𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕

Veteran, student of history, sporadic writer, and perpetual vicious optimist.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

"They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find…and it’s themselves. And all we need do is sit back…and watch."

https://t.co/EeWDj7rToo

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@billysandytodd ...Why isn't it bigger news?

We know why.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@JesterJum Damn... both of ya'll look fantastic... congratulations and many great years ahead for ya both.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@redrose_anna @JennCashmere Excel spreadsheets.

I, too, was financially retarded.

Now, my spreadsheets have formulas and links.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

Pickles on pizza?

No.

Pineapple?

Yes.

https://t.co/OdxdY8AcKr

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@Sassafrass_84 Yes.

It is not as much about punishing the criminal as it is establishing clear consequences for their actions to dissuade similar acts within the society.

If there are rules, yet they are not enforced, then what good are the rules or the authority of those who create them?

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

Unfortunately... agree.

[Mitchell Poole @MitchellPoole14]

Entropy.
Applied at the civilization level. To our institutions, traditions, and educational systems.
Chesterton's fence, the things modernization, and feminism deemed unnecessary or oppressive, were in fact civilization necessities.
You can argue, but....where we are argues louder otherwise.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@siabaaLee @infantrydort And no - they do not get to control the narrative anymore.

...And that is probably disconcerting to their worldview and academic whitepapers.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

That's just it, though - they don't understand that history cannot easily be reduced for the sake of simplicity, justification, or convenience.

Sure, I have written in the past that the Civil War could have been said to start over cotton, but anyone with an understanding of economics, cultivation, manpower, profit, and morality would understand that this is an opening to a MUCH longer discussion. A literal hypothesis, even.

But folks like whats-his-name critic of Dort... they *need* to be right. They *need* the validation of public opinion.

*We* don't.

*We* were there, at the dull edge of the rusty and bureaucratic spear. We didn't (and oftentimes couldn't) be burdened by academic nonsense. We just did what we had to do when needed. Sometimes, some folks went too far. Sometimes, some folks didn't go far enough. We can debate now, but we didn't have such luxury then.

Was whats-his-name critic wrong back then? I dunno - didn't know him then nor wa he in my CoC. Maybe it impacted what we had to contend with, maybe not. But for him to question ethics of then... now... it just seems kinda unproductive, other than generating prompts for posts like this.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

This is the neat thing about these threads: that different perspectives of a common timeline are offered.

I was at Speicher from Jul06 through Sep07... so yeah... I remember the minarets being hit in Samarra and we were preparing for all sorts of Medevac calls... but that was it - that was our only focus.

My only memories of anything external to 1st/2nd/3rd up duty cycles was Bush's "bring it on" comment (to which we were going "Oh HELL no... don't bring it. We don't have enough crews!") and an article about how even though Sunnis and Shias helped each other following a bridge collapse during the Hajj, both sides later regretted helping those of the religious antipode.

So your insights are enlightening - even if they are rekindling old questions of why we ever bothered to help those who wouldn't do the same.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@siabaaLee @infantrydort "Shia and Sunni were blowing each other up at their holy sites and neighborhoods were being ethnically cleansed."

I was at Speicher when Saddam was executed... weird times.

Hard to fight for democracy for people who hate each other as much as they hated us.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@EricLori3 @infantrydort Or the NG CAB that stopped port ops to unfold the birds in Kuwait and go back north.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

"The enemy engineered that dilemma deliberately."

That.

That right there.

They were watching.
They were modifying their TTPs based upon observations of our TTPs.

This is warfare, plain and simple.

Ethics are often based around static assumptions of theory, not the dynamics of operational reality.

Sure, ethics guide and shape the foundation of the warfighters, but they cannot dictate the execution of how wars are fought.

If they do, then that's how one gets 20-year wars.

[Daniel Lee @siabaaLee]

The period from 2006 to 2009 in Iraq was a strategic and operational mess.

Higher headquarters and civilian leadership in DC often had unclear or shifting objectives, and assessments were frequently written to satisfy whatever narrative the academics, colonels and above, or political masters wanted to hear that quarter. We were handed impossible tasks and regularly accomplished them anyway. To hindsight second-guess the people on the ground who were actually dealing with that soup sandwich is beyond the pale.

@infantrydort recently shared one such account on X: a detailed first-person description of a 2008 firefight near Sadr City, in which his small element was attacked from multiple directions during a dust storm, took sniper fire and mortar rounds, called for artillery and air support on the buildings the fire was coming from, and held their ground.

@HicksCBER, a retired military academic responded by implying the officer had never thought through the implications of calling for fire in an urban setting and didn't know anything worth knowing. The veteran's reply was raw and unfiltered, the kind of response you get from a man who actually carried the weight of those decisions. Both reactions make sense. This post is about the context that was missing from that exchange.

Fights matching that pattern occurred across eastern Baghdad and the surrounding belt in April 2008. On April 17 and 18, a heavy dust storm engulfed the city. Mahdi Army gunmen used the cover to attack coalition front lines and checkpoints. Iraqi units at police stations and positions came under pressure, with some companies deserting or being overrun before American forces reinforced. Fighting continued through the night and into the next day while aviation and drones were grounded by the storm. Official reports recorded 17 Iraqi soldiers and 22 militiamen killed in that span, along with civilian casualties.

A second wave hit around April 27 and 28 during another dust storm. Mahdi Army fighters again attacked blockades and positions around Sadr City and in eastern and northeastern Baghdad. In one documented clash, a large group assaulted a joint Iraqi and US checkpoint in northeastern Baghdad with small-arms fire. Twenty-two Mahdi Army fighters were killed in that single engagement. Additional fighting in eastern Baghdad that same period left another 16 militants dead. Broader reporting from the same days noted that most of the roughly 41 Mahdi fighters killed in recent clashes had been attacking checkpoints and patrols while using the sandstorm to offset the lack of air cover. US and Iraqi forces responded with ground counterattacks, armor support where available, and fires into urban areas.

These actions were part of the militia response that followed Prime Minister Maliki's launch of Operation Charge of the Knights in Basra in late March 2008. The Iraqi government was moving against Jaish al-Mahdi strongholds and criminal networks in the south. Tehran enabled pushback through its proxy networks, producing coordinated pressure in both the south and the Baghdad belt. Dust storms became a recurring tactical factor that allowed militia groups to mass against checkpoints, bridges, and canal crossings while degrading Coalition ISR and aviation. The consistent pattern across these fights included use of captured equipment, indirect fire, and deliberate operation in dense urban terrain where civilian presence complicated targeting. That was terrain the enemy chose precisely because it created that complication.

That last point is the one the armchair critics consistently miss.

Michael's charge, that the officer never thought through the implications of calling for fire in an urban setting, gets the causality backwards.

The enemy engineered that dilemma deliberately.

They amassed in dense neighborhoods, used civilians as tactical cover, and timed attacks to dust storms that grounded air assets and degraded ISR. The choice was not between a clean option and a messy one. It was between accepting friendly casualties and accepting the risk of civilian harm inside an urban environment the enemy had deliberately occupied. That is not an ethical failure. That is the enemy's strategy, successfully imposed.

At higher levels the picture remained muddled. The Surge had produced tactical gains, but the broader strategy was shifting toward transition with unclear and sometimes competing priorities between Washington, MNF-I, and an increasingly assertive Iraqi government.

Assessments often emphasized metrics that looked good in briefings rather than the harder ground truth small units were facing. The result was the same soup sandwich across sectors: adaptive enemies executing a recognizable pattern while ground forces handled the immediate friction with limited resources and guidance.

Iranian Qods Force facilitation of weapons, training, and direction gave militia groups the capacity to sustain these surges and impose real friction on Coalition and Iraqi forces. Small units on the ground were dealing with the effects of that proxy system in real time, without the luxury of the strategic clarity their critics now claim to possess.

The veteran's raw response, that he didn't stop for an ethics huddle, that he would level an entire neighborhood to protect one of his men, will strike some as troubling. It shouldn't.

Not caring in the moment is not the same as not carrying the weight afterward.

The men who executed these missions lived with the uncertainty about who was truly in the fight versus caught in the middle. Some of that weight is spiritual. Every person involved still bore the image of God, even when the necessities of the moment did not allow for perfect distinctions. That burden is real, and it is one reason why honest processing of what actually happened matters more than lectures from people who were never in it.

This is where detached ethics criticism falls short.

Comments that reduce these decisions to individual moral failures ignore both the documented pattern and the enemy's deliberate tactics. When small elements faced coordinated assaults on checkpoints and key terrain during dust storms, with effective enemy fires and civilians in the same dense areas, the immediate requirement was to break contact, protect their people, and hold ground. Reducing that to an ethical lapse from a safe distance isn't serious moral reasoning. It's the projection of classroom standards onto conditions the classroom cannot replicate.

The men who did this work in 2006 to 2009 do not need to be turned into case studies for someone else's virtue. They need the space to describe the actual pattern of fights they faced: small units accomplishing impossible tasks inside a strategically confused war against adaptive, Iranian-enabled proxies, without being second-guessed by people operating from safety and hindsight. The ground truth of that period deserves more respect than armchair ethics.

Respect to the men who carried it.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@redrose_anna Fascinating, isn't it?

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

"Now you can't use your college education
When you're swimming in your own perspiration
You broke all the rules you know
Now all the rules go out the window"

https://t.co/o9dkdc7fZn

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

Agreed.

I *have* served... moved allied personnel AND insurgent patients in Iraq - twice.

My son currently serves.

I follow Dort here on Twitter/X.

I would follow Dort in a heartbeat... and I would rest easy if my son told me his leadership was much like Dort.

Is he 100% right all the time?
No.

Do I care that he's not perfect?
No.

Do I want leadership to be right 100% of the time?
I want them to do they best they can with the information and resources available... to bring everyone home after completion of a well-defined mission with viable goals - not an ever-changing "the ethics of this administration..." excuse that would make the academics happy.

Surprise: those types are NEVER happy. So... they critique others who act in place of debate.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

Approve.

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

You know what? Fuck this. I’m so sick of the retired military academic class and their smug bitch made criticism.

Hopefully this ape gets community noted. But it’s fine.

You know what? I actually did the things you say I haven’t. Many witnesses to this.

You’re right though, I wasn’t thinking about ethics in the heat of battle. You got me Mike. GUILTY.

When I was watching the green tracers streaming from the neighborhood in front of me near Sadr City, shooting at my boys and I, I wasn’t thinking of the law of war. GUILTY.

I didn’t stop to have an ethics huddle with the boys. I didn’t move forward to ask if there were civilians in the buildings.

No, I called for a linear artillery target to level the entire fucking neighborhood because the hair on the head of even one of my men is worth more than every person in Iraq to me.

Then I called for jets to bomb the shit out of those same buildings until the firing stopped. No friendly casualties. Massive enemy BDA.

The next days the local cemetery had a massive stream of corpses from that engagement. Were some civilians? Were they all enemy? I don’t know. I don’t care.

I would siege Constantinople to save the life of an American son or daughter. Ruthlessly.

Go to hell you smug bastard.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

...Soooo... are we changing our profile pictures to the French flag again?

Not that I am going to do so - I just find it... interesting... how emotion is being elicited for those finding out after they fucked around.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@RollingTyde @USN_Submariner I felt like I was looking at the Monolith from 2001...

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@303SnowWolf If only you got another video of you setting up for an approach... but waving off before it became a legal issue.

[𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒕 @grumpy67T]

@RollingTyde @USN_Submariner That thing creeped me out the first time I ever saw it - I was on my way to work, and it was menacing even from H-3.