Anniversary of 9/11

[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.