Fred Reed, an experienced soldier wounded as a young marine in combat in a fruitless and totally unnecessary war, is better qualified than most to speak to the historical role soldiers play in spreading debauchery,destruction and death at the behest of a few sociopathic politicians without hesitation or question of morality or purpose behind their or their leaders’ actions.
Today, are we as a society any less bloodthirsty or anymore civilized than when the Golden Horde swept across Eastern Europe in the 13th century?
Dulce et Decorum
by Fred Reed
Recently by Fred Reed: A’Croaking We Shall Go
I am a soldier. I am dirt. With Joshua I put the cities of Canaan to the sword while women screamed and tried to protect their babies. I spent long days in Nanjing butchering and butchering civilians because I enjoyed it. For I am a soldier. I am dirt. I firebombed Hamburg till the wind-fanned flames left nowhere to hide and the people burned screaming and their fat puddled in the streets. I am a soldier. I am dirt.
On the crumbling walls of Angkor Wat, the Cold Lairs, trees now crawling over the walls, you may see me carved, marching, marching to kill forgotten peoples, it matters not whom. In the sweltering heat of Chichen Itza and the terrible winter of Stalingrad and the flaming paper cities of Japan and on the Death March of Corregidor I killed and killed, for I am a soldier. I am dirt. I kill.
In this I glory. I spend my declining years drinking in bars with old soldiers I knew when Breda fell to us and we raped and killed and looted, when we torpedoed the troop ships and left the soldiers in their thousands to drown slowly as their strength gave out. The fierce exultation of watching Atlanta burn, Pearl Harbor, Nagasaki, these I remember lovingly. For I am dirt.
Crush their skulls and eat their faces, we say with remembered bravado. We remember the adventures fondly. They almost had us at Plei Cuy when a 551 arrived with beehive rounds, and that put paid to them, hoo-ah.
These are degenerate days. Once I breached the walls of Ilium or Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade and killed and looted and raped girls of seven in front of their parents – how they howled! Now perforce I say I do it for democracy, about which I don’t give a damn, or to end evil, though our allies are the worst tyrants we can find. Before, I could torture my captives between two slow fires, or by running a red-hot poker up their neither ends, and this in the public square for the amusement of a bored populace.
Now I water-board them, bringing them to the edge of drowning, screaming, begging, puking, yes, that does nicely, now a little more water as their minds break, and maybe I will masturbate over it later. For I am a soldier. I am dirt. I am the worst of a sorry species.
I am a soldier. I pride myself on my allegiance to duty, God, honor, country. My god is Moloch of the red fangs, who wills me to besiege a city into cannibalism, to catapult the severed heads of loved ones over the walls, with blankets infected with smallpox. My god, however named – Yahweh, Molloch, Satanas, Odin, imposes my duty, to kill, to rape.
But if my country says to butcher, then butchery were no crime, but a source of honor. To kill for pure enjoyment, as Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, is most contemptible, but to do it because Bush II, Tojo, Bin Laden, or Netanyahu commands it – this is virtue at its highest. Killing for your own reasons is criminal. Killing someone you have never seen for the benefit of a politician you have never met is a source of medals.
I was a soldier once. I received certain medals. They were trivial medals. The meritorious variety are awarded for jumping into a trench of scared conscripted adolescents and bludgeoning them to death with a rifle butt. I lacked the character. But medals presented problems. If I put them in the toilet, they might clog it, but I certainly would not want children exposed to them. The military presents problems that Clausewitz did not anticipate.
Once, in a war of no particular importance, I lay in a hospital of little importance in a country in Asia that didn’t matter. It was just a country. Soldiers kill, who and where and why being beyond their capacities for thought. I was blinded. Soldiers are dirt, and sometimes they get what they deserve. I did. Across from me, though I couldn’t see them, were the survivors of a tank crew. An RPG 2, which you probably don’t know what is, had hit their
M60, which you probably don’t know what it, had cooked off the cherry juice, which you probably don’t know what is.
I couldn’t see them. I was a soldier. I was dirt. But I was blind dirt. I couldn’t see them under the plastic sheeting under which they oozed serum. But they spoke of the fire within, and the loader and gunner screaming as their skin sloughed off, and they desperately tried to find the hatches and couldn’t, and died screaming, screaming, fingers groping for hatches they couldn’t find in the smoke and agony and terror, which is why I hate you sonosonfbitches that sent them and us to make money for McDonnell Douglas.
For this we hold reunions. We get together in Wyoming and Tuscaloosa and Portland and remember when we were young and the war held off the boredom of life and the star shells flickered in the sky of Happy Valley and life meant nothing but was at least intense. I hated the H&I fire over the dark forests of a puzzled Cambodia and I hate you cocksuckers living soft at home for sending us and I and I hate what I did and I hate my friends who were there, who are really my only friends. And I hope you one day pay, what we paid, what our victims paid and they you pay it as we did. And this will bring me the only joy in my life.
I am a soldier. I am dirt.
December 10, 2012
Fred Reed is author of Nekkid in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well, A Brass Pole in Bangkok: A Thing I Aspire to Be, Curmudgeing Through Paradise: Reports from a Fractal Dung Beetle, Au Phuc Dup and Nowhere to Go: The Only Really True Book About Viet Nam, and A Grand Adventure: Wisdom’s Price-Along with Bits and Pieces about Mexico. Visit his blog.
Copyright © 2012 Fred Reed
Funny Way to Defend Our Freedoms
Here is a picture of those brave “three-minute men” in Pearl Harbor in a queue for a brothel. Was it taken on Saturday, December 6th?
Like I have said on more than one occasion, half of the brothels around the world would have to close for lack of business if the U.S. military abandoned its empire of troops and bases.
sangell says:
What a tasteless and sick post. You’ve got a problem there flash. You seem to think everybody in the world is bad but you. People who feel that way generally need a mirror to see where the real problem lies.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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11th December 2012 at 9:56 am
eugend66 says:
War is Bad!!
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11th December 2012 at 10:03 am
Stucky says:
sangell
Quite the knee-jerk reaction you posted there. Hit and run.
You are CERTAINLY entitled to your opinion. How about some explanation, though? Nada. Your post is little more than name-calling.
What exactly is “tasteless and sick”? Flash’s commentary were minimal. So maybe you’re really upset with Fred Reed?
I enjoy everything from Fred’s pen. He tells the truth, even when it is extremely uncomfortable.
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11th December 2012 at 10:11 am
sangell says:
I was in the army. Most enlisted men are there for the same reasons.
They got married or wanted to at a young age and, if military service doesn’t pay a lot it does offer a lot more in the way of benefits to a young man with a wife and children than working in the civilian economy. If it means he has to go to Iraq etc and risk his life and limb to provide for his family that’s the deal he made. I’d say that young man is a cut above the guy who knocks young girls up, leaves them and lets the taxpayer take responsibility for his ‘family’.
They come from rural and small town America where there are few jobs and military service is a way for them to earn a living and., for many, go back to their hick town after 20 years or so of service.
They have no skills and want to get the GI bill so they can attend college and are willing to take a big risk rather than take out student loans or just want to some military occupational training though those folks tend to go Navy or Air Force for obvious reasons.
They are looking for adventure.
I’d guess that covers most of those who enlist. Very few want to go kill people even if that is the ultimate mission of the soldier. Its like the cop or fireman. They hope they don’t have to risk their lives when they go to work that day but they may have to.
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11th December 2012 at 10:42 am
Stucky says:
Yup. I agree 100%. When I enlisted in 1971 it wasn’t to kill Gooks, it was to save/get money for college. I suppose that makes me a mercenary of sorts.
So, you know firsthand the main purpose of boot camp; it’s to break your will, to follow orders without questioning them. And I believe that’s the point of Fred Reed’s article; when called to do so, soldiers will kill, without question and unquestioningly . Whatever their motivation to enlist in the first place doesn’t matter one whit.
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11th December 2012 at 11:07 am
sangell says:
Actually there was a Canadian military writer, think his name was Gwen Dyer, who, years ago, in the Washington Times reported on a controversial study of men at war that claimed only a minority of soldiers ever actually aimed at an enemy soldier and shot him. Don’t know the truth of the issue as I was never in combat during my short military career but I suspect there is something to it.
My own thoughts are that it takes a lot more than basic training to turn young men into killers which is why replacements into line combat units suffer such high casualties and why combat seasoned units are so much more effective in battle than fresh troops.
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11th December 2012 at 11:31 am
Roy says:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Faust”, considered by many to be one of the greatest works of German literature, is the model for sangell’s post. Unless you witnessed the flatbed trucks on the tarmac at Da Nang with the silver coffins waiting to be flown to Dover AFB for internment, been in a military hospital during combat or spent time in a VA Medical Center you don’t realise what the deal with devil entailed. These are things the recruiter didn’t tell you. Experience them and your attitude changes.
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11th December 2012 at 11:33 am
flash says:
sangell.
Like Stuck pointed out Fred Reed ,a former marine blinded in Vietnam ( just another trumped up war for corporate profit) by an RPG that also took out a M60 tank crew. My 19 year old cousin a tank gunner in Vietnam was blown off an M60 by an RPG that killed his entire crew and wounded or killed several marines nearby.
My cousin spent the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair dependent on other people to wipe his ass. I have to wonder if this is the same incident Fred Reed describes.
That said , thanks for displaying what a total clueless clod you are for missing Fred Reed’s entire point about soldiering.The destruction, misery and death inflicted upon the innocent by one rogue power after another could not take place without the willful participation of the soldier.
Just because you need skills ,a job,money, a wife,a family or whatever your miserable black heart desires does not justify in anyway the mass murder of the innocent.
I was in the military too and it sucked. Groveling at the feet of lesser men in servitude for a meager wage might be your cup of suck-up, but then again you might be a person of such low self-esteem and intellect that you may feel the military is the best you can do…so be it .To each his own.
But,please do not babble on about the nobility of military service, because it is a big shitty lie only a fool would believe.
BTW I lost two cousins in Vietnam, and family friends in Korea fighting our most favored trading partners.They are considered heroes, but granted the opportunity I’m sure they would have favored being alive or hero status.
FTA …and I saw it emblazoned on more helmets than not, but ironically these same guys who in their youth defiantly displayed the insulting acronym are now the morons praising anything the military does.GFF?
I suspect you to be one of these same type booger eating bed-wetting rubes..
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11th December 2012 at 11:55 am
Petey says:
What sangell doesn’t seem to realize, or won’t admit, is that everything he says about why young American men volunteer to become paid government killers, or accessories to government murder, are the same reasons that young men joined up with Alexander or Gengis Khan, or Tamarlane or any other murderous gang: adventure and loot.
War’s a Racket – http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
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11th December 2012 at 11:58 am
flash says:
..speaking of sick.I tried to imbed this tube in the post , but I have yet to master that WP process, but anyway…enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTs6a0ORdQU
These will be the guys doing their patriotic duty by kicking down your door at 4 am to drag your 2nd Amendment babbling , Constitutional rights spewing keyboard cowboying ass off to a FEMA camp where you’ll learn the consequences of dissing our corporate overlords the hard way.
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11th December 2012 at 12:02 pm
Muck About says:
A pisser of an article but it only describes the human condition. Unfortunately, I expect even in the longer runs of time, the human condition won’t change much as killing to survive is built into most living things genes. Us too.
The problem is that the old get to send the young over there to die. The young don’t get a vote and the killing fields exist for only a very short burst of time. In other words, “Maybe I’ll be lucky and do my time (to get the GI bill or whatever else I seek) without getting blown away.”
Sure, all soldiers intellectually understand the possibilities inherent in military service – that’s why I joined the Navy rather than get my ass drafted into the Army (way back there in 1956). My Dad reminded me that three hots and a bunk is far better than a wet ditch and C rations..
All bets are off when the shooting starts. Then the horrors come out, the urine dribbles down the leg and you shake so hard you have trouble loading a fresh clip.
Sad, but human memory is short and WWII is fading fast from living memory. The dust up wars and pissant skirmishes are bad enough but I don’t think they reflect what is coming down the pipe as politicians get panicky about the Nations’ condition and begin grasping straws as has been done so many times before.
We’ll never learn. Just try and stay out of the way.
MA
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11th December 2012 at 12:03 pm
Stucky says:
” ….. a controversial study of men at war that claimed only a minority of soldiers ever actually aimed at an enemy soldier and shot him …” —– sangell
Not sure what’s controversial about that. The question is, what ratio of deployed forces are directly engaged in fighting, relative to those engaged in noncombat support functions? I’m too lazy to look it up but I think I recall reading that the Afgan/Iraq ratio is around 1:9 … including civilian “contractors”.
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11th December 2012 at 12:03 pm
flash says:
sangell, ..see here:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hope_on_the_battlefield
Only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide—in many cases they were willing to risk greater danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages. They simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges.
Why did these men fail to fire? As a historian, psychologist, and soldier, I examined this question and studied the process of killing in combat. I have realized that there was one major factor missing from the common understanding of this process, a factor that answers this question and more: the simple and demonstrable fact that there is, within most men and women, an intense resistance to killing other people. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it.
But , the infantry is only the cannon fodder.
The mass slaughter of the innocent is done by those willing to flip a switch.
The men were killers of entire cities with no forethought to the Innocent lives taken or refusing to participate.
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11th December 2012 at 12:13 pm
sangell says:
@flash
You need some serious help. If you in anyway speak to other people as you write I’d suggest you get it quick before you find yourself either in hospital or prison. You are one disturbed individual.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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11th December 2012 at 12:17 pm
flash says:
sangell, your sugarcoat mass murder under the banner of job, family, opportunity as a good thing and I’m the one who need help.
And yeah, I do tend to say what I think and there have been consequences, but yet here I am.
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11th December 2012 at 12:21 pm
Roy says:
Stuckey – The ratio of combat to non combat was 10 to 1 in WWII and Nam. WWII 10 million men, ! million saw combat, Nam 500,000 – 50,000 saw combat. The real gross statistic is the ratio of government bullet stoppers to civilians, geometric.
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11th December 2012 at 12:23 pm
Stucky says:
sangell and flash seek advice on conducting Combat Operations
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11th December 2012 at 12:30 pm
Stucky says:
Thereafter, flash strikes the first blow
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11th December 2012 at 12:40 pm
Petey says:
Muck About said, “The problem is that the old get to send the young over there to die. The young don’t get a vote…”
Being old I have to disagree with this simplistic dichotomy. I’ve never sent anyone to die, over there or any where.
The young do have a vote, they can vote “no”. They can refuse to go. They can say, “I’d rather be poor than hire myself out to kill people who have done me no harm.” It takes much more courage to say, “no, I will not go” than it does to go along to get along.
Might want to read about Franz Jagerstatter. He said ‘no’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_J%C3%A4gerst%C3%A4tter I hold that what he did took more bravery than storming Normandy beach on D-Day. Or might want to read about the Hutterite conscientious objectors who refused to serve in WWI and were tortured and imprisoned at Leavenworth. Two of them died from the brutal treatment at the hands of U.S. soldiers.
You always have a choice, but the choice may not be easy or popular.
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11th December 2012 at 1:27 pm
Stucky says:
“I’ve never sent anyone to die, over there or any where.” —- Petey
Nice post and nice link. But, regarding your quote above, no one is accusing YOU.
Actual picture of old people who have sent young people to die;
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11th December 2012 at 2:14 pm
ThePessimisticChemist says:
@Stucky – Anyone who votes for a warmonger is culpable in my book, so yeah, I’ll lay the blame at his feet if he voted in any of the aforementioned old people.
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11th December 2012 at 2:20 pm
Mikey says:
@Sagnell, Flash
You’re right. I know that study you refer to well as well as a large number of once-classified follow up studies
While I don’t have a copy of it here so I can quote numbers, it averaged at 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 soliders fired at a human in WW1, going up to 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 in WW2 due to improved training and a greater ‘immediacy’. British soldiers in particular had no problem firing at Germans after the Blitz began.
With improved training, by the American War/Vietnam War (depending on what side you were on) it was closer to 3 in 4 shot at humans. This increasingly dehumanising treatment of “the enemy” in training paid off considerably paid off dividends when it came to destroying the enemy (note the choice of words). Of course it is also directly linked to the civilian massacres – once you dehumanise an enemy and watch them die from your weapon, it’s a very small step to killing others.
I read Frank’s article.
It made me squirm and remember.
Of course it was meant to.
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11th December 2012 at 5:49 pm
IraK says:
flash and Fred Reed should be ashamed of themselves for demeaning American soldiers and suggesting that our troops are no different from those of other nations and in times past. The American soldier, like his officers and our government officials, takes an oath to abide by the Constitution. Our military men are schooled in following the law and rules of war and live by those ideals. Unlike fighting men from other countries, American soldiers fight for democracy, defend our country from terrorists, and promote freedom.
The Battle of Atlanta, which Reed mentions, was necessary to defeat the Slave Power and free millions of Blacks. Nagasaki was bombed because it was a military base and to keep from having to invade Japan which would have cost a million or more American lives.
Perhaps Reed is bitter because he was wounded. Instead he should be glad he had a chance to serve our great country and defend its freedoms.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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11th December 2012 at 6:48 pm
Stucky says:
IraQ
jeeesus.
I fart in your general direction. I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesey-loving second-hand donkey-bottom biter! You mother smells of elderberries, Button your lip, you ratbag
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11th December 2012 at 6:59 pm
The Dude says:
“I’d rather be hung as a traitor than go to war for Wall Street.”
- Eugene Debs, 1917
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11th December 2012 at 7:31 pm
Stucky says:
From the Dept. of War, … errr, Defense
First O’Negro said if Syria uses chemical weapons that would be crossing the red line — whatever the hell that is.
Then the DIC (Dipshit In Chief) said moving chemical weapons is crossing the red line.
I’m guessing the sheer bullshitness of their chemical weapons allegations is too obvious, even to the dicksuckers on Fox … as Panetta NOW says there is no evidence of Syria’s even having them …. due to the cost of chemicals or some other such horsey poo. Amazing.
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11th December 2012 at 7:41 pm
flash says:
“I serve because I in turn am served with meager wage,impunity to steal, power to kill , bravdo via brotherhood and adventure of the unimaginable, thus I become your savior and hero”
Proletariat Buffoon
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11th December 2012 at 8:12 pm
flash says:
Irak is a weak ,runny eyed impersonation of the great pip Smokie.
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11th December 2012 at 8:13 pm
flash says:
« Previous: Breaking the Tentacles of Cable | LRC Home | LRC Blog
A broke-ass fool of a Congress contemplates spending more money they don’t have and will borrow , to commemorate another war that should have never been fought …but at least the first world war provided for jobs,and allowed for affording wives and family for the unemployed youts of America ..and for this we’re thankful.
War is our # 1 employer.Keep killing strong.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/128187.html
December 11, 2012
The Frank Buckles World War I Memorial Act
Posted by Laurence Vance on December 11, 2012 04:02 PM
According to the Congressional Budget Office, H.R.6364, the Frank Buckles World War I Memorial Act “would establish a commission to plan, develop, and execute programs, projects, and activities to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War.”
Why commemorate a war the U.S. had no business fighting and in which 100,000 or so American young men died for nothing?
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11th December 2012 at 7:30 am
S. Wesley Mcgranor says:
There is no greater faulty reason to justify such antics; as a Government sponsored war. With that, non-governmental organizations are considered illegitimate. Terrorism still should be personal though; none of that drone nonsense.
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11th December 2012 at 4:00 pm
George McAdoo says:
But what does one meet terror with. Should one be a sheep, to be slaughtered by your one size fits all “soldier”? Or is it possible that one can be a soldier in defense of those who would be sheep? To concede that there exists evil and that the only good is that which is destroyed by evil is to concede that there is no hope in life but to live in a time or place when and where evil is not active or to be that evil soldier that is simply slave to those whom finance your infliction of their will upon the sheeple. I contend that there exist soldiers of virtue. If not, there would be constant turmoil in all quarters of the world at all times. In not recognizing the difference between good and evil, you deny the right of any human to exist at all. Keep your hell. I trust noone . i hope for everyone. Peace and Semper Fidelis.
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11th December 2012 at 8:30 am
flash says:
aw shucks.. killing children … why that’s just another day on the job created just for those in need of employment.Keeping America job strong…ooooo rah!
U.S. Army Starts Targeting Children
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/12/no-child-left-behind.html
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11th December 2012 at 8:43 am