Our Nation's Barfighters

I was recently quite surprised to learn that our nation's elite Special Forces can't fight. 

Oh, they can certainly kill you quite dead with guns and phoned in air strikes and they are THE best in the world at that, but in a one-on-one fight, many of our nation's most talented street and bar-fighters would mop the floor with them. 

When I worked in Memphis, I heard a lot of stories of Marines and Sailors coming down from the Naval Air Base in Millington to drink, and fight with the locals in the area of Memphis known as Frayser. This has been going on for decades. I assume it was a rite of passage for the service men. It sounded like a weekend for the local brawlers. Something to do. 

I worked with several of these guys. Not a one of them was as tall as 5'7". Their stories tended to check out though. They were older men when I knew them, probably all dead now, and long since removed from fighting in bars anyway. I'm not sure the younger generation picked up the gauntlet of warring with the warfighters. This was 60's and 70's stuff. Back then there wasn't as much to do for entertainment as today. You can fight on PS5 and Xbox now. And the internet!

These little guys I knew would run the bars looking for fights. I heard tell of the Turners, a clan of brothers, cousins and hangers on that terrorized the bars of Memphis back then. There were guys like this in every southern state. In New Orleans I ran across a guy, a real matinee-idol looking guy who was an oil field worker. He and his buddies fought in the bars wherever they were, just for sport. Just not in the private club where I worked. I meet him and he's a super nice, civilized guy because he had to be there. I was assured he was a terror in other bars though. Didn't doubt it. If you go looking for trouble, you probably are ready to deal with it, or you quickly learn not to look for it. 

Truth be told, these fighters exist all over the country. Abusive childhoods and alcohol lead to bumped shoulders and all sorts of similar disrespect, and then the fists, feet and knives start flying. Alot of men play for keeps and they know what they are doing. 

A video I saw, an ex-Green Beret admitted that in some 3 years of SF training, he had received scant training in self-defense. Basically, their job is to kill and take no prisoners, but he recalled a short course in handling prisoners when they had to do so. Pretty rudimentary. The ex-SEAL he was talking to agreed about the training and then told some amusing stories about Navy SEAL fight clubs he had participated in when he first was assigned to a team. He did well as he had a background in collegiate wrestling and had come up fighting in the mean streets of Tacoma, Washington. In fact, so had the Green Beret. Not all SF guys bring that to the table though. It's quite an accomplishment to earn that Trident or Beret and one can certainly feel like a badass but bump the wrong shoulder in a bar and one might lose a few teeth or get stabbed to death. 

The GB told a story of a very talented GB who got a little too tough with a much smaller Mexican in a Texas bar. The GB was asserting his dominance. The Mexican inserted a three-inch pocketknife into the armpit of the much larger soldier and he quickly bled out. So totally unnecessary and tragic, but there are no rules in a street fight for some men. Both SF guys agreed that today, in their 50's, after all the killing they had done in battle, it's best to apologize and walk away. You don't know what the other fellas' rules of engagement are. You don't want to find out. These are life lessons also not taught in training. Maybe future Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth will change this with his warfighters crap. His tough-as-press on nails boss, Trump, might soon be calling on Hegseth's warfighters to be clearing bars out. They better be ready if they are going to fuck around and find out. As Rick Blaine told the Nazi Colonel in "Casablanca" when he asked about an invasion of NYC, "There are some sections of New York I'd advise you to stay out of." Those sections are all over America,  


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