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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! January 24, 2009 Strike One, Strike Two...By Greyhawk...and the Goodwar begins. The Washington Post: Suspected U.S. Missile Strikes Kill at Least 20 in Pakistan"No comment" being perfectly okay with WaPo reporters, who then explain it's just normal, smart business on the part of the US: "The United States generally does not comment on or confirm whether it is behind missile attacks." The Post also has reassuring advice for those who worry about "collateral damage" from such attacks - don't. The attack was a "precision strike": "The precision strike leveled a compound, which was owned by local tribal elder Khalil Malik", who was - according to additional details provided by the Post before the dust had settled around the impact crater - a very bad man: The Haqqani Network has been linked to dozens of suicide and roadside bomb attacks on U.S., coalition and Afghan government forces in Afghanistan, including an assassination attempt last April on Afghan President Hamid Karzai.That second reference being to the other very bad man hit in a precision strike this week in which no innocent civilians were harmed. Previously, any attacks on al Qaeda or Taliban targets in Pakistan or Afghanistan would invariably hit wedding parties instead. If you're wondering why the sudden and " notable change in tempo and reported accuracy", the Post explains that, too: Samina Ahmed, director of the International Crisis Group in Pakistan, attributes some of the change to increased cooperation between the United States and Pakistan. Update/more: at Instapundit, Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin, and Hot Air. I've looked for some "left-wing" blog commentary to balance the above, but if memorandum is definitive, there's really little to none (as of this link). Bill Roggio reports here, James Joyner comments here. For my part, I'm reminded of this: January 20, 1993: William J. Clinton becomes President of the United States.But the Obama administration has clearly learned from Clinton's mistake. Strikes in Pakistan will be different now, and not merely a continuation of Bush administration policies, as Time Magazine hastens to explain. They're on board for the Goodwar, and salute the enlightened change in approach here: The Washington Post has a good assessment of the emerging Obama policy toward Pakistan--continue the effective Predator strikes against terrorist targets in the Northwest Frontier areas on the one hand, while rebalancing U.S. aid to Pakistan, away from the untrammeled military aid of the Bush Administration, most of which was used by the Pakistanis to build up their arms on the Indian front, and toward more economic and humanitarian development projects:I think they're trying to say that we're getting the job done there and not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there. Recent/related: IO, IO, it's off to work we go Posted by Greyhawk / January 24, 2009 4:07 PM | Permalink 1 Comment |
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 |
Don't remember who said, Greyhawk, Instapundit, Fred at Rantburg but one of you can check your archives: "The WoT won't be won or universally accepted as a [good war] until the democrats get on board [by inheriting it in the WH]." Something like that.