--A license to do something--I help people with problems
--Problem solver?
--More of a problem eliminator
--License to Kill (1989)
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart
and let me live again
--How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,
The Bee Gees
We are here to help the Vietnamese,
because inside every gook
there is an American trying to get out
--Full Metal Jacket (1987)
And the day came when the risk to remain
tight in a bud was more painful than the risk
it took to blossom
--Anais Nin
________________________
Below is an excerpt from "365 Bottles of Beer", the story of a young troop's drop into the COIN zone (published @ RAW in its entirety. Links are HERE and HERE.)
Any personal observations are appreciated:
"Like every other soldier, whether draftee or enlisted, [I] was fully prepared to do whatever my Army required to win the war. Every last one of us were willing to kill or be killed in the process of doing what our country required of us, but therein lies the crux of the biscuit: What was required?
When I stepped off that airplane wearing jump boots, crossed rifles, junior jump wings and a Ranger tab with a Green Beret on my high and tight head, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing on the ramp of that airplane, stepping into a war that almost everyone knew was lost (it was 1970). What I did possess was every infantry skill required to kill people, be it on an organizational or personal level.
After I stepped off that plane, 18,000 soldiers died for a policy that was as dead as an old man's dick, but we soldiered on because that is what soldiers do. We are not quitters."
