Santa Gave us C4!
Those of you that have been reading Afghanistan Shrugged for a while or if you've looked through my posts; may remember a post in November about finding an IED underneath a building and then discovering that the building was an ACM headquarters.
Yes, I'm still calling them ACM despite the popular move to call them EOP, Enemies of Peace, by our higher headquarters at CJTF-P. Boredom must have set in at Kabul and for Christmas they decided to give us a new acronym to call the bad guys. I'm still unsure why bad guys isn't descriptive enough, it's accurate (they're bad), simple ( we all know who we're talking about) and Infantry proof (even I can rememeber it). I'll drop this line of thought as it will force me into some tirade.
Anyway, we'd visited this abandoned town previously and discovered a large IED. Please remember the rules of IEDs that there are no small IEDs. When we pulled back from the town the ANA mortared the building and it was pretty darn effective. In the meantime the ACM (Bad Guys) decided to move next door. Neighborhood watch isn't great here.
A small caveat for those of you who like to critque what we do here. This town is abandoned. This means no one lives here, nor have they lived here for a long time. I say again nobody lives here, so please don't write me a comment about COIN and destroying peoples houses. The only dudes who live here are bad. No some wiseass is going to ask me, "How do you know they're bad"?
I have two main cirteria that I use to determine if dudes are bad; or not. These were developed through rigorous research and study. The bulk of the research into bad guy determination was conducted by noted social scientist Don T. Killme and published in his book titled, "Hey, those dudes are BAD" You may not be able to find this on Amazon but if you act now and send me $50 I can find you a copy.
Criteria number one: Did said dudes shoot at you? Yes, they did infact with a belt fed weapon. This actually places them into the category of well armed bad dudes.
Criteria number two: Did said dudes try to blow you up? Yes, with a big ass IED that they hid underneath a building which I was about to walk into.
Thus, they pass the famed Killme test and are clasified as bad guys, ACM, EOP, AAF, enemy or whatever you want to call them. As I said before I'm sticking with bad guys.
So, bad guys have moved next door what should we do about this?? I think we should blow up the building and luckily as an early Christmas present Santa gave us C4 and a cratering charge.
And that is what we did, we blew it up. The result is the picture you see above!
I know that this was a short post and I promise that I'll be back to my long winded, soapbox self in the next one. But, I wanted to answer some questions that people have sent to me.
1. Are there women on your FOB? No, there are not. All there are is stinky Infantrymen and Artilleryman. No sane women would want to be here in fact no sane man wants to be here.
2. How does the Rover system work for CAS? Go to Janes Defense weekly and look it up, I'm not going to encourage your laziness by just giving you the answer. Plus, it's electronic and I don't know.
3. Do the Afghans have an Air Force? No, they have helicopters and that's it.
4. How many ANA and CF are on your FOB? What the...? Do you work for the Taliban?
5. Are you worried about OPSEC? Yes, the stuff I write about has already happened a while ago. I want all my guys to come home alive and I especially want to come home alive. I'm not going to go James Frey on everyone but I use some literary leeway to account for time.
Those were the reoccuring trends that people asked about. If you have questions in the future please feel free to send them in comments.
Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and please drink one for me and the boys on New Years! Please remember to not drink and drive and I'll not drink and post, hell I can't drink here anyway!
"I have two main cirteria that I use to determine if dudes are bad; or not."
Ah! I heard something totally different in my mind as I read that..."If they run they are VC, if they stand still the well-disciplined VC!" - Full Metal Jacket
Hope your day is going well!
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Looks like New Year's Eve fireworks came a bit early for you all! Glad it was the sending and not receiving kind.
Best wishes all remain safe and vigilant.
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Proud Mama of Two US Army Sons, the oldest coming home from your area in March '09 and the youngest is home now on leave from AIT in Alabama. Thank you for posting. Oddly as this may sound,I find it comforting to hear what you and your brothers are doing. It allows me to understand what my son may be dealing with. I also find it easier to hear it from someone other than my first born. I am very proud of you and your men as I am my sons. Our faces may never meet but you will always be thought of as you bring some sense of comfort to me as I await. I knew this waiting would be hard. I waited for my Father off and on for years and he came home but I never ever believed any of my three sons would join. So, always know that many who pray for you and yours and are in the States awaiting safe returns home of all our boys! Happy New Year to you and yours!
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Nice work, sir! Much appreciate your blog, I always get excited to see new posts from you and am happy to hear your account of winning the GWOT one bad guy at a time!
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Those darn EOP's are pesky little critters ain't they? I guess that C4 got em up outta their gopher holes right quick like. If I send you an extra $10 would you send me an autographed copy of "Hey, those dudes are bad"? Funny post, I like your sense of humor and sarcastic wit.
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The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 12/31/2008 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
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Criteria number one: Did said dudes shoot at you? Yes- No need to go further... They don't call it suppression fire without a reason
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Excellent, as usual. C-4 is an excellent stocking stuffer, and D.T. Killme's book is a must for the holiday reading list. I especially like the chapter entitled, "After da stinkeye; clues for those who can't take a hint."
It can't be denied, however, that his definitive study, "Right brain vs left brain thinking; a comparative analysis of suicide bombers and IED specialists" really brought light to the watershed decision made by each young madrassa student when the time comes to choose an ACM career field. I, for one, was mildly surprised to note that those interested in rapid advancement usually chose the suicide bomber option due to their ability to rise quickly through the ranks and the opportunities for early retirement. In the American Army these same individuals would have chosen a commissioning program... at least that's the conclusion that D.T. Killme draws from his research. It is interesting to note that this conclusion is borne out in the writings of terrorists themselves, such as in the memoirs of Achmed Al Fa' Quad, better known as 'Achmed the Dead Terrorist,' entitled, "Shut Up! I Keel You; My Career as a Suicide Bomber," where Fa' Quad acknowledges, "... In the end, it was a business decision. The virgin vesting schedule on the suicide path was clearly superior. The rapid rise to the rank of Martyr, which would be equivalent to Major in any western army was also an inducement. Many of the IED bombers found themselves languishing as Zabets, or Sergeants, after years of the more cautious practice of their trade."
Telling indeed.
Keep up the good work, Sir.
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lifes a bitch one day at a time if you are lucky than you grow old old proverb dont borrow trouble from tomorrow adious
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Just wanted to say Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. I wish I had something eloquent to say, but I appreciate what you the others like you are doing and sacrificing for us and our country. May God bless you with peace and safety.
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You are now on my bloglist. Your posts make me wish I was 20 again. The military is certainly stuffed with incomprehensiblely rigid and rude people and this situation is why I did not stay in the service. Even 4 decades after my service I still fume over the bs when I read these blogs.
By the way, as a beekeeper, I wondered about the identity of the white boxes in the photograph that accompanied this story. Are those beehives?
Roger Smith
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Happy New year to you and your men. You blog is wonderful. You should consider putting a book together someday. You're a terrific writer. I will continue reading and will be praying for all of you.
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Ah yes, Don. T. Killme, I remember him well. He was a prominent philosopher that seemed to travel to all of the Firebases and a few FOBs during my rotations. I'm glad to hear he finally published a book, sure to be disdained by the REMF's who seemed to ban his words from their AO's.
During my time there (and seemingly forever) the infamous Nevamakes Since was the preferred philosopher of the Big Screen Combat Commanders who seem to be able to see and sometimes hear the battle but whose olfactory senses of the battlefield are impaired to such degree that their orders are less than helpful when the bullets are flying. Neither did they seem to understand their handicap.
The ever changing acronyms: There is a single good reason for this: When an officer dreams up a new acronym, it is recorded on his OER, just as the acronym it replaced was recorded on a prior officers OER. You might suggest BG to plus up your next OER.
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Vampire, good info for the enquiring minds. To you and your partners: God bless and Godspeed for completion of your mission and return to the big PX.
Ron Williford
CTIC USN (Ret)
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Enquiry to Ron Williford, Hi are you the Ron Williford stationed at RAF Bentwaters in 1984? ECM shop!
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