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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! November 19, 2005 Open PostBy Greyhawk Posted by Greyhawk / November 19, 2005 2:50 AM | Permalink 11 TrackBacksCanadian Cynic didn't like my last post contrasting real political persecution in North Korea with the American left's paranoid fantasy version. His response is--recounting an Iraqi crime during the 1991 invasion of Kuwait that proved untrue. Which is... Read More There's something you might not know in the constant and continuous din in the media about al-Qaeda, Iraq and the Clinton Administration. One of those interesting facts that really casts the campaign of the Democrats, the anti-war movement and portions... Read More In the fall of 1987, we had a lecture in the big auditorium at the Naval War College. I sure wish I had more than mental notes about it, but here's what I recall: There was a three day conference on the media and one of the resentations was by ... Read More The Democrats, while failing to offer viable alternatives to any of the challenges facing the nation, have managed to smear the Bush administration with false or trump-up charges. We have long been calling for a relentless counterattack, and we are s... Read More You wouldn't know it by watching the Mainstream Media, but gas prices have been dropping like a stone over the past several weeks. Here in Prince William County, most of the stations in our area are either below $ 2.00/gallon for regular or very clos... Read More But as Bush said, even knowing what we know now, he would still have made the same decision, since the other reasons are all still valid. Read More White House Counselor Dan Bartlett today said there is a long list of wartime presidents who served ably without military experience. So who was he referring to. George Washington? Nope, he lead the American army in the revolutionary war. Andrew Read More Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip. That started from this tropic port, Read More Professor Bainbridge writes about this statement from Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation: Read More 403 - 3. So... who voted to cut and run: Cynthia McKinney, (D-GA) José Serrano, (D-NY) Robert Wexler, (D-FL) So. The rest of the pack of yellow-bellied weasels shut their pie holes, and crawled back under their rock. Till the... Read More Democrat John Murtha from Pennsylvania has called for surrender Read More 27 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 |
I've got an idea. Why don't we try winning a war completely, just once, and see how it works?
Trackbacks have a problem?
My open post entry: What Haven't You Been Told?
Sorry about the multiple trackbacks--software screw-up!
From: The Alleged Mental Case
To: The Assistant Village Idiot
RE: Why don't we try winning a war completely, just once, and see how it works?
What a concept!
Oh, well, Server said 'You are pinging trackbacks too quickly. Please try again later.'
Here's my contribution:
http://chaoticsynapticactivity.blogspot.com/2005/11/echos-of-vietnam-war-today.html - Echos of the Vietnam War Today.
I got the pinging too quickly error as well.
http://www.sablogs.com/index.php?blog=46&title=a_letter_to_our_troops
Et tu, Rummy? Look who's playing CYA in Washington! In the immortal words of Gomer Pyle, USMC: Surprise, surprise, surprise, Sgt. Carter!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/08/AR2005110801072.html
Better file this one under: Rule of Law: For Everyone But Wingnut Repuyblicans
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10625
This just in from the commie coward fringe:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/18/iraq.plan/index.html?section=cnn_latest
@ patience, young Padawan. Your feelings get the best of you...
"The suggested Democratic prescription was 'Cut and Run', that turned out to be a 'Vote and Run' at 403 to 3 against."
All Things Beautiful Trackback The 'Cut and Run' Prescription for Iraq (UPDATED)
The only cut-and-run president in my memory was Ronald Reagan, who stuck hundreds of marines at the bottom of a hill in Beirut and then ran away as soon as 240 of them were killed by a truck bomb. Of course, Republican cowardice under fire doesn't count at the Mudville Republican Gazette.
p.s.: Speaking of Mudville Gazette's proclaimed support for the American soldier, how come not a peep from you people about the cutbacks at the Veterans Administration?
How ironic that most significant progress in world peace and freedom in my lifetime, in terms of numbers of people liberated from totaliarianism and disarmament, was made when we let "cowboys" like Reagan and our current President take the reins of our nation.
They did confront evil, to the consternation of do-nothings like you, Wilson ... but they did have to choose their priorities, and (2) in the case of Reagan, had to contend with a nation and an "international community" still susceptible to the siren song of "do-nothing" that you sing ... so he left Lebanon hanging, just as Bush 41 left the Shiites hanging in 1991, to America's shame.
Where were you then, telling him to NOT cut-and-run while Kerry, Kennedy and the rest of the Dihimmicrats were preaching just that?
Confronting evil. Yeah, right. Reagan looked in the face of evil and ran away. As for the Idiot in Chief, his answer was to quote Western movies and the Batman & Robin comic books. By the way, Baghdad Bob, where is Bin Laden anyway?
Kurt Vonnegut has outed himself as a terrorist sympathizer.
Excerpt:
Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism.
But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.
"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."
Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes."
bin Laden? In a cave somehwere, managing his video-tape club, I guess. He's not our only target in the War on Terror ... right now we are dealing with his hands and feet; the headchoppers and the human grenade brigade, who you seem to never criticize.
If we got bin Laden now, those elements wouldn't dry up and blow away ... decapitating your enemy in this case will certainly not bring about an end to hostilities. So instead, we did everything prudent to capture him (unlike your hero Mr. Clinton), and, not achieving that, left him to whither on the vine in Afghanistan, his communications and control capabilites diminished to letter-writing, videotape, and couriers.
And, you might want to ask Eastern Europe and Gorbachev whether Reagan "ran away" from the Soviets ... even in the face of Soviet bluster, and attempted undercutting on the part of John Kerry et. al.
His opponents said he was going to start a war ... his actions ended the Cold War, liberated Eastern Europe from totalitarian rule, and facilitated REAL reductions in nuclear arms.
Now, his actions in Lebanon (along with Bush 41's refusal to support the Shiites in Iraq after Desert Storm) were a black eye for America ... however, in these cases our leaders listened to the do-nothing siren song you and the diplomats both sing, when prudence dictated otherwise.
It was "your side" that consistently and stridently advocated such INACTION, Wilson ... and millions SUFFERED for it.
Fortunately, we have someone in the White House now who learns from history ... and despite your rants to the contrary, does everything in his power to not repeat such mistakes in our past.
Go ahead and rant ... make my day.
NEW MUDVILLE POLL:
Who sounds more like the famous Baghdad Bob, in terms of their outrageous claims?
> Rich Casebolt
> Wilson Kolb
Please leave your votes here.
Rich, that's like asking the German public in 1939 who they preferred, Uncle Adolf or that complaining Jew down the block.
I am sad :( that my trackbacks are no longer accepted.
Wilson, actually, it's more like asking the British public if they preferred Churchill, or that advocate of do-nothingness, Lord Haw Haw.
Something to remember: The United States launched an unprovoked attack on Iraq in 2003. This was done on the basis of premediated lies by the Bush administration. As part of the war, the U.S. military incorporated torture into its standard operating procedures. Both of these actions are war crimes as established in the Nuremberg Trials of 1946.
I don't think your Fake President and his VP of Torture will ever be put on trial for war crimes, but they should be right along with Rumsfeld and the senior military leadership who participated in the planning and execution of these policies.
Seeing that Wilson Kolb is not answering any of the comments and intellectual arguments presented to him, but is merely listing DU talking points, I recommend we don't get too excited.
@ Rich patience, young Padawan.
DU, hey they're just as bad as you guys are. Maybe even worse. After all, Greyhawk has only banned me once and DU has banned me more times than I can count. Extremists are afraid of opposition regardless of their stripe. As ridiculous as "Greyhawk" is, at least for now his/her site tolerates dissent. Probably as a tactic, but so be it.
I'm not sure your contributions qualify as "dissent," though.
I hate when people refer to military members as "kids" and "children".
http://www.thepaladinblog.com/wordsbydave/2005/11/20/kids.html
Kolb blathered.
"Wingnuts, be they from the left or right, can't abide being disagreed with. They particularly hate stingiing dissent. "
...and Kolb then proves he's a wingnut by showing his ire at the icky awful dissenters who mock him in the comments. So he slanders them.
Can you say "projection"?