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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! August 29, 2003 BUH-BYEBy GreyhawkFrom Air Force News:
Kind words. Diplomatic, to say the least. One of the unheralded results of the recent Iraq war has been the end of Operation Northern Watch and Operation Southern Watch, the USAF missions to patrol and enforce the no-fly zones established in the aftermath of the first Gulf War to protect the Iraqi Shia and Kurd populations. Since 1991 the Air Force has kept a continuous rotation of troops and equipment into locations like Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia and Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Air Force men and women have withstood the family separation, heat, and general discomfort of living in modern-day 14th century nations. An example of the type of things put up with: just last year and only after a legal battle and congressional intervention, the Air Force stopped forcing its female members to wear Burkhas when off base in Saudi. Initially they downgraded "mandatory wear " to "highly encouraged wear", but in this instance no one was fooled as everyone knows the military frowns on those who won't do something they're "highly encouraged" to do. (It's simply a semantic dodge when one doesn't want to issue unpopular orders.) The Air Force was scolded into removing all strictures on female garb off base. To what end? As of last December, according to CNN's Wolf Blitzer:
Trivial perhaps, in light of the fact that American aircraft were being shot or at least radar-pinged almost daily for over 10 years by Iraqi SAM sites. Or the aforementioned bombing at Khobar Towers. Still, this issue is a good example of the challenges faced daily by troops that perhaps would have preferred to be elsewhere. Is it ironic then, that the mere presence of these infidels protecting the holy Saudi soil would help inflame the passions of terrorists to the point of murder on an unprecedented scale? It's over now. As it may well be for our long held bases in Turkey. I've spoken with folks "in the know", and have reliable reports from those who've been there recently. The Turks have a strange relationship with the US; as members of the Muslim world many Turks hate us for reasons all too well known. As a small nation behind the power curve on standard of living many harbor jealous rage at our phenomenal national success. As NATO allies they have benefited greatly from us over the years. They have their own national concerns with the Kurds along the Iraqi border. Still, all in all, they'd like us to leave, but please to not take our money with us. And they miscalculated tremendously when figuring how much we needed them in the current gulf war. Content with the protective umbrella provided by the American Air Force enforcing Operation Northern Watch, the government, in a misguided attempt to show strength, appease the masses, and pocket a few quick bucks, made ridiculous monetary demands for their services as an ally against Saddam. In thinking we had no other options they were wrong. The Bush administration spurned their offer, and a massive airdrop and airlift replaced the Turkish land route for opening a northern front. So now ends ONW and OSW. And forgive me for noting that those who would complain of lengthy deployments and demand the return of the troops are about 10 years behind the times. We leave the Saudis with a state-of-the-art command and control center. We leave the Turks too. Using the end of those seemingly eternal operations, those endless deployments, those months in the sand, as official justification. The cessation of the seemingly magic American cash flow through the gates of Incirlik will make a not too minor blip on the local economy. But then again the Turks will no longer need to smile and feign friendship when the infidel enters their shop. And now stay tuned, as the drawdown in Germany, promised from the day the wall fell, inevitable and perhaps overdue since the break up of the evil empire, at last begins... Posted by Greyhawk / August 29, 2003 6:58 PM | Permalink 1 TrackBackThis is an excellent post from the Mudville Gazette on the pullout from Saudi Arabia. He said it far better than I could. Too bad we had to leave the command and control center behind. We should have taken it all. Ingrates. Read More |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
