Yee-ha! says Secretary of WAR! Pete Hegseth
During the oil embargo of the 1970s, a buddy was a cocky, M60-toting scout in the 82nd Airborne based in North Carolina. It’s a combat force capable of deployment on 18 hours of notice. He used to say that in a parachute assault his life expectancy upon hitting the ground in a combat zone was measured in seconds. He’d regale me with stories about being rousted out of bed, fitted out with full combat gear and ammunition, hustled onto a transport and flown around for hours before being ordered to bail out in the dark … over their own base, IIRC. It was a training. But during the 1970s oil crisis, my friend said, he wasn’t sure that if the 82nd bailed out over the Middle East exactly who the enemy would be or what they’d be asked to sacrifice their lives for. That, as they say, was above his pay grade.
Now they’re being sent to the Middle East for real (The Washington Post):
The Pentagon on Tuesday ordered a couple thousand paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to deploy to the Middle East, U.S. officials said, as President Donald Trump weighs a significant escalation in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and declines to rule out putting U.S. troops on Iranian soil.
U.S. officials approved written orders for soldiers from the division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team and the 82nd’s headquarters at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, said two U.S. officials and a third person familiar with the move, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Verbal orders previously had been approved, two people said. It is not yet clear whether they will deploy to Iran itself, officials said.
And it’s one, two, three
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam could be Iran