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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! February 4, 2005 The Difference Between "Almost" and "There"By GreyhawkTina Brown, praising Hillary Clinton in the Washington Post, comes very close to connecting the dots on Iraq: Even reporters on the ground in Iraq could hardly believe what they were living through as they watched the power of an idea transmute into the living, breathing form of black-clad women, Marsh Arabs and throngs of Kurdish mountaineers festively making their way to the polls. The father of a young reporter who has spent most of the last two years in Iraq shared with me his son's e-mail from Baghdad. "We journalists are all sitting round and asking each other how we missed what's clearly a far deeper drive for political and societal change than we realized. It is a measure of our isolation here -- and also, I think, a measure of how the violence and humiliation of the occupation has masked people's very genuine feelings." Apparently the above referenced folks don't read MilBlogs, which should even be available in finer Baghdad hotels. The countdown to the elections that ran here was actually making exactly this point about journalists being out of touch. Should that quoted journo wish to make the final leap, it's more accurate to say that the much feared terrorists kept most reporters from discovering that "far deeper drive for political and societal change" that Iraqis expressed so well - and so unsurprisingly - on election day. But overall the piece reflects a positive trend - that of many opponents of the war beginning to evaluate their positions - perhaps their very concept of the world today. Little clues in the text, however, lead me to believe the result will be an opposition to progress in Iraq from a different direction. On the plus side, note the author's response to an email attempting to put the election success in a "positive" perspective for the left: Sure enough, my first e-mail of the day was a copy of a mass mailing from a gloomy progressive brainiac that included a 1967 New York Times article headlined "U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror." But in spite of the dismissive recounting of this episode, real progress won't come until the "Iraq is Vietnam" crowd is no longer labeled "progressive" without using scare quotes. I might be guilty of nit-picking there, but read the final paragraph, which comes close to a rational conclusion, then veers wildly: That's why among Democrats there's a lot of quiet soul-searching going on. Every Bush hater you meet in New York is engaged with an inner struggle of how much to let go of the past. They are like wives midway through marriage therapy designed to reconcile and foster a new beginning with a feckless husband who has perpetually let them down. Hillary Clinton knows what that feels like better than anyone else. Which is perhaps why she has the discipline to hang tough, befriend the enemy and leave revenge to the future. "Leave revenge to the future" - what a fine way to mend fences. Wonder how Bill feels about that? (Another tip of the boonie hat to The Corner) Posted by Greyhawk / February 4, 2005 9:09 AM | Permalink 1 TrackBackHere are today's Hyscience mid-day picks for the top ten blog posts of the day: Read More 9 Comments |
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 |
Yeah, my very liberal wife had her own epiphany. We had fought over the war to a tense stand-off and the Presidential election put some very real strains on our relationship. She wrote me on Monday (I'm in Korea)that she had changed her mind about the war. Seeing a photo in the Wash. Post of an old woman voting helped her let go of her anger towards the President and accept the good that we had done in Iraq. That just blew me away. I had given up on her. Of course, she still hates Bush, but at least she supports democracy. I can live with that.
Great post!
Brown still misses it widely and wildy. One word illustrates how false memes are so easily implanted in the world of the literati - occupation. We'll see the comparisons to and dire predictions of an "Iraqi occupation" 30 years from now in the same way we see references to the "Vietnam Quagmire" now.
It's an "occupation" because it allows the ideologic inheritors of the 60's to consider the Iraqis as victims and the US as an aggressor. It simply does not occur to them that this makes them as much the useful fools as their parents. The quoted text speaks volumes about this. The intellectual conflict between calling a liberating force occupiers and in the same paragraph noting the clearly marked implication that that force is proactively fostering a societal change that includes free elections is lost on Brown.
If there is an occupying force in Iraq with inimical intentions it is the 'isolated' MSM journalists on the ground. They are far more culpable for any perception of the Iraqis being humiliated by a force that has freed them from Saddam and than any actions of the US military. Brown is not connecting any dots.
you got to wonder what the 1967 NYT headline
"U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror"
would've been had a Republican been in office at the time
Just a thought
Does my memory serve that the Christmas bombing of Hanoi & mining of Haiphong drove the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table and it wasn't until the Church Amendment passed a Democratic congress (allies of the French looking John Kerry, who BTW served in Vietnam)and left the ARVN high and dry that the war was lost?
Since I'm a grad student surrounded by ultra-liberal academics and don't have cable, I've turned to the internet for a balanced view of the news- including The Mudville Gazette as well as a variety of other blogs and news sources. You inspired me to use a comparison of the way different news outlets covered the elections in Iraq to help my students understand the concept of bias in the media. Thanks!
Let me not puke reading Tina Brown's piece on Hillary! It's all about the elite press annointing Hillary as THE Democratic candidate for 2008. They calculate she would be appealing to both Democrats and Republicans. She's really their only candidate who has any chance at this point. All the others are making outrageous statements that show their true natures. Hillary has been very cleverly and cunningly flying below the radar, supporting the war, becoming a moderate on abortion, etc. Make no mistake... her only focus is on winning while not letting her true radical lefist policies be known. Don't be fooled.
"Sure enough, my first e-mail of the day was a copy of a mass mailing from a gloomy progressive brainiac that included a 1967 New York Times article headlined "U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror."
This quote just reminds me of how close to success we were in Viet Nam, before the treasonous behavior of John sKerry and his comrades convince the American people to stop supporting our efforts. Their lies cost Viet Nam its chance at democracy, not to mention thousands of lives of our soldiers unnecessarily.
To them, it's a reminder of their success then, and not to give up now. Sorry folks, you don't own the media anymore!
Hmmm. "Leave revenge to the future.." Revenge against who, exactly? An administration that will be gone? (i.e. Bush?) The only remaining players will be......the voters, you know - the people. So Hillary and company can wait to get revenge against...their clients, the people - later. Contempt for the people is not a winning campaign strategy, just ask Kerry.
Robert F. Turner, Associate Director at the Center for National Security Law, University of Virginia School of Law wrote in December of 2001:
"Most Vietnam "peace activists" no doubt still feel pride in having "ended the war." They simply don't realize that those whom they helped bring to power slaughtered more people in the first two years of "peacetime" following the "liberation" of Indochina than were killed during the previous 14 years of war, including an estimated two million in tiny Cambodia alone. Additional millions were consigned to a Stalinist tyranny that decades later continued to rank among the world's worst human rights violators. But most Americans don't know that, having tuned out Vietnam when American troops came home more than a quarter-century ago."
On August 3, 1995 The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Bui Tin who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnam Army. During the interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr. Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy."
Americans have lives to save. And there are heroic young men and women standing in the line of fire, losing limbs and coming home in body bags so all of us civilians can sit on our asses and sound off about anything that enters our mind. But whining, ranting and viciously attacking the decisions and intentions of our leadership produces no positive result. It feeds the spirit of the enemy, undermines the efforts of our courageous soldiers, and costs American and Iraqi lives every day. The constant criticism and second guessing from the left only prolongs the war and , if allowed to prevail, leads to a disastrous conclusion for those who cherish freedom, and even for those who don't!