Military – Page 9 – The Daily Brief

The Ongoing Quest for Meaningful Employment: Pt 1

10. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Military

This last Friday, at the workforce commission office, I asked the veteran’s counselor for an honest answer: “What does veteran status, really, really get you, as a potential employee?”
To which he replied,
“You get a preference with the state or the federal government. Other than that, all it means, is you get to see a counselor ahead of all those people out there.”

Which kind of confirmed the impression I already had, from my last three or four adventures in job-hunting— that all those glossy, uplifting TV spots we used to air on AFRTS about employers looking on us veterans with special favor— are pretty much a crock. Unless the business is owned by a veteran, or there are enough other veterans already employed to tilt corporate perceptions favorably, you are pretty much judged on the strength— or lack of it— on your resume. I only ever walked into one job, and was hired on the spot because of status as a veteran— and that job was a once-a-week gig, walking around the neighborhood next to mine, putting a local give-away newspaper on the front stoop of every house. Good exercise, but paid f**k-all. It was one of the four simultaneous part-time jobs that I held down just after retiring: the other three included up-scale retail sales, fill-in shifts at local public radio, and entering catalog data for company that sold classical music CDs. I also had some voice-over jobs; one day I walked into my bank with five paychecks, and the teller looked at me and said, “Lady, is there a place in this town where you don’t work?”

The catalogue job was the mainstay; fairly well paying, and the bennies included the pick of freebie CD releases brought around regularly by the distributors, but it didn’t last long enough to be included on my resume. The owners relocated, out of state and took only the office manager with them— all the rest of us readjusted our priorities in about fifteen minutes flat. The office manager lamented that the only reason we all seemed to show up was to use the fax machine to send out resumes, and our breaks and lunch hours to do interviews.

It took three weeks for me to find something else, but I wound up hating that job, the owner of the company, the working conditions, the owner of the company, my cubicle, the working conditions, the irregularity of bonuses, the owner of the company, the way I left every evening at five PM with a stress headache… oh, and I hated the owner of the company. Very little in life so far has given me the equal of the pleasure of giving my notice to him. I should have done so before and often…he was most marvelously civil to me for the last week. A year later I had to contact them again, regarding an IRA they had set up for employees… I discovered that in the space of a year I had been replaced three times over. (I had lasted two and a half years, the last year of it plotting my escape, like a prisoner in Colditz.)

That escape brought me to the job that has— like the catalogue job— just quit me. It is now just about history, although my salary is generously paid (and with luck, the checks will not bounce!) to the end of August. The office doors closed in the middle of June, and I went to working from home on getting the last bits of work done for clients. There are only two of them left with uncompleted work. I am waiting for them to do their part— when they finally come across with it, it will just be a bit of computer time, an-email to the printer, and a quick meeting at the management office which is very kindly letting me use their conference room for this purpose. My focus in the last two or three weeks has turned to my next bit of gainful employment which I pray will be… remunerative, interesting, and a twenty-minute commute away. (Thirty minutes, tops) Congenial surroundings, sensible bosses and co-workers who are not barking-at-the-moon nuts would be nice. Internet access would also be nice, but not essential.

This has been a very discouraging week. I had three very pleasant interviews late in June: one of which was for a job I would have liked very much; it was for a nice, up-and-coming enterprise newly come to San Antonio, which offered a good salary and benefits… alas, as it turns out, the company is transferring in one of their current employees for that position. This happens a lot, in San Antonio; it’s almost axiomatic that any really nice, plum jobs probably won’t go out locally. Having a story about the company, their new facility and their ambitious plans for the local market published on Friday in the local paper did not make me feel much better about it all. Thanks for the salt and the assurance to keep the resume on file. I had a file of old resumes in my desk at the old job. We never had call to look at them again, and they went into the big rolling canvas trash bin three weeks ago.

The second interview was… well, I liked the look of the place, and I would have enjoyed the work— I think!— but I didn’t feel good about how far out in the country it was. Given any sort of choice, I would have turned it down, regretfully, but they beat me to that. There are parties you don’t mind dumping, but you really feel offended at being dumped by…They sent me a letter thanking me for my trouble, but they were hiring someone else. They would, however, keep my resume on file. The third interview was a temp service, they think they can place me someplace; they’ll call me when they can set up an interview.

The only call I got last week, aside from strictly personal, was some asshole wanting to sell me a TV satellite service, and no, I am not in a very good mood, even if my salary is paid until the end of August, and I have spent three hours— like I have for the last couple of Sundays— answering various newspaper and on-line want-ads and filling out an assortment of on-line applications.

A New Coast Guard Fleet?

06. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Military

This from Mimi Hall at USA Today:

WASHINGTON — The Coast Guard’s ships, planes and helicopters are breaking down at record rates, which may threaten the service’s ability to carry out its post-9/11 mission of protecting ports and waterways against terrorism.

Key members of Congress, maritime security experts and a former top Homeland Security Department official say that the fleet is failing and that plans to replace the Coast Guard’s 88 aging cutters and 186 aircraft over the next 20 years should be accelerated.

“This nation must understand the dire situation in which the Coast Guard now finds itself,” says Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, chairwoman of a Senate Coast Guard subcommittee. She favors replacing the Coast Guard’s “deepwater” fleet — the ships and aircraft capable of operating far offshore — over 10 to 15 years.

4th of July: Helping Our Heroes

04. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Home Front, Military

Daily Brief reader Emily Cochran writes “We have just launched a fundraising campaign to pull in $40,000 to meet recent requests for emergency cash grants from families of the wounded troops at Walter Reed …. we’re a non profit 501c3, have minimal overhead (it’s all donated), no paid staff, all of our money reaches our heroes….”

More here.

Here He Comes Again!

27. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Military

Yes, my favorite human piniata, of whom I wrote earlier
“I think they should keep him; for the sheer amusement value. Professor Churchill has inestimable value as the bulls-eye for metaphoric target practice; chained to the academic stocks as it were, focus for scorn, derision, for deconstruction of his fraudulent scholarship, vilely insulting writings and speeches, his questionable status as a “native American”, extremely thin academic qualifications, bullying demeanor, and general fuckwittedness. There is just so much good materiel to work with; we could go on laughing at him for years, picking him up in the intervals between bigger and more transient matters for a little more thrashing, much like my cats derive hours of amusement and exercise from batting around palmetto bugs. I’d rather go back and thrash him every once in a while for practice, than have him all over the media being a martyr.”

According to this, it seems that he would like to encourage the conscripted troops to “frag” their officers. No one seems to have pointed out to the dear professor that the forces have been all-volunteer for simply decades. I know that it is an axiom that the military is always fighting the last war, but it looks like the anti-warriors are fighting the one before that….

(PS— Courtesy of Rantburg the source for all things bizarre)

“Bringing Down The War Machine”

16. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Military

Gmash at Indepundit has a great essay on the counter-recruiters:

Sadly, these activists are only working to slow down the process of lifting the planet’s suffering masses out of the bitter cycle of poverty, famine, disease, and perpetual warfare. In this, they share much common ground with the terrorists who attacked our nation on September 11, 2001. It’s no coincidence that al-Qaeda selected the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as their primary targets — they are the very centers of American economic and military power that threaten to transform their world.

But after 9/11, America responded by pursuing an even more aggressive strategy of toppling backward regimes and encouraging democratic and economic reforms around the world. The radicals now realized that their only chance to halt this process was to somehow hobble the U.S. Military.

Searching for a “chink” in the armor of this military Leviathan, they looked back to their experience during the Vietnam conflict, when popular opposition at home was able to “bring down the American War Machine.” The driving force behind this opposition was the fear of involuntary conscription, or the military draft. But how does one cultivate such fear when the military is an all-volunteer force?

The answer was obvious: they had to make young people fear the return of the draft. They started a massive disinformation campaign, attempting to whip up fear that the Selective Service Administration was preparing for a new military draft. They even pointed to a bill languishing in a Congressional committee that called for mandatory military service for men and women.

The campaign fizzled. The bill was quickly brought to a vote, and soundly defeated. Legislators assured their constituents that they would not support a return of the draft.

Now they’ve decided to go directly after the military recruiters. They’re trying to keep the recruiters off campus, and failing that, scare the kids from talking to them. They’ve even gone so far as to picket and vandalize military recruiting centers.

Read the whole thing. Smash has launched a counter-counter-recruiting effort, which some of us might consider duplicating. I support these idiots’ right to say whatever they like, including, sadly, disinformation. But as for more “active” measures, prosecution is in order. And I would hope the charges are far more serious than vandalism – sedition comes to mind.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

Pvt. Pimentel: Looking Over My Shoulder, Always

13. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Military

(Part 2 of 2)
The question was raised, that the American response to 9/11 has made Americans overseas very much less safe. But I contend that we were never very safe, before, even though American tourists, even the ones venturing into far places like Kashmir and Yemen could assure themselves confidently that they were, between 1970 and 2000. The occasional hijack, or airline bombing, well all that was just a sad case of being in the wrong place, or on the wrong flight at the wrong time. American military and state department employees could never, ever draw that cosy illusion around themselves like a fluffy comforter, thanks to the constant trickle of incidents such as this:

Item: 19 June 1985. Four off-duty Marines assigned to the American Embassy in San Salvador are murdered by local terrorists, while sitting at a table at a sidewalk café. They were in civilian clothes at the time.

Item: 5 April 1986. An explosion at a nightclub in Berlin popular with American service personnel kills three and injures 191. Two of the dead and 41 of the wounded are service personnel. The Libyan government is held responsible.

Item: 5 September 1986. Abu Nidal terrorists hijack a Karachi/Frankfurt Pan Am flight, and divert it to Cypress, demanding the freedom for three convicted murderers in exchange for the lives of the passengers. They eventually kill 22 of them, including two Americans.

Item: 9 September-21 October 1986: Three American citizens, two of them associated with the American University in Beirut are kidnapped. Two of them are held for 5 years by Hisbollah.

Item: 20 October 1987. An Air Force NCO and a retiree are murdered just outside Clark AB, in the Philippines.

Item: 27 December 87. An American civilian employee is killed in the bombing of the USO Club in Barcelona, Spain.

Item: 17 February 1988: Colonel William Higgins, USMC, while serving as part of the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization in Lebanon, was abducted by Hisbollah. The US refused to negotiate, and Colonel Higgins was excecuted.

Item: 28 June 1988, a defense attaché to the American Embassy in Athens, US Navy Captain William Nordeen is murdered by the N-17 terrorist group, using a car bomb

Item: 21 December 1988. Pan American Flight 103, from Frankfurt to New York, was blown up over Scotland by agents of the government of Libya. Most of the 259 passengers are Americans. Another 11 people are killed on the ground.

Item: 21 April- 26 September 1989. An American army officer is assassinated in Manila, and two military retirees are murdered just outside the gates of Clark AB, the Philippines.

Item: 13 May 1990. Two young enlisted men are found murdered, outside Clark AB, the Philippines.

Item: 7-18 February 1991: Members of a far-leftist Turkish group kill an American civilian contractor at Incirlik AB, and wound an Air Force officer at his home in Izmir.

Item: 12 March 91: Air Force NCO, Ronald Stewart is killed by a car bomb in front of his house, in Athens, by the N-17 group.

Item: 28 October 1991. An American soldier is killed, and his wife wound by a car bomb at a joint Turkish-American base in Ankara. The Turkish Islamic Jihad claims responsibility. at October 28, 1991, Ankara, Turkey. Victor Marwick, an American soldier serving at the Turkish-American base, Tuslog, was killed and his wife wounded in a car bomb attack. Two more car bombs in Istanbul kill an Air Force NCO, and an Egyptian diplomat. The Turkish Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Item: 5 July 1992. In a series of incidents in southeastern Turkey, the Kurdish PKK kidnaps 19 Western tourists, including one American. They are all eventually released unharmed.

Item: 26 February 1993. A bomb in a café in downtown Cairo kills three. Two Americans are among the injured.

Item: 8 March 1995 Two gunmen armed with AK-47s open fire on a van belonging to the US Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. Two embassy staffers are killed, one injured.

Item: 4 July 1995. A Kashmiri militant group takes six tourists, including two Americans hostage, demanding the release of Muslim militants held in Indian prisions. One of the Americans escapes, and the militants execute a Norwegian hostage. Both the American and Indian governments refuse to deal. It is assumed the rest of the hostages were killed in 1996 by their captors.

Item: 13 November 1995. A car bomb in the parking lot of a building that houses a US military advisory group in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills seven person, five of them American citizens.

Item: 25 June 1996. An explosive-laden fuel truck explodes outside the Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. 19 American military personnel are killed, and 515 persons are injured. A group identified as the Saudi Hizbollah is held responsible.

Item: 12 November 1997. Four American employees of an oil company and their Pakistani driver are murdered by two unidentified gunmen, as they leave the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi, Pakistan.
.
Item: 7 August 1998. Car bombs explode at the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and at the US Embassy in Dar es Sala’am, Tanzania. 292 are killed in Nairobi, including 12 Americans and injured over 5,000. The Dar es Sala’am explosion kills 11 and injures 86. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network claims responsibility.

Item: 28 December 1998. Sixteen tourists, including two Americans are kidnapped in Yemen. One hostage and a Yemeni guide escaped, and four hostages were later killed when local authorities closed in.

Item: 12 October 2000. A small boat laden with explosives rammed the USS Cole. The explosion kills 13 sailors and injures 33.

A day or so after 9/11, a State department employee mused on a Slate thread, that well, now everyone else knew what it was like to live with the threat, and the aftermath of terrorist acts. Everyone else on the thread immediately jumped all over him for inappropriate schadenfreude, but my daughter and I rather agreed. 9/11 was huge, was horrendous… but in a way, to some of us, it was already something familiar. We had already been there, for a long, long time.

And about Private Edward Pimentel? He was a young soldier, disco-hopping and having a good time. He was seen leaving a club with a young woman who was later identified as a member of the Red Army Faction. His body was found within a day or so; it was noted in the military newspaper Stars & Stripes, that he was murdered specifically for his military ID card, which may have been used by the Red Army Faction to get a car bomb into a well-guarded Rhein-Main AB in 1985.

If This Is Torture, Where Do I Surrender?

12. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not, Military

Eugene Volokh explores this article in The Guardian:

Among the most shocking abuses Saar recalls is the use of sex in interrogation sessions. Some female interrogators stripped down to their underwear and rubbed themselves against their prisoners. Pornographic magazines and videos were also used as rewards for confessing.

In one session a female interrogator took off some of her clothes and smeared fake blood on a prisoner after telling him she was menstruating. ‘That’s a big deal. It is a major insult to one of the world’s biggest religions where we are trying to win hearts and minds,’ Saar said. . . .

Eugene’s conclusion is that, while this may be inappropriate, it hardly rises to the level of sexual torture. I might also note that Saar has both a political agenda and a book to sell. But from my other reading on the subject, I don’t recall the term sexual torture being used. So I’m inclined to believe that the application of this term here originated with The Guardian, who’s reporting is frequently tainted by their own agendas.

One Pvt. Pimentel, By Name

10. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Military

This week one of our regular readers made a comment, to the effect that now Americans venturing overseas were very much more not-safe than they had been before the WOT, because we had alienated so many of the Muslim faith. Frankly, I hadn’t noticed us being all that safe before 2001, the random murderous malice of a fair number of adherents of Hizbollah, the PLO, the Iranian mullahs, various Pakistani Islamists, and a fair number of radical leftists being directed particularly at American diplomats, military and tourists during the three decades previous to 2001.

Item: 30 May, 1972. Members of the Japanese Red Army Faction, acting on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, open fire at Ben Gurion Airport, killing 26 and wounding 78. Many of them are American citizens from Puerto Rico

Item: 2 March 1973. Two American diplomats are taken hostage and murdered by at the US Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan; it is thought members of the Fatah faction were responsible, and that PLO leader Yassir Arafat gave the order for the murders.

Item: 23 December 1975 : Richard Welch, the CIA Station chief in Athens is murdered in front of his house by the Greek N17 terrorist group.

Item: 11 August 1976. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attacks the El Al terminal at the airport in Istanbul, Turkey. An American citizen is among the 4 killed.

Item: 1 January, 1977. The ambassador to Lebanon and the US Economic counselor are kidnapped by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at a checkpoint in Beirut, and later murdered.

Item: 4 November 1979. A radical Islamic student faction seized the US Embassy in Tehran, and hold 66 diplomats and American citizens hostage. Thirteen are released, but the others are held until January of 1981.

Item: 17 December 1981: Italian terrorist group “Red Brigades” kidnaps a senior US army officer in Italy, BG. James Dozier; he is rescued by Italian police forces.

Item: 19 August 1982. Two American citizens are killed when the PLO bombs a Jewish restaurant in Paris, France.

Item: 18 April 1983. A truck-bomb kills 68 at the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Hizbollah, with backing from Iran is held responsible.

Item: 23 October 1983. A truck bomb destroys US Marine HQ in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 Marines. Hizbollah, apparently with the assistance of Syrian intelligence, and Iranian financing.

Item: 18 January-20 September 1983. In Beirut, Lebanon, the president of the American University (an American citizen) is assassinated. The head of the CNN news bureau is kidnapped, but escapes. A political officer from the US embassy is also kidnapped, but he was never released, and his body never found. A suicide bomb on the US Embassy killed 23. A van full of explosives detonated near the US Embassy annex in Aukar, Lebanon kills 2 Americans and a number of local employees and bystanders.

Item: 15 November 1983. The head of the Joint US Military Aid Group-Greece, US Navy Captain George Tsantes, along with his Greek driver is murdered on his way to work by the terrorist group N-17.

Item: 3 April 1984. A US Army NCO, Robert Judd is attacked while driving between JUSMAGG and the American air base at Hellenikon by the terrorist group N-17. He is injured, but survives.

Item: 12 April 1984. A popular restaurant near Torrejon AB, Spain is bombed. 18 US service members are killed. Hisbollah, again.

Item: 4 December 1984. Hisbollah hijacks a Kuwait Airlines flight en route from Dubai to Karachi. Two American passengers are murdered.

Item: 2 February 1985. Bobby’s in Glyphada, a bar popular with American service personnel in Athens is blown up with a small suitcase bomb. No one is killed, but many injuries.

Item: 14 June 1985. TWA Flight 847, from Athens to Rome was hijacked by Hisbollah. A US Navy diver returning from a TDY was murdered and his body dumped on the runway.

Item:8 August 1985. A car loaded with explosives is driven into a busy parking lot at the American base at Rhein-Main, and detonated. Two are killed, twenty injured. The Red Army Faction claims credit. It is thought the murder of an American soldier several days previous was done to secure his ID card, and facilitate moving the car bomb onto a guarded installation.

Item: 7 October 1985. The cruise- ship Achille Lauro was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They threw an elderly disabled American man into the ocean. His wheelchair was thrown in afterwards.

Item: 27 December 1985. Terrorists from the Abu Nidal organization shoot up the El Al offices at Rome’s international airport. Seven Americans were among the 87 killed and wounded.

Item: 30 March 1986: A bomb exploded on a TWA Rome/Athens flight. Four Americans were killed, although the aircraft landed safely in Athens. The Fatah group was held responsible.

Why, yes I was very nervous when I was stationed overseas in the 1980ies and 1990ies… why do you ask?

(to be continued)

How Come I Never Got A Deal Like This?

10. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Military

This from Dave Moniz at USA Today:

WASHINGTON — The Army wants to double the top cash bonus for new recruits to $40,000 in an effort to stem a continued recruiting shortfall in the midst of the Iraq war.

As another incentive, the Army is proposing a pilot program to provide up to $50,000 in home mortgage help for recruits who sign up for eight years of active duty, Lt. Col. Thomas Collins said in an interview Thursday. Congress must approve both plans.

The $40,000 bonuses would apply only to a limited number of hard-to-fill and still-undetermined jobs, Collins said.

Memo: D-Day, 6 June 1944

06. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: European Disunion, General, History, Military

To: France
From: Sgt. Mom
Re: Liberation

1. Make the most of it. We won’t be back the next time you’re overrun. You’re on your own as far as the Yanks are concerned.

2. Well, maybe the Canadians might come around, if they can work out a way to get there. And the Brits might, out of habit— they’re convieniently located, and they have the upkeep on those lovely villas in the South of France to think about.

3. Love the recipe books, by the way.

It’s been real,

Sgt. Mom

Graduation controversy at Petaluma High

05. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Home Front, Military

There’s a story here of a graduating high school senior and recent Marine boot camp grad who is not being allowed to wear his Marine uniform to graduation. Well, he can wear it, but he has to wear his cap and gown over it.

I read the story at The Education Wonks, where I also left a comment. Here’s an excerpt:

… I’d have to agree with the Marines, who said that the young man should conform to the wishes of the school.

One thing that Mr. Kiernan (either the son or father, take your pick) will come to understand about the military is that they appreciate the importance of tradition, including the traditions of other institutions. Tradition for high school graduation is no different in this respect. The principal even adopted the right tone: cap and gown is the “uniform of the day.”

My concern is that this story has the potential to become one of those that travels around the internet as a tale of the anti-military attitude of public school officials. I hope not. Sounds to me like the prinicpal has done nothing that I would consider anti-military, and it appears that the Marines agree. It’s certainly nothing like the story of the Georgia principal I wrote about last week who wouldn’t let a Marine visit a Middle School classroom.

In the end, it sounds like a gracious compromise has been reached:

A possible solution to the whole dilemma, “to pacify a lot of flames that have been brought up with veterans groups,” would be for the high school to announce Kiernan’s military status when they read his name, the Marine Sgt. said.

I’d be curious what others think, but really, do you want to argue with a Marine Sgt?

And a Moment of Silence Please…

05. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Military, Site News

MilBlogger Bunker Mulligan passed away.

We Seem To Be On A Theme Here:

05. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Home Front, Military

Entrepreneurship/self-employment is the best way to realize the true fruits of one’s labor, and avoid the tendency of employers to be exploitive and/or paternalistic. Yet for reservists, there are huge risks (WaPo, free registration req’d):

Stanley Adams spent more than 30 years building up his business. But he had just days to decide what to do with his thriving livestock trailer companies when he was activated for duty in Iraq in April 2003.

“My wife didn’t have a clue. I had to cram-course her and my daughter in a day and a half,” said Adams, 52, who had applied to retire from the National Guard six months before he was called up.

While he was in Iraq, his wife had to shut down one of the Montgomery, Ala., companies, and the other one barely made it. Adams’s revenue dwindled from $1.5 million in 2002 to just $250,000 in 2003.

“I had over a million dollars’ worth of trailers here. Everything came to a halt, and all this money still had to be paid,” he said.

I’m not going out for expansion of USERRA protections to cover those who have chosen to go it alone. Although the tax credits of Tom Lantos (D-CA) H.R. 838 sound promising. But if those people have a reserve commitment, they need to make allowances for the risk of being called up. The Pentagon should make a directed effort, however, to eliminate extended deployments, so (among other things) entrepreneur/reservists can plan for their absence, should they be called up.

Koran Mishandling Report Released

04. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Military

Some interesting stuff from AP:

WASHINGTON – U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee’s Quran down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim holy book was splashed with urine. In other newly disclosed incidents, a detainee’s Quran was deliberately kicked and another’s was stepped on.

On March 25, a detainee complained to guards that “urine came through an air vent” and splashed on him and his Quran. A guard admitted he was at fault, but a report released Friday evening offering new details about Quran mishandling incidents did not make clear whether the guard intended the result.

In another confirmed incident, water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet, and in a confirmed but ambiguous case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.

What are guards doing tossing water balloons in the detention area?

But it seems some detainees my be harder on their Korans than the guards:

Hood also said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qurans. “These included using a Quran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Quran, attempting to flush a Quran down the toilet and urinating on the Quran,” Hood’s report said. It offered no possible explanation for the detainees’ motives.

In the most recent of those 15 cases, a detainee on Feb. 18 allegedly ripped up his Quran and handed it to a guard, stating that he had given up on being a Muslim. Several guards witnessed this, Hood reported.

I doubt there will be any outrage on the “Islamic Street” about those incidents though.

Update: Similar, but more extended comments from Austin Bay here. I particularly like this:

The big joke, however, is on all of us who bother discussing the”Koran mishandling” issue– and that includes Newsweek and its initial “Koran flushing” report. Our focus is Mickey Mouse, in the pejorative sense Disney despises. The big story is the tragically dysfunctional Arab Muslim Middle East that exports its religious and tribal wars as mass terror. The secondary tragedy is spoiled, privileged fools who fail to realize their beautiful liberty is protected by awkward power – and I say awkward, not evil. (That’s an indriect way of telling Noam Chomsky to get a life.) Here’s the upside: The US and its allies –its overt and covert allies– are winning this intricate war, but like a bunch of yammering chumps we’re catatonic about kicking a Koran and a jerk urinating in a grate in Gitmo. Step back: the urine splashes a terrorist sitting a cell. It’s urine, man, not shrapnel, or a 767. Is this My Lai? Is this Nanking? Buchenwald? Stalin? 9/11? The Taliban in full flower? Saddam? How odd and small a focus is this? Will the Boomer Generation ever grow up? Do you have evidence –reliable evidence– on which to question BG Hood’s integrity and the integrity of his report? It turns out in Watergate you’ve relied on the tips of the Number 2 man in the FBI – a Hoover protege.

Please see my post on the inevitability of moral compromise in war– see the quote from Septmeber 25, 2001. That’s reality, sir– mistakes, inadequate responses, oversights, and then trying the hell again because liberty, freedom, and opportunity are worth the individual effort and the united battle. But the blight you suffer from – or at least your post indicates you suffer from– is a hideous blight. You’re defeated if you have so little faith– as well as so narrow a perspective. What’s sad is your defeat is in part our mutual defeat.

NYT: Parents Keeping Kids Out Of Military

03. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Military

I wasn’t going to bother with this, until reading (and following the links on) David’s earlier post, which this story dovetails with.

In one of their typical anti-war stories, the NYT reports today on the “growing problem” of parents urging their kids not to enlist in the military, or at least the Army and Marine Corp. Well, duh; the worried parent/loved one syndrome, particularly in times of war, is as old as time. Author Damien Cave stoops to some unsupported editorializing, however, with this line:

Mothers and fathers around the country said they were terrified that their children would have to be killed – or kill – in a war that many see as unnecessary and without end.

Well, perhaps some do see the Iraqi campaign that way, particularly if they get all their news from the NYT. But I would guess that the great majority of these same parents would try to dissuade their children no matter what the war was doing.

What really gets my neck hair bristling are the parents trying to unduly influence the decisions of other parents and their children:

Meanwhile, Amy Hagopian, co-chairwoman of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association at Garfield High School in Seattle, has been fighting against a four-year-old federal law that requires public schools to give military recruiters the same access to students as college recruiters get, or lose federal funding. She also recently took a few hours off work to stand beside recruiters at Garfield High and display pictures of injured American soldiers from Iraq.

“We want to show the military that they are not welcome by the P.T.S.A. in this building,” she said. “We hope other P.T.S.A.’s will follow.”

And there’s this:

At schools, they are insisting that recruiters be kept away, incensed at the access that they have to adolescents easily dazzled by incentive packages and flashy equipment.

Oh give me a break. There’s no reason military recruiters shouldn’t have the same access to schools, and make the same sort of pitch (so long as they are truthful), as recruiters from other employers or colleges. To be balanced, however, there does seem to be some legitimate gripes about recruiters who are something less than honest:

Orlando Terrazas, a former truck driver in Southern California, said he was struck when his son told him that recruiters were promising students jobs as musicians.

But, just like any other human endeavor, one is going to find a few bad apples. That’s no reason to condemn the whole bushel.

Marine not welcome at Georgia middle school

02. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Home Front, Military, Rant

I’ve written about this over at Ticklish Ears.

Don’t read go there if you have high blood pressure or if you are holding heavy objects that you might throw.

Old Enough to Serve, Old Enough to Be Served

01. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Home Front, Military

Ya know I don’t drink myself. I’ve had enough.

And as a Senior NCO I flinch when I think of the probable rise in alcohol related incidents.

However, the idea that a young man or woman is old enough to go into battle and put his/her life on the line but is not old enough to have a beer when the day/deployment is done just rubs my sense of fairness wrong. I think if you’re on active duty, you’re at the very least old enough for beer and wine until you turn 21.

It’s becoming an issue again.

A Marine Named Nicolas…

01. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Military, Veteran's Affairs

Another member of a newsgroup for broadcasters and others associated with the Far East Network has forwarded a plea for assistance in locating a certain Marine. In association with a visit by the Emperor and Empress to Saipan this month, a local Japanese television station is working on a human interest story, about a local man who was injured and orphaned during the fighting over that island.

Shinso “Shori” Miyagi was only nine years old in 1945, was born on Saipan, and was being treated for injuries that included the loss of his right hand. A Marine who worked in the hospital befriended the little boy, taught him how to play ball, took him out to the movies, to the beach and to Sunday Mass, let him run errands at the hospital, and saw that he had a safe place to stay for several months. Mr. Miyagi knew the Marine as “Nicholas” or “Necos”. He was in the 2nd or 4th Marine Division, the first to land in Saipan. Nicholas or Necos was Caucasian, perhaps Hispanic, tall, sturdy, and 24 years old in 1945. He was in charge of the hospital pharmacy, and the storage room was his workspace and quarters.

After 60 years, Mr. Miyagi would very much like to find the Marine who befriended a little boy who had lost his right hand during the invasion. Any useful information, leads or suggestions can be forwarded to my contact, vfwmichael@gmail.com.

Is Ionatron For Real?

30. May 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Military, Technology

If you’ve seen the demo of Ionatron’s directed energy vehicle, blowing up IEDs in it’s path, well before it’s in the blast zone, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s quite amazing. But is it too good to be true?

Company executives at Ionatron, Inc. in Tuscon, AZ say they’re working on laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC) weapons that use uses femtosecond lasers to carve conductive channels of ionized oxygen in the air. The idea is that Ionatron’s weapon will then use these channels to send man-made lighting bolts up to 800 meters away to disable or kill people and vehicles. DefenseTech.org reports that the company has received $12 million in appropriations.

Investigations by DefenseTech.org and the New York Post, however, are raising questions about Ionatron. New York Post Business columnist Christopher Byron has alleged questionable award practices at the Congressional level and even potential technology ownership issues involving Raytheon and/or HSV Technologies. DefenseTech.org lays out what is currently known about the situation, and reports that Ionatron executives refused to comment on the contents of his story or on Byron’s more detailed allegations.

Memo: Combat Camera

23. May 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Military

“Journalists, in contrast, generally have invoked their responsibility as witnesses — believing they must provide an unsanitized portrait of combat…

Tyler Hicks of the New York Times and Carolyn Cole of the Los Angeles Times accompanied the Army in August during the dangerous assault on the insurgent stronghold of Najaf. They weathered several life-threatening episodes with the troops. But much of the respect they gained disappeared when the two tried to take pictures of wounded and dead soldiers being rushed to a field hospital.

Cole, a Pulitzer winner for photographs she took of the war in Liberia, said later she understood the soldiers’ high emotions. But she resented the row of soldiers blocking her camera, who in her view prevented her from doing her job.

“They were happy to have us along when we could show them fighting the battle, show the courageous side of them,” Cole said. “Then suddenly the tables turned. They didn’t want anything shown of their grief and what was happening on the negative side, which is equally important.” (From the infamous LA Times story, which ran in my local paper this weekend)

To: Mainstream News Media (Photog/Video Division)
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Combat Camera

1. There is a bitter joke about news photographers, which goes roughly “If you have a choice between jumping in and saving a small child from drowning, or taking a Pulitzer-prize winning photograph of a child, drowning… what kind of film do you use?” In other words, where does your duty as a compassionate, involved human being intersect with your passion and your day job as a photographer, and which is your first obligation?

2. It would seem that some of those have chosen the second, but wish to have the moral credit for the first, at least as far as taking pictures of the US military in action is concerned. As was so clearly made plain in the infamous TV segment of “Ethics in America” referenced in James Fallows’ “Breaking the News”, top-of-the-line TV reporters Mike Wallace and Peter Jennings would see it as their duty to watch an American military unit be ambushed by an enemy force, and impartially record the results. So… for the past thirty or forty years, the media has preached their obligation to be impartial, to be an uninvolved witness… but touchingly, have also assumed that they ought to have the access, and the emotional wallop of doing Ernie Pyle-type reportage when it comes to the American troops.

3. How f**king clueless can the major media representatives be? Oh, let me count the ways; it’s as if our troops, our sons and daughters are assumed to be some sort of participants in some bizarre reality TV program, that every jot and tittle of their lives (and deaths) is to be on display to a TV cameraman, or still photographer who swoops in to spend a couple of weeks with the troops, and then swoops out again. That single shocking image is out there, without context, without explanation, just there. Ms Cole sees her job as simply to provide them, and her petulance at not being allowed to do so is absolutely jaw dropping. Of how horrifying it would be to parents, loved ones and friends on the other side of the world to see such pictures flashed up on the front page or on the TV news never seems to have entered into consideration. To have the life of your child summed up for all time in a single shocking image of them, injured or dead… just to kick an old news media outlet a little higher in the ratings and add another notch to the eventual Pulitzer nomination, or serve as someone’s political rallying point is the ultimate obscenity. I am not the least surprised that Ms. Cole and Mr. Hicks were shunned; most people do have a thing about being exploited, and prefer being exploited on their terms.

4. I do not mean to include print journalists in this excoriation, the best of whom truely do worship at the shrine of Ernie Pyle. They manage to do their job, quietly and unobtrusively scribbling away in a notebook, usually after the smoke is cleared and the emergency over. A written account of an event is… well, a written account. There is thought, context, a choice of words, an organization in the act of writing. In most cases, print journalists are not standing up and doing it in the middle of stuff hitting the fan. There also exist photographers and videographers who have been embedded with the military on a long term basis, who live with the troops, eat the same rations, experience the same conditions and have an extraordinary grasp of the niceties of military operations, and the feelings of the front-line troops. They are the combat camera specialists, military videographers and photographers enlisted in the various services. They may not get the red-hot Pulitzer-prize winning stuff, but at least they can do their job without pissing off the soldiers or Marines they are embedded with.

5. Finally, I would ask of those journalists and photographers who don’t think there have been enough pictures of dead and wounded soldiers and Marines coming out of Iraq; do you intend now to publish recognizable pictures of the bodies of dead journalists and photographers?

Sincerely
Sgt. Mom

(More at Mudville Gazette)

The Appointment-Setter’s Lament

19. May 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, Military

(Frequent commenter J.S. Allison sent this, to be posted whenever… enjoy!— Sgt. Mom)

I work in central appointments for a military medical treatment facility and I’m tired. How tired? Let me list the ways:

1. Cell phones are wonderful; the microphones are so sensitive that I can hear everyone and everything within 100 feet of you when you call. Yes, I can tell that you’re in the bathroom, I’d really rather not.

2. Put down the Gameboy while you’re on the phone. At least pretend that this transaction actually matters to you. You called us, remember?

3. Put down the kid while you’re on the phone, especially if it’s screaming. It’s not going to get the kid in any sooner. See #1 above.

4. Multi-tasking is a myth. You’re not equipped to pull it off so stop it.

5. I generally will have somewhere between 5-12 people on queue waiting for me to help them during busy times, so make it march. I’m not being rude, I just realize that there are folk waiting that possibly actually need help so I’m going to try to move the call along as much as practical.

6. If you don’t know why you’re calling, hang up. Better yet, don’t call. I’m not psychic. I’m not taking a test, so spell it out.

7. You called us. That implies that you want something. Making it easier to help you gets you helped, making it harder gets you hung up on on my bad days and definitely reduces any inclination I might have to flexibility.

8. After spending several minutes going on about how desperately your child needs to be seen right away, do not, *DO NOT* ask me for a later appointment because your child is napping, or still in school and you don’t want to get them out. You don’t want to hear what you’ll be hearing next. And no, I won’t get fired over it. Can you say tenure? I knew you could.

9. There are only so many appointments available per day per doctor that are after school. Everybody else wants them too. Don’t expect them to still be available at 2 p.m.

10. I really don’t care that the 0720 appointment is inconvenient, set your alarm. I have to wake up at 0530 every day to get to work on time, how convenient is that?

11. You are the parent, pick the kid up, put it in the carrier, and bring it in. If it’s a self-propelled model you’re still the parent and are potentially bigger and meaner than the kid, bring it in.

12. Don’t delay the treatment of one or more of your kids so you can bring in the whole litter all at once. Oh yeah, on that whole bringing in the whole litter thing, bring another adult to keep an eye on the kids that aren’t being seen. Better yet, leave them home with said adult.

13. On the subject of making it easier to help, once you’ve turned down a few appointment times, tell me what times would be acceptable so we can quit wasting time with twenty questions, better yet, tell me from the outset.

14. This is a military medical treatment facility. As such the first priority goes to active duty military. This isn’t an issue in pediatrics (though it seems it ought to be at times…). However, in the specialty clinics, once the active duty population has been taken care of, dependents and retirees on TRICARE Prime (and other variants who are also paying a quarterly premium) have next call on available resources. Everyone else (who are not paying any premium, btw) get to pick over what’s left. Sorry, but that’s how it is. If you’re not willing to cough up for the Prime premiums get used to paying the copay downtown because your chances of being seen on base range from not much to even less depending upon the particular clinic. You can keep calling everyday, you’re not going to annoy me into giving up an appointment, there are no appointments to give and you’re only delaying your treatment.

15. It is frequently the case that after spending a couple of minutes finding and booking an appointment that the caller will, immediately following the final key press to book the appointment, ask if there’s anything later/earlier/tastier/less filling. The grinding you hear through the phone at that point is my dentures as you now want me to undo everything that was just done, and do it over. This happens at least a dozen times a day, if not more. I know, it’s not your fault but after a bunch of these, well…

16. Cussing me out because you feel that I should bend over backwards to benefit you at my expense and I didn’t do so immediately isn’t going to make me inclined to go the extra mile. On some days, I won’t even make it to the end of the call.

17. No, I’m not going to help you sidestep our policies, wink wink nudge nudge, knowwhatImean?

18. You’re the idiot that put the call on the speakerphone, not me.

19. Don’t mumble and lose the streetmeat patois. Offhanded slacker jackassery might be way kewl in other venues, but do you really want the people that’ll be tinkering with your body with toxic substances and sharp objects confused?

20. I’m convinced that hospitals should provide prospective parents with lists of names that they can choose from for their spawn, including instructions on how to spell them. Parents that saddle their spawn with unpronounceable, unspellable, misspelled, faux-ethnic names should be publicly flogged. If your child wants to make some anti-societal statement with his name, let him do it on his own, don’t saddle the poor little beggar with it when he’s too young to know what’s going on. And if it’s you that has issues, jerk your name around, not your kid’s.

21. TRICARE assigns you to a primary care manager. I will try to match you up with your caregiver’s available appointments first, then move on to other available providers in order that you be seen expeditiously. If you hate your caregiver’s guts, call TRICARE and have your PCM changed. As long as a caregiver is listed as your primary, that’s who I’m going to try to book you with first. Them’s the rules.

22. If you just can’t tolerate that you have a male caregiver, call TRICARE and have it changed. You may find yourself having to be seen offbase as there just aren’t that many wymyn providers round these parts. In any event, I don’t care, talk to the hand. I understand that in certain situations having a provider of a particular gender can be uncomfortable for that particular situation and we do try to work with these issues, but the blanket whining about all wymym all the time is quite tiresome, get over it, and yourself.

23. Just because you don’t have to pay for care, doesn’t mean that it’s worthless. A history of no-shows will get you barred from the facility as you’re preventing other folk from being seen by jerking the facility around.

24. This is the appointment desk, just tell me who you are and what you need to be seen for, I can take it from there. Save the history for your visit, I can’t do anything with it and you’re just extending the call.

25. If it’s an emergency, why are you calling me? Can you say 911?

Memo: Not the Ladies’ Auxiliary

19. May 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Military

To: The Senate Armed Forces Committee
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Military Women & Combat Support

1. My dear ladies and gentlemen, at this point is a little late to be coaxing the horse of “No Women in Combat!” back into the barn and locking the door. This would require the military to reverse nearly thirty years of placing military women— who are volunteers, mark you— in specialties which do not permit them to go out deliberately looking for combat, but which do put them out where combat might, in theory, come looking for them. This was a great change from the previous system, in which military women were stationed either in the continental United States performing various support functions a long, long way from what was clearly understood to be the front, or as nurses and clerks in a handful of rear-echelon areas where it was devotedly hoped that in case of defeat and capture that the Geneva Convention and the enemies’ chivalric sensibilities would afford some kind of protection.

2. Alas, only one country that we have fought since 1941 has given more than lip service for the Geneva Convention, the forces of militant Islam would appear to have about as much use for traditional chivalry as Orky the Killer Whale has for a stair step machine, and it is abundantly clear that in this war, there is no front line, there is no safe area. When an enemy can take a clear shot at the Pentagon, and kill civil servants sitting quietly at their desk jobs— well, that should make it pretty clear that there is no rear in which to park the gear and the ladies’ auxiliary safely out of harms’ way… even if going back to the old way were still even possible.

3. Many of the necessary combat-support jobs in this war are being done by soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines who just happen to be of the female persuasion. They have volunteered for the military, they have trained to do their jobs, they have been leaders, supervisors, commanders, and as such they are essential. As professionals, I am sure that most of them had a pretty good idea of what they were getting into… and for those who didn’t the ambush of a certain Army maintenance unit convoy in 2003 served as a wake-up call. This for real, and this is for keeps, and those who do not have a sword may still die upon one.

4. I would agree that seeing the mothers of small children coming back from Iraq in a coffin is a heartbreaking prospect; so are the accounts and pictures of military women who have lost limbs, been horribly scarred, who have been injured and face a long recovery… but how can it be any less horrible for the mothers of sons to face the same? We all hold a stake in this; we are all at war, no matter where we might be, and no matter if it is a son or a daughter, a wife or a husband serving. Please don’t patronize us by deciding that one or the other of them should be protected right out of what they are doing in our service. Do what you can to see that every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine has what they ought to have, now and in the future to do what they need to do.

5. Finally, I derive a great deal of mental satisfaction in imagining a particularly odious Baathist— perhaps one of Saddam Hussein’s official rapists— or an especially misogynist Al-Quaida operative being cuffed by a female SP, or tapped at a good distance by an expertly shooting woman Marine. I would ask rather that you do what you can to see that this happens… soon and often.

Sincerely
Sgt. Mom

Space Weapons Coming

18. May 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Military, Technology

This from Reuters:

NEW YORK – The U.S. Air Force is seeking President Bush’s approval of a national security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing White House and Air Force officials.

A senior administration official said a new presidential directive would replace a 1996 Clinton administration policy that emphasized a less aggressive use of space, involving spy satellites’ support for military operations, arms control and nonproliferation pacts, the report said.

Update: DefenseTech is underwhelmed:

Well, of course that’s what the Air Force wants. Last year, an Air Force paper on “Counterspace Operations,” signed by chief of staff Gen. John Jumper, declared that the “freedom to attack… denying space capability to the adversary” has become a “crucial first step in any military operation.” In 2003, the service released a “Transformation Flight Plan,” complete with a space weapons wish list — from anti-satellite lasers to arms that could “strike ground targets anywhere in the world from space.”

Unified Theory of Career Nervousness

09. May 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Military

My theory, such as it is, is based on the observation that there were certain people in the military who are just ulcer-inducingly, tear-out-your-hair, develop-a-drinking-problem impossible to work for, and that they were concentrated in certain ranks and had accrued a very specific quantity of time in service.

Of course it was pretty likely that some of these people had been pretty much a waste of flesh and stripes/commission from their first day on active duty, but I began to notice, as I accrued TAFMS years myself, that the majority of them were concentrated in the enlisted rank of E-6 (TSgt.) or the officer rank of Major. Given that complete and total dickheads ought to be pretty evenly distributed throughout the ranks, I tried to account for the disproportionate accumulation of them at the rank of Technical Sergeant or Major with eighteen to nineteen years of service. I believe that Sgt. Mom’s Unified Theory of Career Nervousness accounts for this phenomenon.

My theory is predicated upon the fact that a career military member can retire with a somewhat adequate pension at twenty years, but that most enlisted members want very much to retire as an E-7, and that officers want very much to retire as a Colonel. At those ranks, you can stay on past the twenty year mark, but if you have not… oh well. As they say in Moscow, “Tuff shitski, comrade.”. An E-6, or a major with just a year to two to go before that twenty-year cut off, and facing the prospect that making it to the next rank is problematical to impossible… well, that person is very often either sour and embittered or afraid that the least little mark against will screw up the chance they do have of making it to that next magical promotion. The sour and embittered, or the terribly ambitious are not nice people to work for. Three guesses as to whom they will take it out on, and the first two guesses do not count.

Of course, this is not true of all Tech-Sergeants and Majors with that duration of service… and does not address the truly towering horribleness of Colonels who thirst with a desperate longing to pin on that star… but on the whole, I think it works. Discuss, with examples and competing theories, please.

In Which We Serve

03. May 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Military

(Regular commenter “Dex” sent me an e-mail with a link to this conservative blog, and a note about how one particular thread had devolved into a discussion of why people joined the military. As none of the comments were from people who were or had been in the military, or seem to have even known anyone in the military… or even very much about the military to start with, other than the fact that we wear uniforms, and play with guns and high explosives… well, trying to enlighten via my own comment looked pretty fruitless. I will send a link to this, so I can tell Dex I have done my best.)

It is an assumption in some circles at least, that we are mercenaries, doing it for the money. Or at least, the money and the whole package of benefits, which the wicked military recruiters dangle before the poor and gormless rubes who just can’t get any other job. According to the Chablis and Brie intellectual set, this constitutes an economic draft, achieving by those means what used to be accomplished by a draft board, with exemptions for the college-bound and the well-connected. They’re not really volunteering, they just don’t have any better place to go and it’s all the fault of Halliburton/AshKKKroft/the Trilateral Commission/the military industrial complex/Bushhitler/the Teletubbies/time-traveling lizard-creatures, or whatever. Anyone particularly cherishing these beliefs can stop reading right now. The real reasons people join the military are much more complex, much more mysterious than simple economics, and way above the simple comprehension level of a devotee of conspiracy theories, being a mixture of very real human emotions. (Re-adjust the tin-foil hat, return your levels of snobbish superiority to normal operational levels and go away.)

Mind you, for someone who is fresh out of high school and considering the alternatives— fast food, crappy retail sails jobs or low-level manual labor—- the pay and benefits do look pretty good. Not great, not much more than adequate, really, but for a single person living in a barracks, it’s OK. Health care, paid vacation, extra pay, BX/PX, the commissary, educational benefits, and various allowances… at entry-level, it compares very favorably to your average crappy sales job. Although, once, as an E-4, I sat down and worked out that even with pay, separate rats, housing and overseas allowance, with the hours in my duty schedule, on an hourly basis it worked out to about as much as the fruit-pickers were then on strike for. Even with promotions, and increased allowances, for most military it is never quite as much as they would have been paid on the outside for the same skills and experience. No, it’s not the money. People who enlist for the money are usually pretty disappointed.

The second justification for enlisting is… basically, boredom with a dead-end life in a small town, or a big-city project. Well, for them, it’s boredom; for people who have the resources to enable them to become bored in the Marin suburbs or upper-east side condo, it would be called a yearning for adventure, or to challenge yourself, or to just get a life. Joining the military is certainly the fastest and most efficient way to get a life… and a life as different as the one that you were insufficiently interested/challenged by as it could possibly be. I would put more credit in the second justification, actually… the fact that to someone looking for thrills and adventure, nothing short of the circus or white-water rafting can deliver highs quite like the military. There are people who only feel alive when they are hanging out there, risking it all, with lots of engine noise. And to live at the business-end of America’s defense sword, to be at the very top of your game, with your teammates… for some, that is living life at full throttle. For those people, everything short of it seems like a half-life, sleepwalking through existence. Even those of us more sensible of risk are not immune to the thrill of just doing a good job, of meeting a challenge with confidence, thanks to the solid teamwork of which you are an integral part.

I also had a theory that post-draft, military service is a family thing. In my basic-training flight, about a third of the other women turned in DOD dependents’ ID cards. It is anecdotal, based purely on personal experience, but still… a lot of the young troops serving today, if I am reading the newspapers and blogs correctly, had parents who served in their day. (Consider my daughter, for one, and Rev. Sensings’ son for another.) Growing up in a military family means that joining up yourself, is just one of those things you do. You are already open to the realistic possibilities, anyway. This may be something even more marked in various reserve units: in all the reporting about various activated reserve units participating in Gulf War I, the military Times used to note the occurrence of units containing several generations: fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives all in the same unit and deployed together.

Even in peacetime the feeling of obligation to serve may just be felt a little more powerfully, when it is a family or community thing. Wartime just ratchets up that feeling to a new level. No one who enlisted after 9/11 could possibly delude themselves about what the military was for, and what it might involve… or about how fragile our lives and very safety could be. I myself enlisted after two years of working with refugees; some of my motivation was boredom, and some was wanderlust, but the largest part was the cast-iron conviction that no one I loved should ever, ever have to leave home and country, cast out by an enemy to live as a rootless refugee, dependent on chance and charity. I would think those who enlisted after 9/11 have similar feelings about never wanting to see people jump from tall burning buildings, not if it something that by their service can be prevented.

(Add your own motivation, or expand upon these, in comments.)

Last Weekend’s Airshow

30. April 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Air Force, Air Navy, General, General Nonsense, Military, That's Entertainment!

Well, I think at least, here:

Jets
AARRRGGHH!! Somebody help! Mom, I followed your instructions, and have done all kinds of machinations fiddling with it, and here’s what I get! What, for Pete’s sake, am I doing wrong?

(Can’t tell… upload it again, and e-mail me exactly what it gives you for a code once it is successfully uploaded, and I’ll try editing it in—-
Sgt. Mom)

OK, I did get a few of them uploaded here so you can go look at them there, for now. And there’s a joke involved, if you can stand it!

Joe

MY NOSE IS BLEEDING…..

27. April 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Air Force, Military, That's Entertainment!

Well, it is. I got so sunburned last Sunday – so did Nurse Jenny. Never thought about sunburn, it was so freezing cold. The temp was about 40, with a stiff wind and a wind chill of about 27, but the sun was really bright. We didn’t mind because we were watching the Navy’s terrific BLUE ANGELS! Last weekend was the annual Vidalia Onion Festival – we grow the best sweet onions in the world here – you can eat one raw without tears, they’re really good – and every year we have this festival with air shows on Saturday and Sunday.

The Blue Angels have been here several times, and they put on the greatest show! Go Navy!

But I’d like to see the Thunderbirds put on a show here, they have red, white, and blue smoke whereas the Blue Angels only use white. Of course, being an Air Force retiree, I have this loyalty to the Thunderbirds, I’ve seen their shows, and they used to park their birds on our ramp at PAFB when they came to Colorado Springs. They really put on a great show, but any air shows have to wait until my neck gets over the strain of watching the Angels last weekend! I was videotaping the show, and keeping up with the airplanes kept me moving! But we got some really great video, and Jen was taking stills, so I’ll post one or two of those when I get the film developed.

I just wish I could get over this awful sunburn!

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