George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 202

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‘The virtue of a soldier is to follow orders from superiors, no matter what. I know that well. But this…’

It’s a crazy operation. An operation that grinds people down. An operation that drives subordinates to their deaths. An operation where stupid politicians sacrifice soldiers to preserve their positions.

“Are they planning to use us as scapegoats?”

He worried that being in the war zone for too long might have made him overly negative, and he tried to consider other possibilities. But no matter how he looked at it, this was a disastrous operation based solely on political judgment, with no consideration for the actual situation on the ground.

“Colonel Yuri! This is insane. That forest is full of traps, and thousands of skilled guerrillas are lurking there. They aren’t civilians or regular soldiers; they’re the most cunning and vicious army we’ve ever encountered.”

The statement that the forest was full of traps was no exaggeration. The traps they had encountered so far were incredibly diverse. The guerrillas used everything they could from nature.

From simple traps with wooden stakes planted in deep pits to traps using natural snakes or bears, and of course, if they found one person and chased after them, they were invariably led into an ambush with machine guns. These days, after experiencing this a few times, they had to assume that there was an ambush whenever they found someone and adjust their troop movements accordingly.

One of the reasons for this cautious approach was that the army’s morale had plummeted. If it were a mission to defend their homeland, Russia, it would be different, but this was an overseas expedition. It was a righteous war from the outside, but for the soldiers marching into the dark, shadowy forest like the mouth of a black monster, cursing wasn’t enough; their discontent was slowly turning into insubordination.

‘Well, I wouldn’t want to work for 2,500 rubles [approximately $30 USD] a month either. Not that I get paid that much either.’

Of course, there was a reason why morale was low. Morale doesn’t drop for no reason. From the beginning, the reason they came here was to escape their damn low wages. If they were dispatched here, they could receive up to three times their original salary. So what? They were dying before they even received that triple salary.

Yuri had a cigarette in his mouth before he knew it. His frustrated heart must have manifested in his actions without him realizing it. Even when he tried to put it back in its case, it was already burning red from the tip, as if it knew or didn’t know its owner’s feelings.

“Shit (Блять) [Blyat – Russian swear word].”

The conclusion was to launch an all-out attack using any and all means. The higher-ups were thinking of solving the problem by grinding people down and building a mountain of blood and corpses. Pushing people into a forest where guerrillas were lurking would only make them food for the guerrillas, but if the quantity of soldiers was infinite, they could eventually conquer it. That was their logic.

‘I’ll take responsibility and step down. You bastards!’

Yuri couldn’t contain his anger and crushed the cigarette he was smoking. Was this the reward for 30 years of service to the country?

“No, I can’t do this.”

He wanted to resist and drag his feet, insisting that it was impossible. Or at least he wanted to get permission for an airstrike.

‘You damn hypocrites. More people have to die because of just one forest! Is the forest more important than people?’

If possible, he wanted to burn this cursed forest to the ground. Either way, this forest was already so full of traps that it could no longer properly function as a sanctuary for wildlife. The recovery period would probably be longer than the combat period.

It wasn’t that the Russian soldiers were blind or stupid that they were caught in traps. The skill of concealing the traps was so ingenious that it was impossible to distinguish between normal and abnormal. As evidence, after one march, places where wildlife, not Russian soldiers, had been sacrificed could be found everywhere. Some of them were even grizzly bears, which are at the top of the ecological pyramid.

“Fucking bastards!”

Yuri had no choice. Even if Yuri resisted, saying that he could not carry out such an unreasonable order, Yuri would be arrested for disobeying orders, and the next suitable person would take Yuri’s place. All Yuri could do was obey orders.

“Of course. I can do it. It’s definitely possible.”

Grinding people down is surprisingly not that difficult. If someone high up decides to draw a few lines on a document with a cheap ballpoint pen, isn’t that grinding people down?

“I dare to guess that this opportunity will be an opportunity to show the power of our army to the EU.”

The fact that the higher-ups issued an order to grind people down meant that the higher-ups judged that grinding people down was better than not grinding people down.

To describe the whole story, it is as follows.

The outline is that the EU, cornered, made a kind of ‘international cool deal’ with Russia. The US president threatened and pressured the EU to get out of the Middle East if they were going to do this, and the EU, while being pressured, knew that there was nothing good about going on like this, so they judged that it was right to make a deal with Russia even if it meant taking some losses.

The condition of the deal was to suppress the Kurds who were illegally occupying the territory on the outskirts of Riga [Capital of Latvia] as soon as possible. It was up to Russia to accept or reject this, and Russia had no reason not to accept it.

At least ‘politically,’ it was the best situation. There was nothing good about dragging out the suppression for a long time anyway. In the first place, the longer the military is used, the worse the public opinion becomes. What is the thing that politicians fear most in modern society? Isn’t it public opinion?

And morally, it was the worst, but some politicians rather wanted more Russian soldiers to die on Latvian soil.

The more Russian soldiers die on Latvian soil, the more it acts as Latvia’s debt. Every time one person dies, it turns into a heavy burden and yoke that Latvia has to bear.

This is why some conscientious politicians express the political arena itself as disgusting and fearful. The definition of politics is a tool for governing and ultimately for realizing personal gain.

Anyway, they were about to decide whether to prolong the suppression to preserve their power and screw over the EU with Kurdish independence, or to suppress it quickly and end it neatly, but when the EU offered them a cake they didn’t expect, it was inevitable that they would rush in without even checking whether it was poisoned or not.

In conclusion, the Russian government judged that grinding people down was the most efficient in all aspects. In the face of the interests of the majority, the rights of the minority were nothing more than an illusion.

The old-fashioned and limited battle, consisting only of a small number of combat helicopters and infantry without proper fire support, was over in just two days. Russia versus the Kurdish Middle East coalition. It ended with mountains of corpses on both sides.

Among them, there were quite a few CIA collaborators who had not escaped in time. Because they were not CIA agents but collaborators bought with money, they were expendable, and the CIA agents lurking in Riga had to rely solely on the collaborators for information on the battlefield, so there was no way to know the battle situation in detail in real time.

“Is this the reason why it was late?”

Back in the Oval Office of the White House, Bush received a direct report from the CIA. He didn’t know how they had revealed even Russia’s internal affairs, let alone the EU’s, but the report itself was quite excellent, and he quickly grasped the situation.

The detail was so great that he felt sorry for having gone crazy at the CIA because he was so angry at the unprecedented situation where the work was all done on the ground but there was no information at all.

‘They died, huh.’

He knew that field collaborators were always exposed to the risk of losing their lives. They were not people with US citizenship, but ordinary collaborators, so there was no real loss, but even though he knew it, he couldn’t help but feel heavy in one corner of his heart that lives had been lost for information.

“Yeah, that could happen.”

Unlike Bush, who was feeling heavy, the CIA was in an uproar again today. The President was very angry again. The information was ‘again’ late, and he was angrier than ever before. The President was very disappointed in the CIA!

Originally, in a hierarchical society, responsibility flows down from top to bottom like water, regardless of race or culture. The scolding became heavier, exaggerated, and inflated as it went down. By the time the scolding reached the field in Latvia, the field agents in Latvia had been transformed into almost traitors.

“Excuse me? A pay cut?”

In movies, CIA agents are often afraid of pay cuts, but in reality, getting a pay cut is not a common occurrence. This is because it would be a big problem if an agent handling important information had a change of heart. Some may say that this can be controlled with severe punishment, but if severe punishment could prevent it, why would crime and sentencing exist in the world?

Originally, those who are going to do it will do it anyway, but that doesn’t mean that there are no people who commit crimes because of their environment. Anyway, if circumstances become difficult, even CIA agents, whose iron rule is to keep their mouths shut and whose virtue is to serve the country, will naturally become more talkative.

A physical lock can be broken if a certain amount of force is applied, but a mental lock is often impossible to break with physical methods. In such cases, methods like the North Wind and the Sun [referencing Aesop’s fable] are effective. Of course, other countries are also aware of this, so the agents in the field had to be replaced with new agents.

It was unfair if it was unfair, and unavoidable if it was unavoidable.

And the scolding went all the way back to Africa. It was much weaker when it arrived in Africa, but the gist was, ‘Maybe it’s because CIA agents these days don’t remember the Cold War, so they don’t know that espionage is difficult!’

“Geez, how long has it been since the Cold War ended? What is this again? If you know it’s going so badly, you should replenish the manpower.”

He was being praised as a hero and was finally about to escape from this 거지 같은 [Geoji Gateun – Korean slang for terrible/shitty] Africa, but all his achievements were lost due to illegal smuggling of firearms, and at the same time, his sins were also covered up. All he got from this incident was a story to tell his sons and even his grandsons for generations to come.

“What should I do? I’m going crazy. Aren’t they going to be mad again if I upload this?”

The report he was writing was about signs of internal strife in West Sudan.