Outside looking in

Recently I've started feeling kind of like I'm stuck in an aquarium and some ill-mannered, overweight brat with a cheeseburger in one hand and mickey mouse ears on his head is tapping on the glass near my face. Ironically, I'm the cause for this feeling. With the recent headlines discussing the plot to take over the embassy and the seating of Iraq's new government and the Samarra patrol I've been reading a lot more news and other people's blogs to see what other people are saying about it. I need to stop that. In the military commo world we call it the "10-mile screwdriver", in the sporting world it's called "arm chair quarterbacking". While I was reading these articles and blogs I came across some postings that made me acutely aware of how many whackos there are out there spouting off (I'll pause here for a moment to hope that I don't have three fingers pointing back at me).

It really frusterates me when people start talking about things that are happening here like they were sitting in the room with the planners. Like they were there when PFC Doe was walking the streets of Ramadi with the Iraqi police patrol. Like they were riding shotgun when SPC Smith shot the grill off a vehicle that tried to rush a checkpoint. Like they had been sitting next to some poor staff officer staring at a computer screen for 12 hours at a time waiting for green dots to turn red and then has to file a 10 page report that explains why the green dots turned red. Like they were hiding behind the concrete wall with SGT Jones after he got knocked out of his HMMWV when the IED blew up as he tried to make sure that his driver and gunner were ok at the same time that he was trying to locate the source of the RPG and AK-47 fire. Like they were in the cockpit with CW2 Jackson when he determined hostile intent and fired off a burst of 30mm into what used to be a person.

I made up these Soldiers names, but the scenarios are very real. These are the kinds of events that are faced every day. These arm chair quarterbacks have no idea. I'm not asking that people stop debating the larger political issues, I'm just asking that people don't use troops as fodder for their politics and that people who haven't been here on the ground don't make blanket assumptions of what it's really like or what the decision process is.

Pardon me for a moment please, I need to get back to my tactical roots; if all you know is what you see on TV then shut the !$*& up, you have no %#&*ing clue what you're talking about. Thank you.