My dad: from the days when the US marines were dignified
Today’s American military machine is a ruin. Throw it in the heap, for it is trashed. The only thing left that might be of any value is the metal parts and copper wiring of the air force and the navy.
In the case of the USAF, if there is anything left, that’s only because they haven’t had to fight anyone worth their salt since we took on an already beaten-up Luftwaffe in 1942. How about the Japanese air force in World War II, you ask? Ha! Those Zero fighters had wings and bodies manufactured out of cloth and wood.
How about the US Navy? Yeah, same story there: way too much money spent on big, shiny buckets we don’t need. Maybe we can melt down and sell those huge hunks of junk for scrap metal and make a few useful manhole covers. Or something we are good at, like basketball hoops. Either way, the US military machine is so fubar that there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Oh sure, we probably still make the best war toys, but they are useless in the hands of many of today’s uniformed imbeciles and their bozo bosses in Washington.
I’d like to prove to you that — beyond any shadow of doubt — our US military is more screwed up than anyone could ever imagine. I want to do so by mentioning a few recent episodes I know about and using common sense in totaling them up against history. After reading this article, you might agree that our military will never again win a foreign war and should, for all practical purposes, be disbanded immediately before it boomerangs and somebody hurts themselves.
Arguably, we haven’t won a war since 1776. Americans have a bad habit of not looking at the long-term effects of things — say a hundred years or so. For example, we didn’t really win the war against Mexico. Just drive to Los Angeles today and take a look around and you can be a witness to this fact. We certainly didn’t win World Wars I and II; and a cursory look at events since then will show you that our decline has been almost as rapid as that of our mentors, the Soviets.
I’ve even met some Japanese who claim that Japan didn’t lose World War II. They argue that you need only to consider Japan’s pre-war standard of living vis–vis America’s; and then look at the same today. I furrow my brow; they may have a point.
The phone rings. It’s my beloved career marine father on the line. He’s furious about some idiot 21-year-old US Navy guy from the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft super-carrier who has been arrested in Japan on a charge of murdering a 56-year-old woman and stealing her pocket change.
I’m surprised that my dad even heard about it. You see, there is usually some savage barbarian from the US Armed Farces doing something criminal (and criminally stupid) in Japan, and it never makes the American news. Last year the big news, among others, was the rape of a 15-year-old girl. It was the same sort of story the year before, and the year before that. The only thing that is changing is that the crime rate by US servicemen just keeps soaring every year. You know, boys will be boys. It happens all the time with the morons we now have in the military and it’s the unfortunate Japanese locals who always suffer.
The reason why this kind of thing is hard to find news in the States is due to the Status of Forces Agreement (called SOFA) between Japan and the United States. To the Japanese who live near the various US bases, especially on Okinawa, SOFA is a "deal" that stinks. It’s just about as bad as Commodore Perry’s deal back in 1853: "Hands in the air! Open your wallets and trade with us, Nips, or we blast you." Maybe it wasn’t offered exactly like that, but that’s what I hear from the Japanese.
SOFA allows US military men to spindle, fold, shop-lift, burglarize, fondle, molest, rob, beat, rape and kill Japanese (and break their laws) with impunity. It has only been in the last two years or so, I’d say, that the US has started cooperating when the Japanese police demand to apprehend some cretin in an American uniform for doing something really dumb — as well as completely criminal. Before that, they got off scot-free for whatever the crime was, whether it was crashing into someone head-on while driving on the wrong side of the road, starting brawls in Roppongi, or breaking into someone’s house and raping their 13-year-old daughter while she slept in her own bed.
I yawn as I listen to my now retired and senior-aged father complain about the behavior of today’s American military. After all these years of living in a nation that is under the thumb of the Great US Empire, I’ve become inured to the stupidity of these American numbskulls. My father is disgusted (as he should be) and remarks: "When I was in the military, things like this would have never happened."
In Japan circa 1950
I answer, "Yeah, but dad, when you were in the military, the US military had some esprit de corps. Now it’s a boarding home for delinquents. It is an escape from prison for hoodlums and criminals. The US court system sends monsters into the military so that they can avoid jail time; so what do you expect?"
I can tell that my dad’s ears are red and steam is pouring out of them by how he sounds on the phone. According to news sources, our most recent US military hero and rocket scientist, William Reese, stopped an old woman in Yokosuka (not that far from where I live) and then robbed and killed her. After taking care of that, he had a hankerin’ for a cola and all and went to the local convenience store. Well, shoot, nuttin’ much else to do after that but whittle some sticks and whistle at the girls goin’ by, so then he just moseyed on back to base — bloodstained clothes, money, and all. Heck, what time does the commissary open anyway?
Mr. William "Brainiac" Reese was later quoted as saying (for better effect, try to read this as if Mike Tyson were talking):
“I had no intention to injure her… I stopped her because I wanted to get change so I could take a taxi, but she pushed me and I got angry and beat her.”
Well, why didn’t you say so before, Willy boy? Heck, of course he had to beat to death this Japanese woman; if his own Ho had been sassy to him back home, he’d have beaten her butt good too.
To make this easy for folks in the States to understand, let’s review the position shortly before the killing: Einstein here wanted change to ride a taxi and all he had on him was a (yen) 5,000 bill — that’s forty-some bucks. That may sound like a slightly large bill, but it is not; the only bill smaller than a fiver is a one. It would be hard indeed to find a taxi driver in Tokyo unable to give change for a (yen) 5,000 bill.
Poindexter tells the cops that he didn’t want to injure the lady; he just rolls her for about $130 and then walks over to the convenience store for some fried chicken and a Coke.
Wait a minute; if there was a convenience store nearby, and all he wanted was change, then why didn’t he just go there and buy a stick of gum? That way, he gets his change, and one Japanese lady is not lying dead in the street. Attention! This is the Yoo-ess military we are talking about here! Sir, yes sir. No one wants to hear your trap! Sir, yes sir. These are America’s finest! Sir, yes sir. America’s military only gets the best and the brightest. Sir, yes sir.
If these are America’s finest, then ya’ll is more up stink creek without a paddle than you can imagine. Sir, yes sir! I can’t hear you! Sir, yes sir!
Okay, I can hear you now…
Not our daddy’s Corps anymore
I unadvisedly went on to tell my poor heartbroken father of what has happened to his once beloved Marine Corps: They aren’t my daddy’s car anymore. The marines today also have more than their fair share of dunces who make Gomer Pyle look like J. Robert Oppenheimer. Take the genius of a marine, stationed in the flat-cake formerly known as Fallujah, in Iraq, who proudly said:
"I’m a door kicker-inner."
Marvelous; simply marvelous! That’s what he said. Yep, join the military and see the world. Become a man. Learn a trade. Be all that you can be: become "a door kicker-inner."
Makes you proud, don’t it? Excuse me for a second as I blow my nose and wipe away mah American empire tears of pride and joy. (Honk!)
It’s also wonderful that the marines are trying to teach our boys some of the local language in Iraq. Heck, who knows? These guys might even someday be able to say something useful in Arabic like:
"To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d."
Or, more likely:
"Stop! Don’t move, maggot! Hands in the air where I can see them! Now!"
Or even:
"(gasp) … water!"
Lord knows that way too many American youth today can’t even speak English well enough to graduate from high school. It’s cool, though, they can still get a job in the military where they can burn things and blow stuff up. Awright!
BONUS QUIK QUIZ:
Which image more accurately depicts today’s honorable American serviceman?
Now you may think I’m being negative and cynical about the mental capabilities of some of our men in uniform. And I am. But be warned: it’s going to get worse. Why do I say that? Because there is a modern historical precedent that shows what happens to an army full of dimwits, and that precedent was in Imperial Japan.
Older Japanese people, even to this day, believe that the purpose of all government is to provide a sort of safety net for society. This seems to be the prevailing opinion among Japanese over 60 or so. Regardless of how much Imperial Japan has been called a fascist state, I’d have to say that Japan was and still is a socialist country in many ways.
Prior to WWII, Japan was a poor country trying to catch up with the West. In those days, the disaffected youth, trouble-makers, hell-raisers, criminals, hoodlums and hooligans were put outside of society. These people had to be done something with, and so they were sent into the military. Starting to sound familiar? Japan put its useless sons in the Imperial Army. The elite Japanese youth went into the navy or avoided the military altogether. Once in the army, and outside Japan’s borders, these other punks were basically out of control.
By about, say, 1931, the Japanese government was unable to control its own army in Asia. This is well documented. Since the Japanese government had put all these mental giants into the army (that would explain why these people were so right-wing and so uncontrollable — the reptilian brain, being the small size that it is, fits into helmets and likes moving things like flags, sloshing flesh, the NFL, et cetera), they ran amok in China and Manchuria because that’s what jerks do, and then nasty stuff like the Massacre of Nanjing happened — horrible atrocities that Japan will never hear the end of.
Well, we all know what eventually happened to Japan in World War II. It’s quite ironic that the leader of the only nation ever to drop the ultimate weapon of mass destruction on civilians, US President George W. Bush, is taking you folks on the same ride that the Japanese war-time militarists did to the Japanese public, and that lots of American folks still cheer him on. You’d-a thunk that Americans would have been a bit smarter than that … shucks.
And please don’t write to me with your "anti-American" nonsense. If there were more patriots in America today, that idiot drunk frat-boy and his pals would all have gotten the boot long ago.
So what I’m getting at is that there are way too many cretins in today’s American military. You know I’m right about this. I think my theory explains why US forces ran amok in Fallujah and a few other places in Iraq. It explains why our legions didn’t win hearts and minds in Iraq — and could never win hearts and minds anywhere, for many of our guys possess neither themselves. I think this also stands as another excellent argument for the dissolution of the standing American army. It’s not like China or Russia or Osama are getting their rowboats out to invade the States next Tuesday — but that is another subject for another time.
Maybe instead of spending all these gazillions of dollars on high-tech lawnmowers and other junk to be driven by imbeciles, American parents might be able to use that money on something useful. Like, say, teaching their kids how to read a book, or giving them an education past the ninth grade. Or even giving them the skills to go out and get a useful job, instead of one that involves getting someone’s brains blown out.
