Winning Hearts and Minds

I read over some of my entries and I feel like I’ve been a little negative—maybe too critical. I have a tendency to be a sniper, sitting back, pointing out faults rather than strengths. Some people call me cynical. I like to think that I am a realist; because people generally find true cynics to be unappealing people, and in general (I think) I am judged by peers as a pleasant person. I use this as face validity for the argument that I am not a true cynic.

Okay, Urban Ops. I was kind of looking forward to this course because it sounds like something I shouldn’t be doing, and I’ve played the video game “Ghost Recon” on the Xbox and thought it was pretty cool. The course was actually a butt-kicker—about 11 hours on the short range course, running through squad movement tactics, room clearing in four-person stacks, and moving and firing a close range. Physically it was harder than normal because there was no sitting down and my body armor is starting to kill my shoulders (it’s too big). I have some numb spots and some weird burning pain when I move my shoulders in certain directions.

What I learned: how to clear a room and that I am a crappy shot with an M16 at short range when firing from a moving position. Oh well. The rationale for this course is that all of us MAY be in a convoy at some point and the convoy MAY have to stop in an urban area and there MAY be some event that forces the convoy to dismount and take over adjacent buildings. The convoy credo in the Army is that “there are no passengers in a convoy”. Luckily, that’s a lot of unlikely events that have to occur together in order for me to be involved in room clearing, etc., but I played along and was a good attentive student anyway.

What I learned part II: Hanging out with grunts (mostly infantry guys) has given me some exposure to the warrior ethos here at Ft McCoy. Understandably, they emphasize combat skills that are generally summed up as kill or be killed, but make sure you know what you are killing. The “kill or be killed” part is as old as human history and it makes sense for an army to emphasize this in the training. The “make sure you know what you are killing” part is one aspect of what is propped up as “winning hearts and minds”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this in the last three weeks. The funny part is that that phrase is often followed by phrases like “give him (insurgent) two new holes in his dead and give him a proper burial—kick some dirt on him and leave him to rot for his family.” Whenever the trainers make comments like that, me and another guy ask “Is that part of winning hearts and minds?”

The warrior ethos in laced with large doses of disrespect. It’s not enough to talk about using “controlled pairs” (a shot to the center of mass and a shot to the head) to take down a target, the trainers have to add gleeful anecdotes about shots that decapitate, shots that disembowel. My explanation for this is that most of these guys are young and have already deployed for at least one year. They emotionally repackage the gore as something that is glorious, justified and thrilling. If you have to be prepared to kill everyday, you can’t think of the targets as being humans if you want to keep on going. Some guys can do this and some guys can’t. That’s part of the reason why they send me…

My low point was when one of our USAF majors was repeatedly referring to Iraqi’s as “camel fuckers”. Good job major. Great example to set for the airmen.

The good news is that I am about two weeks from the end of this TDY and it looks like the schedule should lighten up from here on out. I can’t wait to see my family in June!