.

We were quickly overrun by a different kind of person. In retrospect, I'd say that 9/11 was the day that I started to sour on my service. Being in the military became about something else that day, and I wasn;t a part of that and it never sat well with me. The irony is that I would then train those people, my replacement. I only got to go on one more meaningful overseas patrol after 9/11. They installed me as a mout range ncoic, where I would stay until the end of my service - hating life, lol.

[Thumpalumpacus]

In retrospect, I'd say that 9/11 was the day that I started to sour on my service.  Being in the military became about something else that day, and I wasn;t a part of that and it never sat well with me.  

Could you go into that a little more? Forgive an outsider's curiosity, but having been out for eight years by then this comment jumps out at me. Was it rah-rah shit? Was it youngsters who came in for different and harder reasons? Or something else?

Of course if it's not something you want to yap about, cool all the same.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well...I was an in-country trainer. A real grimy motherfucker. Urban infantry. On 9/11 shit became about revenge. I'm not about revenge.

-did youngsters join for different and harder reasons....yes, and I failed most of them. I failed some of them so hard they're dead - to my eternal shame. Rightly or wrongly, if I'd spent a few more minutes training them and fewer minutes getting fucked up and having fun...they'd still be alive.

To be clear, what I knew from the moment and morning of 9/11 is that someone....anyone...would have to pay the iron price for what had happened. Did I believe that the people responsible would shoulder the cost? In a word..no.

Before 9/11 I was a peacekeeper. After 9/11 I was a warfighter. No one consulted me about that shift.

[AFTT47]

Like Thump, I was out by 9-11 but I experienced some of the same soul-searching in 1990-1991 during Desert Storm. The thing that got to me was that Saddam conscripted a bunch of farmers, trained them quickly and deployed them along the border with Saudi Arabia. He did not commit his more experienced (valuable) troops to that duty because he knew they would be cannon fodder. And he was right. During the 30-day air war, we carpet-bombed those innocents. B52s cruised over and dropped cluster bombs all around them. No escape.

When the ground-pounders were sent in, these guys tripped over each other in their eagerness to surrender. They surrendered to news crews. I was told that the survivors were so grateful to be alive, they welcomed the invaders with open arms. Supposedly, our guys did things like teach them to sing the Gilligan's Island theme song. Can you imagine that? I bunch of Iraqi farmers having no idea what they were singing, joyfully singing about the millionaire and his wife and the professor and MaryAnn. But those were the lucky ones. We killed thousands of them. Their only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Like Thump, I was out by 9-11 but I experienced some of the same soul-searching in 1990-1991 during Desert Storm. The thing that got to me was that Saddam conscripted a bunch of farmers, trained them quickly and deployed them along the border with Saudi Arabia. He did not commit his more experienced (valuable) troops to that duty because he knew they would be cannon fodder. And he was right. During the 30-day air war, we carpet-bombed those innocents. B52s cruised over and dropped cluster bombs all around them. No escape.

When the ground-pounders were sent in, these guys tripped over each other in their eagerness to surrender. They surrendered to news crews. I was told that the survivors were so grateful to be alive, they welcomed the invaders with open arms. Supposedly, our guys did things like teach them to sing the Gilligan's Island theme song. Can you imagine that? I bunch of Iraqi farmers having no idea what they were singing, joyfully singing about the millionaire and his wife and the professor and MaryAnn. But those were the lucky ones. We killed thousands of them. Their only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was in the rear with the gear, but our bombers flew a three-ship mission every three hours around the clock for almost forty days. 153 750-lb bombs per strike, they'd moonscape a rectangle one-by-three miles.

Especially after a couple of uncensored Spanish news reports, I looked at my own service and though I wasn't dropping bombs, I sure as hell was helping dropping bombs not only on those conscripts but also on civilians at cement plants or crossroads or lord-knows-what.

I felt fine about it at the time. It took a while for me see what was our utility and what the real mission was. The sour taste (amongst other reasons) meant I didn't re-up.

[AFTT47]

Like Thump, I was out by 9-11 but I experienced some of the same soul-searching in 1990-1991 during Desert Storm. The thing that got to me was that Saddam conscripted a bunch of farmers, trained them quickly and deployed them along the border with Saudi Arabia. He did not commit his more experienced (valuable) troops to that duty because he knew they would be cannon fodder. And he was right. During the 30-day air war, we carpet-bombed those innocents. B52s cruised over and dropped cluster bombs all around them. No escape.

When the ground-pounders were sent in, these guys tripped over each other in their eagerness to surrender. They surrendered to news crews. I was told that the survivors were so grateful to be alive, they welcomed the invaders with open arms. Supposedly, our guys did things like teach them to sing the Gilligan's Island theme song. Can you imagine that? I bunch of Iraqi farmers having no idea what they were singing, joyfully singing about the millionaire and his wife and the professor and MaryAnn. But those were the lucky ones. We killed thousands of them. Their only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was in the rear with the gear, but our bombers flew a three-ship mission every three hours around the clock for almost forty days. 153 750-lb bombs per strike, they'd moonscape a rectangle one-by-three miles.

Especially after a couple of uncensored Spanish news reports, I looked at my own service and though I wasn't dropping bombs, I sure as hell was helping dropping bombs not only on those conscripts but also on civilians at cement plants or crossroads or lord-knows-what.

I felt fine about it at the time. It took a while for me see what was our utility and what the real mission was. The sour taste (amongst other reasons) meant I didn't re-up.

You were a lot closer to the action than I was. I was a ground radio technician in a com squadron. But the air missions don't happen without com. I installed and maintained our com at the airbase in Dharan. I installed and maintained our Giant Voice base-wide PA system. Hell, we all had a hand in it. The guys feeding us grub in the chow halls enabled us to do our jobs. We were all culpable to some degree.

I can't say I regret my service. I agreed with our mission. It was a good thing we did in liberating Kuwait. I'm proud to have taken a part in that. But I never stop thinking about those poor farmers who were unwilling pawns of Saddam Fucking Hussain and were slaughtered by a massively superior force they had no hope of resisting.

War sucks, no matter how you slice it.