New rule for posts - each post begins with trigger point. No, this does not serve a purpose except negating the need for me to explain somewhere in the first few paragraphs what I was doing when this came about. Plus it allows for linkbacks, links I might've looked up between the postling's little seed in my head and its actual publish(posting? publishing? publishment? does publish have a noun form? publication! of course! shame on me!).
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TRIGGER POINT : TIME's investigative report on the US military presence in Afghanistan
Easily the scariest part of this story was the series of suicides amongst the recruitment regiments of the US army. Men and women in their mid 20s, returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and dunked into the supposed "soft" arms for some recovery are given hard sales KPIs of 2 recruits per month. The brutal emotional and verbal abuse resulting from failing these targets, combined with their already ravaged psyches still fresh with vermilion blood upon ragged rocks, means they crack within months of their new roles.
I sometimes wonder what cause frontline defense personnel work towards. I have the greatest respect for their work in a situation like Afghanistan where they attempt to overthrow the Taliban by befriending the locals, but somewhere the line between patriotism and a false sense of heroism is blurred. On the morning of the hangover, it leaves you with the metallic taste of ferrous in the mouth and the echoes of gunpowder followed by the slightly panicked shouts from the scuttling attackers, whose tongues speak alien languages and who look like they should be in primary school. You aren't really sure what you're fighting. You aren't really sure how this relates to keeping your second cousin going to her 40 floor office in her BMW safe from another 9/11.
And then you come back and look for more infants to send off to the great finishing school. To harden them, they say.
I can't help but doubt that what Charlie Wilson's War depicted was in fact fractional to the reality - how inflated budgets feed new political dreams, inspire dreams of inherited power and ultimately as ANC's (hopefully quick) downfall in South Africa will show, even Mendela's legacy can barely even last his lifetime. Politics and Militia cannot stay separate. Yet, sadly, its a poisonous mixture. With big money at stake.
And maybe, maybe, I begin to understand why my father wanted to leave the Indian Army. Any military organisation as you go higher up, is plagues by political activism, corrupt middlemen, seekers of grants for personal research gains that are enmeshed with ethical disputes and third parties who will bribe you so they can have in on the big plan.
The irony? The tagline the US army is using is "Are you Army Strong?" I guess they weren't.
The greatest revolutionaries make the worst democrats. Indeed. Wartime heroes feel anti-climactic in an environment that is focussed on making the peace a happier peace rather than a war a war that goes over the edge so that it is finally won. They struggle to create power struggles where none need exist.
The counterpoint of course is that Zardari is a democrat, and hardly a good one at that. What Pakistan desperately needs a revolutionary.
PS: I'm pretty excited about the next TIME cover story - "100 days" (of Obama-ship). Its already online (click here for article and here for photoessay), but I think I'll wait for it to get to my post box in hard copy. I'm itching to have a reason to condemn the mass iconisation of this man. I took it hard when I saw a Che Guevara style nine panel multichrome stencil portrait grafitti'ed on a Melbourne alleyway. (Suddenly realize should have taken a picture - the artwork was spectacular).