What Goes Around Comes Around

The Stinger Surface to Air Missile

Remember “Charlie Wilson’s War”

Yes, that was the name of the movie about the Congressmen from Texas who seemed to single hand-idly got us involved in the Soviet Afghan war. (1979-1989) Wilson had made it his life's work to get the US to do everything to defeat the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. It was going to be Russia’s Viet-Nam.

In the course of that effort Wilson was successful in getting the US to arm the Afghan rebels with the FIM Stinger Shoulder Held Missile Launchers. They were so successful in bringing down Soviet Helicopters that many military writers credit them with defeating the Russians. And boy did those very same missile launchers proliferate. We ended up selling them as if they were kitchen doilies to anybody and everybody. Around this time my friend Hugh Jones was working In India. He tells how an arms dealer offered to sell him a Stinger Missile. Hugh asked if he expected him to just take it home on the plane? Needless to add it was very profitable for Raytheon.

Okay, so here comes the, “Comes Around.” Day before yesterday we suffered our worst Day In Obama’s Afghan War. A Boeing Chinook Army Helicopter with 35 men, some of them amongst our very best were killed as it was brought down with, you of course have already guessed it a “shoulder held surface to air Stinger Missile.” Oh, I’m pretty sure nobody is going to report that our elite fighters were killed by our very own missile. God it pisses me off how stupid our Military leaders can be.This brings me to the Black hawk Sikorsky Helicopter downed in Mogadishu in 1993. That ended up as a movie, “Black Hawk Down.”

So, how did the US Army get into the Helicopter business?
At the end of WW2 the Army Air-force Generals decided they wanted their very own military unit and so the United States Air Force was born to the great disappointment and chagrin of the Army. Some time before the Army had lost its old Horse Calvary Unit. It was made famous in our Western movies. They were the great saviors of the white man in the wild west. As we watched and waited sure enough here came the “Old 7th cavalry singing to the rescue.

Somehow the Army needed their very own flying ability and so the Helicopter as part of the infantry was born. I was not able to get the exact number of Helicopters shot down since the 1950s but it has been a lot including the famous catastrophic failure to rescue our Iranian hostages. That probably cost Jimmy Carter his second term. There was that famous failure in Mogadishu in 1993. That led to the movie “Black Hawk Down. So much for the Army Helicopters in wartime. Now this latest flop in Afghanistan. Shot down by one of our very own Missile Launchers.

As I write this I am haunted by those Obama election promises to end the Afghan war. Mr. President, war is not some abstract policy. It’s peoples lives that are being spent and for what? That is the question, and for what?