Iraq and Afghan vets - do you regret joining over these wars? Did you enjoy it at the time?
This in no way is a bait thread, I am just curious what your opinion was then and now.
Iraq and Afghan vets - do you regret joining over these wars? Did you enjoy it at the time?
I loved it. You don't know what war is like until you've been, and the GWOT was the perfect mix of dangerous small-unit action without the boring lethality of peer-level artillery.
war is probably boring, unless your on the patrol i am betting war is safe and kinda boring for the non fighting units.
In GWOT yes, in a real war no. Plenty of supply units have been killed by HIMARs or Kalibers in Ukraine.
Ok that's a fair point, and the no bid contracting system was incredibly sketchy. I misread your post and thought you were trying to minimize the israeli influence.
Ironically supply units bore the brunt of casualties in GWOT because they hit IEDs while the infantry hunted down and killed the IED makers.
That sounds Iraq specific. My whole AO in Afghanistan was resupplied by air. We went on 1 resupply convoy to get some new trucks after 3 of ours got blown up and that shit was boring as frick. If you were stationed in Orgune go frick yourself you posh living b***hes.
yeah unironically the logistics and suppply troops in iraq probably saw the most combat vs any other war
I can attest to the fact that intelligence, even at an alphabet soup during the GWOT, can be, and often is mind numbingly dull.
Most fun I actually had in that line of work was outreach stuff at the Cairo embassy where I got to teach some classes/discussion groups.
>alphabet soup
which one?
bin laden was in Pakistan, though. We knew that the whole time. The point of all of our wars is to make money, and it's been a rousing success.
You policed a nation of imbeciles.
And in the end the very land he bled for was given right back. Now it’s the same people in charge from before the war kek
Last I checked there aren't any Ba'athists in the government
>Iraq
Is the ba'ath government still in charge in iraq, moron? Even in Afghanistan, the removal of the taliban wasn't the main goal for america. The goal was to destroy al-Qaeda camps and to find bin laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. The taliban was just in the way because they were buddy buddy with the al-Qaeda. It took 20 years for the Taliban to relinquish all support and acquaintance with al-Qaeda to get the americans to leave because the taliban had to promise america that they do anti-terrorism in their stead.
You sat on your ass. Don't cope so hard. You had the chance and you missed it.
Is that ever not the case?
Thank god i was not born moronic and both of my parents were present and not moronic so i went to college got a good job and got married.
Two of my hs friends went the zogbot route, one killed himself two years ago and the other is a dead end alchoolic.
Frick this pozzed military shit, if you are not brown and looking to be a welfare queen in uniform its just a waste of time.
>Each sentence has its own line
>This is not a sign of an ESL shillposter
>Please believe it
GOOD MORNING SIRS
2010-2018 combat engineer with deployments to both, I got my 100% gibs so I cant complain I get to be a 30s something man child with my own house, sure some people like think every GWOT vet is a deadbeat suicide but I cant name anymore I personally know that an heroed so its a mixed bag most of the people I know are happily married with children and successful
> zogbot route
This is definitely an organic and well thought out post and definitely wasn’t made by a mentally broken individual who can’t conceive of a worldview that doesn’t revolve around the baseless assumption that israelites rule the world.
Zogbot is all encompassing now you old ass boomer. They not hand out the updated slang manuals to your unit yet?
Your friends were genetic dead-ends. Military got nothing to do with their dysfunction.
5 tours
University degree
Good paying job
Wife and 2 kids
No PTSD
Loved it and you are a pussy.
Wash your pussy anon.
i've always had a more philosophical bent so it did bother me, but you're so exhausted in the moment in terms of your ethical reasoning capability by the constant bullshit that you just stop caring. i work in a call centre now dealing with healthcare and it's unironically the same shit. after the eighth sobbing mother with cancer you just can't summon up any fricks to give. caring about people is hard work. when you're constantly witnessing suffering it's not that you become "jaded" it's that you literally run out of energy to care. when the energy comes back the care comes back too. if you read interviews with SS men from nuremberg et al they say the same thing - "we COULDN'T think".
you just sort of accept that you are where you are doing what you're doing and some things you have control over and everything else you don't. i didn't shoot civilians, i didn't steal shit, i didn't damage property or frick up people's livestock. but other people did. it's like if you see someone breaking into a shop do you have to go over and stop them? maybe you should, if you can, but nobody is going to say that you MUST. you're not a cop.
where it becomes tricky is when the bullshit comes down from above as an order, because you can't just ignore that and it IS your problem. but there's a difference between General Petraeus ordering a final solution to the Shi'a question versus bored kids with guns doing an oopsie poopsie with high explosives.
insofar as the lawful orders i got to do shit, i was a weapon. the fault lies with the hands that wielded me. sure, a lot of what we did was fricking moronic, but a moronic order is not the same as an unlawful order. i'm not an officer, i don't have officer training etc. i can't just be chiming in with my own personal views and fricking up the strategy. a bad plan well executed is still better than chaos.
i wish my efforts hadn't been wasted, but i'm not responsible for the mistakes. what i was told to do, i did properly and ethically.
>a lot of what we did was fricking moronic
can you explain?
>but other people did
did they kill random people on purpose?
It took me a long time to stop feeling guilty about my role. I didn't even kill anyone directly, just fixed the planes that dropped the bombs. I was naive when I joined, and I was ready to defend our country if needed, so I can feel good about that. I have not forgiven the CIA or the politicians, and probably never will.
I am an old frick by this board's standard. I joined in the year 1999 (USMC) way before the towers were hit, but I ended up having my contract extended a couple of times because of typical GWOT stop loss shenanigans. 0321 before they were completely saudomized by USMC brass in favor of MARSOC. Recon has no real place since, but who gives a frick. I got out as MARSOC didn't want me and frankly in typical fashion, the corps chewed me up by 2007.
I was on an MEU in 2001 and I was one of the first units to end up in Afghanistan. That was cool in a way, but no real fighting happened, just a lot of ricky recon shit. I went to Afghanistan one more time in 05. Ass backwards country, this was a foolish war.
Went to Iraq in late 2002 for the buildup of an invasion, did the invasion, but it was pretty fricking lame. Went to Iraq 4 more times and each time got progressively more dangerous. IEDs really didn't sit well with me, absolutely terrifying to see firsthand after rolling through a country essentially unmatched. Also saw a firsthand account of the jihadist power vacuum we created.
Was it worth it from my perspective? Frick it, yeah. I was bored before GWOT kicked off. Nothing really happened outside of training. Was it worth it on a much grander scale? I think we all know it's a resounding "no" if we look at either region now. At the end of the day we're the low level peons who do the bidding for politicians. Nothing is wrong with wanting to use your skills that you've trained for.
>Ass backwards country
can you tell how the country was?
I usually see videos of people travelling in other countries but there's few videos on dangerous shitholes
>Iraq and Afghan vets
>went to war for halliburton execs who dined on lobster while they got shit on by rudimentary opfor while catching all sorts of cancers
can you read eyes? because they all look like theyre on suicide watch
I know one guy who did one term as marine infantry and absolutely loved it. Another guy did 3 enlistments as marine artillery and says there were some great times but he regrets it overall. So I'm guessing it was worth it for an enlistment but after that it's just depressing.
This was also probably the best possible war to fight in. Lots of opportunities to use your individual skills, lots of action, no enemy artillery or air support. Basically the opposite of the new trench war meta.
>went to war for halliburton execs
Yeah it was totally for Haliburton execs and not a certain other group
sorry meps denied to bro
glad to see the neverserveds already seething lol
>he doesn't know about dem Halliburton cooks
I dined on lobster at the FOB while you were seething online in middleschool.
Lobster was served at every shit tier base. Good bases had a full salad bar.
Hell a few air force bases had the fabled chocolate fountain. I was more of a morning omelet and afternoon steak type tho. Plus Greenbeans after a raid.
>aaaaa talking about lunch is bragging
In what twisted world is lobster or crab legs a big deal? Are you a poorgay?
> tfw his post got deleted because it was so unironically moronic
Kek, imagine actually bragging because you ate food that costs just a bit more than chuck beef.
lmao I love how America has chocolate fountains while Russia has like AIDs and penal battalions and assrape
Russian units get their chocolate fountain when the new mobik's prolapsed and broken anus gushes forth the remains of an MRE that expired in 2014
Posts like this are why the American war machine can shit on literally every enemy we may face in the future.
We rule logistics
>>went to war for halliburton execs who dined on lobster while they
you clearly have no idea what the chow halls were like during OIF
steak & lobster every fricking Friday bby
>went to war for halliburton execs who dined on lobster while they got shit on by rudimentary opfor while catching all sorts of cancers
What are you talking about? FOBs always had shit like lobsters or other foods of luxury.
What baffles me even more regarding the issues with Liz Chenney is that somehow the GOP doesn't have the balls to kick her out of the party. She's been voting consistently alongside the Democrats in a brazen display of childish tantrum and somehow the idiots still don't have the balls to eject her traitorous RINO ass.
That's why they voted her in. Nepotism is strong, if she'd been a random becky with neocon leanings noone would have cared.
Was there any cases of guns getting successfully smuggled illegally back to the states by veterans
Yes
>.t knower
so do white people are you going to blame whites next
@57548450(you)
@57548499
shouldn't you be deleting your posts in a Ukraine thread?
called it
it's obviously jannies deleting posts lol
richest and most powerful people are wasps though?
Worldwide? I don’t think so, after all they weren’t called rootless for nothing
What year are you living in?
Could you please keep your fantasies about black men to yourself?
posting in a honeypot thread
Why not Saudis and Gulf States? It's not like Saddam had many friends in the neighborhood.
They get the neighborhood bully removed and all their jihadi goofballs who threaten their royalty's hold on power go there to get blown up by Americans. It was a pretty good deal for them.
It was both. Bush family had / has a close connection to the bin Laden family and the Saudi royal family. They also have close connections to Israel. Look up The Carlyle Group.
but also on the flip side, everyone thought the iraq war was a good idea at the beginning, it was one of those 'better be safe than sorry lets topple this b***h'
No, not everyone did. Just easily led morons. There were plenty of people who spoke out against it. Hundreds of thousands of people in New York City alone protested the invasion in 2003.
based sincere Christian who actually understands the teachings of Christ. Love and light to you, brother. Goodness will prevail and greed will be defeated. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
>homosexual lefties protesting in NYC as a precursor to Occupy Wall Street
yeah, iraq war made sense at the time. moderates in the midwest were for it, Saddam Hussein was an butthole who was asking for it, and there was a chance another terrorist attack could happen so it made sense to neutralize what was percieved to be a source of wmd to terrorists
Again, only the dumbest of the dumb believed that shit.
>everyone thought the iraq war was a good idea at the beginning
...no? A lot of people were being very loudly opposed to it. Most of the world really.
>Ironically i sometimes feel like offing myself but only because i sometimes think life is too much hassle.
Yep, that's a depression alright no matter how un/k/ool that may be.
>and it works every time.
Yeah, not a living soul around who religion couldn't pull back from the brink of suicide.
>do you regret joining over these wars?
No
>Did you enjoy it at the time?
Absolutely, did 16 deployments between 2002 and 2018
16 deployments in 16 years. What high speed unit were you in anon?
It has it ups it has its downs. Still wouldnt adamantly try and talk everyone out of service, but also frick the Gov.
Bong here. Only did Afghanistan. I was an MP attached to the infantry. I loved it for the sense of purpose and mission.
Then I left the army and over the last few years have concluded it was fricking moronic for the UK to go into Iraq and Afghanistan for literally no reason. I also now have some emphaty for the insurgents. If motherfrickers invaded your country then acted like they owned the the place, you fight them too. Of course if you have to be invaded, its better to be invaded by NATO, but the principle of it feels wrong to me why.
My mates and I have done pretty well since we left. One guy was suicidal but seems to be better now. Ironically i sometimes feel like offing myself but only because i sometimes think life is too much hassle.
Rope yourself buddy fricker.
Frick no, it was great. You have to think of yourself and what is good for you, people get too wrapped up in this heady big-picture bullshit and lose their minds. GWOT was going to happen regardless and you cant change it, so it comes down to whether you want to watch from the sidelines or go and experience it for yourself. It wouldn't have missed it for anything, even if I barely saw action.
Regarding suicides, combat arms isn't really touched by it from what I've seen, at least not anybody I know. IMO its all pogs who weren't in the right mindset for combat to begin with, they're the ones who regret ever being there and end up self-terminating.
SOF have a higher rate of suicide, but that's also tied to injuries and disability.
POGs who got deployed had higher rates of PTSD than combat units in some studies I've seen. National Guard was at higher risk too.
Once you equalized for exposure, front line combat forces, particularly elite ones, have a much lower risk given all groups get involved in at least some combat.
This is normally explained by age, selection bias, and better training.
Not being infantry and ending up ambushed in much more jarring.
Lol special forces units have some of the most suicides
Those were great days we lived, bros. We were jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted there were the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotated back to the world, we missed not having anyone around that's worth shooting.
Test
Was my senior year in High School when 9/11 happened. I had wanted to join the Marines anyway, but after 9/11 I was motivated even more. I had always planned to frick around in town for about 2 years before I joined partying and what not. Sort of like college years minus the college. That turned into 4 and shortly before signing up I found the Alex Jones Bohemian Grove video. It sounds really stupid but I was raised in a very conservative family and that video actually disillusioned me and made me tear up. I felt like I'd been had. I felt like all the world leaders were in on this grand scheme together. I did poorly in High School because I didn't give a shit since the plan was always the military, so I still joined but switched to the Navy instead so I could travel and picked a non-combat role. Spent my 4 years travelling and partying. Deployments were just training with NATO groups and sometimes hunting pirates. It sounds moronic but Alex Jones might have saved my life, but at the very least he kept me from living a life of guilt I may have suffered from finding out later I killed people I shouldn't have.
It's your life and it's great that it worked out for you without any regrets. But I'd be lying if that wasn't the most moronic teenage reasoning I've seen in a while.
An Alex Jones vid was all it took? Not any soul searching, moral dilemma or in-depth research but instead AJ blowing a gasket about some richgay larp party? At least you're happy with the end results but holy shit.
Learning we're ruled over by crazy morons who like to play dress up and pretend they're contacting spirits can be pretty shocking if you don't know it already.
Granted, but still. The dress-up shit is pretty low on the list of evil/moronic shit those folks do. Just the cutthroat and straight up immoral business practices of corporate America should be enough to signal that these people shouldn't be blindly trusted. Sure, it's not as spectacular as theorizing about evil cabals and magic n stuff, but it affects the average person a whole lot more.
Eh, I guess when you're still a teen that shit just slips by you a lot more.
I think a lot of people would be more okay with centralized power if the power were not centralized in the hands of insane morons.
>European hands typed this post
gay internet RP
It's the main reason I don't believe all tha Illuminati/jew/whatever global conspiracy stuff. Does any of this crap around us look like it's being controlled by ultra-competent secret overlords? I fricking wish these people were as skilled as the schizos say they are, because right now it's just a loose group of backstabbing gagglefricks making sure everything just barely holds up until after they croak and everyone else has to try and un-frick it somehow.
It's not one giant conspiracy; it's a system that rewards shifty, shady people who conspire amongst each other all the time. People are shaped by their environments, and when you have a system created to legitimize plunder, greed, and scams, then that's what you're gonna get. Every organized crime group is a conspiracy between the gangsters, and organized criminals run the world.
I have two cousins who served in the US military. One cousin was a US combat medic who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's a doctor now. At the time he was pretty gung-ho and super Pro- America. Whenever he would visit our home country (we're Filipino-Americans) he would sometimes openly point out Muslims while in public, which I always found funny when I was a kid. I distinctly remember asking him on his thoughts about the russian military and he would reply that that they're a joke.
Nowadays he would not stop complaining about how America wasted its time in Iraq and Afghanistan and how all of their efforts were for nothing. What's concerning is that he's become very anti-american and started praising putin. I just can't believe how someone who was so super patriotic would turn into a russian bootlicker. I hope it's just contrarianism due to Biden and the democrats being in charge (family is pro-republican), but still.....
And then there's my other cousin in the navy who was just happy that they were bombing the shit out of Iraq. Even today, he's happy that America is giving Ukraine tons of weapons to kill russians.
>t. Some Catholic mutt descended from Ellis Island immigrants named "Seamus Mozzarelli"
I bet you think DeSantis is white too baka
I'm a direct descendant of Reverend Thomas Hampton, pastor of the Jamestown colony in the 1640s. cope + seethe shitskin
>Englishmen
>White
The good reverend would be sad you are not in favor of smiting enemies with holy justice and fire
Doesn't make you any less of a homosexual
Calls FIlipinos Invaders, when it was Americans who invaded the Philippines first during the Philippine-American War. Kek the state of Americ**t edumucasyon.
Lol no, Filipinos have more Native American blood due to Mexican immigration during Spanish times, more Native American than actual White Majority American, give our land back to us please