22 Iraqi speedboats (Updated 6.5.03, 4.48 p.m.)
Blech. Reading over it, I don't like that last post. What a strange tone. Anyways . . .
Couple weekends ago, my cousin Mickey and I were sitting upstairs at Casino el Camino, staring at the unused pool tables--one with the balls racked and then abandoned for some reason, the other with the a few stripes stranded after our game--when we got to talking about the war. Mickey's a radar tech on a destroyer that's in the same fleet as the USS Abraham Lincoln, a carrier that received quite a bit of press. I'd avoided the war subject, in part because I was afraid I'd let slip my ideological disagreement with it and in part because I wanted him bring it up, if he wanted it to come up at all. When we finally got to talking about it, he made it sound pretty mundane: five-hour shift, books and/or video games, sleep, repeat. About what I'd figured. Iraq's Navy wouldn't rival the Texas Coast Guard.
But then he said something that's been rattling around in my head ever since: "Of course, everything the news says is wrong."
I raised my eyebrows while tipping back my Lone Star. He continued, "All those reports from the carrier and all that, they didn't know what they were talking about. Whenever something would happen on the ship, they'd report it all wrong." He looked at the ground. He wasn’t angry.
"No shit." I said.
"One time," he started again, swigging his beer, "we almost had to fire on this Iraqi civilian ship. They were heading right at us and wouldn't respond to our commands to steer away. Like five times we sent them messages, and they ignored us completely. They didn't respond over the radio or change direction. We waited as long as possible. Right before we were about to open fire, they finally turned.” He shook his head. “It got pretty close there."
He leaned back, annoyance creeping into his voice. "But they turned so late that we brushed up against them, just barely. Later, the news reported that the Paul Hamilton had crashed into an Iraqi vessel, like it was our fault."
I couldn’t offer more than a “Huh.”
He went on to tell me about those times he had to man the guns on the deck. They were giant (compared to anything a civilian would see) machine guns, basically, and it was his job to stand guard in case any small-craft threat came toward the ship. “There were always speedboats coming right up to the ship, before they’d turn away at the last second. They’d go right next to the ship—so close I could spit on them. At one point, I could see 22 speedboats, all coming directly at us. I radioed it in, ‘I’ve got 22 speedboats out here,’ like three times. Finally, they were like, ‘Uh, roger that.’ And that was it.”
I didn’t understand. “Why would they do that?”
“Because they hate us, Matt. They hate America. A lot of people over there just hate us.”
They were calling our bluff. They knew our weakness, but they also knew that an unarmed Iraqi speedboat fired on by an American destroyer would do much more damage to our cause than anything a repeat of the USS Cole could do. Strangely, that only reinforces the possibility that Iraq had (and perhaps destroyed) WMD, yet at the same time, it makes me wonder what effect this war actually had on stopping terrorism—or any enemy that wanted to strike our vulnerabilities. The next time we invade a country, they may not bluff.
Update: A couple of y'all expressed some confusions about my WMD comment. Sorry, it was late, and I just wanted to get the thing posted. Stream-of-conscious punditry is not such a good idea.
Here's what I meant: An easily coordinated attack by those 22 Iraqi speedboats could have done some serious damage to--if not destroyed--my cousin's ship. Everyone involved in the whole strange scene knew this. But their goal was to make the Americans the aggressors. Apply that same logic to a larger scale. If Saddam knew he was going to lose this war, which had to know, unless he really was THAT crazy, then he also knew that using WMDs would only help the Americans and have no effect on the outcome of the fighting. Given that, the next logical step would be to destroy any weapons or evidence that you might have before the U.S. gets ahold of it and gets to say that they were right all along. Without the weapons, you've left Bush in the bind that's currently ensared him. I thought the speedboat incident showed the mindset of a group of people who knew they were defeated before the fighting started.
Now, obviously, I'm not saying that without a doubt this is what Saddam did. I'm still just as skeptical as the next liberal, simply because I think it would be near impossible for that bureaucratically inept country to have done such a thorough job removing all the evidence when they couldn't defend even one bridge with their "elite" brigade. Saddam, coward that he is, probably fled his country before he was in any danger, knowing that he was conscripting many young Iraqi men into a death sentence. If he's smarter and less crazy than we all thought, and if he's still alive, then he knows Bush's current predicament is the biggest victory he could have hoped for. I, for one, hope we find his carcass in one of those bombed-out bunkers.
The point I'm trying to get at, though, is that our outright aggression has shown our enemies that we must be struck first. I think, next time, my cousin may have to use his gun. I can only hope that we somehow rebuild Iraq into something that was worth all of this. That's the only way this war will ever be in the least bit respectable in my mind. I'm not exactly optimistic.
---
A picture taken when I was in Houston visiting Mickey. This is a view from Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros.
Blech. Reading over it, I don't like that last post. What a strange tone. Anyways . . .
Couple weekends ago, my cousin Mickey and I were sitting upstairs at Casino el Camino, staring at the unused pool tables--one with the balls racked and then abandoned for some reason, the other with the a few stripes stranded after our game--when we got to talking about the war. Mickey's a radar tech on a destroyer that's in the same fleet as the USS Abraham Lincoln, a carrier that received quite a bit of press. I'd avoided the war subject, in part because I was afraid I'd let slip my ideological disagreement with it and in part because I wanted him bring it up, if he wanted it to come up at all. When we finally got to talking about it, he made it sound pretty mundane: five-hour shift, books and/or video games, sleep, repeat. About what I'd figured. Iraq's Navy wouldn't rival the Texas Coast Guard.
But then he said something that's been rattling around in my head ever since: "Of course, everything the news says is wrong."
I raised my eyebrows while tipping back my Lone Star. He continued, "All those reports from the carrier and all that, they didn't know what they were talking about. Whenever something would happen on the ship, they'd report it all wrong." He looked at the ground. He wasn’t angry.
"No shit." I said.
"One time," he started again, swigging his beer, "we almost had to fire on this Iraqi civilian ship. They were heading right at us and wouldn't respond to our commands to steer away. Like five times we sent them messages, and they ignored us completely. They didn't respond over the radio or change direction. We waited as long as possible. Right before we were about to open fire, they finally turned.” He shook his head. “It got pretty close there."
He leaned back, annoyance creeping into his voice. "But they turned so late that we brushed up against them, just barely. Later, the news reported that the Paul Hamilton had crashed into an Iraqi vessel, like it was our fault."
I couldn’t offer more than a “Huh.”
He went on to tell me about those times he had to man the guns on the deck. They were giant (compared to anything a civilian would see) machine guns, basically, and it was his job to stand guard in case any small-craft threat came toward the ship. “There were always speedboats coming right up to the ship, before they’d turn away at the last second. They’d go right next to the ship—so close I could spit on them. At one point, I could see 22 speedboats, all coming directly at us. I radioed it in, ‘I’ve got 22 speedboats out here,’ like three times. Finally, they were like, ‘Uh, roger that.’ And that was it.”
I didn’t understand. “Why would they do that?”
“Because they hate us, Matt. They hate America. A lot of people over there just hate us.”
They were calling our bluff. They knew our weakness, but they also knew that an unarmed Iraqi speedboat fired on by an American destroyer would do much more damage to our cause than anything a repeat of the USS Cole could do. Strangely, that only reinforces the possibility that Iraq had (and perhaps destroyed) WMD, yet at the same time, it makes me wonder what effect this war actually had on stopping terrorism—or any enemy that wanted to strike our vulnerabilities. The next time we invade a country, they may not bluff.
Update: A couple of y'all expressed some confusions about my WMD comment. Sorry, it was late, and I just wanted to get the thing posted. Stream-of-conscious punditry is not such a good idea.
Here's what I meant: An easily coordinated attack by those 22 Iraqi speedboats could have done some serious damage to--if not destroyed--my cousin's ship. Everyone involved in the whole strange scene knew this. But their goal was to make the Americans the aggressors. Apply that same logic to a larger scale. If Saddam knew he was going to lose this war, which had to know, unless he really was THAT crazy, then he also knew that using WMDs would only help the Americans and have no effect on the outcome of the fighting. Given that, the next logical step would be to destroy any weapons or evidence that you might have before the U.S. gets ahold of it and gets to say that they were right all along. Without the weapons, you've left Bush in the bind that's currently ensared him. I thought the speedboat incident showed the mindset of a group of people who knew they were defeated before the fighting started.
Now, obviously, I'm not saying that without a doubt this is what Saddam did. I'm still just as skeptical as the next liberal, simply because I think it would be near impossible for that bureaucratically inept country to have done such a thorough job removing all the evidence when they couldn't defend even one bridge with their "elite" brigade. Saddam, coward that he is, probably fled his country before he was in any danger, knowing that he was conscripting many young Iraqi men into a death sentence. If he's smarter and less crazy than we all thought, and if he's still alive, then he knows Bush's current predicament is the biggest victory he could have hoped for. I, for one, hope we find his carcass in one of those bombed-out bunkers.
The point I'm trying to get at, though, is that our outright aggression has shown our enemies that we must be struck first. I think, next time, my cousin may have to use his gun. I can only hope that we somehow rebuild Iraq into something that was worth all of this. That's the only way this war will ever be in the least bit respectable in my mind. I'm not exactly optimistic.
---
A picture taken when I was in Houston visiting Mickey. This is a view from Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros.
posted by Matt at 12:16 AM
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