At least twice every football season, The Miami Dolphins football stadium is graced by a flyover of fighter jets just before the game starts. I am not sure why they do this, but I have observed a variety of reactions to the event. From our season seats, the jets appear close enough to practically reach up and touch though that is most likely my imagination playing tricks on me. They always fly the same route and from our vantage we can see the tails of the aircraft as the pilots pour on the fuel turning on the red glow. They fly fast and close to the stadium. No matter what your perspective, they definitely make a statement.
Our closest friends have the seats right behind my wife and me and one time our friend observed that I had an uncomfortable reaction to the flyover. She commented to me that it looked like I did not enjoy seeing the aircraft doing the flyover but assured me that both of them liked it a lot. They felt as though seeing the fighter aircraft up close and in action gave them a sense of security. For them it made a positive statement that the military was on the job and capable of defending the country by hitting the enemy very hard. She apparently had noticed that what hair I have left on my head was standing straight up after the flyover. I replied to her that perhaps seeing low-flying jets just as the pilots goosed their engines gave her reassurance that someone was on the job in our post-9/11 hysteria, but to me it only brought back memories of what those jets are capable of doing.
I gave her the visual of trying to imagine a stretch of wood line or jungle about six to eight football fields in length suddenly turned to toast from a napalm drop. It is impossible for someone who has not seen such an event to imagine what it looks like. I have been within one thousand meters of air strikes two times. Calling in air strikes for a reconnaissance mission was unusual in Vietnam. It happened once because we had been reporting enemy operations to our commanders and by chance a sortie was made available to us. Apparently a fighter team was in the area and to put it plainly, wanted to drop their ordnance rather than take it back to their base. We gave the location of the enemy activity to the pilots, gave them our location, and watched as they took over. The amazing thing is you know they are coming even though you can't hear or see them. They fly low and fast – just like when they fly over football stadiums. One jet popped into view and fired a white phosphorous marker for confirmation. He was dead on target so we confirmed. Seconds later, the second jet made his first run. He fired defensive cannon fire that included ball (solid metal rounds), armor-piercing, high-explosive, and incendiary rounds from his four guns. Firing the defensive cannon fire is a way of saying "Good morning" and "Good-bye" at the same time. He started his napalm drop so it included the entire target area and in the middle of the run dropped two high-explosive bombs. The whole run took less than two seconds. Just as the aircraft that had made the first bomb drops pulled up, the plane that had fired the marker made a duplicate run repeating the action of the first bomb run. Talk about your weapons of mass destruction! Then both jets repeated their runs giving the area a quadruple strike. After the bomb runs, as suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone. We witnessed the extremes of total chaos in one moment to the vacuum of complete silence and emptiness in the next. It was almost more than the human brain could process.
I was awestruck at the destruction these two aircraft had caused. Every tree, every bush, every blade of grass was burned to a crisp. No buildings survived, no animals survived, and surely no human could have survived the attack. My team tried to make an accurate appraisal so a bomb damage assessment report could be given but the napalm fire was just too hot to allow us to walk into the strike area. We concluded that whoever was in the area was history and reported a guesstimation of a body count. What stuck in my memory were the suddenness and the completeness of the destruction. In seconds we had arranged the killing and cremation of an unknown number of the enemy and completely obliterated a group of a half dozen houses.
The other time I saw the devastation of an air strike was while our team participated in a "search and destroy" operation. Search and destroy operations were the Army's way of clearing an area of every living thing and destroying any useful item that remained. It was a sure way of clearing the enemy out of a zone or area. The only side effect to the search and destroy tactic was it took out all the civilians along with the enemy. But in war, civilians do not carry much value so to the war planners, knocking off a few (or a lot of) civilians did not matter. I am not sure why a recon team would be involved in a search and destroy operation unless it was to give our teams a bit of humility by reminding us what the dirty end of air strikes look like. I should add that while serving in a Ranger unit, I experienced some jealousy and hostility from the regular line units. While they served in hundred-man operations and rarely saw the enemy, we went out in five-man teams and practically always found the enemy. We wore black berets, used special weapons and techniques, ate special food rations, and did not have to pull KP or guard duty – all of which contributed to appearances of elitism. So I guess that our recon teams were included in the search and destroy operation assignment to put our feet back on terra firma.
In the briefing before the operation, we were instructed to kill anything we found alive. That included people (any and all), and animals (pigs, chicken, and water buffalo). We were to burn any standing building, destroy any boat motors, and destroy all food such as rice or other supplies. Part of the air strike included the gassing of the area with CS teargas. CS is called pepper gas or teargas but it does more than make you cry. It makes you drop face down as you vomit and gasp for oxygen. If you can get a breath of fresh air, the effect ends in a few minutes. If you continue to breathe the gas while out of breath, you continue to vomit. The nice thing about CS is it is not lethal though it completely incapacitates you. We were told the wind would be blowing out of the south, so the CS would be moving ahead of the troops and we would not need our gas masks. I am betting you can guess which way the wind actually blew: yes, it blew out of the north.
Several jets flew in and dropped their napalm and high explosive bombs creating a tremendous inferno of burning life. The CS gas was dropped and in went several companies of line units along with two of our recon teams. All we found were American soldiers puking their guts out, along with a few live chickens, two pigs, and a water buffalo which we promptly killed. Well, they were enemy animals after all! We did find and dump a huge bag of rice into a canal. We also managed to find part of a house still standing to set afire. And in the course of action, we found several scorched human bodies. By their positions, it appeared as though they were frozen in place though I guess frozen would be a bad choice of words. We found that walking in the sticky napalm made our feet so hot our boots started to smoke and we had to stand in water to cool them off. And there was another sensory experience that I would like to forget – the smell. In Vietnam, with the heat at around 100 degrees and humidity always hovering around 100%, the smell of death always came quickly. So if the CS did not have you tossing breakfast, lunch, and dinner the smell of burned hair, boiling hot human flesh and the rapidly decaying bodies would do the job. The end product of that senseless search and destroy mission was an area destroyed, some civilians killed, a bunch of food destroyed, and maybe a few dozen farm animals incinerated. Oh, and after an air strike, every fire ant in the country gets a really bad attitude and they all take it out on American soldiers who walk through their area. We all came back with millions of ant bites.
Maybe it is a bit clearer now why my response to the stadium flyovers may not be the same as everyone else's reaction. Behind our friends at the stadium sat a fellow who was apparently a bit over-patriotic as well as a bit over-intoxicated. Some football fans take their obligation to become inebriated early quite seriously. Following one flyover, I turned around to let our friend know that I had survived it again and as I did, the patriotic fellow let his alcohol speak for him: "Yeah! Have those guys hit those terrorist bastards! Let them make a statement!" This was followed by a few more "Yeah's" and some clapping and some back-slapping and concluded with a trip to what I'm guessing included the bathroom and most likely the bar.
I pondered the comments of the intoxicated football fan/military expert. Bombing "those terrorist bastards," as he had so delicately put it was a great idea. Maybe we ought to nominate this guy to George W(MD) Bush's advisory group so he could tell them to "Bomb the terrorist bastards." Obviously the military has not thought of this because one bomb on Osama Been Forgotten's head ought to do the job. Heck, make it two! Could it be that our current enemy attackers, unlike the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor, did not leave their return address? I'm thinking that might have something to do with it. In fact, I think that may be the reason that while OBL hides in Afghanistan or Pakistan (or practically anywhere) Americans are in Iraq dropping bombs on high-value targets as well as civilians.
Oh, in the Iraq war, napalm has supposedly been replaced by a different incendiary device. The gasoline in the Vietnam era napalm mixture was replaced by kerosene. I am sure the recipients of the new gadget are thankful for that improvement. The cannon fire from the jets has also been changed from what I experienced. Now they include DU (depleted uranium) rounds. I strongly encourage the reader to follow the DU hyperlink if you are unfamiliar with the health concerns relative to its use. Depleted uranium makes an excellent armor-piercing shell that cuts through armor like a hot knife through butter. I noticed some news footage after our shock and awe portion of the Iraq war was concluded that showed rows of tanks, military trucks, and other military vehicles that had been shredded by the DU rounds. On the plus side, while acting as a very effective weapon, using DU rounds helps get rid of our nuclear waste. Well, it seems that using DU has its costs. Maybe the Iraq war veterans will not have the napalm nightmares that haunt the Vietnam War vets but will instead finish their lives dealing with DU side effects.
In any case, I think that anyone who cheers the prospect of aerial assaults, bombings, or napalming the terrorist bastards/civilians ought to have the opportunity to experience the damage caused by the strikes. While others are gathered around their favorite watering hole cheering as CNN reports on American warplanes as they bomb enemy targets, you might notice some very uncomfortably quiet faces with a bit of a distant look in their eyes. One of those faces will be mine.
If this article seemed to hit you a little too hard and left you with a sense that a statement has been made, please email it to all of your friends who still support George Bush's war in Iraq. Let the Americans who voted for his re-election understand exactly what they have supported.
April 25, 2006
