Big problems in that chain of command.

The BBC has more on the incident in Mahmoudiya, Iraq in March:

A former US soldier has been arrested and charged with killing four Iraqi civilians after raping one of them, the US Justice Department said.

This is a pretty ugly incident if the guy's squadmates were involved, as is reported in this article from the Army Times.

The Army Times' article reports that:

The affidavit, filed by FBI special agent Gregor J. Ahlers of Louisville, said Green and three other soldiers from the 101st’s 502nd Infantry Regiment were working a traffic checkpoint in Mahmoudiya on March 12 when they conspired to rape a woman who lived nearby.

Which implies to me that a squad team leader is involved, because somebody had to be incharge of that traffic checkpoint.

So the soldier charged was a PFC and was discharged for having a 'personality disorder', which means he had to have been a 'problem child' even before this happened. Now, I can see one crazy guy going off and doing this. But an entire fireteam? There is something wrong in that chain of command.

What a mess this is going to be.

A kind word for KOS

A Kind Word for Kos:

Southern Appeal noticed this diary on Daily KOS, a hate-filled diatribe against the South and Southerners. It is not the first, and doubtless will not be the last, so I was prepared to write it off in that spirit. I hadn't intended to comment on it at all.

The only reason I'm going to do so is the follow-up post at the author's homepage noting that Kos and company had run him off ("like Saint Patrick casting away the snakes," in the author's own words). He has words for Kos in the same spirit as his earlier words for the South, but leave off what he has to say; it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that this was an act of decency by Kos, from whom I had not expected one. It is noted and appreciated.

Hamdan

Hamdan:

The body politic is in an interesting place. The most important distinctions are decided time and again by razor-thin margins, yet the winning side gets all. Thus, in 2004, the electoral margin was very thin -- yet the Republicans won both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Though the margin of victory was only a few points, the whole power of the state passed into Republican hands.

In Hamdan, a 5-3 decision that would have been 5-4 if Roberts had participated decided the day. The margin was as narrow as can be, and yet the intent of the other two branches of government was set aside, and the most hardline liberal ruling in years became, for now, the law.

The SCOTUS is designed to 'tack behind' the rest of the government, as lifetime appointees of previous administration continue to hold to an older understanding of propriety. This has a conservative effect on government, in the sense that it slows and moderates change. That is the real effect of Hamdan -- to hold us to a Cold War understanding of the Geneva Conventions.

During the Cold War, terrorists and guerrillas were the regular proxies of both sides, though particularly the Communists. As such, the great powers had an interest in pretending that those groups had a kind of legitimacy they really never deserved -- whether it was the Contras or the proto-Taliban on the one side, or the Viet Cong or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or various quasi-Marxist African militias on the other. The Cold War superpowers each adopted a false morality in order to pursue the real goal of disemboweling the other sides' interest through proxies. We chose to treat these people as if they were noble freedom fighters -- at least the ones whose defiance of the laws of war was beneficial to our own side -- and now we are paying the price. The community of legal scholars who came up during the Cold War considers terrorists to simply be disadvantaged soldiers, and considers the violations of the rules of war that terrorists engage in to be simply a balancing of the playing field. We must treat them as if they were moral equals, if only to show how much better we are.

SCOTUS will come around on this one, as more justices retire and are replaced. Justices chosen after 9/11 will not be soft on terrorists, as the old-school justices have learned to be.

Nor will the international situation continue to be so kind. The Cold War is over. The great powers have changed: they are now the United States, China, and a declining European Union. There is a rising India. Of those, only the EU has an interest in continuing to treat terrorists as a sort of criminal, rather than as a sort of barbarian. The EU's power declines steadily, as it strangles itself with regulations and tries to force economies as different as Frances' and Greece's to obey the same rules. India has no love for terrorists, as it suffers more from radical Islamic terrorism than anyone; China has already adopted the issue as a way of dealing with "splittists."

The tide is strongly against Hamdan and its advocates. I join those who suspect that the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress will set out to overturn it as their major business between now and the 2006 elections. They will not find it hard to do, as the groundwork is already lain. Hamdan, though stern, is a last stroke from a once-strong champion. Once that model of thinking bestrode the world. This was its last hour of strength.

As for what lays beyond, Chester has some interesting thoughts. I myself simply believe that the Republican Federal powers will undo the work of the SCOTUS, and gain political strength in doing so. The Congress will be asked for new authority, and will grant it gladly. Abroad, there is nothing at the international level that is strong enough to resist the combined interests of the United States, China, India, and Russia into the bargain.

There will be no great new rights for terrorists. They will not enjoy the full protections of courts martial, as if they were honorable men. The tide turned long ago. All we see in Hamdan is proof that a few old men and women failed to notice.

Birthday Cake

Birthday Cake:

The boy is four years old now. We were moving during his birthday, so the celebration was postponed until tonight. My mother, his grandmother, made him a birthday cake.

I haven't said much about my mother (here and here are the only times I recall), but you probably know that Southern women are polite and sweet, yet stern and iron-willed.

My mother is all those things, and also rather assertive on the question of health food. This is a departure from when I was a boy; in those days, she hardly cooked at all. I left home knowing how to make everything from pancakes to lasagna from scratch. At our house, if you wanted to eat it, you'd better know how to cook it. At some point, though, she decided that she wanted to eat right and have better health, and naturally therefore she accomplished both goals. Nothing in her house is low-fiber, full-fat, or otherwise potentially unhealthy.

Which brings us to the birthday cake.

I swear this is true: his grandmother made him a prune-bran birthday cake.

She really did.

Move

The Move South:

I've been quiet for a few days while moving house. A few notes on the experience:

1) I've never driven a truck quite that size before. It was a very large Penske rental, right at the upper limit of what a non-commercial license allows.

2) Naturally, therefore, the first part of the drive included crossing the Blue Ridge mountains.

3) In the worst rainstorm on record.

4) Having gotten off the mountains and into the Shenandoah valley, where the rain was even worse, we came across (in the little village of New Market) an absolutely horrendous wreck involving six semis and numerous smaller vehicles. "Great," I thought. "Even the professionals can't keep the big rigs on the road today."

5) "Perhaps it was a fluke, though," I thought, carrying on down the road. About ten miles later, there was another wreck, this one involving two semis.

6) The rain was so bad that, on some occasions, traffic just stopped. After a while, people shut off their engines and waited for a break in the rain.

7) A "break" still meant very heavy rain.

8) Penske's trucks are top-notch. I loved the thing -- beautiful, powerful, outstanding.

9) Penske's service sucks. The truck was more than half a day late showing up. Nothing they told us about it was true. No proper instructions were given for anything, including the question of whether it could accept low-sulfur diesel fuel or how it was to be returned.

10) Did I need a truck that large? Yes and no. Only about one third of the truck was actual furniture or household goods. The other two thirds? About half of that was the wife's art supplies and artwork in progress. The rest was flowers. Tons of them, pot after pot, three shelves full lashed together to make big platforms and then all the floor space. I can't understand how she could acquire so many flowers.

11) OK, I can understand it -- she grew most of them from seeds. But still.

12) In spite of everything, we survived. All is well, more or less. Hope you've had a good few days.

Sending a message.

If this report is true,

Israeli warplanes buzzed the summer residence of Syrian President Bashar Assad early Wednesday, military officials said, in a message aimed at pressuring the Syrian leader to win the release of a captured Israeli soldier.

I think the Israelis are about to take the gloves off.

Update:
I guess it is true.

This doesn't leave much wiggle room, either:

Earlier, Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that Mashaal, was a target for assassination due to his ordering of the kidnapping of Shalit.

"He is definitely in our sights ... he is a target," Ramon told Army Radio. "Khaled Mashaal, as some who is overseeing, actually commanding the terror acts, is definitely a target."

Well, it isn't like Hamas isn't asking for it.

Life Changes.

The fellows over at Situational Awareness are going through a major change.

I wish them good luck in their new endevors, and it seems that they already more to say. Yeah, I agree. Keep bombing.

Outstanding

Outstanding:

OOH-Rah -- I tell you what, every now and then that Bush fellow really gets one right.

Speaking of getting it right, Michelle Malkin's WWII-poster Photoshop contest results (here and especially here) are something to see. I hope we'll be seeing serious prosecution for these leakers, who took oaths to keep our secrets and then betrayed them. In the meantime, as Darleen's Place put it:

Don't Kill Her Daddy with Careless Talk!

The one difference between the WWII posters and the modern situation, though, is this: it's not just the soldiers being put at risk. Indeed, in the case of the NY Times publishing every detail of our anti-terrorist programs it comes across, it's not even primarily the soldiers.

Terrorists love soft targets.

It's you that's threatened by this.

Coffee

Coffee At Borders:

This afternoon I took the wife to the Borders bookstore in Warrenton, so she could look at art magazines. She loves to look at art and flower and horse magazines. Actually, she's the biggest magazine-reader I ever met. In addition to looking at these things at the store, and then buying the ones she likes best, she has numerous subscriptions. She reads every one of them cover to cover. Last Tuesday the mail brought two of them at once. When I handed them to her, I said, "Well, there goes a week's productivity." She hit me.

(Yes, Cassidy, I know.)

Anyway, we went to Borders. After the first hour or so, I had looked at everything in the store twice and decided to just go get some coffee.

The coffee shop is upstairs on a ledge overlooking the rest of the store. That's just the way they designed it.

I went upstairs and there was this young guy running the coffee stand, flirting with his female customer. He was laughing and passing her coffee and change and receipts, and making what were intended as witty comments and trying to make her laugh. Finally, he turned and suddenly tossed her the container of cream cheese for her bagel --

-- which missed her by quite a bit --

-- and landed at my feet.

He looked abashed, looked at me, looked more abashed, and managed to get the girl out of there quickly and without any further witty banter. She left, and he watched her go as he spoke to me. He was twirling a roll of tape around his finger as he talked -- 'welcome to Seattle's coffee, what can I get you' --

-- when suddenly the tape came off his finger --

-- flew past my head --

-- and landed just behind me.

He cleared his throat. I handed him his tape back, and ordered a cup of regular coffee.

He nods, turns around and sets up the cup, and opens the tap so that coffee starts to pour into my cup. He steps away to get the cream, asks if I want cream, I don't want cream, all right no cream then -- he puts the cream back.

By this point, the coffee is pouring over the top of the cup and off onto the floor.

He turns around, sees it, and with a shout -- 'Ah!' -- he shuts it off. "Well," he said, "seeing as that cup is now scalding hot and soaked I'll, er, get you another one."

He looks at the coffee machine, and notices he has poured all the coffee out on the floor.

"Would you prefer a lighter or a darker roast?" he asks.

"Dark," I said.

"Oh, good, that's all that's left." He fetches a new cup and fills it from the "DARK ROAST" pot at the end. I paid him, and sat down to read the newspaper.

A little while later, I saw two soldiers walking through the bookstore below. They were in uniform, and I noticed they were wearing the flag patch on their shoulders. They walked up into the cafe and off to the restrooms.

While they were in the restrooms, I went over to the guy and told him that -- whatever they ordered -- he was to refuse to take their money, and just let me pay for it. I told him not to tell them who'd done it. I have a good reason for that. If someone does something nice for you, you think, "What a nice guy." But if something nice is done for you by someone unknown, you think of all sorts of different people who might have done it. You think about why these people might have done it. And that gives a better sense to the soldier of just how much they really are owed.

They got their drinks and left. I studiously ignored them, in case they were searching for a sign of who might have bought them drinks. I didn't want them to know, so I just continued to read the paper.

A little while later, the wife finally came upstairs. I asked if she wanted some coffee. She said she did, so I gave her some cash and told her to go over and get whatever she wanted, and pay the man what I owed as well. She didn't understand why I would owe anything, but I told her -- don't worry about it, he'll know. She gave me a funny look, and went to pay.

A few minutes later, I hear this exchange:

"I'd like a frozen vanilla coffee. Oh, and my husband wanted me to pay what he owed."

(It turns out another clerk had come on duty, so I hear a female voice). "Who's your husband?"

"The gentleman over there."

"Hm. I don't know. Let me ask [the name of the male clerk]."

So the lady clerk called over the other clerk, and my wife repeated, "My husband said to pay what he owes."

"Who's your husband?" the male clerk asks.

"The gentleman over there," my wife ever-so-patiently repeats.

"Oh," said the clerk. "The gentleman with the hat and the big knife?"

"Yes, that one," the wife agreed.

"He doesn't owe anything," the clerk replied. "Neither do you."

And then he opened up the register, and gave her back the money I'd paid him for my coffee.

"Your drinks are on the house."

I tried to talk him into taking the money, but he flatly refused. It's a good world, you see -- sometimes.

Joking?

Are They Joking?

Heidi at Euphoric Reality points me to a story about a Nike advert that is apparently causing some objections among incredibly brain-dead kind-hearted British folk. The image in the ad is of a soccer player, who has painted himself white with a red cross that makes up his hands and arms, and from his face to his belly. The red cross is done in a ragged sort of style, with the effect that the soccer man looks a bit like a bloody albino.

It isn't the bloody-albino effect causing the protest, though, but rather:

Rev Rod Thomas of Church of England evangelical group Reform was not convinced. ‘It’s quite a disturbing image and because the paint is wet, it really looks like blood,’ he said. ‘It therefore brings to mind the crucifixion to many people, and why Nike would want to do that, I haven’t a clue, unless it is simply as a publicity stunt.’

Now, we all know -- as does the Reverend Rod, who mentions it later -- that the red cross on a white field is the Cross of St. George, which happens to be the national flag of England. It is also the flag used by supporters of England's soccer team. So, as to why you'd want to paint an English soccer player with the Cross of St. George, it takes very little imagination for a thinking man to sort that out.

As for the intentional crucifixion imagery...

That was really the whole reason for the flag.

Hot

Hot.

I don't know about this, but in my part of Virginia, it's too hot to think. I trust you will all forgive me, but it's almost 9 PM, the heat index is still over 92 degrees, humidity is high and rising, and I haven't had much of a coherent thought in hours.

Blackhawk, sir, when you are ready to claim your hat, please drop me an email.

Oh, yes -- the DOD did finally decide on that contract it's been pondering over for three years. It awarded it to some firm I'd never heard of until a few days ago. I've obviously made many plans and options ready in case of such an action -- when you're working on "you might be unemployed in 20 days!" for three years, your thoughts do tend to turn to contingencies -- but if anyone out there is in possession of an especially adventurous option, I would be inclined to hear it.

Oh, Boy

Yes, I'll Brace for That:

Celestial Junk Blog warns us to prepare for the outrage:

As news reaches us that two US troopers were “slaughtered” by Islamo-fascist terrorists, we must brace ourselves for the inevitable Mainstream Media outrage, human rights organization fury, and overall international do-gooder annoyance. It’s going to be quite something as page after page of editorials from BBC to NYT scream headlines like, “US Troopers Denied Geneva Rights”, or, “Islamist Crime Evidence that Freedom Fighters are Just Terrorists”. Daily KOS will launch into days of angry profanity filled rage against the Islamist thugs who committed the crime, and even Al Jazeera will bemoan in giant headlines, “Islam Slandered Once Again by Islamist Extremists.”

Brace yourselves boys and girls, it’s going to be ugly. Amnesty will of course decry the fact that Islamist terrorists, after this sadistic act, are now even more depraved than the Abu Ghraib bum-pile perverts. Leftist blogs the world over will warn Muslim fanatics that they had better start wearing uniforms if they want to be accorded Geneva convention rights. And, the CBC in Canada and the BBC will come to the conclusion, that the murder of the two US servicemen, proves once and for all that “Terrorism is the enemy of all Civilization”.

I'd better go get ready.

H/t: The Dawn Patrol at the Mudville Gazette.

Gitmo

Hostis Humanii Generis

Strong words from Austria:

The EU has welcomed US president George W. Bush's statements on ending the Guantanamo prison camp, with the Austrian chancellor saying after Wednesday's bilateral summit that it is "grotesque" to claim that the US is harmful to world peace.

I think we'd all like to see GitMo closed. The problem is -- what do you do with the people there if you close it? Bush says he'd like to send them home, except a few to be tried in US courts. I have opposed, and still do oppose, the idea of using criminal courts to try terrorists: they aren't criminals, entitled to the protections of a civilization even when they defy its laws. They're hostis humanii generis, enemies of all mankind, like pirates.

That idea has some currency in odd places. Amnesty International, for example, is trying to push nations to adopt the idea of hostis humanii generis as a way of getting at nations that engage in torture:

Initially, a federal judge dismissed the Filartigas’ claims on the grounds that Paraguay’s treatment of its own citizens was not governed by international law. But the Court of Appeals rejected this reasoning. Specifically, the Court of Appeals found that torture was a violation of international law, and that torturers—like the pirates of the 18th century—were hostis humanii generis (enemies of all mankind) who could be brought to justice anywhere.

In the Filartiga v. Peña-Irala ruling, the appeals court relied on the 1975 United Nations Declaration Against Torture and All Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the United Nations promulgated following Amnesty International’s first international campaign against torture. The relationship between human rights activism and success in the courtroom could not have been clearer.

The Filartiga case led to dozens of other cases over the next two decades against human rights violators found within the United States, including Ferdinand Marcos and Radovan Karadzic. Under the ATCA, the federal courts accepted claims of torture, extra-judicial killing, prolonged arbitrary detention, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Amnesty and I agree that there are enemies of that type -- people for whom civilization should set aside its protections. The questions on which we differ are these:

1) Which protections should be set aside? Amnesty for example, is willing to set aside the protections of jursidiction and national sovereignty. I am willing to set aside the protections accorded to "ordinary decent criminals" by the Western criminal court system, and pursue these enemies instead as unlawful combatants subject to the laws of war.

2) What punishments should these enemies of mankind face? Amnesty, though willing to set aside crucial parts of the justice system, wishes even humanity's worst enemies to be treated with a special gentleness: they oppose not only the death penalty, but also "supermax" style prisons that would allow you to separate people who might try to recruit others to their poisonous ways. I think that torture should be forbidden, but that execution for terrorists and unlawful combatants who hide among women and children -- because they glady endanger the lives of women and children -- should be permitted, following a proper military hearing on their status according to the forms of the Geneva Conventions.

3) Who exactly are the enemies of mankind? For Amnesty, they are mostly government officials -- which is a wise position, honestly, a wiser one than the United Nations system credits. The UN system believes that rights belong to states, and the "rights" of individuals are to be protected through the various nation states. This is why Cuba is now on the UN's Human Rights watchdog group.

For me, I am glad to agree that government officials can be the enemies of mankind, and that the worst ones ought to be hounded out of the civilized parts of the world. But these terrorists, these people who hide among the innocent and murder, they really are like the pirates of the 18th century. Lawless, stateless, mobile through the uncontrolled parts of the globe, they prey and murder and wage war against mankind.

The old idea ought to be upheld. GitMo has been our place for sticking these enemies of mankind while we decide what to do with them. It is, I think, a mistake to go through the courts, and accord criminal protections to these people -- giving them the status of criminals is too good for them. They are barbarians, outlaws, and ought to be treated as such.

Meanwhile, let's remember Austria's kind words, for which I thank them.

The more things change, the more they stay insane:

Feuding families bring road to a standstill

I can just hear Irene Ryan yelling "There's gonna be a feud?"

Lucky that isn't Appalachia. There'd be a body count already. Heh.

HT:Fark

Addendum

Addendum to Last:

The Geek with a .45 notices a little tampering with a review of the new Superman:

Quote:
-----------
In "Superman Returns" (written by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris from a story they cooked up with Singer), the caped crusader for truth, justice, etc. (Brandon Routh) returns to crime-ridden Earth after a five-year detour...
-----------

Truth, justice, etc?

Commenter Rick C notes that the trailer contains a similar formula:

Perry White demands to see if he still stands for "truth, justice--all that stuff."

I'm guessing that devotion to The American Way would be one of those 'ancient and archaic' views I keep reading about. The movie company, of course, intends to sell the film overseas -- indeed, I have heard that overseas profits are now at least as important as domestic take to some films. They don't want to go to the trouble of making an "international cut" of the film that drops the American rhetoric, and Hollywood has been out of the business of trying to sell the world on "the American way" for a long time. So, rather than make two editions of the film, they simply write the script to avoid any references to anything as 'ancient and archaic' as patriotism.

Shall I bother to get angry about that? What would be the point? The producers are money-chasers in the extreme, and the actors are mostly anti-patriots by sentiment. The latter can't be convinced by any argument of the rightness of pro-American movies, and the former have already been convinced by the only argument that matters to them -- profit margins. Nor is it worthwhile to get angry at them for caring only about the profit margins, as it is clear that Hollywood is dying. As it becomes easier to make independent films of a similar quality (this one was done years ago now, and is at least as good conceptually, and almost as good actually, as anything Lucas produced), independents will arise to produce the domestic, patriotic content that Hollywood can't afford. It is bound to the mass-market model, and that model is dying. Just as Americans will soon be making films for Americans again (so, why see a billion-dollar Hollywood job that insults us?), so shall every nation have films appropriate to it (so, why see a Hollywood job that doesn't really care about us Basques/Hindus/Whatever?). Their days are numbered, their span is dwindling, and their light is going out of the world.

So be it. Once great men lived there, kings, gods -- once, but long ago.

Why Patriotism

Why Patriotism?

Much has been made of the anti-patriotic rant by one or another of the Dixie Chicks:

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."

What makes this an astonishing question is that the Dixie Chicks arose from a tradition whose most famous members have directly addressed the very question asked here. Maines can't be ignorant of the answers proposed, because no one who once made a successful living as a country music singer could have failed to encounter those responses. She will have heard, for example, John Wayne's direct answer to the question, which begins:

You ask me why I love her?
Well, give me time, and I'll explain.

And so he does, at length -- not only in the song, but in a book of the same name. John Wayne, feared and loathed by parts of the Left even to this day for his iconic power, was in love with a land of beauty -- truly, and purely, in love.

Nor can the Dixie Chicks have failed to hear "The Ragged Old Flag" by Johnny Cash, composed during the last period of native anti-patriotism. It takes a different tactic, less about the majesty and beauty of America than about her history. No excerpt will do the piece justice -- nor, indeed, do the lyrics do it justice. It was meant to be heard, and ought to be: but if you have not heard it, and have no access to it today, read it through.

I'm reminded of an old Warner Brother's cartoon -- another American icon, that -- starring Porky Pig, called "Old Glory." It features a lazy, child version of Porky, griping about being forced to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in school. He drifts off to sleep, and is visited by Uncle Sam, and given a vision of all that has gone before. On waking, he is insipired with a newfound sense of awe at what has gone into the making of his nation, and he learns and pledges allegiance in a pose of solemn respect.

Have you seen this cartoon? If not, watch it here.

What strikes me about all of these answers is this: to the patriot, they are beautiful, moving, inspiring, the kinds of things that make you want to get up and shout. To the anti-patriot, they are not convincing in the least. As the Salon article about John Wayne demonstrates, they look at the same things and shudder. As the fellow wrote:

For my part, I've spent the last three years working on a novel that features a thinly disguised John Wayne as the villainous central figure in a 13-year-old girl's coming-of-age story.

Why should John Wayne, of all people, seem villanous -- particularly to a 13-year-old girl? My wife tells me that she spent her childhood dreaming of growing up to marry John Wayne. Still, some people do think he is a secret villian, somehow dark and evil.

I think this is a point of departure, a breaking point at which there is little to say. The answers given by Johnny Cash and John Wayne do not convince: you were either convinced when you got here, or you cannot be convinced. The loyalty of the patriot is supernatural. It is like the love of a man for his mother; it pre-exists thought, but instead arises naturally.

Sometimes, perhaps, it tries to arise -- and is instead hurt or twisted by the evil and cruelty of the world. Perhaps the anti-patriots are sensitive but flawed souls who had believed in beauty and happiness, but find that beauty fades in spite of art, and the greatest sources of happiness are also the worst sources of pain. The Salon author, drawn to Wayne though he despises him, writes:

Wayne's greatness lies in his ability to embody this figure utterly while somehow retaining a hint of innocence, of hope. He's the hard-boiled man out on the frontier, after all, not trapped in the decaying, decadent city. While personal psychic redemption may be beyond him, he stands a chance of breaking clean ground for others, of protecting the women and the fresh-faced, naive young men (Montgomery Clift, Jeffrey Hunter and, most oddly, the 54-year-old Jimmy Stewart in "Liberty Valance") who wander into the unfinished, dangerous West. America might have a chance for greatness on the back of a man like Wayne, but he'll always take others to the mountain top, never get there himself. He's seen too much ugliness, in the breaking and mastering of this wild land, in the purging of the hostile natives. In himself.

Yet this is just what the patriot can do, that the anti-patriot cannot. He can love in spite of his pain; it does not twist his love into something else. The world has hurt him, yet it is still his world. The country, his mother, they are not perfect -- but they are his country and his mother. His loyalty is not diminished. He retains hope, and love, and faith.

This is precisely the quality absent in the anti-patriot. It is struck out of them, for whatever cause, a wound in the soul. People bent by such things hate as strongly as we love -- they speak of mother or country, as Maines does, through clenched teeth.

What can we do? Pity them; hope for them to heal. Otherwise, nothing. They are beyond us. Supernatural things are not for men. Perhaps a spirit will heal them. We cannot, any more than we can understand them.

They have left us.

Stetson giveaway

A Stetson:

Quarterly taxes being due yesterday, I don't have much to offer to Project VALOR IT right now. I will, however, make a personal sacrifice if anyone will make a donation to the cause: I have a Stetson I would send to any reader who wishes to wear one of Grim's own hats (or decorate your horse with one, or whatever). It is a Chevron, which is more suitable for city wear than most Stetsons, yet still good for the countryside. It's in size 7 5/8 (or "61," in the Australian terms).

Readers must pay for shipping, and make a donation to Project VALOR IT. The size of the donation isn't as important as getting some money toward serving our wounded -- pick any amount you think fair. Email or comment if you're interested.

UPDATE: Blackhawk's offer states that he needs a hat right away to deal with the Texas summer sun. I'll leave this open the rest of the day only, to give all readers a full workday to encounter the offer and consider it, but if there are no other bids I shall close the offer tonight. We wouldn't want a man going hatless in this weather.

Bush

Gifts for Bush:

I have only one comment about this story: these people have outstanding taste in gifts. I'd be happy to receive any of those things.

OP VALOR IT

OP VALOR IT:

Grim's Hall has always supported Operation VALOR IT. Sadly, events here continue at a pace such that I haven't been able to blog much -- or read much outside of my professional readings -- the last week or two. As a consequence, I haven't mentioned the current drive to fund the operation. If you haven't seen it at other websites, please visit the link.

Read this from Monday, too.

Bedside manner

Bedside Manner:

I went into see the doctor today to get a tetanus shot, on account of having stepped on a rusty nail. It took three hours -- it's getting hard to get in and out of a doctor's office, as I imagine all of you have noticed.

While I was there, I got a little taste of Gunny Therapy. It wasn't a bad wound, and I wouldn't have gone in at all except for the tetanus risk -- I cleaned it out carefully with a knife and some rubbing alcohol yesterday, so by this morning it was mostly healed and just a little sore if I put my full weight on it. After sitting for two hours waiting on the doctor, she finally turned up and asked to see the wound.

"Not much to see," I said, but she insisted, so I pulled off my boot and sock. She peered at the foot for a second or two, and so did I.

"Could be this is the wrong foot," I said. That's when she hit me.

Hey, I told her I just needed a tetanus shot.

Nice girl, for a New York Yankee. She was a vet -- Air Force -- and we talked for a little while before she went on. I did get my shot (another hour later, when someone could spare the time to give it to me), so it all worked out. Got home just in time to go pay the taxes. Happy Second Quarter to you, too.

Intelligence Coup

Intelligence Coup:

When I began hearing about large numbers of Al-Qaeda in Iraq members being rounded up or killed during the past week, I assumed that some sort of intelligence success had been achieved during the search for Zarqawi, and that American military, Iraqi military, and Iraqi police were moving quickly to make use of that intelligence.

It turns out that a significant amount of information was unearthed from the house that Zarqawi died in.

According to a recent announcement by Iraq's National Security Advisor, a good deal of information was found in digital form, on a laptop computer and a portable drive. (Captain Ed links to one news article; BBC news also reports about it.)

When I read this, I mused for a few moments about the term "information density", a phrase often used in computing. Information density refers to the amount of information that can be stored in a physical space--like a room full of magnetic-tape drives, a portable hard disk drive enclosure, or a thumb-drive in a person's pocket.

A significant amount of information can be held in the palm of a one's hand, using modern computer technology. Computers also make accessing and searching the data easy. That fact worked against Zarqawi's associates in this case: an Iraqi policeman was able to pick up in his hands information that would have filled at least one file-cabinet if it was reproduced on paper.

It was good news to hear that Zarqawi had been eliminated. It is even more good news to hear that his files have been ransacked and many of his compatriots have been dealt with.

Some have described the death of Zarqawi as a symbolic event, with little actual effect on the struggle against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This news belies that claim: it appears that Zarqawi's death is significant.

Russ Sends Again

You're Welcome, Rabbi:

Via Russ Vaughn, again:

Thank God our safety is in the hands of these guys from the Midwest and South and not those snivelly effeminates from Brown, Brandeis, Columbia and NYU. If it were so, we'd by now all be prayer rugs.

Just don't forget our brothers in Texas, who deserve their own mention.

Dumézil

So… I was spurred into pulling an old book off the shelf by Grim’s post this morning. I looked at that drawing, and then thought back to that idiot cartoonist that the Joint Chief’s wrote a letter to, and wondered what type of moron really believes this with such a broad-brush?

Despite how pissed I get, the majority are not morons. What they are is ignorant of military culture and open, through thousands of years of distrust/wariness/prejudice, to being prey to a minority with an agenda.

Televising and embedded reports, even on the scale we have today, is not enough to overcome the millennia of wariness directed towards the warrior functions. The book I reached for this afternoon was Georges Dumézil’s The Destiny of the Warrior. Dumézil is a philologist who identified a stratified society in Indo-European cultures, made up of a Sacral (First) Function of kings/priests/magicians, Warrior (Second) Function, and a Common (Third) Function made up of the everyday Joe. To get to the point, he states that no other function of society straddles the ethical boundary of society in the manner of the warrior.

Warriors train for, and engage in, actions seen as reprehensible to the greater society. Warriors make killing and deception part and parcel of their lives... they train in the very acts which threaten society in order to defend society.

Short of removing that minority, I’m not sure what we can do to overcome the fears. Intense military marketing? Compulsory military service?

Anyway- just a thought before I head out of the office for a long weekend.

AZ Cartoon war

Of Course You Realize, This Means War:

A wee cartoon from the Arizona Republic:

Russ Vaughn sends, and suggests that you might want to write them a letter. Which, of course, is the point -- we'll be writing letters. Even the mention of "war" in the headline is just a reference to old Bugs Bunny cartoons. The blood-soaked, murderous Marines that the media loves to scorn will express their wrath with carefully-worded letters. They will explain, again, the honor and discipline of the Corps; its extraordinary history of service and the glory of its battle-record; and so forth and so on. It won't make any impression at all, except we might get a letter of apology from the editor, who probably told his administrative assistant to go ahead and dash one off for him at the same time he decided to publish this cartoon.

Not to mention any names, but I can think of some people who get more respect from various cartoonists these days. Something about arson and death threats, I think. Apparently that's the path to respect where the newspapers of the world are concerned. Maybe someday they'll stop to reflect on that fact, and what it says about them.

Bounty Hunting

Bounty Hunting:

Thailand has an interesting new counterinsurgency strategy it is considering: pay civilians to shoot insurgents.

As you read the article, it will help to know that Pattani is one of four Muslim-majority provinces in the south of Thailand, which are experiencing a bloody insurgency. Like most such things, this insurgency has mainly directed its violence at the defenseless -- monks, schoolteachers, immigrant workers from even poorer countries than Thailand -- though insurgents have demonstrated a capacity for fighting off the Thai military and police on occasion. Thailand, whcih has strict gun control, began arming teachers some time ago, and certain trusted citizens. Police General Chitchai Wannasathit, in addition to being Justice Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, was recently the acting Prime Minister -- in other words, a very important man. General Sonthi is the chief of Thailand's army, also a very important man, and the first Muslim to occupy that position. It was hoped his appointment would 'win hearts and minds' among the southern insurgents, but it has not: he is a Muslim, but an ethnic Thai, whereas the insurgents are Muslims but ethnic Malays.

Now that you know all that:

The governor of Pattani wants to offer cash rewards of 50,000-100,000 baht to civilians who kill or injure insurgents in gun fights. He says rewards would give people an incentive to fight back, but academics and law experts argue it would just encourage more extra-judicial killing.

However, caretaker Justice Minister Chidchai Wannasathit and army chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin appeared to second the idea yesterday.

Pattani governor Panu Uthairat said his proposal was a security measure aimed at protecting the lives of innocent people in the province. ''In some cases, people want to retaliate. Some have fired warning shots into the sky. Others clashed with insurgents who were killed or wounded in the process,'' he said.''Some wounded insurgents were caught. In the past, we handed out 5,000 to 10,000 baht in cash to civilians to boost their morale so they will fight back in self-defence,'' he said.

A source said civilians would be given 50,000 baht each if their return fire hit any insurgents, leading to their capture. The amount would double if the insurgents were killed.

Mr Panu said the authorities could not provide security for people around the clock. People should learn to protect themselves. They should be permitted to carry guns but only use them in self-defence, he said.

Legal experts questioned the Pattani governor's authority to offer a cash reward. Outgoing Bangkok Senator Sak Kosaengruang, formerly president of the Lawyers Council, said the idea was dangerous and unlawful.

If the reward was offered to police, it would lead to extra-judicial killing by unscrupulous officers, he warned....

Pol[ice] Gen Chidchai, also a deputy prime minister, downplayed fears a reward-system would give rise to extra-judicial killings. He promised to consider both sides of the proposal.

Gen Sonthi said the reward offer was a strategy by the governor to stimulate people to be extra careful. People should trust the government's judgment in tailoring anti-insurgent strategies to the region.

"People should trust the government" is not a very reassuring slogan, but "people should learn to proctect themselves" certainly is.

I remain convinced that, as we see the continued development of asymmetrical warfare, we will eventually have to distribute warfighting capability across the whole society. The tyrannies of the 20th century were based on the massed standing army, and civilian gun control to ensure that the army need not spend much of its time fighting the civilians. They could be kept at bay by free nations, but only with massed armies in return.

The new, would-be tyrants avoid the armies, and slip into our societies to take cover among civilians. Civilians are also their primary targets, in order to wreak such terror as to obtain by destroying a nation's will what they otherwise lack the strength to gain. Only the armed citizen could be assured of being present enough of the time, at enough places, to defend against such an enemy.

The Thais are finding that out. Despite their attachment to the idea of gun control, which they would very much like to believe is the right and moral policy, they are having to abandon it because it is not sustainable in the face of a modern insurgency. Irony abounds: the insurgents, by proving that they are capable of defeating the Thai army, are making free men and citizens out of the subjects of Thailand's King.

The new tyrants bypass hard targets to seek soft, defenseless ones. We must therefore harden the entire society. This is not a sentiment, but a truth. Even those who are sentimental about gun control, as is Buddhist-majority Thailand, come to realize it. The citizen ceases to be a mere unit of production for supporting the state's endeavours, important only because he works to build the nation's economy, pays taxes to support government spending, and is kept disarmed so that he can't protest too loudly about the taxes.

Instead, the citizen becomes what he was meant to be. The nations of the world will find that they need him. They shall have to arm him. Therefore, they shall also have to listen to him.

Rite of Passage

Rite of Passage:

It seems that I've been away from the Hall for too long. I return, partly because I have a question to pose to the membes of the Hall.

In the recent past, I have had many opportunities to think about rites of passage. Most recently, I went through a significant one myself, having earned an M.S. degree in my chosen field of study. However, I have also seen family friends celebrate the commencement of high-school education, and one of the friends of the Hall has received an M.D. (I haven't heard of many Marines who received that honor after their service...)

All these events are rites of passage. They mark the achievement of a goal. They mark the honoree as having left one class and entered another.

The question that comes to mind is this: is there a specific rite of passage that turns a boy into a man? Is there an event that we can say qualifies a young man as having risen to full (adult) manhood?

During my pondering of this question, I remembered a comment from Grim that I originally took as a joke:

With a possible exception for certain foreign countries, there is no such thing as a gun-free man.

I would be happy to accept this as the mark of manhood--but if you feel that something else should be used, feel free to comment on it.

Recruiting and retention seems on track.

All Active duty branches have met their targets for the year so far for both new recruits and and reenlistments. Even the Army National Guard, Army Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve are at 103%, 96% and 100% of their YTD goals respectively.

These look like better than pre-9/11/2001 numbers. Interesting.

Three Guantanamo Bay Detainees Die of Apparent Suicide.

Can you just imagine the conversations going on right now at Gitmo? I'll bet you some procedures are going to get rewritten.

(Not that I particularly care that those guys offed themselves, mind you.)

Stratergy

The Political Strategy for Iraq:

Iraq's new leader, Nouri al-Maliki, has written a piece for the Washington Post. He explains to Americans, and anyone else who cares to read it, the agenda for his new government. I wish him the best of luck with it.

Zarqawi

Memento Mori:

Successes in counterinsurgency are hard to come by. It took months and months to capture Saddam, who for so long seemed invisible to our best intelligence and finest troops. Then, one day, he was dragged out of a septic tank, rank and ragged.

Today is another such day. Follow the link, and read CENTCOM's official announcement.

First, congratulations, CENTCOM.

Second, notice that it was the Iraqi Police who were first in on the ground here. Even in such a sensitive operation, CENTCOM trusted them to secure the area. That says a lot about how far they've come. General Casey said, "Iraqi forces, supported by the Coalition, will continue to hunt terrorists that threaten the Iraqi people until terrorism is eradicated in Iraq." That is not just rhetoric. The Iraqi forces were the first in.

Also read this, from Greyhawk. Even al Anbar province is coming under Iraqi government control.

Third, there are some important comments by Rumsfeld and Hayden on the subject.

It's days like this when it becomes easier than ever to visualize what victory will look like. Everything is coming together, even though there are foes who continue to fight against us. The wicked cannot hide forever. The brave men of Iraq are standing up and taking increasing control of their domain. We shall win.

UPDATE: MilBlogs has a whole lot more, including posts on "roll up" operations being conducted in rapid succession this morning, the finalization of Iraq's ministries, and more.

Creed

A Creed:

JarHeadDad, in the comments to a post a Milblogs, pointed to the difficulties of the war for the families and the fighters. He then said something I thought you should probably all read.

It all boils down to belief I guess.

I believe the mission is golden.
I believe the American military is the finest fighting force the planet has ever seen.
I believe the level of honor and integrity of our warfighters has never been seen in history.
I believe Gen Mattis should be seen in history standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Chesty Puller.
I believe Gen Hagee is one hellova' Marine.
I believe politics have invaded every nuance of warfighting.
I believe half this country is made up of spoiled self-righteous pantywaists.
I believe the squad leaders on the ground hold the key to beating an insurgency.
I believe the current ROE were made up by people afraid of votes.
I believe each and every young man and woman in this military is the finest America has to offer.
I believe each and every warfighter deserves the benefit of the doubt.
I believe we are asking of our young men and women something that has never been asked of them before. For better or worse.
I believe in our abilty but not our will.
I believe in our honor regardless of the actions we are required to make.
I believe we are fighting a war on evil with one hand tied behind our backs.
I believe you cannot support the troops without supporting the mission.
I believe we better ALL figure out what side we are on or it will be too late.
I believe our government has run amuck in all directions.
I believe it is time to vote each and every member of Congress out on their collective butts.
I believe it is time for a third party.

I think I agree with almost every word of that.

Zeps

The Zeppelin Returns:

So says The Scotsman. I've been expecting this for some years -- I think there's a market for "cruise ship" style Zeppelins that would "sail" across country, either in the US or Europe. That's not what they're using them for in Africa, though.

H/t Eric's "FARK" page.

DDay

D-Day:

Blackfive is running an excellent roundup on D-Day memorials. Today is the anniversary.

A few for the blog roll:

I've been meaning to ask Grim to add these.

Memorandum: Find out what everybody in the blogosphere is talking about. I check this everyday now. It is very, very curious to see who is commenting on what.

Protein Wisdom: Jeff Goldstein is a smart ass. But he's an entertaining and thoughtful smart ass. The comments are often "Internet Performance Art".

Flares into Darkness: An intriguing group blog. Always worth a look.

Mystery Pollster: This guy is smart.

FARK: News of the wierd, mostly. Florida has its own category. Sarcastic commentary galore. Sometimes it's even deserved.

Priorities matter.

Confederate Yankee pretty much sums it up:

"Mr. President, if you really think I care about gay marriage right now, you’re out of your ever-lovin’ mind."

Jeebus.

What the hell is he thinking?

Back

Back Out of the Saddle:

We made it to Georgia. I can report that the boy loves to camp. No surprises there.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a long road and a slow, but it's well-worth it if you find yourself with a few days. We camped in the George Washington Forest the first night, the Pisgah Forest the second night, and traveled the full length of the Shenandoah National Park as well. We've now driven on every inch of the Blue Ridge Parkway except a few feet near Roanoke, and a few miles right at the end -- we turned off and went down into the Cherokee Border Lands instead of heading into the GSM National Park.

The military did, in fact, get its act together and get the contract paperwork sorted out while I was camping. Well, for the twenty-day extension. Not for the "real" contract, which is still in the no-word-about-it department.

So, all is well. Hope you've had a pleasant few days.

The Worm Turns

Does this mean we now need affirmative action for men?

Women now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate -- from biology to business -- and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine and other advanced degrees.

Federal statistics released Thursday show that in many ways, the gender gap among college students is widening. The story is largely one of progress for women, stagnation for men.

"Women have been making educational progress, and the men are stuck," he said. "They haven't just fallen behind women. They have fallen behind changes in the job market.".

Does It Hurt To Be This Stupid?

Who was it who once said it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt?

Top ten signs you should not be allowed to wade into the gene pool:

1. You passed your 40th birthday without acquiring enough common sense to realize that birth control only works if you use it all the time:

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we're starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

...and your husband failed to use a condom. And you both failed the impulse-control test. Big time.

2. You compound your initial error in judgment with further acts of blithering stupidity:

The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy -- but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. As we're both in our forties, my husband and I had considered our family complete, and we weren't planning to have another child, which is why, as a rule, we use contraception. I wanted to make sure that our momentary lapse didn't result in a pregnancy.

In other words, you wanted to preserve the delicious thrill that comes from taking risks, while absolving yourself of the messy consequences that so often result. Doubtless this explains why, though you were sure you wanted no more children, you didn't have a tubal ligation as I did at 23 when it became obvious my husband wanted no more children. I'm sure this must also be why your husband didn't have a vasectomy.

3. Last time I checked, hope was not an effective family planning strategy:

The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend -- and the end of the 72-hour window -- was approaching.

But I needed to meet my kids' school bus and, as I was pretty much out of options -- short of soliciting random Virginia doctors out of the phone book -- I figured I'd take my chances and hope for the best.

Hmmm... have an unwanted abortion, or miss the kids' school bus one day? It's the choices in life that kill you. And after that, the rest of the day was completely shot. Letting your fingers do the walking is so time-consuming.

4. And they say denial is a river in Egypt:

Weeks later, the two drugstore pregnancy tests I took told a different story. Positive. I couldn't believe it.

5. I've always heard it said the best defense is a good offense. Don't get mad. Just blame someone else:

I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.

Perhaps if you find the idea of having an abortion so upsetting, you should have thought ahead. This is what adults do:

In most states, the morning-after pill is available only by prescription. Also, it is important to note that some pharmacies may not stock the medication. Because the pill works best when taken quickly after unprotected intercourse, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists encourages women to get an advance prescription — to have on hand, just in case.

6. And once again, a self-absorbed woman who can't be relied upon to take responsibility for her own reproductive destiny is pissed because the law wants to protect underaged girls... such as, perhaps one day, her own daughter:

My anger propelled me to get to the bottom of the story. It turns out that in December 2003, an FDA advisory committee, whose suggestions the agency usually follows, recommended that the drug be made available over the counter, or without a prescription. Nonetheless, in May 2004, the FDA top brass overruled the advisory panel and gave the thumbs-down to over-the-counter sales of Plan B, requesting more data on how girls younger than 16 could use it safely without a doctor's supervision.

Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern -- valid or not -- wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

The truth of the matter is that the FDA was concerned about the medical effects of unsupervised, repeated use of Plan B by young girls who might misuse the drug. They were also worried because there have been no clinical trials on adolescents:

Advocates argue that women know better than to use the morning-after pill often, so there is no risk of over-use of this high-dose drug. Yet, in the label comprehension study submitted by Barr Labs to the FDA, a full one-third of adult women who read the instructions for Plan B did not understand that the morning-after pill is not to be used as a regular form of birth control. The number increased among those with low literacy and less than high school education. Over one-third did not understand the need to take the second pill at 12 hours after the first.6 The chairman of the FDA Advisory Committee that reviewed the comprehension study called it an “overall failure.”7 The maximum safe dose for levornorgestrel (the active ingredient in Plan B) has not been determined by scientific study, or the effects of overdose.8 It is unknown whether there is a maximum safe daily dose, monthly dose or yearly dose. The health risks for those who may use Plan B repeatedly (ranging in age from menarche—as young as 9—to women in their 50s) at one time or over years are unknown.

While advocates brush away concern over repeated use, stating that women will use it only in “emergencies,” experience shows that, when easily available, the morning-after pill is relied upon often. In fact, promoters of the morning-after pill describe “emergencies” as suspected contraceptive failure or “any time unprotected sexual intercourse occurs.”9 Repeat use is only discouraged based on its insufficient efficacy as a birth control method, not due to safety concerns.10 Dr. Ben-Maimon of Barr testified at an FDA Advisory Committee hearing: “Well, I think that there is no question that the data suggests that women who have emergency contraception use it more frequently.”11

I suppose it is understandable that a 42 year-old mother of two who hasn't figured out how to prevent conception, get an advance prescription, or use the Yellow Pages in a time-sensitive situation might not possess the critical thinking skills to see how children might fail to exercise good judgment if OTC morning after pills were available. Birth control pills are not dispensed except by prescription and under a doctor's supervision, yet a high-dose birth control pill is supposed to be available OTC to anyone - even children - who wants to buy it.

No problem - you have needs too. The hell with worrying about what a frightened or irresponsible child or a marginally literate woman might do to her own health. It's more important to protect affluent adults from the inconvenience of having to deal with their own irresponsibility.

7.

To this day, I don't know why my doctors wouldn't prescribe Plan B -- whether it was because of moral opposition to contraception or out of fear of political protesters or just because they preferred not to go there.

In any event, they were also partly responsible for why I was stuck that Friday, and why I was ultimately forced to confront the decision to terminate my third pregnancy.

To this day, apparently you still have not figured out that it was a combination of your own cluelessness beforehand and laziness afterwards that caused your predicament.

8.

Calling doctors, I felt like a pariah when I asked whether they provided termination services. Finally, I decided to check the Planned Parenthood Web site to see whether its clinics performed abortions. They did, but I learned that if I had the abortion in Virginia, the procedure would take two days because of a mandatory 24-hour waiting period, which requires that you go in first for a day of counseling and then wait a day to think things over before returning to have the abortion. Because of work and the children, I couldn't afford two days off, so I opted to have the procedure done on a Saturday in downtown D.C. while my husband took the kids to the Smithsonian.

Ending a human life can be so inconvenient. Embarrassing too. Interesting how "the procedure" became "termination services" when you were shopping for doctors (something you didn't have time to do on Friday when it mattered) and "abortion" when you called Planned Parenthood.

9. ...and worst of all, they treated me just like some clueless teenager who'd been knocked up by her baby-daddy:

I arrived shortly before 10 a.m. in a bleak downpour, trusting that someone had recorded my appointment. I shuffled to the front door through a phalanx of umbrellaed protesters, who chanted loudly about Jesus and chided me not to go into that house of abortion.

All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn't been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn't even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.

After passing through the metal detector inside the building, I entered the Planned Parenthood waiting room; it was like the waiting room for a budget airline -- crammed full of people, of all races, and getting busier by the moment. I was by far the oldest person there (other than one girl's mom). The wait seemed endless. No one looked happy.

10. But every cloud has a silver lining. If all else fails, simply blame the BushReich:

The procedure itself took about five minutes. I finally walked out of the building at 4:30, 6 1/2 hours after I had arrived.

It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.

They prevented you from getting an advance prescription as recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists?

The White House prevented you from discussing this in advance with your doctor?

The President's religion prevented you using birth control in the first place, or from having your own "Plan B" in case it failed? Perhaps it broke your dial-y finger so you couldn't contact another doctor that Friday? Oh yeah. The school bus was coming.

If only it had been the Clue Bus.

cross-posted at VC

I'm going to kick around a couple things I noticed from Situational Awareness recently but haven't posted about.

The first is this post entitled "Was Tarawa necessary?" I'm not really going to debate that issue, (feel free to, though, in the comments) but rather the last paragraph caught my eye:

"...My interest is in examining the expectations of how the assault would go versus how it really went down. Tarawa happened early enough in the Pacific War as to be an "initial encounter" for a particular type of operation: the opposed beach landing against an island. The casualties it produced were shocking at the time, even by WW2 standards. There was outrage in the US, and calls for Nimitz's resignation. Sound familiar?"

Not to bring up those retired Generals' carping again, but gee-wiz, what were they really expecting? Perfection? A plan that worked flawlessly? C'mon. In the end, as the saying goes, hindsight is 20-20, and the decisions made by the US in Iraq are going to be fodder for debate for longer than anybody reading this will be alive.

The second is this post about "An Army of One"

"As societies the world over come to value the individual, military systems have been evolving to follow suit. In Western-oriented armed forces, casualty management is not good enough: The goal of many current battlefield tactics and supporting technologies is casualty avoidance. The evolution of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; battlefield networks; stand-off, precision fires; and electronic warfare are all examples of how modern militaries exploit the skill and value the life of each individual warfighter. Every friendly casualty is viewed as a failure on some level. Some see this as a weakness. I see it as a strength, one that is entirely consistent with the relationship between a society and its military.

It must be frustrating - and maybe quietly terrifying - to face an enemy who expends money rather than lives to kill you."

This idea isn't entirely new, as the cartoonist Bill Mauldin made a similar observation in his book "Up Front" about the US Army in Europe in WWII, willing to expend munitions instead of men.

But it is definitely more necessary these days. No longer, it seems, are people willing to be conscripted to fight. Therefore, militaries are going to depend on those willing to serve, (for whatever reason), and this 'warrior class' (or whatever you want to call it) cannot be 'bled white' or suffer undue (or maybe any) attrition.

Jumping out of perfectly good airplanes always seemed to me to be somehow wrong.

However, this might change my mind.

"A new military parachute system which fits wings on soldiers could enable them to travel to 200 kilometres (124 miles) after jumping, Jane's Defence Weekly defence magazine said Friday."

I can't see it working with like, a battalion of paratroopers though. Can you imagine the confusion that would ensue?

But I could see SF types using something like this. I say mount missles on it too.

HT:Fark

Window Contractor

A Window into the Life of a Contractor:

Most readers know by now that I work on contract for the DOD. For the last three years, I've been working on a contract that has operated on "extensions" from the original contract, which ended (I gather) three years ago. The military decided not to renew it at that time, but rather to do a full competition process for a five-year contract. That was, as I mentioned, three years ago.

Since then, we've operated on one last-minute extension after another. This is because "the contract" was always coming through -- just two more weeks, DOD says. Ok, we need another month. Well, the holidays are coming up -- we'll make this one a two-month extension. Actually, we've decided to rethink who will be in front of this process -- six months. We've made the decisions, but we just couldn't get the paperwork done. Thirty days. Ok, another thirty. Maybe we should rethink the RFP -- let's give you another six months.

Etc.

Today, at midnight, it will be six months from the last six month extension. I am told that the contract is "almost finished!", but in fact not finished; so, to make sure this work doesn't go on hold, they wanted to give us a twenty-day extension.

As of close of business, they... er... hadn't finished the paperwork. But it's no problem, almost done, we'll surely get it tomorrow.

I love the military.

Anyway, I'm unemployed as of Midnight Romeo. Talking about government efficiency, by the way -- another government agency, which shall remain unnamed but with which I work through the military contract, cut off my access to their computer systems yesterday at midnight. No problem if y'all can't read a calendar: just remember that childhood ditty, "Thirty days hath May." Right.

So, I'm going on a brief vacation -- first one I've had in quite a little while. I've seasoned my camp dutch oven and grill, packed up my kit, and off I go for a few days on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the mountains thereby. Be back online by Sunday, or thereabouts, when I'll be blogging from the Great State of Georgia. I'd say, "I should be under contract again by then," but we'll just have to see.

Gentleman co-bloggers (and Cassidy, if she's a mind), feel free to entertain yourselves. You have the run of the hall.

Names of Campaigns

Names of Movements:

John Derbyshire wrote, a while ago now:

The Santorum business brought to the fore an outfit called "The Human Rights Campaign." You would never know from its name that this is a homosexualist lobbying organization. I have no problem with HRC's existence — homosexuals have as much right to organize and lobby as the rest of us — but I do have a problem with that name — viz., it's dishonest. The name of an organization ought to give some clue as to what the organization is for. Why don't they call themselves "The Homosexual Rights Campaign," or "The Campaign for Tolerance of Alternative Sexuality," or something like that? If they want to be a little more in-your-face, they could go for something with a defiant or humorous twist: "The Sodomite Sodality," perhaps. Don't they understand that this straining at bland respectability just makes them look shifty?

Readers, I have decided to launch a movement for the legalization of dog meat as a marketable foodstuff. My movement will be named: "The Campaign for Truth, Justice, Harmony and Peace." Everyone OK with that?

As to which, Southern Appeal kindly points us to this story:

Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage.

The Charity, Freedom and Diversity party said on its Web site it would be officially registered Wednesday, proclaiming: "We are going to shake The Hague awake!"

I'd lampoon it, but it's been done three years in advance. Thanks, Derb.

Marines = Doctors

Marines = Doctors:

That's the lesson I'm forced to draw from Doc Russia's first post since becoming a doctor. It's a list of twenty-one lessons (or twenty-two) that he got in Med School which were the same as the lessons he learned in the Corps.

Number three is my favorite.

Don't mess with Marines.

Especially one who puts the lie to the old saying about bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Yowza.

Memorial Day II

A Memorial Day Wish (For Good):

I want to wish everyone a fine, reflective Memorial Day. I encourage you to visit MilBlogs and BlackFive to enjoy the tributes there.

As for me -- I'm working today. :) So, my Memorial Day tribute will be to do my duty as a contractor, in service to the men in the field. My respects to them all, and those who have gone before.

A Memorial Day

A Memorial Day Wish (For Ill):

Deuddersun came by in the comments below to warn us about an anti-Marine Corps site, posing as a tribute. Be warned.

Grim,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news on Memorial Day, but so be it. I recently visited my blog and while checking out my referrers (from my counter) I came across a url that begins with http://blog.myspace.com/index.cf...g.view&friend...

Following that link led me to a blog on mypace that appears to be a tribute to the Marine Corps. Every sentence or gif is linked to a site involved with, in some way, the Corps, whether they be Left or Right. Each link refers to one of our sites, yours, mine, Mike the Marines, fox news, even the Corps own official site. Each link also contains a nasty virus or worm. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent cleaning my machine. I notified myspace asap and threeatened legal action if they didn't remove the blog immediately. The sick bastard who built that site is neither Left nor Right, he/she just hates Marines. I suggest you check your own list of referrers, but DO NOT click on any link starting with the url I posted above. Just going to the site releases a nasty worm called Byte-Verify/execute. I don't know what else to do, but I do know that anyone visiting this site will be directed to ours and susequently infected. I have notified the Corps and sent them the entire url with a warning not to open it unless they can handle the havoc it unleashes. Likewise I will notify Mike the Marine.

It turns my stomach that some piece of shit would do this on Memorial Day. If you or any of your readers know of any other way to deal with this, please let me know. I'm not blogging much these days, too busy working, but my email works and comments can be left at my site under my last post.

I am sorry to have to make you aware of this on Memorial Day.

Best to you and yours. As always, I remain

Semper Fidelis

Always Faithfull

d.

Be warned. I suspect that the Marines will be the subject of more such in the near future. We should be on guard.

John of Arrgh! over at Milblogs points to a post by Tigerhawk that is spot on.

Confront your shame and honor the heroes

The following articulates something I've sensed out of a lot of people over the past few years, and even 20 years ago when I enlisted.

There is something deeper, though. I think we resent the all-volunteer military. It is a constant rebuke to those of us who might have done more for our country, but decided not to. When the heroes are draftees, we can honor them for having risen above the misfortune of their low draft number. They lost the lottery, and still they thrived. The draftee is not different from us in the choices he made, he simply made the most of his bad fortune. We imagine we might have risen to the same challenge.

When our soldiers are volunteers, however, many of us are both mystified by the decision that they made and embarrassed that we did not make the same decision. We are ashamed by their heroism, because it reminds us of our own self-indulgence. We then compound the insult by not recognizing our own weakness and honoring the heroes in spite of it.

People do what they do for their own reasons, of course. It may not be weakness or self-indulgence. But then it just might be those things too.

Update: I confused Tigerhawk with Iowahawk. All fixed now.

WTF, over?

Is this for real?

The Respect MP George Galloway has said it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to murder Tony Blair.

I just don't have words vile enough to describe this sort of behavior.

Expectations

"Expectations"

Soldier's Dad at MilBlogs has a short but outstanding post on what things were like in what are now the world's trouble spots when he was a soldier.

We are all confident that America's fighting forces are good, and on balance bring good to wherever they go. I've rarely seen it so concisely demonstrated, however. There is a chain of events in the region starting with the collapse of the USSR and leading through the Gulf War, 9/11, and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A great deal of the extraordinary positive change has been brought about by US involvement. It's easy, in the daily noise of our enemies and the negative press, to forget just how far we have come in a generation.

Hummingbirds

A New Hummingbird:

Purely a link for nature-lovers. My mother, believe it or not, sends. ("Why even Father Lonergan had a mother." "What'd you expect?!?")

Birth of a hummingbird. Be sure to click "Next Page" as you watch it.

Congress Gone

Turn Them Out:

I'll buy some of these, too. What a disgrace. Is there a good way to turn out every single member of Congress, without electing anyone else to take their place?

On Dogs

On Dogs:

I talked to Sovay a bit ago. She was complaining about James Dobson (sp?), whom she says is among the most important people in America.

"He said he had a dachshund pup who was sleeping by a warm radiator," she told me, "and he'd told the dog to move. But it was 'defiant,' so he picked up a switch and whipped it for an hour."

I'm not sure who this Dobson fellow is, but I hope he never comes down Georgia way if that story is true. Doing violence to a dog where I come from is the sort of offense that will get you in serious trouble.

Sovay was telling me about going to the dog park -- this is a nifty idea they have in Maryland that we should do more in various places, where you have in a public park a fenced-off section where the community's dogs can get together and run and play -- and a guy thought his dog was being knocked around by another. So he walked up to the other fellow's dog, picked it up, and threw it through the air.

"We all just left," she said. "He hasn't been back. Nobody was willing to deal with him after that."

I told her that, where I came from, if you picked up a man's dog and threw him through the air, you'd probably get yourself shot.

Sovay said she wouldn't murder anyone over such a thing.

"Not murder," I replied. "Where I come from, dogs are a part of the family."

Well, I suppose what matters in the end is that you achieve a common peace. If people understand the rules and abide by them, most of the time, I guess you've got what counts out of civilization.

All the same, I like our way better. You pick my dog or my child and throw him through the air, you'd best have your insurance paid.

But that's probably just me. I still think we should re-legalize duels.

Heroic Flags

Get Some, Russ:

We'd be better off if more folks thought like this:

Arriving early for my flight, I found myself grumpily grumbling about the hassle of airline security and as I struggled to get my metal-studded western belt back through those damned harder-to-reach loops and pull my boots back on, the thought blossomed in my brain momentarily, that given the opportunity, I would gladly don the uniform once again and join the mission to seek out and take out some of the terrorist bastards who were causing me this too early-in-the-day aggravation. As I proceeded down the concourse, I indulged myself with the thought of laying the sight blade of an automatic weapon on some Muj and sending his raggedy butt smoking off to Paradise for causing me to be sent through all this airport security: not exactly a balanced trade-off, I know, but hey, they started it.

In response to Steve Schippert's excellent piece on fighting and politics, "Clint" wrote in to say:

While you may believe that the country has changed, the truth is that as the world becomes smaller, our perspective has become more broad. No longer are we restricted to the one-sided, self-preservating view of the world that you seem to admire.

Damn right I admire it. The alternative to the 'self-preservating' view used to be called "suicide."

It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront.

Every man is born to a flag. He ought to defend it, if it is a good flag; or destroy it, if it is a bad one. This business that 'we must understand that our flag isn't better than any other' is nonsense. It is our business to make it better than any other, or to rend it out of the world. That is the heroic life.

Leftists

On Gullible Leftists:

Greyhawk has some theories.

Why MacBeth

Why Did Jessie MacBeth Do It?

Blackfive, reaching out to try and understand a troubled young man.

There must be a word in Latin

There Must Be A Word in Latin:

Perhaps our Eric Blair can help us sort out the puzzle that Mark Steyn lays before us:

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, in a quintessentially McCainiac contribution to the debate, angrily denied the Senate legislation was an "amnesty." ... He has a point. Technically, an "amnesty" only involves pardoning a person for a crime rather than, as this moderate compromise legislation does, pardoning him for a crime and also giving him a cash bonus for committing it. In fact, having skimmed my Webster's, I can't seem to find a word that does cover what the Senate is proposing, it having never previously occurred to any other society in the course of human history.

I think it occurred to Vortigern. I'm not sure, however, just what he called his policy of providing bonuses to Saxons who would "do the work Britons do not wish to do."

Bird Flu

Bird Flu:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says to make sure your will is up to date. On the other hand, Doc Russia says it's just a good time to check your emergency supplies. Both -- as of this weekend -- are medical doctors (Congrats, Doc!).

By coincidence, Kim du Toit has reposted his grab-and-go bag advice. And here's Doc's, on a first aid kit for lifesaving.

I am, myself, unconcerned with such things as living and dying. I have a son -- so long as he lives on after me, good enough. Still, I supply this information as a service to the readers.

GHMC: P-Wagon disc

Grim's Hall Movie Club: Paint Your Wagon

There is, in retrospect, way too much to talk about with this movie. Anything you folks want to discuss, I'll be more than happy.

I'm just going to go into one aspect of the film: the way that the prophecy comes to pass, and what it says about the film's ideas on sin and virtue.

This is a question worth considering, because the film is steeped to a surprising degree in Christian ethics. It assumes an audience -- 1968 was almost the last time you could assume it -- that is equally familiar with the details of Christian ethics, and that will share the farmer wife's shock at the idea of a woman having a husband whose name she did not share. In addition, at the end the film resolves all the moral issues it raises in favor of the accepted mainstream Christian ethics of the day. In other words, it's not poking fun at Christianity. It's taking it quite seriously. Christianity isn't the joke: Christianity is the context that makes all the movie's jokes funny.

No-Name City's doom is foretold by the Parson, shortly after his arrival. He sees all the departures from mainstream Christian virtue (to name a few: polyandry, drunkeness in the streets, prostitution, gambling, Sabbath-breaking, etc). He arrives on the veranda of Ezra Atwell's hotel and gives his prophecy:

No-Name City!
No-Name City!
The Lord don't like it here!

No-Name City!
No-Name City!
You're reckoning day is near!

No-Name City!
No-Name City!
Here's what he's gonna do:

Swallow up this town,
And gobble it down,
And good-bye to you!

That is, of course, precisely what happens.

However, the first person to "sink into the pit!" is the Parson himself (although he finds Ben Rumson there to greet him -- "Welcome to hell!"). The two men have to escape from the bull while the city collapses around them, and the prophecy is re-sung with enthusiasm. The Parson's eventual fate is not shown -- he is last seen in a collapsing building -- but Ben Rumson escapes the chaos, afloat in a bathtub with one of the ladies of the evening.

Why would the Parson suffer a worse fate than Ben Rumson, who is among the chief sinners ("Go pray outside, Parson, where the Lord can hear you better")? There's nothing to indicate that the Parson is a hypocrite, which is the usual crime of religious figures in movies. He really seems to believe all the things he says. He really acts on the beliefs. He has the gift of prophecy; the Lord does indeed, in the film, carry out his threats.

It seems to be the case that the Parson is just damned annoying in his certainty.

That is to say, he is possessed of the sin of Pride. This is (so the Medievals thought) the worst of the deadly sins. Ben Rumson is without pride: he covets his own wife, but not so much that he won't share her with another husband. He loves to drink and fight and gamble, but he is wholly honest about the fact that he is a sinner -- his early conversation with Pardner lays out his sins as honestly as could be desired by the Biblical admonition to "confess yourselves to one another."

The Parson is virtuous, but sure of his virtue; and Ben Rumson is sinful, but honest about his sins ("A man has his creed; and mine is all greed," he sings, although in fact he's most generous with Pardner at every point). He does have some virtues -- he works hard, he faithfully keeps his bargains with Pardner and his wife. He honors the contract of marriage (according to his own understanding of it as "mining law") and also his proposed terms of partnership.

Is that why?

Or, alternatively, is it a restatement of the problem of the Book of Job: that virtuous living is no guarantee of success in this world? That suffering belongs to all men, even the best men, and that success or punishment in worldly affairs is not proof of the Lord's favor or disfavor in a larger sense?

Just like the Book of Job, the movie ends on a contradictory note. Rumson rides off into loneliness and the certainty of despair (his occasional "melancholy," as he calls it, he says is "a disease common among mountain men" -- as I can attest myself). Pardner, the best man in terms of traditional ethics, gets all the rewards, just as Job finds at the last that he is given rewards to more than make up for all his suffering.

The movie, if it is echoing Job, echoes it very well. We must not expect virtue to be rewarded and vice punished; and yet, virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. Yet there is no sense of hate or disdain for the honest sinner: Ben Rumson rides off, "pushing on to another wilderness," beloved by all he leaves behind.

Yeah, it's a grand, rollicking comedy. At times it celebrates vice and sin gleefully. Yet it presents us with a picture of genuinely moral men, within the real confines of human limitations. There's not an evil character in the entire film: not though they kidnap, brawl, booze, wench, steal, and eventually witness the divine destruction of their city.

HAHAHA

HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH! Good one, China!

From Chinese Aggression Watch:

China has no covert agents in the United States trying to buy military gear on its behalf, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

"The so-called allegations that China is conducting intelligence collection on military or science and technology in the United States are purely fictitious," spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular news conference.

Oh, that's beautiful! I'm wiping the free-running tears from my eyes, I'm laughing so hard. Outstanding joke! Well done!