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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! June 12, 2009 Work on "think"By GreyhawkHey - I'm a conservative this week! See the linked word "agree"? That's me! And I'm "pathetic", too! Er, actually I'm "a milblogger that called Smith and Herridge "pathetic" for reconsidering the report." Hey - wait a minute, lemme check something here... Crap - I was actually directly addressing an accusation against veterans. But if my fellow veteran Ralph Peters said something...A biography of Brunn posted on the site says he is a World War II veteran who served time in federal prison for trying to make a "citizens arrest" of Federal Reserve Board members in 1981.If that's all on which Smith and Herridge are basing their claims of vindication regarding the veteran threat, they're pathetic. Neil, I gotta say something. On Fox News of all places in the last hour I heard that this tragic incident at the Holocaust Museum somehow validates the disgraceful report from the Department of Homeland Security warning about a terror threat from our returning veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan. Neil, this guy served in World War Two. He's been out of the military 64 years.Double crap! - he was talking very specifically about veterans, too. But he's a conservative, right??... but crap again! I actually wrote my bit before he said that, and added him in an update. Dammit, I was just responding to a moronic claim about vets. Then again - Michelle Malkin linked me! She's conservative, ergo so am I. But wait! The quote I opened this entry with, wherein I am linked twice, is from Think Progress, obviously a "progressive" web site, so I must be a "progressive" too... Wait - it gets better! I scrolled through the 75 comments currently at the Think Progress post to see if any one of the 30 people who bothered to follow those links over here and actually read my work for themselves had corrected. No again! (But there are several sneering at all the conservatives/Right Wingers who've never even read the DHS report!!!...) As far as I can tell, at Think Progress they're all "progress" and zero "think". Aha! I must be conservative because now I've indiscriminately criticized "progressives" for believing anything they're told! But that's wrong again - because here's Mahablog (who I've linked previously on one of my defenses of President Obama - gasp!). They understood and concur with my point exactly (even though they see me as a right-wing blogger). And here's my old friend (I mean that) The Gun Toting Liberal who links to my follow-on post where I point out that with one exception no one deserves to be linked to this alleged J-school grad who (like John F Kennedy) was a PT boat captain in WWII. Here's the tricky, confusing way I worded that: ...no one (other than fellow Nazis - and some of them will probably deny him) deserves to be associated with this sumbitch. In his 90 years on this earth (which he probably wanted to end guns blazing) this dirt bag probably did many things (including - like Hitler - "art") - most of which neither define him or reflect on others who did - or do - those things.Once again I avoided right/left etc. - but yes, from "no one" you can infer correctly that I've made a CLEAR point regarding any group other than Nazis. (And I was right about that "some will deny" bit, too.) In a moment of sublime synchronicity, two days before the shooting I had written this comment on another post: RAHBut one thing does tend to get me pissed off - people who blindly, willfully, and unquestioningly believe what they're told. Bad things follow. Next post - unless some Leftist whack job offs me for being an Iraq war vet - I'll actually write what I think of the DHS report(s) - which I've all but ignored up until now. At this point it's only fair. (Hint: "it's prescient" - I've already said that here...) Previous/related: Love American Style Another change in Party Affiliation Posted by Greyhawk / June 12, 2009 12:33 PM | Permalink 2 TrackBacks...and incoming bolides:A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned. The sat... Read More the point about whether World War Two veterans are what the DHS really meant when they said Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. ... "The wheels came off the wagon because the vetting process was not followed," Ms. Napolitano told the House... 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 |
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