Hearts and Minds with Feet of Clay
The cordoned village was being scrutinized by a clutch of
bellicose gasconaders, denoted by their vainglorious fanion.
Spooks and advisors, interlarded with commanders and aides,
flanked some pristine White Mice sporting polished-bamboo
warders, whose conative conclave was deliberating tactical
methodologies. The Occidentals were either professionally torpid
or mortifyingly enthusiastic about their prospects. The Orientals
projected a contempt for the onus of karmic repetition obtruding
into their diversions. The community had been sealed since dawn,
and the families were hostage to our moral rectitude; so hygiene
and work became criminally suspect to our martial purpose. There
was an informant, captured during curfew, who was willing to
identify communist sympathizers, as long as his identity could
remain secret; so a blind had been established, and every
inhabitant would be paraded for review. The ruse would probably
fail, by a process of elimination and inference, but that was
probably incidental to his ulterior vendetta. The hamlet was
regulated by the national government but the officials did not
bother to learn about the villagers culture, nor could the
province officials recognize legitimate denizens. They only had
to administer the peasants ... not associate with them. Once the
parade had resulted in several selections, the true business of
impressed authority took effect. Immaterial of our mission to
protect these people and to preserve their way of life, a concept
only valid among true-blue and red-blooded compatriots, every
inscrutable Asian was suspicious, but providence had delivered
some guilty suspects into our prejudiced custody ... so
we only needed to generate some evidence or extract a confession
to prove our perspicacity. The village sat baking in the sun, a
spectacle for the gawking tourists toting guns instead of
cameras, and we lost an opportunity for building trust with civic
action. Having nothing better to do, and interested in the
sophisticated professional techniques we were allegedly teaching
this hopelessly underdeveloped country, I abandoned my post to
follow the cluster of brass-hats as they separated and
sequestered their charges. The whole affair lacked urgency, and
the operation was not subsequent to battle, so I never discerned
the purpose of perimeter interrogations, when transport to a
nearby office or detention center might have spared reactions.
Perhaps it was symptomatic of the pervasive contempt, or maybe it
was just indolence. My commander was pleased to be made privy to
the initial torture, and delighted to be able to extend the
invitation to his coterie of sycophants, who finally assumed the
chore from the enervated core. The methods were conventionally
brutal, and typical of dastardly bullies playing to mob
satisfaction, rather than some detached professionalism aimed at
capitulation and information. As the screams and wails carried
across the pensive village, the only lessons I learned were that
cowards don't like to get their uniforms dirty, and obesity lacks
endurance in the tropics. Following a recent sweep operation, all
the enemy and civilian bodies were gathered into a net slung
under a chopper, and the gruesome load was unceremoniously dumped
from several hundred feet over a suspected sanctuary. This psywar
operation resolved any ambiguity on the future disposition of
their sympathies. Likewise, the next Med-Cap, trailing its
vexillum to charity, will meet hostility and resistance in this
pacified village. With our countless injuries and our innumerable
insults, we alienated our allies and deprived them of the chance
for liberty. We co-opted our enemies, and struck our own ensign
for ethics, rent our own flag for independence, furled our own
courageous standard. We bled our fading colors into unprestige,
and rued our bannered fate. We have spawned an unheroic milieu,
because nobility is disrespected and dedication is onerous; so
our new role models have feet of clay, and our tenuous tenets are
eschewed dubieties.
by Pan Perdu
... who is a former soldier and VA counselor; this work has been
excerpted from Fragmentations, a book in progress.
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