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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! May 2, 2005 Open PostBy GreyhawkAll are welcome... step into the light... Posted by Greyhawk / May 2, 2005 5:35 PM | Permalink 27 TrackBacksThe Vietcong guerilla troops had strong support by communists and leftists in Sweden during the 70's. The FNL (Front National de Liberté) movement was very strong in Sweden. Even the prime minister, Olof Palme, was participating in a FNL demonstratio... Read More An email: This is what a real sand storm looks like. The pictures were taken by a Brown and Root worker at Ba'Qubah at camp Warhorse. The pictures were taken in Iraq on April 26, 2005 (click images for larger... Read More A couple of months ago, my husband decided to let our 5-year-old have his first "taste" of video games. He let Jacob play Zelda on his old Super Nintendo. Well, Jacob lost interest playing, but he did like to watch me and Jim play. Needless to say, g... Read More Prof. Hawking posts on Point Five every Monday and Friday. Read More Ala‘, Age 13 Like many other children, Ala‘ witnessed conflict between rebel groups and the Janjaweed. This drawing depicts a rebel soldier first shot in the arm, then executed by gunshots to the groin. Ali, a teacher in a... Read More A short visit to Lincoln's earlt life, courtesy of Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years. Read More Baron of Bodissey of Gates of Vienna reads this blog, but he doesn't link here. Why? What is it about Mythusmage Opines that makes him reluctant to blogroll the place? That's simple, he's embarrassed. He doesn't want people to know... Read More Baron of Bodissey of Gates of Vienna reads this blog, but he doesn't link here. Why? What is it about Mythusmage Opines that makes him reluctant to blogroll the place? That's simple, he's embarrassed. He doesn't want people to know... Read More His injuries are apparently serious enough he requires major surgery and even if he is ok after the surgery, his recovery time will be 6-8 months. His wife and family can't be with him because he is quite a ways from home. Read More Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly continues to spread the myth: "In other words, by summer of 2002 Bush had already decided on war regardless of Saddam Hussein's actions; democracy promotion was not even mentioned in passing as a reason for the war" ... Read More When you use something many times and train with it over and over, you tend to lose that lovin' feeling, know what I mean? While in Italy supporting the No-fly zone over Bosnia in the mid-90's, my team was one of three performing CSAR* operations. ... Read More SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea test fired a missile into the Sea of Japan Sunday — just days after a U.S. intelligence official said the secretive Stalinist state had the ability in theory to arm a missile with a nuclear warhead — raising new... Read More Modern paraphernalia has been useful to archeologists and crime-scene investigators who are engaged in a grisly task in Iraq: Dates on medicine found in the graves indicate the people were killed about the time of the 1987-88 Anfal campaign in whi... Read More Will Kim's Regime Collapse? Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Apparently Kim is obsessed with being deposed by his own people, in the style of Ceaucescu of Romania. Odd, considering that the national motto is "On... Read More Famed chef and TV personality Emeril Lagasse has drawn the ire of anti-gun groups over the use of his trademark catchphrase, Read More The 2005 Review Conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) starts today. The United States has put out a proposal that would penalize those states that violate Articles I and II of the treaty, namely the promise not to... Read More Be careful where you step. This is REAL rich.'Inexperience and stress'“It is likely that the state of tension stemming from the conditions of time, circumstances and place, as well as possibly some degree of inexperience and stress might have led Read More It may be surprising to the people who run the numbers and compile reinlistment statistics, but it shouldn't be surprising at all. Our military is chock full of professional men and women who put it all on the line to further this little experiment w... Read More It may be surprising to the people who run the numbers and compile reinlistment statistics, but it shouldn't be surprising at all. Our military is chock full of professional men and women who put it all on the line to further this little experiment w... Read More The Jawa Report's series of interviews with family members of American hostage Roy Hallums is a gut-wrenching look at a little-noticed front in the War on Terror. So far, America has an inauspicious record on dealing with hostage situations.... Read More Testing 1...2...2, err...3 Taking advantage of Greyhawk's kind ... Read More After I got close to the end of my 20 years, I began to subscribe to this self discerned philosophy: "For the first ten years you meet people, for the next ten years, you just meet them again." Read More Slowly but steadily, the politically correct among us have begun to blur the lines and steer us away from the pain we felt on September 11, 2001. They want us to forget how deep our wounds were, and what it was like to be in the throws of a massive ter... Read More 1st Lt. Pantano's Article 32 hearing has concluded and he now awaits the decision as to whether there is enough evidence against him to proceed with a Court Martial trial. The hearing ended with a fiery defense cross-examination of Sgt.... Read More The month of May is National Military Appreciation Month, a time for us all to think about the sacrifices made by our military and their families. This year more than any other, our service men and women need to know all of us appreciate their role in ... Read More This should be interesting. I'm not confident though in the SCOTUS especially when one considers Justice Bryer and O'Connor advocation towards international law. Read More Beth, points us to an article by Mike Whitney, brain-dead writer of "opinion" at Axis of Evil Logic. I would just go ahead and call him a bunch of names but I would run out of space. He is esentially... 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 |
