Friday, June 23, 2006
Denoument - in progress
So, what's more anti climatic: the fact that I'm loggin an entry 18 months after I got back or the that I returned and there's still a war to fight? Yes, unlike the Revolution, the War of 1812, the War of Northern Aggression (Fort Sumter aside) , WWI, WWII, and the Gulf War, I returned ala the Korean "Conflict" and Viet Nam.
I felt it before you did, anticipating it a couple of months before we returned: I was coming back and we hadn't won the war. After I got back, the same guy who sent me an adoring email when I was in Falluja awkwardly acknowledged my presence when I passed him in the hallway.
And our homecoming wasn't even after a decisive battle, but after a series of less and less dangerous assignments: police station support and weapons interdiction in South Baghdad, outer cordon and patrols around Falluja, Iraqi leadership security detail out in the Red Zone everyday, Iraqi leadership security detail in the Green Zone most days, and finally "roof top ranger" duty on the FOB reporting attacks from atop of Baath party headquarters.
In the months after my return, I had a lot to say, but didn't want to drag this out: "Hey, you're home, what do you want a medal?" ; ) And everytime I thought about writing, I reminded myself that it would take time away from my family. But, after I saw Rudolf Giuliani speak, Senator Lieberman lose his primary, and the crap the Democrats are putting out in anticipation of the upcoming election, it struck me that Conventional Wisdom had changed more than I had thought.
A question I'm asked a lot is, "Will I ever have to go back?" Well, technically "no". I actually told my kids that I would never have to leave them for such a long time again. One of my sons often said, "Papa, I'll never stop being mad at you for going away." He then transitioned to saying - when I left in the morning, "You are leaving now, but you will be back tonight, right?"
The question I've asked my wife, is whether a child is capable of understanding the difference of having to go and going. We are now looking at a six month tour. Engineering this may be tricky and one question is whether it's fair to other troops.
Another timely study from John's Hopkins published in the Lancet has come out. The last one article which I noted earlier citing 100,000 deaths came out a few days before the 2004 election. Since that number wasn't enough to make a difference the same unitversity in the same peer reviewed medical journal now says it's 650,000.
No news is good news, and that is why good news is not news. We don't hear about the million people who got into work safely this morning, instead we hear about the dozen who didn't. Iraq is just like that. Most of Iraq is secure. People go about their business every day.
People want change in Iraq, but don't offer solutions - besides cut and run. I hear the retiring Generals criticising Secratary Rumsfeld, but I don't hear the detials - maybe they contain sensitive information. Obviously, our intelligence was lacking, but after Frank Church gutted our capacity for collecting human intelligence, it's been challenging.
I think one of two things happend to the WMD: either they hid them in Syria, or they destroyed them after W got into office - whether it be after 9/11 or after the invasion of Afghanistan, they destroyed them.
The difference between Bush and Clinton - who believed the same thing - is tactics: Clinton's military activities - post Mogodishu - if you believe Bill Maher, "...we have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly." When you -on a day which you have to look particularly presidential - send a missile to destroy a chemical weapons plant in Sudan, but instead destroy an aspirin factory, all you get is a bunch of dead Sudanese - not Americans.
President Bush had a different approach: ”When I take action, I'm not going to fire a 2 million dollar missile at a 10 dollar empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."
I believed the world changed on 9/11. And having an attention span greater then the average 10 year old, I still believe it. That said I have some understanding of the argument that because we a re a democracy, the civilian population (less the children, I would tend to think) are responsible for US policy and therefore are not innocents.
As Rudy Giuliani says, I wish they din't want to kill us, but it's a fact that they do.
Some say we shouldn't have disbanded the Iraqi army, but the army was headed and by and strongly associated with the Baath party, and using them to keep order would be like the Allies using the recently surrendered Japanese troops to keep the Vietnamese in line in French Indochina in 1945.
Some say that we conquered them to quickly: had we fought Saddam's armies in the field along well defined lines, instead of using a "Shock and Awe" strategy, we would have killed a lot more "bad guys" and diminished and exhausted them. I guess this is the "Kill me now, or kill me later, philosophy" aka Monday morning QB.
This war requires finess and a gradual transfer of power. When I arrived, about half the Iraqis in the security forces had weapons. Later they had helmets and body armor. By the time I left they were flying helicopters and driving around in amored vehichles.
"These are the times that try men's souls." But what's the rest of the Thomas Paine quote?
"The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
The war goes on, but Americans seem to be fickle as ever. It's funny, after 9/11 everyone proudly displayed little cards depicting the American flag - under it the maxim, "These colors never run". Well, what do you think that means? Maybe they left off the text, "Unless things get difficult."
And Conventional Wisdom also says that we shouldn't let ourselves get bogged down in this developing civil war. A civil war starts and we should leave? I think about Dafur, Rwanda, the Balkans and say that leaving is the last thing we should do!
The President said his job is to do everything he can to prevent another 9/11. The same goes for the Department of Justice: John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, etc. You may have been confused about their responsibilities as their predecessor, Janet Reno said that her number one priority was preserving the right of the defendant. Actually, in our adversarial system of justice, that's someone else's job; their job is to find bad guys and put them in jail.
Who said the government was the friend of the individual? Our founding fathers knew this and that's why we have the Bill of Rights. The government is going to do everything they can to get the bad guys - it's the citizen's responsibility to bring action against them when their Constitutional rights are violated.
A few years back, I was in a train station when two police officers came up to me and asked me for ID, I told them that I didn't have to show it to them. They wanted to look in my bags, I told them "no". They took me to a detention area along with another guy and had a dog check our bags. The dog "alerted" on my bag and since I had to catch a train, I didn't wait for the court ordered warrant, but instead allowed them to search my bag, in which they found some bananas. They were looking for drugs; I had none, the other guy had a suitcase full of them. Why didn't I just let them search my bag in the first place, so they can move on and catch the real bad guys? I dunno, how come you don't want the government listening to your international phone calls?
Here's a scene of "torture for information" in a "ticking timebomb" scenario you may remember. Detective Callahan needs to find the girl who is buried underground and will run out of oxygen within hours. The dialog proceeds as Detective Callahan grinds his heel into Scorpio's freshly gunshot leg.
Scorpio: No, no, no, no. Don't do anything more. You tried to kill me...Please no more, I'm hurt, can't you see I'm hurt? You shot me, please don't, don't! Let me have a doctor...Please give me the doctor, don't kill me.
Callahan: The girl, where is she?
Scorpio: You tried to kill me!
Callahan: If I tried that, your head woul be splattered all over this field. Now where's the girl?
Scorpio: I want a lawyer!
Callahan: I said, where's the girl?
Scorpio: I have the right for a lawyer.
Callahan: Where's the girl?
Scorpio: I have the right for a lawyer, don't shoot me, I have rights, want a lawyer.
So, there may be scenarios in which torture is a legimate means of getting information.
I'm all over the Geneva Conventions - to the letter. And when Senator McCain - a POW for over five years - speaks out on torture, I listen. The problem is that these people aren't POWs.
Things get tough and what - we pull out? All this "land of the free and home of the brave" and "greatest nation on Earth" rhetoric dies away when we actually have to do something hard that won't give instant gratification. We are absolutely doing the right thing in Iraq - how we are doing it can always be improved.
"Battles are won by the infantry, the armor, the artillery, and air teams, by soldiers living in the rains and huddling in the snow. But wars are won by the great strength of a nation - the soldier and the civilian working together." - General of the Army Omar N. Bradley
Do we want to give up and allow history to judge us as quiters, or do we perserver and know that when we are done, we have made a positive difference for humanity?
I've realized patriotic quotes Americans have been citing for years is just rhetoric for most, but as Woodrow Wilson said, "Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American."
In 1998, a group of students from St. Mary's College in the midst of a trip to Guatemala was robbed and the females in the group raped. At gunpoint, eveyone laid face down in a sugar cane field while the robbers raped the women. Afterwards, back in the United States, the professor leading the trip said that he was proud of his students for keeping their heads and remaining calm. Imagine that your hero was there, lying down silently with his female classmates were raped: what would you think of him or her. You might be disappointed. You see, there are some things more precious than life.
When Kuwait was invaded by Iraq in 1990, Sheik Fahd, the younger brother of the Emir of Kuwait stayed behind to defend the palace after the rest of the royal family left. Was there a point to "throwing his life away"? This act gave his people hope - that they were not being abandoned.
The United States Army has raised the maximum age for enlistment to 42. Do you want to die in a nursing home or die helping to bring freedom to people?
So, what's more anti climatic: the fact that I'm loggin an entry 18 months after I got back or the that I returned and there's still a war to fight? Yes, unlike the Revolution, the War of 1812, the War of Northern Aggression (Fort Sumter aside) , WWI, WWII, and the Gulf War, I returned ala the Korean "Conflict" and Viet Nam.
I felt it before you did, anticipating it a couple of months before we returned: I was coming back and we hadn't won the war. After I got back, the same guy who sent me an adoring email when I was in Falluja awkwardly acknowledged my presence when I passed him in the hallway.
And our homecoming wasn't even after a decisive battle, but after a series of less and less dangerous assignments: police station support and weapons interdiction in South Baghdad, outer cordon and patrols around Falluja, Iraqi leadership security detail out in the Red Zone everyday, Iraqi leadership security detail in the Green Zone most days, and finally "roof top ranger" duty on the FOB reporting attacks from atop of Baath party headquarters.
In the months after my return, I had a lot to say, but didn't want to drag this out: "Hey, you're home, what do you want a medal?" ; ) And everytime I thought about writing, I reminded myself that it would take time away from my family. But, after I saw Rudolf Giuliani speak, Senator Lieberman lose his primary, and the crap the Democrats are putting out in anticipation of the upcoming election, it struck me that Conventional Wisdom had changed more than I had thought.
A question I'm asked a lot is, "Will I ever have to go back?" Well, technically "no". I actually told my kids that I would never have to leave them for such a long time again. One of my sons often said, "Papa, I'll never stop being mad at you for going away." He then transitioned to saying - when I left in the morning, "You are leaving now, but you will be back tonight, right?"
The question I've asked my wife, is whether a child is capable of understanding the difference of having to go and going. We are now looking at a six month tour. Engineering this may be tricky and one question is whether it's fair to other troops.
Another timely study from John's Hopkins published in the Lancet has come out. The last one article which I noted earlier citing 100,000 deaths came out a few days before the 2004 election. Since that number wasn't enough to make a difference the same unitversity in the same peer reviewed medical journal now says it's 650,000.
No news is good news, and that is why good news is not news. We don't hear about the million people who got into work safely this morning, instead we hear about the dozen who didn't. Iraq is just like that. Most of Iraq is secure. People go about their business every day.
People want change in Iraq, but don't offer solutions - besides cut and run. I hear the retiring Generals criticising Secratary Rumsfeld, but I don't hear the detials - maybe they contain sensitive information. Obviously, our intelligence was lacking, but after Frank Church gutted our capacity for collecting human intelligence, it's been challenging.
I think one of two things happend to the WMD: either they hid them in Syria, or they destroyed them after W got into office - whether it be after 9/11 or after the invasion of Afghanistan, they destroyed them.
The difference between Bush and Clinton - who believed the same thing - is tactics: Clinton's military activities - post Mogodishu - if you believe Bill Maher, "...we have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly." When you -on a day which you have to look particularly presidential - send a missile to destroy a chemical weapons plant in Sudan, but instead destroy an aspirin factory, all you get is a bunch of dead Sudanese - not Americans.
President Bush had a different approach: ”When I take action, I'm not going to fire a 2 million dollar missile at a 10 dollar empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."
I believed the world changed on 9/11. And having an attention span greater then the average 10 year old, I still believe it. That said I have some understanding of the argument that because we a re a democracy, the civilian population (less the children, I would tend to think) are responsible for US policy and therefore are not innocents.
As Rudy Giuliani says, I wish they din't want to kill us, but it's a fact that they do.
Some say we shouldn't have disbanded the Iraqi army, but the army was headed and by and strongly associated with the Baath party, and using them to keep order would be like the Allies using the recently surrendered Japanese troops to keep the Vietnamese in line in French Indochina in 1945.
Some say that we conquered them to quickly: had we fought Saddam's armies in the field along well defined lines, instead of using a "Shock and Awe" strategy, we would have killed a lot more "bad guys" and diminished and exhausted them. I guess this is the "Kill me now, or kill me later, philosophy" aka Monday morning QB.
This war requires finess and a gradual transfer of power. When I arrived, about half the Iraqis in the security forces had weapons. Later they had helmets and body armor. By the time I left they were flying helicopters and driving around in amored vehichles.
"These are the times that try men's souls." But what's the rest of the Thomas Paine quote?
"The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
The war goes on, but Americans seem to be fickle as ever. It's funny, after 9/11 everyone proudly displayed little cards depicting the American flag - under it the maxim, "These colors never run". Well, what do you think that means? Maybe they left off the text, "Unless things get difficult."
And Conventional Wisdom also says that we shouldn't let ourselves get bogged down in this developing civil war. A civil war starts and we should leave? I think about Dafur, Rwanda, the Balkans and say that leaving is the last thing we should do!
The President said his job is to do everything he can to prevent another 9/11. The same goes for the Department of Justice: John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, etc. You may have been confused about their responsibilities as their predecessor, Janet Reno said that her number one priority was preserving the right of the defendant. Actually, in our adversarial system of justice, that's someone else's job; their job is to find bad guys and put them in jail.
Who said the government was the friend of the individual? Our founding fathers knew this and that's why we have the Bill of Rights. The government is going to do everything they can to get the bad guys - it's the citizen's responsibility to bring action against them when their Constitutional rights are violated.
A few years back, I was in a train station when two police officers came up to me and asked me for ID, I told them that I didn't have to show it to them. They wanted to look in my bags, I told them "no". They took me to a detention area along with another guy and had a dog check our bags. The dog "alerted" on my bag and since I had to catch a train, I didn't wait for the court ordered warrant, but instead allowed them to search my bag, in which they found some bananas. They were looking for drugs; I had none, the other guy had a suitcase full of them. Why didn't I just let them search my bag in the first place, so they can move on and catch the real bad guys? I dunno, how come you don't want the government listening to your international phone calls?
Here's a scene of "torture for information" in a "ticking timebomb" scenario you may remember. Detective Callahan needs to find the girl who is buried underground and will run out of oxygen within hours. The dialog proceeds as Detective Callahan grinds his heel into Scorpio's freshly gunshot leg.
Scorpio: No, no, no, no. Don't do anything more. You tried to kill me...Please no more, I'm hurt, can't you see I'm hurt? You shot me, please don't, don't! Let me have a doctor...Please give me the doctor, don't kill me.
Callahan: The girl, where is she?
Scorpio: You tried to kill me!
Callahan: If I tried that, your head woul be splattered all over this field. Now where's the girl?
Scorpio: I want a lawyer!
Callahan: I said, where's the girl?
Scorpio: I have the right for a lawyer.
Callahan: Where's the girl?
Scorpio: I have the right for a lawyer, don't shoot me, I have rights, want a lawyer.
So, there may be scenarios in which torture is a legimate means of getting information.
I'm all over the Geneva Conventions - to the letter. And when Senator McCain - a POW for over five years - speaks out on torture, I listen. The problem is that these people aren't POWs.
Things get tough and what - we pull out? All this "land of the free and home of the brave" and "greatest nation on Earth" rhetoric dies away when we actually have to do something hard that won't give instant gratification. We are absolutely doing the right thing in Iraq - how we are doing it can always be improved.
"Battles are won by the infantry, the armor, the artillery, and air teams, by soldiers living in the rains and huddling in the snow. But wars are won by the great strength of a nation - the soldier and the civilian working together." - General of the Army Omar N. Bradley
Do we want to give up and allow history to judge us as quiters, or do we perserver and know that when we are done, we have made a positive difference for humanity?
I've realized patriotic quotes Americans have been citing for years is just rhetoric for most, but as Woodrow Wilson said, "Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American."
In 1998, a group of students from St. Mary's College in the midst of a trip to Guatemala was robbed and the females in the group raped. At gunpoint, eveyone laid face down in a sugar cane field while the robbers raped the women. Afterwards, back in the United States, the professor leading the trip said that he was proud of his students for keeping their heads and remaining calm. Imagine that your hero was there, lying down silently with his female classmates were raped: what would you think of him or her. You might be disappointed. You see, there are some things more precious than life.
When Kuwait was invaded by Iraq in 1990, Sheik Fahd, the younger brother of the Emir of Kuwait stayed behind to defend the palace after the rest of the royal family left. Was there a point to "throwing his life away"? This act gave his people hope - that they were not being abandoned.
The United States Army has raised the maximum age for enlistment to 42. Do you want to die in a nursing home or die helping to bring freedom to people?
