Classic Moments in Soldiering: Hey, Try This!

This exchange came as we scarfed down the goodies out of a care package that had been handed to us as we sat around the chaplain's tent today. We found a bag of peanut butter M&Ms that was already torn open, spilling some into the box, which I snatched and tossed into my mouth.

Me (chewing): Uh, this bag wasn't sealed and these kinda taste like diesel exhaust.
Sgt D (eating): Yeah, definitely diesel exhaust.
Me: So, uh, you gonna stop eating them?
Sgt D (still eating): Hmmmmm, thinkin' about it.

So we stopped eating, but we definitely didn't throw them away, because we had to offer them to anyone who came into the tent. And it wasn't like we were tricking anyone:

Us: Hey, try one of these. They taste like diesel.
Them: Awesome. (tries one). Gross.
Us: Yeah, ain't it?

It's the little things.

Soundtrack to My Life

Oh, it was getting about time to participate in another silly meme. So here we go, courtesy of IndianaJane.

Here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...
7. Include commentary

Opening Credits: Zak and Sara, Ben Folds Five.
Pretty good start, to a quirky romantic comedy. Which is not at all what I imagine my life to be.

Waking Up: I Can't Help It, Johnny Cash.
Starting the day with unrequited longing? At least the dragging beat fits my typical morning mood.

First Day at School: Wolverine, Sufjan Stevens.
Fitting: hesitant, understated. "Take it in stride, take it in stride, take it in stride. It's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault". I wish someone had told me that then!

Falling in Love: It's Been So Very Long, Plankeye.
Pop-punk's a strange genre for love, but the lyrics are perfect: "It's been so very long, since I've been man enough, to be the kind of man, if I'm'onna hold your hand."

Fight Song: La redecouverte. Yann Piersen (Amelie soundtrack).
The fight occurs in surreal silence behind a lilting waltz of an accordion, a glockenspiel, maybe, what is that, a klavinette? Is that the right name for that? Anyways: Awesome.

Breaking Up: Pancho and Lefty, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
I throw my banged-up guitar into my rusted musclecar and tear off down a dusty country road. Cue montage of me drinking my sorrows away in a series of increasingly shady roadhouses, finding myself down and out in a gutter, pulling out that picture of my girl that I just couldn't let go of, throwing away my fifth of cheap whiskey in disgust (which shatters, because in movies even cheap booze still comes in glass) and climbing onto a bus headed for home.

Prom: Oh, Fugazi.
This soundtrack rather optimistically imagines my high school to have been much hipper to the indie scene than is plausible for rural east-central Wisconsin. Also, you can't dance to this, but it'd be amusing to see someone try.

Life's Ok: This Is Not a Love Song, The Juliana Theory.
This would make for a very bittersweet sort of "Life's Ok" moment. Maybe this is fitting for a Dark Lutheran? "and you're so far away, and I'm sitting right here. It's ten o'clock your time, and it's one by mine".

Mental Breakdown: Take the "A" Train, Duke Ellington.
Hahahahaha. I love it. My soundtrack is so very appropriately surreal.

Driving: Janine, Soul Coughing. This is more than just a trip, this a journey. A journey of self-discovery. Contemplative, mournful, dirty acoustic guitar scratching, and the gonzo touch of a lo-fi answering-machine recording of a woman singing "The Lemon Tree" (tune-and-rhythmlessly) playing in the background through the length of the song.

Flashback: It's a Scientific Fact, Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans (the Singing Science records). Definitely a flashback, but not exactly what we were going for. "It's a scientific fact that there are belts of radiation in outer space that are a hazard for future space travelers to overcome."

Getting Back Together: Lady Eboshi, (Princess Mononoke soundtrack).
Haunting orchestral melody, pizzicato strings opening to an oboe solo, brimming with mournful hope. The past cannot be forgotten or overcome, but the pain strengthens our love.

Wedding: The Colony Room, The Sea and Cake.
Now is the time for something understated and light-hearted. We don't want to overdo anything.

Birth of Child: Amazon, M.I.A.
What better to commemorate the birth of a child than underground Lankan-British trip hop self-produced on a 4-track mixer in a London basement?

Final Battle: The Gash, The Flaming Lips.
The song is about not quitting, as much as any Flaming Lips song is about anything. I suppose that works. I just wish it had been "Fight Test". That'd have been perfect. Oh well.

Death Scene: Narcolepsy, Ben Folds Five.
I guess that works. It's sort of epic-tragic anyway. I'd like to think of my life as more the former than the latter, but you take what you get.

Funeral Song: Cinders and Smoke, Iron and Wine.
"Give me your hand, take what you will tonight. I'll give it as fast, and high as the flame will rise. Cinder and smoke, you ask me to pray for rain, with ash in your mouth, you ask it to burn again." Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.

End Credits: Brazil, Grant Green.
(from the Brazil soundtrack, which is something like 17 different versions of the same tune).
A nice electric jazz guitar version of the old standard. A fitting end to the strange movie of my life.

The Face Of Hope

Meet Sheikh Ahmad Fatah Khan al-Rishawi. He and his late brother Sheikh Sittar (assassinated by al-Qaeda last fall) have been architects of the "Awakening" movement that since summer of 2007 has seen Sunni tribes in Anbar province join with each other and with coalition forces to rid their lands of al-Qaeda, and which has become the archetype for American counterinsurgency efforts throughout Iraq. Now he's offered to send his tribesmen as advisors to Afghanistan.

Remember hearing how Iraq's tribes were going to be such a stumbling block? We don't know anything about their relationships, it's a dangerous wildcard, we told ourselves. Seems nobody had the optimism to believe that a social institution that has provided a coherent framework for Iraqi life through millennia of upheaval just maybe could turn out to be a stabilizing force.

And So The Luster Fades

In a few short months, my opinion of Senator Barack Obama has degraded considerably, to say the least. At the start, when I knew nothing of him but what he chose to present of himself, I was suitably impressed. I never thought much of his policies (or lack thereof), but I at least believed in his idealism. When his church was shown to be a hotbed of racial contempt and grievance-mongering I at least admired his willingness to stand by his associates, even while he artlessly dodged the implications of those associations. I lost the last of my personal respect for him when, so soon after defending his pastor of 20 years, he publicly sacrificed the Rev. Wright on the altar of political expedience. Call me old-fashioned, but loyalty still means something to this soldier.

Then came Mr. Obama's autohagiographic commencement speech this past Memorial Day weekend, with its strangely limited conception of service. For Obama, improving the lives of others apparently only counts as "service" when you're an underpaid left-wing rabble-rouser or organ of a maternalistic government bureaucracy. Referencing the economic challenge of India and China, Obama calls for graduates to become not engineers, scientists and tradesmen, but teachers and administrators. He quotes a young man who joined the Peace Corps “because it was the first time someone asked me to do something for my country.” This young man has seemingly never seen an Armed Forces recruitment ad anywhere, ever. And those men and women many of us think of first when we think of "service" -- firefighters, policemen, armed servicemen -- who daily protect Americans from those people and forces that would do them harm? Ironically for a speech on service, "the Service" earned not even a mention from Mr. Obama.

After all that, however, it was Senator Obama's victory speech last night in St. Paul that turned my ambivalence to disgust. There are a lot of things in this speech I could write pages about: Obama's disingenuous mischaracterizations of John McCain; his arrogant naivety in thinking that handing out international legitimacy like party favors counts as "tough, direct diplomacy"; his Obamessianic promise to retrochronically create the fields of health care and employment while channeling King Canute's promise to command the tides (and without the good King's pious intent); his fascistic sanctification of "change", as if we live in the worst of all possible worlds and any change must be for the better; or his adolescent whinging that McCain hasn't given him an attaboy for his (unsuccessful) campaign to get asbestos removed from some Chicago tenements at the same age McCain was having his bones broken in a North Vietnamese prison camp. But I'll leave all that aside for the one unforgivable quote of the speech:

[I]t's not change when [John McCain] promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians.

Mr. Obama, before now I was thinking that you really need to visit Iraq, to understand the imminent victory from whose jaws you are so intent on snatching defeat. But after that remark, I truly wish you wouldn't visit Iraq -- though I know political expedience will force you to -- because you have no right to stand alongside the Iraqi politicians you sneer at. If you must go, however, I wish their examples might teach you what hope means when it's not just a pleasant buzzword. These men risk their lives daily to build a future for their country; many have had family members kidnapped and killed. We ask nothing?! They risk everything! They risk everything because they. have. hope. Hope for the future and faith in their countrymen. You would present yourself as an expert on hope, but your denial of the courage and determination of these brave men -- and your cynical reliance on the ignorance and indifference of your supporters to the undeniable political progress being made in Iraq -- has made me realize that whatever you mean by that word, it's something I don't even recognize.

Basrah, After

In March the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police, with limited support from American and British forces, took back control of the port city of Basrah from assorted bands of smugglers and puritanical thugs under the aeges of the Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army) and Iranian-supported "special groups". While Prime Minister al-Maliki's new-found willingness to confront Shi'a extremist groups closely tied to his political base was a welcome development, at first the rather slapdash execution of the operation rightly made concerned observers a bit nervous. I stated back in April (a bit boldly, in hindsight) that the IA had proven the naysayers wrong, and it seems the center continues to hold as IA and government-aligned civilian militias keep the peace. Basrah joins the majority of Iraqi cities on the path toward a semblance of normalcy, something even the Washington Post can celebrate with a photoessay of life cautiously coming out of the shadows. At the start of the Basrah operation, I called these "dangerous but hopeful times for Iraq". The danger is most certainly not past, and any progress is reversible. But these pictures speak to the power of hope.

Hiatus

Looking ahead at some changes coming down the pipeline, I figure I should give my loyal readers the heads-up that I'll probably be taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging. Things are getting busy as we prepare for redeployment in a few months, and at some point we'll be moving into tents to make room for our replacements coming in. Long story short, since I don't know exactly when I'll suddenly find myself without internet access, I'm letting you know now so you don't worry if I stop posting for a month or so.

Camel Spider

I have now truly been to Iraq. I have seen the quasi-mythical camel spider. I say quasi-mythical because the creature soldiers tell stories about and the actual beast are pretty much two separate things. The one I saw was just scuttling alongside the path to the bathroom the other night. It was pretty creepy, but I managed to refrain from stomping it. And I'd still prefer that to a scorpion. Haven't seen any of them yet, surprisingly. I would have imagined this place to be crawling with them.

So let me let you in on a little secret, should you ever find yourself out here in the desert. I haven't actually needed this advice, due to the aforementioned lack of scorpions and seeming rarity of camel spiders in this area, but I figure I'll pass it along. Apparently some soldiers like to pull a fast one over on the new guy by taking bets on a staged battle between a camel spider and a scorpion. After all the horror stories he's heard about them, the new guy will always bet on the larger, more fearsome-looking camel spider. But here's the secret: scorpion always wins. There. I just saved you 5 very hypothetical bucks.

Battle Hymn

For Memorial Day, John Hinderaker over at PowerLine posted a nice recording of his children's school choirs singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I imagine it would be pretty moving except that whenever I hear that tune, thanks to the Airborne brainwashing they play over the loudspeakers every morning in Braggistan, all I hear are the words to "Blood on the Risers":

There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute,

Intestines were a'dangling from his Paratrooper suit,

He was a mess, they picked him up, and poured him from his boots,

And he ain't gonna jump no more

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,

He ain't gonna jump no more!

The Airborne has ruined me.

Memorial Day Post

Happy Belated Memorial Day.

Forgive me, but I'm 8 hours (at least) ahead of most of y'all and I work nights now to boot. I'm not going to go too in-depth on my thoughts on Memorial Day; I think I wrung most of that out a bit prematurely. But on this (second-?)most patriotic national holiday, I'm struck by how many Americans are confused or conflicted on what constitutes the proper expression of patriotism. A captain I trained with and greatly respect used to rail against the sort of flag-waving patriotism he saw as cheap and hollow. And I think he had a point, to a degree, that patriotism and even "support" for the military can be cheap, when it's nothing but words and flags and bumper stickers. On the other hand, I consider all the soldiers' charities out there that provide real support for wounded veterans our government is failing. I sleep under a camo quilt handmade for me by some very hard-working ladies from my hometown. And my PT score is gravely threatened by all the goodies we receive. Some of these things are weightier than others, obviously, but none is trivial.

Melody of Boots on the Ground has a good reflection on a civilian's patriotic duty:

It's my responsibility... that I value my freedoms enough to fight for them here at home while she fights for them overseas. [My emphasis].

Ain't that the truth.

Lieberman On Obama

The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial by independent Democrat (and one still worthy of the name) Joseph Lieberman, adapted from a speech he presented May 18 to Commentary magazine. In it he addresses the (historically aberrant) McGovernite trend in Democratic foreign policy and its unfortunate resurgence in the post-9/11 Democratic party and particularly in the person of Barack Obama. He deconstructs Obama's fallacious historical justifications for the gaffe-become-doctrine of unconditional meetings with foreign tyrants. It's good stuff.

Not-So-Big Oil

Following up my previous comments on the subject, and Melody's question about when people are going to start really getting upset about the price of oil, PowerLine today had a pair of items that really point the finger at those ultimately responsible for the price Americans pay for oil: state oil companies in foreign countries who control 94% of the world's proven reserves, and those politicians in America who have blocked even exploration of domestic oil and near-oil resources, lest Americans come to know exactly how badly they're being screwed. America's oil companies are tiny compared to the foreign state-owned monopolies from whom they are forced to purchase crude. ExxonMobil, America's oil "giant", controls one measly percent of global oil reserves, making it the world's 14-largest by that measure. Only 7% of the worlds total reserves is up for unrestricted bidding by private companies, while almost 75% is completely off-limits, controlled by state oil companies. So who's the big bad wolf?

Orwellian Influence at the BBC

Don't get me wrong. I'm no Holocaust Denier. I am, however, just old-fashioned enough to think that skepticism is the root of science rather than a threat to it, and according to some that puts me in the same camp. I don't even deny the central premise, that global temperatures have risen and that human activity has some connection to that. What needs further study is 1) the strength of that connection and 2) real analysis of the costs and benefits of a warmer world. And I'm with Bjørn Lomborg; we need to think rationally about whether our money and efforts are better used trying to forestall a global phenomenon or simply adapting to it. Meanwhile the tactics of those who ominously insist "the time for debate is over" just get spookier. Jennifer Marohasy's Politics and Environment blog posts an e-mail exchange between a BBC Environment reporter Roger Harrabin and "climate-change" activist Jo Abbess. (HT: Pajamas Media). It seems the reporter's original story on decreasing global temperature, while factually correct according to the World Meteorological Organization, would supply dangerous material to "skeptics" and thus should be edited to fit the activist-established reality. Or, as Abbess puts it, "emerging truth". When Abbess writes demanding he change his reporting, Harrabin initially takes a very reasonable line:

If the [secretary-general] of the WMO tells me that global temperatures will decrease, that's what we will report.

Abbess, however, persists in chilling terms:

Personally, I think it is highly irresponsible to play into the hands of the sceptics/skeptics [for someone otherwise so sure of herself, what's with the indecision?] who continually promote the idea that "global warming finished in 1998", when that is so patently not true.

It is hard to tell exactly what will happen based on historical science. However, the broad sweep is : added GHG means added warming. Please do not do a disservice to your readership by leaving the door open to doubt about that.

The next correspondence only gets more Orwellian:

Your word "debate". This is not an issue of "debate". This is an issue of emerging truth. I don't think you should worry about whether people feel they are countering some kind of conspiracy, or suspicious that the full extent of the truth is being withheld from them. Every day more information is added to the stack showing the desperate plight of the planet.

It would be better if you did not quote the sceptics. Their voice is heard everywhere, on every channel. They are deliberately obstructing the emergence of the truth.

And it wouldn't be a clear-cut case of intellectually thuggery without a credible threat:

Otherwise, I would have to conclude that you are insufficiently educated to be able to know when you have been psychologically manipulated. And that would make you an unreliable reporter.

I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.

In other news, I'm currently reading a book that traces the historical relationship between real, historical fascism (as opposed to the more-common definition" "an idea so bad I don't have to engage it intellectually") and progressive politics. Go figure.

Remembering

Peter, a fellow Ole working in youth ministry in Petrozavodsk, Russia, has a great post on the Russian celebration of Victory Day, roughly equivalent to our Memorial Day. His piece led me to reflect on what led me on the path to becoming a Soldier, a path very far removed from everything I had expected or imagined for myself. I suppose now's as good a moment as any to share the story.

There are all sorts of reasons I enlisted, of course. Such a major life choice doesn't spring from a single motivating factor. When the standard script of military smalltalk gets to "so what brought you into the Army?", I usually mention how the linguistic training I could get in the Army more specifically matched my aspirations than anything available in graduate school. But of course, having almost zero contact with the military sphere, I wouldn't have even learned about what training was available if I hadn't been looking into it. So why, during my senior year of college, with a defiantly impractical Classics degree within my reach, was I considering military service? The moment that first opened the door for me to consider military service was, in fact, lost to me for some time. I had completely forgotten about it. I spent my first year in the Army not exactly remembering what had led me to consider enlistment in the first place.

Then, sometime last year, I remembered. It was the fall of my senior year, while I was circumnavigating this beautiful and tragic world of ours, that I found myself at the battlefield of Al-Alamein on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. I'd been to war memorials before, and never really managed to internalize much of what I saw. This time, it was different. The North African campaign wasn't even a particularly brutal sideshow of WWII. It's celebrated as much as it is precisely because it featured the (comparatively) easy morality of soldiers fighting soldiers in a desert landscape devoid of "collateral damage". That said, when we visited the German mausoleum and the Commonwealth cemeteries, I was overwhelmed. The German monument includes a dedication to the truly unknown soldiers, those whose remains left no clue to their nationality. It is a tribute to the universality of patriotism, and of sacrifice. But it was in the Commonwealth cemetery, with its rows upon rows of simple headstones, where I was convicted. Each stone there bears a name, a rank, a date, and a relationship. I was saddened -- though not shocked -- to see the numerous stones marked "brother" and "son", over men who died at 18, 19, 20. What took my breath away, left me weeping quietly in the desert, were the stones marked "father". Too many young men with young families of their own lay dead on that desert plain. Too many young women, young mothers, received that terrible news. Too many children grew up with a medal and a photograph on the mantle in the place of a father. Yet England knew well that the price her young men paid -- not to mention their widows and children -- was the fair price of freedom in this dark world. It was on that desert plain, wandering between the gravestones, that I was convicted by the sacrifice of all those young fathers. They had so much more to lose than I, so many more depending on them, and they gave it all. Somewhere deep inside I asked myself if I could risk the same.

I left Alamein and promptly forgot all about duty and honor and sacrifice, for a time. I was still in college, after all. The example of the soldiers buried there had opened a door, however, one that never entirely closed again. And here I am.

Something New Every Day

Today, while reading an entertaining piece by St. Olaf professor Gordon Marino on the author David Mamet's fondness for Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I was surprised to find the word transmogrify slipped into a piece of otherwise stolid prose. I, of course, immediately connected this word to Calvin and Hobbes and pegged it for a sly tribute. Not so, according the the Online Etymological Dictionary, for transmogrify dates back to 1656. Go figure.

Reflections on Vengeance

For all those who extol the virtues of traditional, peaceful, aboriginal cultures, unsullied by the violence and greed of technological civilization, Jared Diamond has some reflections on vengeance in the Papuan highlands.

It's been said that the root of conservatism is the heartfelt belief that civilization is both precious and fragile. The Burkean war of all against all is not, after all, so very far removed from our daily lives. It lurks just below the surface, in each dark animal impulse we resist out of respect for morality and law. But those ideals make for a dangerously thin wall, and there are those who continue to dig at its foundations.

Further Reading: Theodore Dalrymple has said much more, and much better, on this topic.

Guess They're All Just Hajji to Him

I'm used to gently correcting fellow soldiers on this point, but it seems even Barack Obama hasn't gotten the news that Iraq and Afghanistan are very different places. Via ABC News (HT: PowerLine and Hot Air), Obama said in a recent speech in Missouri:

Obama posited — incorrectly — that Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan — forgetting, momentarily, that Afghans don’t speak Arabic.

“We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.”

His campaign put out a nice response to ABC, of the usual "if you consider that I was actually referring to this and not that, you'll see I was right all along" line. Sorry, not buying it. I'm willing to grant that he probably did know -- if he stopped to think about it -- that they don't speak Arabic in Afghanistan, but simply misspoke. That doesn't absolve the issue for me, as mentally conflating two very. different. places. shows a significant lack of depth of understanding either one.

I Want One

Microsoft's former chief of technology has commissioned the construction (for a cool million dollars) of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, what would have been, had it been built in its time, the world's first computer, capable of computing polynomial calculations of over 30 digits. In analog. 8,000 moving parts, which when cranked by hand spool out calculations on paper tape. It's a work of art, it really is, and if any of my readers make it out to Silicon Valley in the next year it's on display, I think it'd be worth seeing.

Preterition

In follow-up to my piece on Hillary's gripe with OPEC and in reference to Necessary Roughness, I was going to throw in my own two cents on the subject of peak oil. But after reading numerous websites declaring that civilization will collapse as a result of, well, commodity speculation, I just lost interest. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've long held that while I don't expect to see civilization collapse in my lifetime, I wouldn't be all that surprised. So I'm sympathetic to the homesteader's mindset of living self-sufficiently, just in case. But there's a big difference in mindset between living a simple country lifestyle and filling your basement with astronaut food. And of all the things I can imagine bringing down civilization, a shock in the petroleum market isn't one of them. So there, Peak Oilers, I think you're wrong, but I just don't care enough to bother explaining why in any detail. More vacuum-packed survival rations for you, I guess.

Bad News from the Sudan

Granted, that's one of the world's more unnecessary headlines. But, no matter how evil and oppressive the Khartoum regime in the Sudan is, rebels on the outskirts of the capital is not good news. As bad as the current government is, I don't want to see Sudan go the way of the Congo.

Windfall Profits Tax

In reference to my previous post on Hillary's gripe with OPEC, I've also got a few excerpts from Jonah Goldberg over at National Review Online, on the proposal to tax the "windfall profits" of oil companies:

Imagine this. You've built the better mousetrap... You take your invention and, with your last few pennies, manage to bring it to market. It’s a smash hit. It starts flying off shelves. You earn back the investment in raw materials and maybe something close to compensation for your time. Now you’re ready for the big payoff. There’s just one thing left to do: make an appointment with the regional Reasonable Profits Board to find out how much of your windfall is reasonable for you to keep... members of the Reasonable Profits Board will determine how much of your already-taxed profits cross the “rational threshold.”

“Windfall,” of course, is just another word for “undeserved,” which is why windfall profits are defined as the profits earned by someone other than you.

If you tell oil companies that they won’t be able to keep their profits past a certain point, you know what they’ll do? They’ll make money right up until that point and then they’ll stop. Unlike the guy building the better mousetrap, oil companies aren’t in it for the glory, they’re in it for the money.

Meanwhile, less investment in exploration and efficiency will cause pump prices to rise (less supply = higher prices) and, as in the 1980s, cause us to rely on more foreign oil. But, by all means, let’s do it, because Big Oil is bad and someone — or everyone — has to pay for it.