US Soldier-- "Not more troops, but fewer Fobbit-motherf***ers"

[vogonity]

"That's not at all the way it works in Iraq. For one thing, the majority of the troops in a place like Baghdad never leave the massive, seemingly Manhattan-sized walled-in Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). Battle-hardened soldiers derisively describe army personnel who live in the FOBs as "Fobbits" and it is roundly accepted in Iraq that Fobbits make up a clear majority of our deployed military men. For soldiers who actually have to go out and risk getting blown up in patrols, Fobbits are a vile contagion, like malarial mosquitoes -- amazingly numerous and deeply annoying. One soldier laughed when I asked if he thought we needed more guys in Iraq. "Not more troops, but fewer Fobbit-motherfuckers," he growled."


From Matt Taibbi

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/46535/

[kentuck]

1. Behind the Green Walls...

Lying by the pool, reading the Internet, drinking Pepsi Colas...they read about the IEDs...

[KansDem]

11. "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone"

I know this has been posted before, but you description warrants another posting...

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

From The New Yorker
This revealing account of the postwar administration of Iraq, by a former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, focusses on life in the Green Zone, the American enclave in central Baghdad. There the Halliburton-run (and Muslim-staffed) cafeteria served pork at every meal—a cultural misstep typical of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which had sidelined old Arab hands in favor of Bush loyalists. Not only did many of them have no previous exposure to the Middle East; more than half had never before applied for a passport. While Baghdad burned, American officials revamped the Iraqi tax code and mounted an anti-smoking campaign. Chandrasekaran's portrait of blinkered idealism is evenhanded, chronicling the disillusionment of conservatives who were sent to a war zone without the resources to achieve lasting change.
Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

From Booklist
It is now more than three years since American and so-called coalition forces launched the invasion of Iraq. Despite the immediate military success, the U.S. remains mired in the swamp--afraid of the consequnces of leaving yet unable to shape an acceptable reality while staying. Given the fissures in Iraqi society that our intervention revealed, perhaps the current state of violent chaos was inevitable. However, Chandrasekaran, an assistant managing editor of the Washington Post and the former Post bureau chief in Baghdad, maintains that shocking American arrogance and blundering during the first year of the American occupation virtually destroyed any hope of a "successful" occupation. The Green Zone was the headquarters for the American occupation in Baghdad, but like the inhabitants of the Emerald City of Oz, the Americans entrusted with the task of rebuilding and transforming Iraq lived in an isolated fantasy world divorced from the reality outside their walled compounds. This is perhaps a one-sided account, but it is still a devastating indictment of the post-invasion failures of the Bush administration. Jay Freeman

“In Imperial Life in the Emerald City draws a vividly detailed portrait of the Green Zone and the Coalition Provisional Authority (which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004) that becomes a metaphor for the administration’s larger failings in Iraq . . . His book gives the reader a visceral–sometimes sickening–picture of how the administration and its handpicked crew bungled the first year in postwar Iraq, showing how decisions made in that period contributed to a burgeoning insurgency and growing ethnic and religious strife . . . The picture Mr. Chandrasekaran draws in these pages often reads like something out of Catch-22 or from MASH.”
- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times


“Extraordinary . . . Indispensable . . . Full of jaw-dropping tales of the myriad large and small ways in which Bremer and his team poured fuel into the lethal cauldron that is today’s Iraq . . . has a keen eye for the small detail that illuminates larger truths . . . documents the way that an avalanche of unjustifiable mistakes transforms a difficult mission into an impossible one . . . Chandrasekaran does not set out to score partisan points or unveil large geopolitical lessons; he is, essentially, a reporter telling readers what he saw. Yet it is impossible to read his book without thinking about the larger implications of the story he tells.”
-Moisés Naím, The Washington Post Book World

--more--
Amazon

[MADem]

2. And it's the Fobbits, the behind-the-wire types, the "In the rear with the gear" tools, who are the

first to pipe up about their exploits. If they are talking to someone who doesn't realize what their job assignment is, and who thinks that anyone wearing a cammy uniform is out on the front lines, they're the first to portray themselves as Rambo-esque creatures. Always handy with a war story, when the reality is closer to the terrible time when they couldn't type up the Plan of the Day OR the Duty Watchbill when the power went out and the generators were out of fuel! And oh, the HUMANITY! Having to live without air conditioning until the Public Works types fixed the problem was damned near unbearable....and let's not even talk about the time the mess hall ran out of ranch dressing...it's just too painful.

[central scrutinizer]

3. In Vietnam, they were called REMFs

stood for Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers

[4bucksagallon]

4. I call them rear echelon shit burners but the name in the corp was pogie.

[Bigmack]

5. RAMF...Rear Area Mother Fuckers in the Corps.. nt

nt

[gratuitous]

8. Been known by that for years before Vietnam

I read "Citizen Soldiers" by Stephen Ambrose, and he talked to a lot of men who had been in combat across Europe. One guy talked about living in his fox hole for days on end, developing a lifelong habit of cupping his hand over the end of his cigarette because the cherry would draw fire if it was seen. For that guy, everyone behind his fox hole was defined as "rear echelon."

The book is by turns harrowing, sad, depressing, and even funny. But it also points up the difference between wars fought for a military objective, and wars fought over ideological supremacy (which is not to say that there weren't political differences as well in World War II, but the bulk of the fighting was conquest and liberation of conquered territory). There aren't any military objectives in Iraq. We can "take" any piece of ground we want to, and hold it for as long as it suits us. But simply holding this city or dominating that province doesn't bring us any nearer an identifiable military objective, certainly not like establishing a beachhead on D-Day or winning the Battle of the Bulge did.

[LanternWaste]

14. OT, but may be of interest to you...

I do indeed like that particular book. Might I suggest also his book "Eisenhower and His Boys" and my favorite of the WWII oral history genre, Studs Terkel's, 'The Good War'.

The Good War goes beyond interviewing only the Allies and into in-depth interviews with Germans and a few Soviet soldiers.


Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming....

[atreides1]

6. Just one little problem

Where do you think the field hospitals are located? In FOB's!

So let's yank all of the Fobbits out, and the next time a troop has his leg blown off by an IED, maybe his buddies can reattach it with staples and duct tape!!!!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. you still your duct tape from 2001, no?

when our homeless scrutiny assholes told us we needed it to protect our homes?

Well, be a patriot and donate it to Iraqnam, already.

sheesh.

I wonder how long before some faux channel idiot begins a MASH II made for TV show about Iraq.

[Orsino]

7. If they call these alleged brothers in arms "Fobbits"...

...imagine what they think of us civilians, sitting comfortably at home, who never even see Iraq except in carefully-scrubbed TV images. When this war is over, there will be plenty of healing to do, everywhere.

[Aviation Pro]

10. Fuggin' REMFs

...in the rear with the gear.

[The_Casual_Observer]

12. When it gets to this kind of infighting & name calling it's time to call

the whole thing off. Because it's going no place.

[Red1]

13. Crazy

you have to have the proper support for the soldiers, the problem I have are with all the war hawks that talk as though they were combatants, while in the vicinity of another american "war",

red1