Time for something different, away from the three-ring circus that is the country right now. Haven't had too much free time lately, but hearing about the remake of V made me think it might be worthwhile to revisit broadcast television (something I rarely do, save for Lost and 24). V seemed intriguing; the original was from more or less the same time period as the first BSG, and the new BSG was good, so it stood to reason a new V could be good too, right?
Well, thus far, I'm less than impressed. Oh, I'm not complaining about seeing some of the old cast members from Firefly come back to play (especially Morena Baccarin; good to see Wash too, though it looks like he won't be the funny guy this time around), or the rearrangement of various characters and plot devices we've come to expect from any reimagined show. But the new edition feels, above everything else, rushed. In the first hour, the Visitors arrived, awed everyone, set up embassies and "universal health care"; and by the end of the hour, we knew they were up to no good, were reptiles in disguise, and a resistance had organized against them. I think it took the better part of six hours for the original miniseries to get to that point, at a pace that pulled you in and made you very interested in what the Visitors were up to. Instead, ABC evidently feels obliged to spill all their beans right away lest viewers yawn and change the channel. They should know better; Lost, after all, is now on season 5 (6?) and still has tons of questions to answer; and people watch, damn it! Now we're only two episodes in and I get the feeling that the new V is already running out of twists. Choppy special effects (and way-too-tight jeans on the male lead) aside, the original was a powerful tale on the allure of fascism and how ordinary people found the courage to challenge it. Apart from some mild references to the current political culture of hopeychanginess, the new V has plowed through the slow pervasiveness of soft totalitarianism straight to the battle scenes, as it were, leaving all the nuances of the old show in the dust. I'll give it a few more chances, but I'm already thinking about removing it from my DVR and replacing it with some DVDs of rubber lizards in orange jumpsuits. Perhaps the new Prisoner will fare better. Has anybody delved into that yet?
And while we're on the topic of sci-fi dramas, I hereby declare that I'm going to list my personal all-time favorites and challenge anyone to do better:
1) The X-Files - yes, Chris Carter broke his solemn vow that Mulder and Scully would never have a romantic relationship; the second he did, the show crumbled. But though I don't like to talk about the last two seasons with the T-1000 replacing Scully as the skeptic, Carter gave us many good years of the freaky, the funny, and things that go bump in the night. From angels to aliens and demons to deranged scientists, Sunday night regularly challenged our imaginations and occasionally made us want to sleep with the lights on. Much imitated (I'm talking about you, Fringe), never duplicated, the X-Files took the weird into the mainstream. Looking back on it, I'm still impressed by the strength of its story-telling and willingness to let Mulder and Scully engage in a deep and powerful friendship without sex (until the end, when Carter copped out). Its greatest flaw, as I look back, is merely that recent history has shown that Chris Carter vastly overestimated the government's ability to keep really big secrets. I'm fully confident that if aliens truly existed and were trying to take over the planet, some blogger would have spilled the goods by now.
2) Firefly - I bet some of you out there will argue that BSG was better. Well, BSG was lasted longer, but Firefly was its godfather, and proved that you could tell compelling stories in outer space without devolving into complete and utter geekdom. Firefly was a drama that happened to take place in space; it was intensely character-driven and featured some of the best writing I've seen on television. It had no aliens, no faster-than-light travel; just a group of misfits perpetually on the wrong side of authority who nevertheless tried to do the right thing (frequently to their detriment). It also featured fun little details that bigger shows rarely concerned themselves with, like a well-researched 'blended' future Sino-American culture, or acknowledging - as no other sci-fi show or movie has - that there's no sound in space. Cancelled after only one season, Firefly made for a great 'what if' debate about how bright its future would have been; but I'm still grateful for what little we had.
3) Battlestar Galactica - Firefly opened the door creatively precisely for something like BSG; and unlike Fox, SciFi actually let its show run its course. BSG adopted many of the elements of its predecessor, from the choppy, documentary-like camera angles to the character-driven storyline to the little details (like military folk actually saluting) that proved its creators cared about their creation through and through. Again, it was about people, not technobabble; and this time, it wasn't about people living on the fringes of civilization, but people striving to cobble together a future after their civilization was taken from them. And, where Firefly cracked the door of religion by having a preacher on board, BSG kicked the door wide open by featuring not one but two competing belief systems between the protagonists, openly discussing theology in a way never before attempted by big-name series like Star Trek. BSG gave us four seasons that alternated between current political issues, powerful personal relationships, and massive nuke-slinging space battles. As with many shows, its longer run gave it more chances to stumble, and much of the third and fourth season had a weakness and sense of 'mission creep' that Firefly never did. But then, the former may well have gone that way had it lasted; no way to know now. That said, much like the X-Files, even at its weakest BSG could still give us some great television, and it is to my everlasting regret that I waited so long to get into it. For years, I devoted my attention to Star Trek and its various offspring, not knowing that space-faring sci-fi was capable of things other than shiny clean spaceships and vacuous moralizing. I would trade those years and years of Trekking for another good hour of BSG in a heartbeat.
I'd go on, but it's late and I'm old and ready for bed. Let me know if this list needs additions or if you think I'm full of crap (which I'm not and you're already wrong and you just don't know it, but I enjoy comments just the same :) ).
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Unserious Part IV, or V, or maybe XVI, it's hard to keep track
I may have to create a new "unserious" label for my posts, as it seems to be a common theme in Washington these days and deserves continuous scrutiny, but I'd hate to be accused of copping out of creative blog entitling. This issue will receive the highest consideration by my cabinet, and I'm optimistic we can reach a decision by the end of this week. Or the end of the month. At the very latest by Christmas, or possibly New Year, but no later than Yom Kippur next year.
On the bright side, the facts that poured out about Maj. Hasan last week made it harder and harder for talking heads and Beltway denizens to be unserious about the major's motives and intent. It's been confirmed that he was in repeated contact with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen, who also gave 'spiritual guidance' to some of the 9/11 hijackers. He made no bones about the extreme nature of his own faith, be it in PowerPoint slideshows to his classmates or on his business cards, which make no mention of his actual employment (i.e. the Army), but are quite clear about who he believed he was fighting for ("soldier of Allah"). Hasan received scrutiny from multiple federal terrorism task forces as well as his own superiors, who had several meetings on Hasan's piss-poor performance and openly debated whether the man was psychotic. The good major may also have been wiring money to terrorist groups in Pakistan, though we'll need more information to confirm it. All in all, it's increasingly clear that Hasan may not only have cultivated himself as a 'homegrown jihadist', but actively sought to sell himself as a free agent to the other team. I revise my first analysis of his rampage: this was not an act of terrorism, but an act of war and high treason.
That said, unseriousness still exists in this case, and it's unseriousness that enabled Hasan to be in the position he was at Fort Hood last week. Hasan's superiors at Walter Reed, despite their numerous conferences on the man's unsuitability as a doctor, could not find the strength within themselves to actually do something about it. Rather, they didn't want to endure the hassle of writing the paperwork required to fire him, so they did what we in the military call "shit canning": they shit-canned him to Fort Hood to make him someone else's problem. They were quite candid about what they were doing, too, consoling themselves with the knowledge that there were enough good doctors at Fort Hood to pick up Hasan's slack. Profiles in Courage, all of these men. I think a few of them should be on the stand beside Hasan for dereliction of duty.
It doesn't help, however, that the Army's chief, when presented with the bodies of 13 of his soldiers, lamented that as great a tragedy as these deaths were, the greater tragedy would be if the Army's "diversity" suffered as well. So, Gen. Casey, you'd be willing to accept a few more of these incidents so long as you can boast about the tapestry of diversity woven through the Army? That's cold comfort to 13 Army families and about as fundamentally unserious as a commander can be in time of war. Diversity be damned if it endangers American lives.
Oh, by the way, for the 1,394,758th time, "time is running out for Iran" on coming to a peaceful resolution of its little nuclear problem. Iran is "unable" to say yes to an alternative agreement to reprocessing its fuel; that sounds better, I suppose, than acknowledging that Iran is not unable, but completely unwilling, to come to any agreement short of being a nuclear power. In the parlance of our times, not only no, but F**K NO. That, and they may already have tested a nuclear warhead design (another nugget of info buried in a U.N. report by the hard-hitting investigators of the IAEA). What will it take for the civilized world to take Iran as seriously as they take themselves? An underground test? Nuclear blackmail? A radioactive Jewish city? Or, heaven forbid, a radioactive American city? What, exactly, will make us realize that Iran wants the bomb, is pursuing the bomb, and no amount of carrots will make them relinquish the bomb?
Fortunately, we're more serious, at least, about dealing with the perpetrators of previous terrorist acts. We're so serious that we're going to bring the mastermind behind 9/11 - Khalid Sheik Mohammed - and four of his friends back to New York City, the scene of their handiwork, and give them a civil trial with all the rights and privileges thereunto pertaining, regardless of the fact that they're not American citizens, deserve no rights as such, may well present a high security risk to the city, and could expose a large amount of the intelligence apparatus we're still actually using to find KSM's friends who still want to kill large numbers of people; and we're going to let the attorney-general tell you all this while we kiss the Japanese emperor's shoes. Now, there are some who don't think this is quite the disaster I make it out to be, and it will be great if they turn out to be right. I don't think the odds are in their favor, and I don't think the gamble is worth the test, but I hope they're right (even though 'hope' is hardly a national security strategy). All this aside, however, my biggest question is: why are we taking these risks when KSM and company are already safely put away in a high-security facility, far from jihadist eyes, and were on the verge of being convicted by military tribunals that the president himself supported? And by the AG's own admission, other prisoners at Gitmo will be prosecuted by these same tribunals; why not KSM? The president was fine with this arrangement a couple of years ago:
What changed?
Finally, addendum to two posts ago: I now appreciate that America was, in fact, too busy to celebrate the fall of Soviet communism:
On the bright side, the facts that poured out about Maj. Hasan last week made it harder and harder for talking heads and Beltway denizens to be unserious about the major's motives and intent. It's been confirmed that he was in repeated contact with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen, who also gave 'spiritual guidance' to some of the 9/11 hijackers. He made no bones about the extreme nature of his own faith, be it in PowerPoint slideshows to his classmates or on his business cards, which make no mention of his actual employment (i.e. the Army), but are quite clear about who he believed he was fighting for ("soldier of Allah"). Hasan received scrutiny from multiple federal terrorism task forces as well as his own superiors, who had several meetings on Hasan's piss-poor performance and openly debated whether the man was psychotic. The good major may also have been wiring money to terrorist groups in Pakistan, though we'll need more information to confirm it. All in all, it's increasingly clear that Hasan may not only have cultivated himself as a 'homegrown jihadist', but actively sought to sell himself as a free agent to the other team. I revise my first analysis of his rampage: this was not an act of terrorism, but an act of war and high treason.
That said, unseriousness still exists in this case, and it's unseriousness that enabled Hasan to be in the position he was at Fort Hood last week. Hasan's superiors at Walter Reed, despite their numerous conferences on the man's unsuitability as a doctor, could not find the strength within themselves to actually do something about it. Rather, they didn't want to endure the hassle of writing the paperwork required to fire him, so they did what we in the military call "shit canning": they shit-canned him to Fort Hood to make him someone else's problem. They were quite candid about what they were doing, too, consoling themselves with the knowledge that there were enough good doctors at Fort Hood to pick up Hasan's slack. Profiles in Courage, all of these men. I think a few of them should be on the stand beside Hasan for dereliction of duty.
It doesn't help, however, that the Army's chief, when presented with the bodies of 13 of his soldiers, lamented that as great a tragedy as these deaths were, the greater tragedy would be if the Army's "diversity" suffered as well. So, Gen. Casey, you'd be willing to accept a few more of these incidents so long as you can boast about the tapestry of diversity woven through the Army? That's cold comfort to 13 Army families and about as fundamentally unserious as a commander can be in time of war. Diversity be damned if it endangers American lives.
Oh, by the way, for the 1,394,758th time, "time is running out for Iran" on coming to a peaceful resolution of its little nuclear problem. Iran is "unable" to say yes to an alternative agreement to reprocessing its fuel; that sounds better, I suppose, than acknowledging that Iran is not unable, but completely unwilling, to come to any agreement short of being a nuclear power. In the parlance of our times, not only no, but F**K NO. That, and they may already have tested a nuclear warhead design (another nugget of info buried in a U.N. report by the hard-hitting investigators of the IAEA). What will it take for the civilized world to take Iran as seriously as they take themselves? An underground test? Nuclear blackmail? A radioactive Jewish city? Or, heaven forbid, a radioactive American city? What, exactly, will make us realize that Iran wants the bomb, is pursuing the bomb, and no amount of carrots will make them relinquish the bomb?
Fortunately, we're more serious, at least, about dealing with the perpetrators of previous terrorist acts. We're so serious that we're going to bring the mastermind behind 9/11 - Khalid Sheik Mohammed - and four of his friends back to New York City, the scene of their handiwork, and give them a civil trial with all the rights and privileges thereunto pertaining, regardless of the fact that they're not American citizens, deserve no rights as such, may well present a high security risk to the city, and could expose a large amount of the intelligence apparatus we're still actually using to find KSM's friends who still want to kill large numbers of people; and we're going to let the attorney-general tell you all this while we kiss the Japanese emperor's shoes. Now, there are some who don't think this is quite the disaster I make it out to be, and it will be great if they turn out to be right. I don't think the odds are in their favor, and I don't think the gamble is worth the test, but I hope they're right (even though 'hope' is hardly a national security strategy). All this aside, however, my biggest question is: why are we taking these risks when KSM and company are already safely put away in a high-security facility, far from jihadist eyes, and were on the verge of being convicted by military tribunals that the president himself supported? And by the AG's own admission, other prisoners at Gitmo will be prosecuted by these same tribunals; why not KSM? The president was fine with this arrangement a couple of years ago:
What changed?
Finally, addendum to two posts ago: I now appreciate that America was, in fact, too busy to celebrate the fall of Soviet communism:
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
One Marine's birthday thoughts
From the CO of 2/3:
I watched 19 and 20 year old men, who a mere few years before were undoubtedly typical self centered teenagers, earnestly try to make a young child who has only known poverty and war smile. I even saw a very imposing Marine in this Battalion who, frankly, scares the heck out of me, see a little girl off to the side of a group of kids with nothing in her hands so he very seriously went around saying "Somebody give me a teddy-bear, who has a F-ing teddy bear?" until he found one and presented it to her. The only person there with a bigger smile than the little girl was the Marine. He then went right back to chewing on his squad to keep their dispersion and move faster.
I watched FST medical personnel try every desperate measure to keep a good Marine with us, to the point of opening his chest and massaging his heart for what seemed like an interminable time. At the same time I saw a line of Marines and Sailors and Soldiers forming outside to donate blood, we had enough donors to transfuse all of Hannibal's elephants but they all wanted to do something and at that time the only thing they could do was give some of their blood.
I watched an NCO very patiently sum up all the complex nuances of counter-insurgency warfare to a young Marine while both were being pummeled with stones and physically knocking intruders off our wall from a mob threatening to breach the walls of our police station; "They want us to shoot them, so then they can make us all look like bad guys." So we didn't shoot, even though we had more than sufficient justification, and in the end what could have been a horrible incident broadcast around the world actually became a positive as the locals started talking about the restraint of "their Marines" and became angry with the rioters for their "un-Islamic" behavior.
I watched a Marine, with excruciating slowness and superhuman patience, lead an Afghan Policeman through a patrol brief. And I saw the pride in the ANP officer's face when he lead his patrol out the entry control point, in his town and in front of his people, with the Marines trailing along behind in case he needed some help. I also saw an Afghan Policeman's face when I told him that the Marines thought highly of him and had told me that "Spider" (his nickname) was a good guy to have alongside you in a fight. He sputtered a little bit then said something short and stared at me very intensely, the linguist told me "He says he is just so very proud that the US Marines think that". Once Spider was sure that I understood that he meant it, he strutted away like he had just won the world's highest honor. And perhaps he had.
I know that for the rest of my life I will cherish this period in which I had the honor to spend my days among such incredible men. And I know that it has been your sacrifices that have made it possible. I thank you for allowing me this time with your loved ones.
We are coming home.
This is a bit of an odd update I'm afraid. It isn't my intention to talk about Afghanistan or our mission here, but instead to address just what incredible men your Marines and Sailors are. I doubt that I will ever be able to express the extent of the respect and admiration I have for your loved ones in this Battalion. I can use words like dedication, courage, honor but in the end words don't quite cut it. So let me tell you what I have seen.
I saw a LCpl bring in his buddy's gear following a horrible IED strike and practically beg to go back out so he could get back in the fight.
I saw a Marine leaning out over the edge of a roof in the middle of a firefight, leaving himself in the open purposefully in order to tempt an enemy RPG shooter to break cover in order to end him.
I've seen numerous Marines standing a lonely post in the pre-dawn hours, keeping watch carefully and correctly even though no one would know if they cut a corner, but doing it right because they were responsible for their buddies' lives.
I watched a Sailor calmly grab his gear and run out in the open to a casualty who needed him, he never asked "How bad is he hurt?" or "How much enemy fire is there?", the only thing he asked was "Where's the casualty?" then he went. Because Corpsmen always come when they are needed, always.
I saw a Marine leaning out over the edge of a roof in the middle of a firefight, leaving himself in the open purposefully in order to tempt an enemy RPG shooter to break cover in order to end him.
I've seen numerous Marines standing a lonely post in the pre-dawn hours, keeping watch carefully and correctly even though no one would know if they cut a corner, but doing it right because they were responsible for their buddies' lives.
I watched a Sailor calmly grab his gear and run out in the open to a casualty who needed him, he never asked "How bad is he hurt?" or "How much enemy fire is there?", the only thing he asked was "Where's the casualty?" then he went. Because Corpsmen always come when they are needed, always.
I watched 19 and 20 year old men, who a mere few years before were undoubtedly typical self centered teenagers, earnestly try to make a young child who has only known poverty and war smile. I even saw a very imposing Marine in this Battalion who, frankly, scares the heck out of me, see a little girl off to the side of a group of kids with nothing in her hands so he very seriously went around saying "Somebody give me a teddy-bear, who has a F-ing teddy bear?" until he found one and presented it to her. The only person there with a bigger smile than the little girl was the Marine. He then went right back to chewing on his squad to keep their dispersion and move faster.
I watched FST medical personnel try every desperate measure to keep a good Marine with us, to the point of opening his chest and massaging his heart for what seemed like an interminable time. At the same time I saw a line of Marines and Sailors and Soldiers forming outside to donate blood, we had enough donors to transfuse all of Hannibal's elephants but they all wanted to do something and at that time the only thing they could do was give some of their blood.
I watched an NCO very patiently sum up all the complex nuances of counter-insurgency warfare to a young Marine while both were being pummeled with stones and physically knocking intruders off our wall from a mob threatening to breach the walls of our police station; "They want us to shoot them, so then they can make us all look like bad guys." So we didn't shoot, even though we had more than sufficient justification, and in the end what could have been a horrible incident broadcast around the world actually became a positive as the locals started talking about the restraint of "their Marines" and became angry with the rioters for their "un-Islamic" behavior.
I watched a Marine, with excruciating slowness and superhuman patience, lead an Afghan Policeman through a patrol brief. And I saw the pride in the ANP officer's face when he lead his patrol out the entry control point, in his town and in front of his people, with the Marines trailing along behind in case he needed some help. I also saw an Afghan Policeman's face when I told him that the Marines thought highly of him and had told me that "Spider" (his nickname) was a good guy to have alongside you in a fight. He sputtered a little bit then said something short and stared at me very intensely, the linguist told me "He says he is just so very proud that the US Marines think that". Once Spider was sure that I understood that he meant it, he strutted away like he had just won the world's highest honor. And perhaps he had.
I know that for the rest of my life I will cherish this period in which I had the honor to spend my days among such incredible men. And I know that it has been your sacrifices that have made it possible. I thank you for allowing me this time with your loved ones.
We are coming home.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Postcard from Berlin
Dear America,
We're having a blast today. Today, we celebrate 20 years since the downfall of the most oppressive system of governance the world has ever known. We celebrate the triumph of the free market over central control, of individual rights over collectivist suffering, of unbridled prosperity over the chains of poverty, of democracy over dictatorship, of free speech and thought over the gulag, of free will over diktats, of every truly Western, liberal, and enlightened value that thinkers, fighters, leaders, and citizens have treasured and defended for hundreds of years.
Wish you were here.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
No "tragedy"
I'm back from the first of what will be many week-long sojourns up at 29 Palms, having successfully completed TACP school and achieved a new MOS as a FAC. The firing exercise itself saw some good training with a wide variety of aircraft and weapons; I was a tad disappointed that we didn't get an AC-130 or A-10 to show up with their various calibers of hate and discontent, but we had a never-ending stream of F-18s, AV-8s, and AH-1s, and they brought plenty of fireworks with them (and I certainly enjoyed being the only student who got to control a live Hellfire shot).
It felt good to wrap things up on Thursday; as we say in military parlance, a lot of learning occurred for me in the last four weeks, as I struggled to understand the nuances of a side of aviation that was completely foreign to me (most people in the class were either TACAIR pilots i.e. they've dropped ordnance for ground units before, or ground-pounders who'd been in situations where CAS was required. As assault support, we're generally told to hang out somewhere else until all the bomb-dropping is done and it's relatively safe for us to bring our fat asses in). This course was no joke, but hey, at the end everything clicked and that's what's important. Our class' collective elation at finishing, however, was sobered when we came back from the range Thursday night to learn that a dozen more American soldiers were dead and several dozen wounded in a bloodbath that took place not in some remote outpost in Afghanistan, but in our own back yard.
The name of Major Nidal Malik Hasan will doubtless live in infamy in Army history well beyond the day he finds himself on the wrong end of a firing squad or is hung from the yard-arm until dead (I don't know if we still have yard-arms but I think it's a tradition worth reviving for him). Equally infamous will be the enduring knowledge that Hasan exhibited enough disturbing behavior over a long period of time that his actions may well have been prevented at any number of points had anyone in the Army's bureaucracy shown some stones. As it is, an attitude of political correctness and fear of repercussions for alleged 'discrimination' by people in Hasan's chain of command deserve at least some of the blame held by the trigger-puller himself.
That attitude, unfortunately, seems to pervade the current investigation into what drove Hasan to gun down the soldiers he was supposed to be helping. Various explanations are floating around, all apparently designed to support the head-in-the-sand notion exemplified by one army wife who lamented that she wished the gunman's last name had been Smith. There's the cure-all theory of post-traumatic stress syndrome, always a favorite to explain irrational violence by vets returning from Bush's unjust wars; yet Hasan had never deployed. There's the story that Hasan felt - evidently very deeply, judging by his actions - that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were wrong and that he really, really, really didn't want to go, to the point where he hired lawyers to help him avoid deploying. Well, there are many legitimate courses of action for conscientious objectors to take (first and foremost: not joining the military to begin with), and in the past eight years military personnel have taken them (as well as not-so-legitimate choices, like fleeing to Canada). Yet within the ranks of objectors, no one else ever decided to express his opposition by murdering his comrades. Finally, of course, there's the argument that Hasan was on the receiving end of that always-just-over-the-horizon anti-Muslim 9/11 backlash that CAIR insists will arrive tomorrow. There are recourses for that too, from bringing such discrimination to the attention of the Equal Opportunity officer resident in each military unit (yes, I'm not making that up, we all have one) to using the rank of major he held to tell the offending party to STFU.
All of these straw men are currently employed in obfuscating the clearest explanation, which is that somewhere along the way, Major Hasan's Muslim beliefs became increasingly radicalized to the point where he turned into a free agent for the opposing team. This means that his actions Thursday afternoon were not a "tragedy" - as if this were an earthquake or wildfire - but a pre-meditated example of jihadist terrorism at its vilest. Everyone is going to great lengths to say that his religion had nothing to do with murdering a pregnant mother just returned from combat duty, a nurse who wanted to join the Army after 9/11 despite being over 50 years old, a PFC from a family of military service stretching back to Vietnam, a female sergeant who vowed to personally take on Osams bin Laden, and half a dozen other fine men and women. Yet all the evidence points to just such a motive. As early as 2001, Hasan attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, VA, at the same time two 9/11 hijackers were receiving 'spiritual guidance' from an imam who was an ardent al-Qaeda supporter. His fellow medical students frequently heard him erupt in 'anti-American' rants (though, notably, did not report them for fear of being considered discriminatory). Hasan's local imam in Texas reports that the gunman had reservations about fighting fellow Muslims (evidently lost on Hasan was the irony of seeking support for his radical views from an imam who was a retired first sergeant and Desert Storm vet); the imam did not report this to Hasan's superiors presumably because as a former first sergeant, he assumed that the Army would discipline Hasan if they knew about it (which they did, but did not act). Hasan allegedly posted rants on the Internet equating suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades. And, finally, as Hasan rose from his desk, looked his fellow soldiers in the eyes, and started shooting, he shouted "Allahu akbar" - "God is great", a cry I have heard on countless jihadist videos right before an IED shreds a convoy, a missile plucks an aircraft out of the sky, or a suicide bomber wipes out a marketplace. Claiming that Hasan's religion had nothing to do with his actions is like claiming that when it came to the Final Solution, Hitler's anti-Semitism was beside the point.
In the weeks and months to come, we'll get the full story. No doubt Hasan himself will have something to say; either he'll tell us that his fellow soldiers were a bunch of infidels about to make war on innocent Muslims and deserved to die, or if he decides to manipulate the legal system for all it's worth, we'll hear that he was suffering from 'pre-post traumatic stress syndrome' and was so terrified by a deployment he didn't want to go on that he just snapped and in a fit of despair killed and maimed those who happened to be around him, reloaded, and killed and maimed some more. My guess is he'll get a lawyer who will go with the latter (and though it makes me sick to my stomach, I'll also go out on a limb and guess that he'll have a long line of America-hating opportunists looking to represent him, as all our buddies in Gitmo do). And we will have to endure further obfuscation as attorneys claim that everything from redneck discrimination to the fundamental injustice of American foreign policy around the globe is responsible for thirteen people lying on slabs, while the perverse ideology that justifies the murder of the innocent and unarmed in the name of Allah goes unchallenged. Maybe I'll be wrong and prosecutors will get to the heart of the matter (not getting my hopes up, though, when our wishful cultural ignorance goes up to the top, with the head of Homeland Security warning against an anti-Muslim backlash in the wake of the shooting. Well, Janet, in your quest to assuage the world that Americans won't go all ig'nant and start getting pissy at 'towelheads', I'd point out that, based on Thursday, non-Muslims have more to fear from Muslims than vice versa. Surely even you can count: after Thursday, Muslims killed = 0; non-Muslims killed = 13. Who should fear who?). Either way, at least there's no chance that Hasan will ever walk the streets of this fair country again. Let's get down to finding that yard-arm . . .
It felt good to wrap things up on Thursday; as we say in military parlance, a lot of learning occurred for me in the last four weeks, as I struggled to understand the nuances of a side of aviation that was completely foreign to me (most people in the class were either TACAIR pilots i.e. they've dropped ordnance for ground units before, or ground-pounders who'd been in situations where CAS was required. As assault support, we're generally told to hang out somewhere else until all the bomb-dropping is done and it's relatively safe for us to bring our fat asses in). This course was no joke, but hey, at the end everything clicked and that's what's important. Our class' collective elation at finishing, however, was sobered when we came back from the range Thursday night to learn that a dozen more American soldiers were dead and several dozen wounded in a bloodbath that took place not in some remote outpost in Afghanistan, but in our own back yard.
The name of Major Nidal Malik Hasan will doubtless live in infamy in Army history well beyond the day he finds himself on the wrong end of a firing squad or is hung from the yard-arm until dead (I don't know if we still have yard-arms but I think it's a tradition worth reviving for him). Equally infamous will be the enduring knowledge that Hasan exhibited enough disturbing behavior over a long period of time that his actions may well have been prevented at any number of points had anyone in the Army's bureaucracy shown some stones. As it is, an attitude of political correctness and fear of repercussions for alleged 'discrimination' by people in Hasan's chain of command deserve at least some of the blame held by the trigger-puller himself.
That attitude, unfortunately, seems to pervade the current investigation into what drove Hasan to gun down the soldiers he was supposed to be helping. Various explanations are floating around, all apparently designed to support the head-in-the-sand notion exemplified by one army wife who lamented that she wished the gunman's last name had been Smith. There's the cure-all theory of post-traumatic stress syndrome, always a favorite to explain irrational violence by vets returning from Bush's unjust wars; yet Hasan had never deployed. There's the story that Hasan felt - evidently very deeply, judging by his actions - that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were wrong and that he really, really, really didn't want to go, to the point where he hired lawyers to help him avoid deploying. Well, there are many legitimate courses of action for conscientious objectors to take (first and foremost: not joining the military to begin with), and in the past eight years military personnel have taken them (as well as not-so-legitimate choices, like fleeing to Canada). Yet within the ranks of objectors, no one else ever decided to express his opposition by murdering his comrades. Finally, of course, there's the argument that Hasan was on the receiving end of that always-just-over-the-horizon anti-Muslim 9/11 backlash that CAIR insists will arrive tomorrow. There are recourses for that too, from bringing such discrimination to the attention of the Equal Opportunity officer resident in each military unit (yes, I'm not making that up, we all have one) to using the rank of major he held to tell the offending party to STFU.
All of these straw men are currently employed in obfuscating the clearest explanation, which is that somewhere along the way, Major Hasan's Muslim beliefs became increasingly radicalized to the point where he turned into a free agent for the opposing team. This means that his actions Thursday afternoon were not a "tragedy" - as if this were an earthquake or wildfire - but a pre-meditated example of jihadist terrorism at its vilest. Everyone is going to great lengths to say that his religion had nothing to do with murdering a pregnant mother just returned from combat duty, a nurse who wanted to join the Army after 9/11 despite being over 50 years old, a PFC from a family of military service stretching back to Vietnam, a female sergeant who vowed to personally take on Osams bin Laden, and half a dozen other fine men and women. Yet all the evidence points to just such a motive. As early as 2001, Hasan attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, VA, at the same time two 9/11 hijackers were receiving 'spiritual guidance' from an imam who was an ardent al-Qaeda supporter. His fellow medical students frequently heard him erupt in 'anti-American' rants (though, notably, did not report them for fear of being considered discriminatory). Hasan's local imam in Texas reports that the gunman had reservations about fighting fellow Muslims (evidently lost on Hasan was the irony of seeking support for his radical views from an imam who was a retired first sergeant and Desert Storm vet); the imam did not report this to Hasan's superiors presumably because as a former first sergeant, he assumed that the Army would discipline Hasan if they knew about it (which they did, but did not act). Hasan allegedly posted rants on the Internet equating suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades. And, finally, as Hasan rose from his desk, looked his fellow soldiers in the eyes, and started shooting, he shouted "Allahu akbar" - "God is great", a cry I have heard on countless jihadist videos right before an IED shreds a convoy, a missile plucks an aircraft out of the sky, or a suicide bomber wipes out a marketplace. Claiming that Hasan's religion had nothing to do with his actions is like claiming that when it came to the Final Solution, Hitler's anti-Semitism was beside the point.
In the weeks and months to come, we'll get the full story. No doubt Hasan himself will have something to say; either he'll tell us that his fellow soldiers were a bunch of infidels about to make war on innocent Muslims and deserved to die, or if he decides to manipulate the legal system for all it's worth, we'll hear that he was suffering from 'pre-post traumatic stress syndrome' and was so terrified by a deployment he didn't want to go on that he just snapped and in a fit of despair killed and maimed those who happened to be around him, reloaded, and killed and maimed some more. My guess is he'll get a lawyer who will go with the latter (and though it makes me sick to my stomach, I'll also go out on a limb and guess that he'll have a long line of America-hating opportunists looking to represent him, as all our buddies in Gitmo do). And we will have to endure further obfuscation as attorneys claim that everything from redneck discrimination to the fundamental injustice of American foreign policy around the globe is responsible for thirteen people lying on slabs, while the perverse ideology that justifies the murder of the innocent and unarmed in the name of Allah goes unchallenged. Maybe I'll be wrong and prosecutors will get to the heart of the matter (not getting my hopes up, though, when our wishful cultural ignorance goes up to the top, with the head of Homeland Security warning against an anti-Muslim backlash in the wake of the shooting. Well, Janet, in your quest to assuage the world that Americans won't go all ig'nant and start getting pissy at 'towelheads', I'd point out that, based on Thursday, non-Muslims have more to fear from Muslims than vice versa. Surely even you can count: after Thursday, Muslims killed = 0; non-Muslims killed = 13. Who should fear who?). Either way, at least there's no chance that Hasan will ever walk the streets of this fair country again. Let's get down to finding that yard-arm . . .
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Fallen angels
This has been a rough week for naval aviation. We started with a mid-air in Afghanistan and ended with nine lives lost in a collision near San Diego and a training aircraft missing out of Corpus Christi. In a time of war and with a high op tempo, this is the cost of doing business. Keep all of them in your thoughts; they're your neighborhood guardian angels, braving friendly and unfriendly skies to bring you home when you're lost and keep the wolves from your door. They are sorely missed.
I'm spending the next week in the field at 29 Palms and so will be out of touch. Spare a thought for Bree and Aaron too; they're about to endure another phase of separation that came unlooked for when I assume my new post up here.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
'One of the best'
Apologies for the hiatus, I've been immersed in the arts of FACdom at TACP school pretty deeply, surfacing only to jaunt out east for 30 hours to run a marathon and then come back home for more FACdom. I was on the verge of shooting out some quick thoughts on Afghanistan when things there took a tragic turn yesterday.
"One of the best". That certainly describes Capt Kyle Van De Giesen, who was killed in action two days ago in a helicopter collision. He graduated a year ahead of me from St. A's, and was one of the first people I encountered on my own road to the Marine Corps. Since it's a small Corps and we were both helicopter pilots, we crossed paths occasionally after both of us graduated, and I remember that each time, he always exuded the utmost enthusiasm for his job. I think he was one of those Marines who completely loved what he was doing and wouldn't have traded it for anything else. Of all people, he surely deserved to finish his tour and go home to his wife and kids. It was gut-wrenching to learn that he was within a week of doing so, and doing so in time to see the birth of his second child, when his aircraft went down. I hope you'll all spare a moment and a prayer for his family who are now planning a funeral instead of a homecoming.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
A fine leader, Marine, and American, taken from us at 29. Requiescat in pace and semper fidelis.
"One of the best". That certainly describes Capt Kyle Van De Giesen, who was killed in action two days ago in a helicopter collision. He graduated a year ahead of me from St. A's, and was one of the first people I encountered on my own road to the Marine Corps. Since it's a small Corps and we were both helicopter pilots, we crossed paths occasionally after both of us graduated, and I remember that each time, he always exuded the utmost enthusiasm for his job. I think he was one of those Marines who completely loved what he was doing and wouldn't have traded it for anything else. Of all people, he surely deserved to finish his tour and go home to his wife and kids. It was gut-wrenching to learn that he was within a week of doing so, and doing so in time to see the birth of his second child, when his aircraft went down. I hope you'll all spare a moment and a prayer for his family who are now planning a funeral instead of a homecoming.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
A fine leader, Marine, and American, taken from us at 29. Requiescat in pace and semper fidelis.
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