More Army of Dude

Back to some regular programming...

Army of Dude has a great new post up. For those new to AoD, he is an Infantryman in Iraq, serving in a Stryker unit.

The military is obsessed with taking something and renaming it with a
totally different term. A jumping jack is a side straddle hop, and any Islamic
terrorist not affiliated with Al Qaeda is a concerned local. When a mission is
complete, there is a rollup of killed enemies and found weapons. A rollup is
another term for a summary. So I present my own summary (er, rollup) for the
time my company has spent between June 2006 and June 2007:

525,600 Minutes Passed
Countless Enemies Killed and Captured
3 Destroyed Strykers
Dozens of Rifles, RPGS and Mines Found and Destroyed
2 Fatherless Baby Girls
Thousands of Rounds of Ammunition Found and Destroyed
9 Figure Severance Paycheck to Dick Cheney, Courtesy of Halliburton
3 Cleared Cities
2 Dead Friends
100,000 Contractors Making Five Times My Pay for Doing Laundry and Serving Food
Thousands of Cleared Houses
1 Quagmire

A year later and this is what we have to show for it.

A year later and we care about the survival of each other more than a fledgling
democracy in the Middle East. To officers and officials influencing policy, our
goal is to stimulate the economy and prop up competent Iraqi Security Forces. To
the unwashed enlisted in the muck, we’re just trying not to get blown to fucking
bits. A year later and we have realized finally: we’re biding time until the
next unit comes to replace us. That’s it. Rotate in, rotate out. A year’s worth
of sore backs, twisted ankles, near death experiences, shootouts, blown up
buildings, fires, mangled corpses, dead kids, dead soldiers, cold desert nights,
hot desert days, shit covered boots, trash filled streets, unfulfilled dreams,
stagnant aspirations and murdered futures.

A year well spent.

Keep up the great work Alex! Well said. When you get a chance, you should read this book. I read it this past weekend...it's amazing!