Friday, January 21, 2005

RCOB Overload

As if my blood pressure wasn't high enough after finding that photo of the Army SFC today, I hop over to Kim du Toit's blog, hoping to find a little blood and guts blogging to clear my head and instead find this.

What really irritated me was a scene I witnessed in the Lincoln’s wardroom a few days ago. I went in for breakfast as I usually do, expecting to see the usual crowd of ship’s company officers in khakis and air wing aviators in flight suits, drinking coffee and exchanging rumors about when our ongoing humanitarian mission in Sumatra is going to end.

What I saw instead was a mob of civilians sitting around like they owned the place. They wore various colored vests with logos on the back including Save The Children, World Health Organization and the dreaded baby blue vest of the United Nations. Mixed in with this crowd were a bunch of reporters, cameramen and Indonesian military officers in uniform. They all carried cameras, sunglasses and fanny packs like tourists on their way to Disneyland.

My warship had been transformed into a floating hotel for a bunch of trifling do-gooders overnight.

As I went through the breakfast line, I overheard one of the U.N. strap-hangers, a longhaired guy with a beard, make a sarcastic comment to one of our food servers. He said something along the lines of “Nice china, really makes me feel special,” in reference to the fact that we were eating off of paper plates that day. It was all I could do to keep from jerking him off his feet and choking him, because I knew that the reason we were eating off paper plates was to save dishwashing water so that we would have more water to send ashore and save lives. That plus the fact that he had no business being there in the first place.

My attitude towards these unwanted no-loads grew steadily worse that day as I learned more from one of our junior officers who was assigned to escort a group of them. It turns out that they had come to Indonesia to “assess the damage” from the Dec. 26 tsunami.

Well, they could have turned on any TV in the world and seen that the damage was total devastation. When they got to Sumatra with no plan, no logistics support and no five-star hotels to stay in, they threw themselves on the mercy of the U.S. Navy, which, unfortunately, took them in. I guess our senior brass was hoping for some good PR since this was about the time that the U.N. was calling the United States “stingy” with our relief donations.

As a result of having to host these people, our severely over-tasked SH-60 Seahawk helos, which were carrying tons of food and water every day to the most inaccessible places in and around Banda Aceh, are now used in great part to ferry these “relief workers” from place to place every day and bring them back to their guest bedrooms on the Lincoln at night. Despite their avowed dedication to helping the victims, these relief workers will not spend the night in-country, and have made us their guardians by default.

When our wardroom treasurer approached the leader of the relief group and asked him who was paying the mess bill for all the meals they ate, the fellow replied, “We aren’t paying, you can try to bill the U.N. if you want to.”

In addition to the relief workers, we routinely get tasked with hauling around reporters and various low-level “VIPs,” which further wastes valuable helo lift that could be used to carry supplies. We had to dedicate two helos and a C-2 cargo plane for America-hater Dan Rather and his entourage of door holders and briefcase carriers from CBS News. Another camera crew was from MTV. I doubt if we’ll get any good PR from them, since the cable channel is banned in Muslim countries. We also had to dedicate a helo and crew to fly around the vice mayor of Phoenix, Ariz., one day. Everyone wants in on the action.

As for the Indonesian officers, while their job is apparently to encourage our leaving as soon as possible, all they seem to do in the meantime is smoke cigarettes. They want our money and our help but they don’t want their population to see that Americans are doing far more for them in two weeks than their own government has ever done or will ever do for them.

To add a kick in the face to the USA and the Lincoln, the Indonesian government announced it would not allow us to use their airspace for routine training and flight proficiency operations while we are saving the lives of their people, some of whom are wearing Osama bin Ladin T-shirts as they grab at our food and water. The ship has to steam out into international waters to launch and recover jets, which makes our helos have to fly longer distances and burn more fuel.


That's right folks, the USS Abraham Lincoln is hosting the worst sort of money grubbing, parasitic, America hating opportunists that you can think of, and in addition to adding absolutely NOTHING to the mission, they are detracting from our ability to help the people who need it most! How many of these transi fucks have we been ferrying around instead of food and water? How many of these unelected beurocrats have we had to deal with instead of the people who need help? The "International Aid" people don't want to help anyone but themselves, and do it on America's dime!

You can add to the above this tale of UN asshattery, as recounted by Diplomad that was sent to be by a wonderful reader. (D.L., you know who you are)

"As we come up on two weeks since the disaster struck, the U.N. is still not to be seen where it counts -- except when holding well-staged press events...

"Ah, yes, but the luxury hotels are full of U.N. assessment teams and visiting big shots from New York, Geneva, and Vienna. The city sees a steady procession of U.N. Mercedes sedans and top-of-the-line SUV's -- a fully decked out Toyota Land Cruiser is the U.N. vehicle of choice; it doesn't seem that concerns about 'global warming' and preserving your tax dollars run too deep among the U.N.ocrats...


You know what all these UN idiots are good for on a US Navy ship? Ballast. The people flying those helicopters should go up to about 2000 feet and then toss any person not there on USA orders right out the side. They think they are the end all be all of humanity? Fuck 'em. See how well they can fly. Or let me go over there and just shoot them so that our boys and girls can get back to doing what needs to be done.

Mark my words, the only countries that are worth anything have sent money, supplies, and manpower to Southeast Asia. The countries who aren't worth two squirts of piss sent the UN. And as far as I'm concerned, the UN needs to be dismantled, destroyed, blown up, annihilated, killed, removed from existance. The UN is THE biggest impediment to peace and prosperity in the modern world. Every day, every report, simply brings us more evidence to that fact.

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