The first thing I am going to do when I get home is write my congressman and find out why the United States Army is still painting the Red Cross on their dust-off choppers.
The Taliban forces simply use the red crosses as an aiming point and shoot at them with impunity because they know that they are unarmed. The Geneva Convention states that any vehicle bearing the Red Cross must be unarmed. All this is well and good except for the fact that the last time I checked the Taliban do not observe the Geneva Convention.
In order to be able for a dust-off to do their job it means that the Army has to field an Apache to escort it and that means the logistics required to send out two choppers has to take place.
The Air Force and Marine Corps do not play this silly little game, nor do the Brits. Their medevac choppers bear no such markings and are armed to the teeth. Generally the Taliban are more likely to leave these birds alone because they bite back, and they bite hard.
While the average dust-off crews are equipped with brass balls and would cheerfully land in the middle of the flames of hell to pluck out a wounded GI they are discouraged from landing in a hot LZ unless the Apaches are up overhead.
The helicopters flying dust-off flights should be armed so well that they gird our forces inside a doughnut of nice, sticky burning napalm about a half-mile wide so they can land to pick up our wounded with impunity.
Another thing the Army seems to forget is that putting a red cross on a chopper is much like waving a red flag in front of a bull. It is the symbol of the Infidels that tried to wrestle the Holy Land from them back in the 11 and 1200s. I would not be surprised if the good Afghanis were somewhat offended by this.
The delays caused by politics and the resulting delays like this does nothing more than costs GIs their lives.
Sending these dust-offs out into the middle of a fight unarmed emblazoned with a red cross is nothing less than criminal and as far as I am concerned, the officers that are keeping these policies going are guilty of manslaughter. At the very least they should be tried for conduct unbecoming an officer and cashiered out of the service.
Of course the guilty officers supporting marked unarmed medevac flights are going to give a bunch of mush-mouthed excuses about the political end of things and in my opinion that is no damned excuse whatsoever.
We’re talking about the lives of GIs and not the opinions of a bunch of old men sitting around in some safe haven creating enough hot air so that we will have to listen to Al Gore warn us about global warming all over again.
It is a disgrace that a 60 year old former GI should have to write about this simply because it should not be happening.
The troops deserve more.
Arm the dust-offs to the teeth and take that damned red cross off of them.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
Amen! Unfortunately, much of what our troops quote as gospel and being in the GC is NOT in the GC! Get rid of the damn cross!
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