Sgt. Dennis Weichel, 29, gave the world a measure of the bravery and humanity of our soldiers serving abroad this week. Weichel, a father of three from Rhode Island, gave his life to save an Afghan girl from being run over by a 16-ton armored fighting vehicle this week. While Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called all Americans “Demons” , Weichel did not hesitate to give his life for a little girl in danger.
Weichel, a Rhode Island National Guardsman, was riding in the convoy in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan when he and his comrades saw Afghan children collecting shell casings on the road. The soldiers got out of the convoy to shoo the children away for their safety. Then, one girl suddenly ran back to grab a casing that the children collect for money. Weichel looked up and saw a MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle, heading toward the girl. He ran in front of the armored vehicle, grabbed the girl, threw her to safety, and was then run over himself.
A member of the Rhode Island National Guard since 2001, Weichel had only arrived in Afghanistan a few weeks ago. He previously served in Iraq.
I can only imagine the pain and sorrow of this family. However, if it is some small comfort, the entire nation is mourning the loss of this wonderful human being.
Source: ABC
Woosty said:
“—Yes it is. Yes it is! THIS IS THE TIME AND PLACE!”
Thanks for repeating my much earlier reply to OS. Glad you took it up.
Your endorsing seems to have awakened others, where my same plea did not.
Snark:
Is it the use of capital letters or the reputation that counts? Smile!
As long as selfishness creates problems for the world, I see no need to be accommodating or cordial to the selfish.
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Gene, who gets to decide who is selfish and who isn’t? Let’s be real…in the world of ‘War’, it isn’t the selfish who pay the price. It is only honest and searching discourse that can prevent violence and the possible mistake of calling someone ‘selfish’, who may in fact be simply fighting to survive. That little girl who was picking up shells….must have been pretty damn selfish to not even notice a tank coming right at her….
Blouise and others,
Seems like I started this break of mislead hero worship and started a thread about soul-searching of the root problems yesterday, March 30th. See below citation.
My daring to buck you all and face a possible assault (and there were some) is now unnoticed in the round of self congratulatory comments, ended by Blouise. Wish I could have been included. Because the tide turned only when MM entered the fray. Congratulations, sir.
No matter, I didn’t come here for praise, but the freedom to speak my mind where it might matter.
But just to remind you all:
idealist7071, March 30, 2012 at 5:57 pm
I’m not dissing the Sgt. He’s my hero too. Cuz I’ve been where it was tough and did not do the right thing. It wasn’t like his situatlon, ……
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But it’s the utterings of hero worship which disturb me. Hero worship smacks of justifying the war. And all wars as well. We have become enamored with violence as seen throughout all our culture. I won’t list them, you know them better than I do.
……………….
And the lack of empathy for the millons we suppress and have suppressed and killed, again and again. And these children there. Saying we are bringing democracy for their sake is complete and utter BS.
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Have you watched the helicopter butchery in Bagdad we can thank Wikileaks for revealing to us? Have you read a detailed account of My Lai?
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Tell me more about your hero worship then.
END CITATION
I am glad to note the awakening here………….for the nonce. How long will it last?
MM, Blousie, “There was a great deal of wisdom wrapped up in one of Michael Murry’s single sentences … “You can’t do a wrong thing the right way.””
One could say that much of the political posturing and psychological warfare we are subjected to is intended to influence us to disregard this fundamental observation. Or the obverse. Or some variation . . .
Anything but trying to speak the truth. Or are all of our so-called leaders so enveloped up in the fog of their own self-importance that they wouldn’t know an attempt at truth telling from intentional misleading — with the best intentions, of course.
Why can’t ‘they’ admit they haven’t a clue, are truly fucked up and, in whatever vestige of conscience remains, ought to say so and quit. Instead of reinforcing this very sick, very dangerous morality play called . . . whatever you like
Elaine:
“Bron,
That was a truly nasty thing to say to Gene.”
Maybe you should review some of the very nasty things Gene has said about me and others for that matter. I havent seen you chastising Gene H nor did you condemn Buddha is Laughing, who was truly nasty to many people. His departure has increased the participation on this blog 100 fold.
I guess your condemnation is only for people with whom you disagree.
There was a great deal of wisdom wrapped up in one of Michael Murry’s single sentences … “You can’t do a wrong thing the right way.”
Woosty said:
“what is it in people that allow children to run around combat zones gathering shells to survive in the first place?”
Well, let me say that they are not going to retire to their ‘copters to fly to a warm meal and a warm sack, guarded by a perimiter. That meal costs on the average of USD 250. And we pay without complaint.
The village Afghans instead are facing a total destruction of their own and their local economy. You can’t go to the market to sell and buy. There is no market any more. The motorcycles with bulging bags of casings comes once a week to collect and pay cash. How do you exist in a collapsed economy, when you don’t have the rice paddies of Vietnam to feed you for a year.
Ask MM, He knows.
Ellsberg was there, in the field with a CIA standard issue machine gun to locals in Laos, etc.
Ellsberg was a hero long before he leaked the Pentagon Papers.
He was a marine officer, infantry of course, and asked to be extended to be able to be with his battalion (G3 op off) on board the landing ships off the NA coast when an invasion was planned
He was in Vietnam the first time before Kennedy came, and was chosen to brief JFK as he was a visiting senator then.
He later left the Pentagon job to join the “Hearts n Minds” team at the Vietnam embassy. He became the embassy expert on field ops—simply because he was the only one who ventured into the field—thanks initially to contact with a former mil who specialized in running the roads in an ordinary Toyota truck to outposts normally visited only by heliicopter. Ellsberg followed US patrols, day and night, and went to the most low level ARVN posts to check on the validity of ARVN night patrols. The ARVN reports were lies. The American advisor, a major, knew and said that they were what was wanted up the chain at ARVN HQ. He left Vietnam jaundiced from paddy wading, in body but also in mind after seeing how the war was in reality.
Read his book. It is essential to understanding the lies we were fed from 1946 and forward—without interruption.
I’m sure the Sgt will excuse my using his thread. So that he may not have died in vain. due to these suckers who lie and lied to us.
Woosty,
I’m with ya on this. A difference in opinion is no excuse for an onslaught of nasty rhetoric aimed at anyone’s personal worth especially if that opinion has been expressed well and with sincerity.
(except, maybe, in the case of … [sshh, I’m whispering so as not to wake the dragon] … anon)
W=^..^
As long as selfishness creates problems for the world, I see no need to be accommodating or cordial to the selfish.
You bemoan the situation in Afghanistan?
It was created by selfish people.
‘Nuff said.
Otteray Scribe1, March 30, 2012 at 11:58 pm
Agree raff. I understand Micheal’s bitterness and anger, but there is a time and place for everything. This ain’t it.
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Yes it is. Yes it is! THIS IS THE TIME AND PLACE! This is a blog…it is a successful blog because people come here to converse and exchange ideas about CURRENT EVENTS. Thank G*d it epitomizes the Constitutional right of freedom of expression. It is a Lighthouse in that respect. There is room for disagreement. Thank you Prof. Turley! [I have a feeling that he is healthy enough to be within earshot of even with those who disagree with him.]
Show me a human being that can be completely separated from thier personal experiences and compassion and I’ll show you a hunk of scrap metal. Compassion is all encompassing…just because your experience colors a different part of an experience does not make the other party without compassion.
I agree wth Mr. Murry, I hope that doesn’t open me up to an onslaught of nasty rhetoric aimed at my personal worth. If it does, then fuck you all and the hypocritical horses you rode in on!
W=^..^
“This man was amazing to do what he did….but how about what the fuck were we doing there in the first place and what is it in people that allow children to run around combat zones gathering shells to survive in the first place?”
Three distinct issues.
The first is an episode of extreme personal heroism and example of such behavior rarely occur under good circumstances.
The second and third issues are encapsulated by the scenario in which the episode occurred: the broader scope of the Afghan War. What we are doing there is simply a political matter based in war profiteering – no and, ifs or buts about it. Afghanistan was involved in the 9/11 attacks and not even to the extent that the as yet unpunished Saudi Arabia was involved in 9/11, but strategically speaking a long term occupation of Afghanistan was a losing proposition from the get-go unless you’re a military contractor. There is no way to hold Afghanistan. Period. The nature of the terrain and the indigenous culture make it a strategic impossibility. What we should have done with Afghanistan is simply this: bombed every training camp we could find and the villages that acted as their support networks and told the Afghans that if they ever trained personnel to attack U.S. targets again, we’d come back with nukes. And then left them to their Islamic hillbilly ways with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. I’d also have the willpower to uphold that threat. Then again, we should also have annexed Saudi Arabia or turned them into a parking lot for North Africa for their role in 9/11. Had I been in charge, the whole operation would have been over in 4 years tops and with the appropriate parties punished. Saddam would still be alive and Iraq would still be a secular bulwark against theocratic aggressors in the ME theater like Iraq. But then again, unlike Bush, I’m not in bed with the House of Saud.
As to the third issue, it’s a war zone. Survival can mean hard choices. I’m pretty sure that most people would rather have an option – any option – other than sending their children out on an inherently ultra-hazardous activity in order to make enough money to feed the family. This situation was created by the same pols that created the situation the caused Sgt. Weichel to be there in the first place: domestic war profiteers and war criminals who didn’t give a rat’s ass about protecting American interests or lives as long as they could personally make some money.
The vile acts of these criminals in no way (as you note) detract from the selflessly heroic act of Sgt. Weichel.
“There is nothing objective in this scenario and no way to be objective.”
I disagree . . . and so do you whether you realize it or not. You agree because your statement “[t]his man was amazing to do what he did” reveals that you objectively recognize the value of his actions separately from the situation in which it occurred. Perhaps you meant there is no way to be emotionally detached from this scenario? Which I will stipulate is difficult but not impossible.
“It is evil plain and simple.”
The situation is, sure, but the actions of Sgt. Weichel are anything but evil. And as I said, this is a situation not of his creation nor is it a creation of the little girl he saved. It’s a bad and evil situation. Acts of heroism rarely occur in any other environment though.
I really couldn’t let this one pass. The sheer, mindless malevolence arising from its obtuse refusal to acknowledge reality requires debunking. From commenter Gene H:
“What we should have done with Afghanistan is simply this: bombed every training camp we could find and the villages that acted as their support networks and told the Afghans that if they ever trained personnel to attack U.S. targets again, we’d come back with nukes. And then left them to their Islamic hillbilly ways with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.”
First off: the 9/11 hijackers came almost exclusively from Saudi Arabia — the home, heart, soul, and bankroller of Islamic Jihadism. Not a one of the 9/11 hijackers came from either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Second: the operational planning for the 9/11 attacks took place in Hamburg, Germany, and could have taken place anywhere on earth where people can think. An Egyptian engineer did the calculations concluding that the explosive energy of a plane full of high octane fuel could, in effect, function as a potent bomb.
Third: learning how to fly an American commercial jet airliner, the one critical skill without which the entire enterprise would never — no pun intended — have gotten off the ground, took place at American flight simulator schools in America. The Saudi terrorists, in other words, trained to attack America in America.
Fourth: the Saudi terrorists did not employ “weapons of mass destruction” in attacking America. They found American stuff in America and attacked America with its own stuff. They took a lesson from American terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who created a bomb out of a truck full of fertilizer and brought down an American building with it.
Therefore, according to Gene H, America should nuke Germany and Florida for “allowing” the training required to attack American targets to occur on German and American territory, since the entire “logic” of Gene H’s atavistic revenge fantasy hinges on the location of thinking and training, no matter that the governments of both Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with the events of 9/11/2001, a daring stunt carried out almost exclusively by our “stalwart ally” Saudi Arabia in retaliation for American presidents stationing infidel American troops on Saudi Arabian soil within infecting distance of Mecca, the holiest of Islamic shrines.
As for the “training camps” in Afghanistan, America and Saudi Arabia created them for use in fighting a proxy war against the former Soviet Union. America should therefore nuke itself and Saudi Arabia for midwifing Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Several problems with nukes, though: they tend to create radioactive fallout that spreads via wind currents to neighboring countries — even far away countries like the United States. The United States government might not mind raining radioactivity on its own citizens, but other countries — some of them with nukes of their own — most assuredly would mind getting a dose of cancer-causing fallout, to the point of taking joint action in self-defense against the United States for its mindless and terrifying stupidity.
Worst of all: those persons alive and awake during the First Gulf Battle of 1991-92 can recall seeing columns of greasy black smoke arising from Kuwaiti oil fields set ablaze — with very small explosives — by Saddam Hussein’s retreating army. Now imagine a series of thermonuclear explosions in the same area — assuming they even hit the intended target — that setsan underground sea of oil on fire for decades. Sayonara atmosphere, sunlight, crops, food, animal and human life — everything gone in an instant of venal vainglorious madness.
So I say to you, Gene H, with all earnestness and care for my choice of language, that you ought to give the “nuke ’em” jive a rest. You do not seem to have enough credible historical information at your disposal, your “logical” associations reveal glaring gaps and leaps from one untenable assumption to another, and you give no sign of ever having contemplated the dire and irreversible consequences of the madness you advocate. America has already pounded Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to a bloody pulp for going on twenty years, beginning with President George the First. That the bloody pulp has somehow emerged victorious over the American pounding enrages and frustrates your vicarious homicidal proclivities, so that you now can do nothing but howl for even more draconian pounding.
Give it up. Spastic and incoherent American violence has lost again, as it should have. We lost the day we started this insanity. We win the day we stop it. Just stop it. The sooner safe-at-home Americans stop treating war-somewhere-else as “reality” TV entertainment, the sooner America and its many victims will begin the necessary healing. It seems to me that Americans ought to take the occasion of Sergeant Weichel’s death as an opportune moment to reflect on ceasing what America never should have begun.
To all:
Sacrifice, especially of the highest class, feels most bitter when it is done in the service of an unjust cause. Which prevents our usual rejoicing in the vindication of why we sacrifice.
And THIS cause is to the detriment not only of those oppressed, but to us as responsible, and those of us who sacrifice in our defenxe.
Hope you understand that I feel this loss deeply. But can not accept—not only this war—but what caused it. It is a lie, all of it.
Gene H.1, March 30, 2012 at 8:34 pm
Bron1, March 30, 2012 at 8:43 pm
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Bron stop being NASTY to Gene
Gene stop being NASTY to Bron
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thankyou
Michael Murry1, March 30, 2012 at 7:07 pm
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Damn I like your stuff….have you a book?
Rafflaw,
“I hope Rafflaw (sorry I need a name, yours will do) stops his hero worship long enough to fully realize he has been duped, a patsy in the latest move in controlling the American people, when we are tiring and want to get out now, not later.”
“To say otherwise is just a bald faced slur.”
I said, as you see: “sorry I need a name, yours will do”
You assume too much from my words or didn’t read them well
My apologies for using your name to give a face to this dupery.
Glad to know of your position.
BUT, I ALSO see them using of this hero, one I have acknowledge here, as a red herring to distract us from any remaining thought about the 16 massacred in Kandahar.
Tired of war, says Obama, get charged up by our latest hero. They use him and they dupe the public.
Undiluted anything is suspect in my eyes. Zealots of all kinds are creepy.
Pro or con.
How about you, Rafflaw?
I cannot believe the idocacy of the people condemning those that give up their own life to save another’s.
Gene H.1, March 30, 2012 at 11:15 am
Oh yeah.
Because the presumption is that this girl will grow up to be a victim
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I’m not being objective….not by a long shot. The only people that get a leg up when a good man goes down are the cowards and the greedy boars. That families life just got unbelievably harder. This man was amazing to do what he did….but how about what the fuck were we doing there in the first place and what is it in people that allow children to run around combat zones gathering shells to survive in the first place?
There is nothing objective in this scenario and no way to be objective. It is evil plain and simple. No amount of anything will be able to fix it or forego it’s impact. That’s all.
Idealist, no I have not read the book, but am familiar with the Ellsberg story.
Thanks for the reference.
DonS
Have you read Daniel Ellsberg’s book “Secrets”?
There is the story of falsifying to Congress, to the press, to the publlic, as a conscious and persistent policy in the Pentagon. Ellsberg stood there on his first day as a DoD employee, an expert Rand consultant, but now working as special assistant to the DOD asst Sec responsible for pre-Tonkin gulf Vietnam ops and strategies. The first Ellsberg saw at 7 AM was the running messenger from the comm center with the Tonkin destroyer vessel reporting the attacks that were later re-evaluated as sonar operator human error. The cables came pouring in at 2 minute intervals, he took them on since his boss was sitting with McNamara.
Results? The lie we were told of an unprovoked attack on a routine patrol on the high seas—–said LBJ. The lies continued, the whole time including Nixon’s time.
Not a damn word of truth. And LBJ and others ignored the clear advice from the military, the politicians, etc:: “Get out now”, was unequivocal advice. Nothing can be gained. Except things that only LBJ knew of. None of his advisers since have been able to enlighten us, only speculations
So read it if you want to know how America, or that part of it, functions—-or misfunctions is more correct.
Idealist,
When I commend and honor the self sacrifice of Sgt. Weichel, I am not calling for or encouraging continued warfare in Afghanistan or anywhere else. To say otherwise is just a bald faced slur. No one wants us out of Afghanistan completely out of Iraq more than myself and I have been consistent on that from day one. To call honoring those that do sacrifice their lives for others, hero worship is denigrating to the dead and to the living.
MM,
The Marines in Afghanistan do receive language training and training on the customs of the people in Afghanistan and they also have interpreters with them on most missions. The Marines imbedded within ANA units utilize the language of the ANA soldiers and their training to understand what is being said.