A Letter From the “Third Front”
I recently received an e-mail from a buddy of mine – “K-Dawg,” as he’ll be known for purposes of this blog.
He’s a Desert Storm veteran, a commissioned officer, and a U.S. Army Reservist, who recently was called back into action – and thereby out of his cushy job beating plaintiff’s attorneys senseless down in Southern California. (Kidding; about the “cushy” part, that is.) He’ll soon be shipping out to one of Bill Clinton’s favorite bombing targets – Kosovo – in order to assist with peacekeeping duties there.
And he’s got some things to say about various issues upon which McGovern-era stoners, in academia, and trust-fund liberals, in the media, have been ruminating:
I’m here in Germany preparing to go into Kosovo with my unit. I just read Polipundit and saw how Al Franken goes on a lot of USO tours. I appreciate his concern, I guess, though he seems to think we are committing unspeakable crimes. I think I can live without his comedy stylings.
Hey, active duty sure isn’t what you hear about in the media. I’ve never heard a serious complaint about our 18 months back in the Army – not one. We’ll be peacekeeping in Kosovo, which is kind of our third big theater after Iraq and Afghanistan. Back door draft? Hell, we volunteered – and many of us are disppointed only that we aren’t going to Baghdad instead.
Let’s talk about the undertrained, underequipped reservists I’m always reading about. Where are these guys? This is day 115 of training – and our sixth major exercise. If anything, we are overtrained. You should see the number of experts on culture, on language (I had 40 hours of Albanian!) and on military skills they have training us (our lead trainer is a retired four star general!).
And equipment? My complaint is that there’s too much – we have top of the line cold weather gear (all Gortex), brand new improved body armor and all sorts of other stuff – I needed another duffel bag to haul it all.
Is it perfect? Of course not – it’s the Army! But I’m better trained and equipped going onto this peacekeeping mission than I was when I was an active duty soldier deployed from my base in Germany into the Persian Gulf in 1990. And I know the guys going into the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan have it even better.
So that nonsense you read about some sort of broken Army is just that – nonsense. Hey, my butt is on the line and I’m not complaining (there’s still the potential for a real mess in Kosovo) – you can take that as you will, but this is one United States Army officer that’s proud and ready. And my buddies and my troops are likewise.
So, stick that in your shot glass, Whiskey Ted.
-- Jayson