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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! July 14, 2005 Open PostBy GreyhawkAs long as I'm directing people to great places around the internet, please visit Mudville's advertisers in the right sidebar. They are after all, the folks who make it possible. Posted by Greyhawk / July 14, 2005 8:45 PM | Permalink 29 TrackBacksWhile speaking to Campus Progress, a liberal student group, complained that Democrats were "boxed in" on the abortion debate and face a double standard from the media. Read More I received an email recently from one of the female marines that I write to, and whom I had sent a few pairs of barefoot sandals to for Mother's Day. She emailed to say that the other women living in her barracks all love them and would each like a pai... Read More The video tape was taken from captured terrorist scum in Iraq - you've got to watch it. The footage was recorded by a terrorist sniper team (who were later captured by coalition forces, hence, we have the tape). It just came out of a briefing in Iraq... Read More The video tape was taken from captured terrorist scum in Iraq - you've got to watch it. The footage was recorded by a terrorist sniper team (who were later captured by coalition forces, hence, we have the tape). It just came out of a briefing in Iraq... Read More Cadets from the United States Military Academy at West Point watched as Paladin self-propelled artillery fired at St. Vith range on Fort Knox. The cadets were getting a "hands-on" experience with the Field Artillery branch, courtesy of combat veteran... Read More It has been one week since the world was shocked with the news of the bombings that occured in London on 7/7. AP reports that, Taxis and buses were urged to pull off the road, commuters to pause in reflection and workers to put down their tools acros... Read More Is it any wonder the Brits got what they paid for? This blind and PC perspective is what makes it possible for the British people to fund the recruitment of their own home-grown terrorists! I guess it just goes to show you that dhimmitude isn’... Read More I sometimes get the feeling that The Cap Times editorial board aren't big fans of the Bush administration. Read More Talk radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt debunked a MSM attempt to make the London bombings seem the result of our overthrow of Saddam. Read More We were going to post about Senator Rick Santorum’s anti-Boston liberalism comments, but thankfully Michelle Malkin did it for us. Uh, what she said… We will just add a few thoughts - If Santorum had merely said that in general, liber... Read More Assad's Slipping Grip On Syria- Syria is well into a fateful period in its modern history. The economy is stagnating even as the population (now at 18.4 million) is expanding rapidly. Petroleum, long the leading resource, is being depleted at... Read More Top sources have revealed that open war has broken out within the Bush administration over the replacement for SCOTUS Chief Justice William Rehnquist, whose retirement is being widely discussed in the wake of his hospitalization yesterday... Read More Abortion may indeed be a civil liberties issue, but it seems strange to make it the ACLU’s top priority. After all, Planned Parenthood, N.O.W., and National Abortion Rights Action League ably fight for abortion rights. But defending abortion ri... Read More The American Civil Liberties Union, with encouragement from the liberal political icons in this nation, is taking advantage of an activist court. And the ultra liberals in the Senate need to follow tradition. Read More I'd like to share with you what I thought was an incredible exerpt from the man who knew more about Iraq's nuclear weapons program than any other person in Saddam's Iraq. ... Read More I just heard about this on Special Report with Brit Hume--today must be this idiot's lucky day... If you just happen to be passing through, do the considerate thing and bring a small gift. We suggest a special bouquet for our esteemed latter-day Wor... Read More Reporter Dave Hirschman and photographer Read More Howard Dean, said of the Republican party- "[They are] a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party." It now looks like even the MSM can't ignore the reality. "...New Republica... Read More I spent a couple of minutes trying to decide whether to tag this as a "Military" post, or a "Politics" one - politics won out, you'll see why. John Donovan has a nice piece up at his place today, here... Read More In the aftermath of the terror attacks in London, Boris Johnson, writing for The Daily Telegraph, believes some introspection is in order. Americans can certainly appreciate a Brit who has come to realize that perhaps America's flag-waving reputation i... Read More Senator Carl Levin and Washington Post Op/Ed get fisked. Read More Please Sandy, don't leave. It just won't be the same without you. What can we do to get you to stay? Better parking space? Free gas? How about Chief Justice for a year? Well, two out of three she already has. It is the third carrot that liberals and ... Read More Among the left we often hear that the insurgents are "Arab minutemen" or they are heroes in their own right. I have a message for our friends on the left; heroes do not kill children. Heroes do not bring misery and suffering to people on purpose. Heroe... Read More Among the left we often hear that the insurgents are "Arab minutemen" or they are heroes in their own right. I have a message for our friends on the left; heroes do not kill children. Heroes do not bring misery and suffering to people on purpose. Heroe... Read More New York Senior Senator Charles Schumer (D) has been quite outspoken as of late, regarding possible criminal activity of Karl Rove and his alleged leak of the name of Joseph Wilson’s wife, an alleged CIA agent (who’s super-secret name won... Read More Here's Ollie North's definition of hero: Read More The one for Sgt. Angela Magnuson had something very impressive in it in the form of the testimony of a dying man. Not his words, but his actions. "His name was Spc. James Holmes. But to those who knew him, he was affectionately called "Tugboat"... Read More ...that liberals will vehemently defend the rights of pedophiles in the U.S. and troop-murderers in GITMO and scream how "innocent until proven guilty" is a vital tenet of our society--yet Rove and Delay are guilty even if proven innocent. They screa... Read More ...that liberals will vehemently defend the rights of pedophiles in the U.S. and troop-murderers in GITMO and scream how "innocent until proven guilty" is a vital tenet of our society--yet Rove and Delay are guilty even if proven innocent. They screa... Read More 4 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 |
Why are so many people leaving trackbacks to this post? If Greyhawk said that is ok, then whatever. But it seems to me that all these people are leeching, or basically using this trackback function not to show a post in which they talk about what Greyhawk said, but just to have their URL appear on Greyhawk's site.
Michael, Greyhawk kindly creates these Open Posts to "share the wealth" around the MilBlogosphere (am I the first to use that particular piece of blog-ese?). It helps lesser-known folks (such as myself) get some extra exposure.
With the Open Posts, people can link with whatever their latest entry is about, instead of adding an unrelated trackback ping to a "regular" post.
I sure am thankful for the opportunity. Good point, though -- no one should take Greyhawk's generosity for granted.
Greyhawk and Mrs. G, your website is an inspiration to all of us bloggers. Thank you for allowing us the Open Post's to get people to read our thoughts as well. God bless both of you.
I have no idea why mine double posted --SORRY!