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« Stein vs Stein | Main | Open Post »

January 30, 2006

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And I Dreamed I saw the Bomber Death Planes Riding Shotgun in the Sky

By Greyhawk

It's September 10th in America, and birds are singing as butterflies and rainbows color the sky...

My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.

Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.

Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.

Sure, it was awful, but face it - subsequent events have proven it wasn't that big a deal. Those silly wars in the Middle East don't get consideration in this discussion. Real men walk away from fights. There have been no other attacks on US soil, so our responses obviously were a result of hot headed over reaction. And that, by the way, is just what the terrorists want - fearful. over. reaction. We played right into their hands.

As we do by monitoring their terrorist communications - which is the real point of this column:

My second question is this: What does history tell us about our earlier responses to traumatic events?

My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the "quasi-war" with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950's, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.

It's like that silly communist thing that collapsed under it's own weight. But not nearly as deadly as the Cuban missile crisis, which was an over reaction to that silly communist thing.

The argument boils down to this: All those draconian measures we've taken to prevent another 9/11 have been proven useless - because there haven't been any more 9/11s!

By fighting them, we are losing. By fighting, we reveal our weakness. We only fight them out of fear, and fear is what they want. By killing them we make more of them. If we fight them, they win.

BECAUSE OF BUSH!!!!

Fearless Lefty bloggers weigh in here here and about 50 more here. But as a military guy/Iraq vet still stationed overseas and thus likely to have my every phone call home heard by Karl Rove I have DOUBLE ABSOLUTE MORAL AUTHORITY.

Oh how they must wish they were me.

Update: While I'm on a roll, now that we have DNA technology that could prove guilt or innocence conclusively, we must abolish the death penalty! I demand you take these arguments seriously!


Posted by Greyhawk / January 30, 2006 9:26 PM | Permalink

5 Comments

[caveat: I did not read the linked article as it was behind the NYT $$$-firewall]

I think the basic problem is that the author is comparing apples & oranges: you can't compare 9/11 to the Civil War as a whole. You could compare it to Ft. Sumter where the immediate ramifications did not hold dire consequences for the whole of the union. Likewise, 9/11 (both tactically & operationally) did not have a significant effect on us as a country. It certainly had a strategic effect though, and same with Ft. Sumter.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents for now.

Greyhawk,

I hope all is well for you. I am a bit confused by your post. Either you were sarcastically mocking the notion that engaging the enemy in battle on the War on Terror is a waste of time, or you have seen so many friends suffer that you are genuinely wondering if it is all worth it. Given what most of your posts are advocating, I believe you were being sarcastic, but I'm just checking.

You are in my prayers, along with our brothers in arms engaged in this fight. I know a bunch of guys who have gotten discouraged about the war because of their own personal losses, but most of these folks got there because they need some pastoral care and haven't had very much. Part of that antidote is appreciation, and I cannot thank you enough for the way you apperciate EVERYONE in this war on terror, especially those who who have suffered much. I hope that you too are doing OK. You and your wife are amazing people. I might get to Germany for a short tour this year, or tagging along on a unit deployment. If you haven't PCS'd by then I try to look you up.

I remain convinced that this war is worth all the sacrifices we face because I am convinced the enemy will be more able to bring more terror to our shores if we had not engaged them. They were emboldened by our restraint in the 20 years before this war, but now restraint can bring a nuke into an American harbor, or worse.

Blessings,
Fr. Wes

Fr.Wes,

I read Greyhawk's post as a mocking of the Times piece equivocation of 9/11 to other events in American history... ie: Since 9/11 didn't (or couldn't) result in the destruction of America, hey, maybe it's not as bad as everyone says... No need to overreact!

Greyhawk is spot on with his responses.

good grief.....these are exactly the same arguments made in 1968.

I agree that it's an apples/oranges comparison. In addition, the enemies we fought in the American Revolution, Civil War, etc. weren't terrorists of the kind we know today. It's a new enemy in an age of limitless technology and a seamless ability to communicate undercover. If 9/11 teaches us anything as time passes - let it teach us to never be asleep at the wheel again, to pay attention to the smallest warning and to be vigilant, ever vigilant to protect our way of life.

Oh, and I'm not just a "casual commenter" here - we lost a loved one on 9/11. You might say that makes my opinion jaded, but I would disagree. It makes my opinion more relevant.

In memory of Heather Lee Smith, Flight 11

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November 26, 2010


America@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 shall remain

INDEPENDENT - A non-profit member association, with no government support, that does not lobby for special interests;

NON-PARTISAN - An independent, professional military association with a mission, goals and objectives that transcend political affiliations; and shall encourage

IDEAS - Through its respected journals Proceedings and Naval History, its conferences, its books and its online content, in support of those who serve.

"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:

Closing Blogs is nothing new. So many site's owners just give up on their own. They come and go, you know, these MilBloggers do. Like any other sort of blogger. Many post in the lonely down hours far from home, spill their guts for the world, then abandon their spots when the tour of duty is up. They have lives again somewhere in the world, and no need to share the details. So it goes.

Many are truly gone - no site left at all. "The page cannot be found." Other blogs remain, like abandoned defensive positions in shifting desert sands.

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 | Comments (0) |

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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.
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  • Kris, in New England: I agree that it's an apples/oranges comparison. In addition, the read more
  • Salminio: good grief.....these are exactly the same arguments made in 1968. read more
  • Son Of The Godfather: Fr.Wes, I read Greyhawk's post as a mocking of the read more
  • Fr. Wes: Greyhawk, I hope all is well for you. I am read more
  • liber accipiter: [caveat: I did not read the linked article as it read more

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The Mudville Gazette is written and produced by Greyhawk, who recently retired from 24 years of active duty in the US military, but will maintain this disclaimer: Unless otherwise credited, the opinions expressed are those of the author, and nothing here is to be taken as representing the official position of or endorsement by the United States Department of Defense or any of its subordinate components.

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

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*****

Tending Distant
Fires


Far from hearth and home, watching
Cold alone but not alone
On distant shore and only wanting
Safe return and little more

What tales we'll tell
When that time comes
When tales can be told

When things grim
Seem far away
When other fires go cold

Some distant sunset, vision fading
Memories remain
And tired eyes gaze 'pon folded flags
While distant drums beat their refrain

Saluting fallen friends whose names
And youth will never fade
Here's to those on other shores,
for them live well, the price is paid

- Greyhawk,
Baghdad,
December 2004