Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Mine is not to question why…
8/16/2006 11:50:00 PM |
Posted by
JoeSettler |
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My friend Rechavam has returned home safely (Thank G/d) – though quite a bit angry.
While he still 100% disagrees with Avi on his choice, and he backs it up with a quote from Begin when he said “We should fight the British like there are no Nazis and the Nazis like there are no British” he feels he was unnecessarily endangered, and he felt his missions were too often unclear as to their goals.
He was particularly upset at one particular mission which had no clear goals, and where a significant number of his fellow soldiers were seriously injured. After their return to Israel a senior officer told this elite unit that they were sent out there as bait for the enemy.
In the coming days, Rechavam will be writing about his experiences here along with photos of dead terrorists. I think he’ll also discuss his opinion of the leadership that mismanaged the war he risked his life in.
While he still 100% disagrees with Avi on his choice, and he backs it up with a quote from Begin when he said “We should fight the British like there are no Nazis and the Nazis like there are no British” he feels he was unnecessarily endangered, and he felt his missions were too often unclear as to their goals.
He was particularly upset at one particular mission which had no clear goals, and where a significant number of his fellow soldiers were seriously injured. After their return to Israel a senior officer told this elite unit that they were sent out there as bait for the enemy.
In the coming days, Rechavam will be writing about his experiences here along with photos of dead terrorists. I think he’ll also discuss his opinion of the leadership that mismanaged the war he risked his life in.
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9 comments:
Hey, Joe!
I checked your blog today to find out whether Hizbollah has been disbanded yet, but it didn't say...
'bait for the enemy'
Please tell me he was exaggerating.These are real lives .
I hadn't been to your site in a long while, and I see what I've been missing! Gotta take the time to read many, if not all - of your posts, they look so interesting! I'll get myself a cup o'coffee after supper and sit down to read (bli neder). No need for novels anymore. Thank G-d Rechavam came back alive; looking forward to see his posts, too.
daat y:
There is nothing wrong with using soldiers as 'bait'. Sometimes that is neccessary. There is a little something wrong with not telling them that that is their mission, but sometimes that is neccessary too.
There is something very wrong with putting them in that situation and then not giving them any means to extricate themselves or proper external support to protect them, to the point where every soldier's hands were full with other injured soldiers, and they had to extricate themselves under fire and walk back to Israel.
But that is Rechavam's story if he wants to write about it.
My cousin came back for 24 hours and said that they were faint from lack of food and water. They went into one village but decided not to go further rather to go into another village instead. The knocked on a door to ask for food and it was the home of a previous Lebanese fighter that helped Israel a while back. He told them that had they intered the previous village that they were thinking about going into, they all would have been wiped out. Can you imagine, risking your life just to get food and water?
If the army would spend less money on giving pointless jobs to girls on the army bases simply to draft them, and more on supporting our troops this war would look different.
You cannot walk on to any jobnik base and not help but see the complete waste of money and resources.
I'd guess that that half the infrastructure projects in the army don't even get finished (or finished properly) because they constantly rotate the inducted staff (for some reason unknown to me).
Someone told me that fighter pilots can get steaks at every meal (I don't know if this is true).
It comes down to priorities. The army's priorities have not been in providing combat troops with the best equipment and training.
I am sure that converting the IDF into a professional army (as opposed to a people's army) would make it more efficient, just as I am sure it would be the same sectors/people going into combat units anyway.
What would that do to the IDF as a unifying force in Israeli society?
Well, I always thought the primary job of the IDF is to defend us, not to break down societal barriers.
But what do I know?
lurker:
I've add a count-up clock to the blog.
It will automatically keep counting so I don't have to type in:
Disbandment Watch: Day 100,000,000: Hizbollah stil hasn't been disbanded or disarmed.
Foul-ups occur in all wars, even
successful ones. Recall the
venerable American slogans from
World War II - SNAFU! (situation normal, all fouled up), Hurry up and wait, "military intelligence" is an oxymoron, etc, etc. As I understand it "Murphy's Law"(that which can go wrong WILL go wrong) also comes from that war.
What we need to hear about are clear cases of incompetence, bad planning and bungling from the top echelons. This is what the citizenry needs to know if we are to wisely decide whether they should be chucked out or not.
bar_kochba132, from what joe settler said in his first comment, it doesn't sound to me like his friend is talking about SNAFUs or cases of "incompetence, bad planning and bungling", clear or otherwise. It sounds like deliberate, intentional throwing-away of our sons' lives.
And Joe, I ditto everything you said about jobnik bases and the draft army. I see it day in and day out.
-- MAOZ
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