Goodbye Jeremiah.

I was sitting at my desk this morning writing a French paper, worrying about the deadline that I would clearly miss and feeling badly about sleeping later than I should have. And there were other, more pressing concerns on my mind, namely, a recent mistake I made that caused pain to someone else and to myself. I won't go into details. My phone rang and I got up to answer it, sure that it was my dad calling for the first of what would inevitably amount to five or more phone calls throughout the day. He likes to check in more and more the older he gets.

But it wasn't my dad, it was an old Army buddy named John Williams, one of the guys I've been working with on a documentary project about National Guard veterans of the Iraq War. His voice, normally strong and clear, was faint. "Hey, sorry I've been out of touch for awhile," he said. "No problem,” I replied, “what's up?"

"Did you hear yet?"

"No, hear what?"

"It's McNeal. KIA."

A few minutes after I hung up with John Williams, another Army buddy called. It was Sean Crippen, a 3rd Yr. sports management student at Virginia State who I've also been working with. Crip's tears were audible over the phone. His voice faltering, he mumbled, "I can't keep going to these funerals man." I told him I'd be there too. There's small comfort in knowing that we can rely on each other for support when our war comes home to haunt us.

Sgt. McNeal was my friend and fellow soldier for three years. We lived on the same base during my year in Iraq and continued to serve in West Point, VA for two years after our return. He was a gentle human being, not Gung Ho in any way, but extremely dependable. Just before we deployed for the first tour, in February 2004, McNeal married his girlfriend. We were all sure it would fall apart, as do so many marriages rushed into before a pending deployment. But his marriage lasted, one of the few that remained strong. His wife recently gave birth to their second child. I don't know if McNeal ever met the child. I am sure, however, that neither child will remember their father, a man I respected immensely and had a great deal of faith in as a young leader.

As for me, I'll always remember McNeal because of his ready smile and because he laughed at all of my jokes.

McNeal deployed for a second tour with my former unit -- the 237 Sapper Company -- in October, 2007. He joined the Guard for college tuition assistance but ended up working full time to support his family. His death brings the number of Iraq dead that I've known personally to five.

With each death I retreat several steps from healing. If I've learned anything from my own veteran experience, from working with fellow veterans, and from reading as many veterans' novels and memoirs as I can get my hands on, it's that soldiers leave a part of themselves -- perhaps their youths, certainly their innocence, often their hope -- in whatever far away place they call "in country." Indeed, many soldiers never make peace with their war experiences. The war becomes for many a perpetual reference point for anger, sadness, failure, and alienation.

I am not there yet. Crip and Williams aren't quite there either. But we are keenly aware of how close we are, and every time one of our friends dies we fear what will come. We wait anxiously for the bitterness, the resentment, and the frustration to well up inside of us. We wonder how it will affect our lives, our careers, and our relationships. We wonder if we will ever be able to say goodbye, or if we should.

There's only one thing I don't wonder about. I never wonder whether or not men like McNeal would leap at the opportunity to take another crack at life. I never wonder whether or not they, having lost everything, would return from the grave with a commitment to take nothing for granted.

And so I try to turn the pain into something positive in the only way I know how, and that's to remember -- every time I doubt myself or feel like giving up -- how lucky I am to have the opportunity to try my hardest at this life. When I think of the friends I have lost, I take stock of all of the decisions I have made, of where I am headed, and I try to remember that I still have the opportunity to right wrongs, to do the right thing from here on out. Those are profound opportunities that five of my friends will never have again. To choose to live more fully, more compassionately, and more justly is the luxury of the living. It is your luxury and mine, and it is a grave responsibility, one that we must cherish and respect while we have the time.

So go out and say you’re sorry to someone you’ve hurt. Do something nice for someone, anything at all. And above all, be thankful you’re alive.

Mr. Rove turns his guns on Obama.

Today Karl Rove published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal describing the "tears" in the fabric of Mr. Obama's campaign rhetoric. Alas, it seems that Mr. Obama has a leftist Democratic agenda under his cloak, laments Mr. Rove.

Several months ago, Mr. Rove wrote an op-ed for Newsweek entitled "How to Beat Hillary." Hillary Clinton was then the strong Democratic frontrunner and the greatest fear of most Republicans. Obama penned a very similar open letter to Mr. Obama himself, "Memo: win Iowa or lose the race," subject heading: How to Beat Hillary. Well, apparently Mr. Obama read the letter well. He did indeed win in Iowa and since then his campaign has steadily outperformed Hillary's, which seems to have taken a nosedive.

Now that Clinton has faded a bit and Obama seems poised to seize the Democratic nomination, it makes sense that Mr. Rove is realizing his earlier error in offering strategical advice to the young candidate on the Obama-Hillary takedown. Mr. Rove realizes -- probably with alarm -- that Obama can, and likely will, beat Mr. McCain, and that he is a much bigger threat now that Hillary ever was. Oops. So now Mr. Rove turns his guns on Mr. Obama. It all makes sense. Damage control.

Don't know if the tide can be stopped now, though, Mr. Rove. It appears that you and every other American who underestimated Mr. Obama are in for a surprise. Will it be the collapse of the U.S. into the dark days of a leftist Democratic agenda? I seriously doubt it. Anyway, what could be darker than the last eight years over which your administration has presided with such damaging and disheartening carelessness?

Goodbye Castro, Hello . . . ?

Well, I guess we're all waiting to see if brother Raul will hold off on opening the floodgates until Fidel actually bites the chorizo. So while the old guy is still alive, perhaps it's time to get a bit nostalgic.

Last year Foreign Policy Magazine published a debate between two Cuban scholars (one is in American "exile") as to whether or not Castro has been good or bad for Cuba. We all know the charges levied against Castro falling on the negative side: forbade competition and caused imposition of embargos by alliance with Soviet Comintern; prohibits freedom of speech and freedom of assembly; and, worst of all, banned elections and made himself pres. for life. Those are pretty bad allegations, especially if one heavily favors the United States' ideological and strategic position during the Cold War. Which reminds me of another bad point not included in the scholar's own list: Castro allowed the Soviets to put nuclear warheads on his island, knowing full well that if the Soviets ever used one of them against the US, fired from Cuba, that Cuba would be utterly destroyed. That was perhaps an instance of taking too much liberty with his population's security.

On the positive side: The Revolution and Castro's government prioritized medicine, education, and egalitarianism, such that Cuba now has one of the finest medical systems in the world and some of the best trained doctors (of whom there are more deployed per capita doing international aid work than any other nationality), such that Cuba boasts one of the finest education systems in the world (to which students travel from all over Latin America), and such that race does not exist as a factor in daily life for most Cubans, who are overwhelmingly mestizos of one sort or another. Racism still exists institutionally, in the sense that dark black comrades are less likely to advance to high party posts than "whiter" comrades, but racism as such does not exist -- so I'm told -- in the way that it does in the United States. Cuba's advanced mestizo culture was an ideological selling point for Castro during the Cold War, when the United States preached freedom and democracy to the world while turning dogs and firehoses on peaceful black protesters in Alabama, when the United States still demanded that a citizen have white skin in order to vote.

And Castro's government accomplished all of these positive things while under embargo from the US, and thus suffering from a lack of US investment and export trade. So the pro-Castro scholar suggests that had Castro's Cuba been able to profit from a trade relationship with the United States, it would have been the lone successful communist project in world history (by successful I mean that the standard of living for all comrades would have approached, dare I say, "middle class," without, of course, ever becoming bourgeois). So it was the US, for all of those years, that kept Cuban children shoeless and living in dilapidated tenements, not Cuban communism.

It's an interesting thing to think about, and I'm sure the truth about Castro's influence -- as always -- lies somewhere between our two arguments. Certainly, however, Castro was no villain and his vilification in the United States has been an embarrassing reminder of our own national insecurities rather than a declaration of legitimate disapproval from on-high.

So, I guess I say, "Viva la revolución!" But I also say, to all of those farmers, landowners, and businesspeople whose lands and livelihoods Castro seized in the name of the revolution, I'm sorry. I hope that you are able to finally find the justice you've been looking for after Castro.

Obama v. Clinton: Maureen Dowd on why Clinton promises to carry us further toward the Darkside.

This from a recent Maureen Dowd editorial in the New York Times titled "Darkness and Light"(www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/opinion/06dowd.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin):

Hillary Clinton denounced Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, but she did not absorb the ultimate lesson of the destructive vice president:

Don't become so paranoid that you let yourself be overwhelmed by a dark vision.

I think Hillary truly believes that she and Bill are the only ones tough enough to get to the White House. Jack Nicholson endorsed her as "the best man for the job," and she told David Letterman that "in my White House, we'll know who wears the pantsuits." But her pitch is the color of pitch: Because she has absorbed all the hate and body blows from nasty Republicans over the years, she is the best person to absorb more hate and body blows from nasty Republicans.

Darkness seeking darkness. It's an exhausting specter, and the reason that Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy, Claire McCaskill and so many other Democrats are dashing for daylight and trying to break away from the pathological Clinton path.

"I think we should never be derisive about somebody who has the ability to inspire," Senator McCaskill told David Gregory on MSNBC on Tuesday. "You know, we've had some dark days in this democracy over the last seven years, and today the sun is out. It is shining brightly. I watch these kids, these old and young, these black and white, 20,000 of them, pour into our dome in St. Louis Saturday night, and they feel good about being an American right now. And I think that's something that we have to capture."

I cannot remember the last time I was positively inspired by a politician, or any other public figure for that matter.  I am not naïve enough to pine nostalgically for some bygone era when politicians were brilliant, morally unassailable, and charismatic to-boot.  Politicians have always been, well, political, a basic fact that necessitates degrees of manipulation, cajoling, and varied self-representation.  I know that many people saw Lincoln and FDR as dubious and divisive figures who threatened the future of the country, but I also know that the lasting power over the American imagination held by men like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan results from the very real inspiration they engendered among Americans of all political stripes.  I know that the hope they embodied helped bring the country together in the wake of terribly divisive events in our national history.  Kennedy inherited a populace torn asunder by Cold War panic and its most reprehensible manifestation, Joseph McCarthy.  Kennedy also presided over the opening salvos of what would come to be known as the Civil Rights era.  Reagan took the Oval Office after the devastating economic losses of the late 1970s, during which time all of the social progress set in motion during the 1960s began to backslide.  Kennedy and Reagan inspired the American public to reunite, and Barack Obama can do the same, while the other major candidates will almost certainly tear the country further apart.  

Barack Obama is often criticized for a "lack of experience," but such criticisms fail to account for one region in which he clearly demonstrates the value of the experience he has had: he has experienced a nation and a political system on the brink of profound failure, and from that experience has learned the value and the immediacy of unity.  Obama has promised, above all else, to center his political agenda on national healing, something which he knows can only be accomplished through careful management of the economy, foreign policy, and social programs like education and healthcare.  When the two Democratic candidates' policy proposals are so similar, it's worth examining the foundations of -- the inspirations behind -- their candidacies, and in that regard, Barack Obama is a light on a hill, while Hillary Clinton lures us toward the Darkside. 

Making it all worthwhile.

I'll make this brief: I was pissed when Bush decided to invade Iraq, and even more pissed when it came to me -- a Virginia National Guardsman -- to do the dirty work.  But I did my job.  Ever since I've been plagued by the idea that perhaps we could have brought some good out of a very bad decision had we only pursued intelligent strategies and tactics from day one.  Of course, we did no such thing, and until very recently it did not appear that we would ever approach our mission conscientiously or intellectually.  And so I fell in with the staged-withdrawal crowd, advocating for hard time-lines and all of that.  It broke my heart.

Now I'm a bit perplexed: the "surge" (the "success" of which we're all a bit hesitant to acknowledge), the population displacements, the failure of al-Qaeda in Iraq to maintain support among the people with whom they live and whose lives they endanger by their presence, and maybe even the possibility of American withdrawal looming in the election politics, have all worked to spur the most sincere effort at cooperative statebuilding we've seen since 2003.  Such statebuilding can only continue -- now that it is finally going on -- in a safe situation; that safety will be compromised if we leave.

After this roller-coaster -- which I admit has taken quite a toll on my conscience -- I am left asking myself again: "shouldn't we stay as long as necessary to make all of this sacrifice worth something?"  And I ask that question with full knowledge that it's the same question that has dominated Republican sophistry for the past three years.

But shouldn't we guarantee security as long as the Iraqis are willing to make good use of it?  Don't we owe it to them?  And to ourselves?  If I knew that the private sector fraud, waste, and abuse that characterized Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority and set the tone for 2003-2007 were finally under control (e.g. Halliburton's recent loss of no-bid contractor privilege); if I knew that strategists like Gen. Petraeus would remain in place; if I knew that something would be done from within the Iraqi administration to quell the tide of displaced persons; if I knew that we could somehow re-budget the unsupportable expense of the war ($200 billion a year not adjusted for interest/inflation?); if I knew our troops could handle the taxing deployment schedule for another five years; if I knew all of these things, I would say "let's stay the course." 

But I'll never know any of these things for sure.  Nor will any President or Congress[wo]man.  That's why we put our trust in our national leadership, and that's why I'm so concerned about who will become our next President. 

Read this if you're in a swoon because of all the "good news" coming out of Iraq.

I've often heard over the years that there's a lot of "good news" in Iraq that never makes it to press, and that all the media wants to report are the horror stories, the corruption, the fledgling government's failures, etc. blah blah blah.  It's true that many media sources have harped on the horror, at times overshadowing small victories and even somewhat hopeful human interest stories.  But in the wake of the "surge" and Presidential election politics, it's become more important than ever for the Right to condemn the "liberal media" for refusing to acknowledge our "success" in Iraq.  It's important for Americans to believe that their Army is winning against the insurgents and succeeding in its mission to establish security; it's important for Americans to believe this untruth as the Republican election machine that has been so tied up with Bush's Iraq policies gears up for another White House run.

Just a clarifying point: the media has not been shying away from reporting the "good news" coming out of Iraq. In fact, it's become common sense across the airwaves that "the surge is working"; hence McCain's sudden appeal, and hence the Democrats sudden fear of the powerful question: "So, Dem candidates, all of you have opposed to war for some time and campaigned on a promise of scheduled withdrawal. Now that the 'tide has turned' in Iraq, how have your Iraq plans changed?"

Articles citing the success of the "surge" have appeared in both the NY Times and the Washington Post in recent weeks, sometimes begrudging admissions from journalists who previously advocated immediate withdrawal. The sentiment is this: "Damn. It seems like there might actually be hope. Now what do we do."

But anyone who uncritically accepts the "good news" coming from Iraq is begging for long term disappointment. The "good news" has perhaps less to do with the success of the "surge" and more to do with a record exodus of displaced Iraqis. Over 800,000 Iraqis were displaced either within Iraq or to one of the neighboring countries in the past year. There are now as many as 4 million Iraqi refugees spread throughout Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt (a country that recently closed its borders officially to Iraqis, though they'll still come illegally — and they're in most of the other countries illegally too).

So who does all of this "good news" benefit exactly? Also, remember that news of "decreased violence" does not signify an actual decrease in violence to manageable levels, only a decrease from the completely chaotic violence of 2006-2007. Now we're back to mere chaos instead of full-scale civil war. It remains to be seen whether or not the Iraqis will take this relative "calm" and run with it. And when they do decide to "get serious" about things, how will they handle the flood of four million displaced and frustrated people that will come pouring back into their borders, having been kicked out of their host countries?

Don't talk to me about "good news" from Iraq. When it comes to war, there's really no such thing as "good news." You demean the seriousness of the situation by reducing to simple questions of good or bad media, as if the media have anything to do with the way the military conducts the war in which we are currently embroiled and probably will be for years to come.

Afghanistan: The Good, the Bad, and the Newsworthy, pt. 1

I'm happy to see Afghanistan back in the news after a conspicuous absence lasting, oh, say, four years (every since we invaded Iraq).  Since 2003, there has been an oft-heard refrain among disgruntled military types and anyone else ranting about American strategical failures/inconsistencies in the Middle East-- it goes something like this: ". . . . and NOBODY is talking about Afghanistan anymore."  You might have heard it like this: ". . . . and you wouldn't even know there's a war going on in Afghanistan."  Gripes about the downsized media coverage of Afghanistan are legitimate; though a smaller scale conflict by roughly 130,000 soldiers (U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan have fluctuated between 18,000 and 26,000 over the past two years compared to Iraq's "surge" increase since January 2007 from 138,000 to 163,000), a losing war in Afghanistan poses no less of a security threat to U.S. and global interests than loss in Iraq.  

In Afghanistan, loss means the collapse of the Karzai government and the return of the Taliban. Loss also means the unchecked resurgence of the opium trade and the end of seven years worth of sustainable economic development initiatives.  Finally, real loss in Afghanistan means true failure for Bush's misguided Iran containment plan (U.S. bases supported by stable pro-U.S. regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan).  Whether or not Iranian containment is the most pressing issue in the region is another story entirely.  

Should U.S. and NATO forces (the latter also at an all-time high of 26,000 since December) leave Afghanistan, precious influence over and upon Pakistan's tribal regions will also be lost.  As everyone knows, the mountainous regions of northern Pakistan (esp. Waziristan) -- just over the Khyber pass from Afghanistan's Tora Bora cave network -- are home to nearly unfettered Taliban and al-Qaeda training camps and operations strongholds.  Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf claims to have global anti-terrorist interests in mind and strong anti-terrorist military policy in place.  He remains "pro-U.S." and anti-Taliban/al-Qaeda.  But as last summer's Red Mosque siege, the Bhutto assassination, a quadrupling of suicide attacks in Pakistan, and recent Taliban successes in Afghanistan show, Musharraf's iron fist needs some alloying from his allies.  

These issues -- threats to development, the risks associated with allied failure in Afghanistan, and the ultimately feeble hand of Musharraf are the subject of recent articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Washington Monthly.  Last week's Sunday edition of the Post included a series of articles on Iraq, the most powerful of which was an article about the effect of Iraq's many displaced populations on regional stability and economic/political development. 

This Sunday's Post gives all its attention to Afghanistan, with a strangely comforting interview with Afghan President Hamid Karzai (perhaps dismaying, depending on whether you take Karzai's answers as dejectedly noncommittal or optimistic) and an article about small success in Jalalabad overshadowed by Taliban success on the other side of the country.  Karzai shocked me with his answer to Lally Weymouth's question about Iran: 

Q: How much influence does Iran have in your country right now, Mr. President?

A: We have had a particularly good relationship with Iran in the past six years.  It's a relationship that I hope will continue.  We have opened our doors to them.  They have been helping us in Afghanistan.  The United States very wisely understood that it is our neighbor and encouraged that relationship.  I hope Iran would also understand that the United States is a great ally of ours and that we value that alliance with the United States.  So that is the foundation of our relationship with them, and I hope that it will continue as it is.

Wow!!: "The United States very wisely understood that [Iran] is our neighbor and encouraged that relationship."  Is that the same United States that calls Iran an Axis of Evil country and maligns Iran for providing Iraqi insurgents with the materials that go into EFPs (a new breed of armor-piercing shape-charge IEDs)?  Is that the same United States that recently added Iran's Revolutionary Guard to its dread list of terrorist organizations?  The same United States that, up until a month ago, was threatening bunker-busting bombing missions over Iran's potential but actually non-existent weapons facilities?  I know Karzai's in between rocks and hard places (actually three rocks when you include Pakistan), trying to please Tehran, Washington, and Brussels, not to mention a swath of formidable warlords and domestic political forces; but are such answers nothing more than the squeals of a pinched man?  I hope not.  I hope it's true that Iran is a positive actor in the future of Afghanistan.  And oh how I hope it's true that some representative agency of the United States "very wisely," officially or unofficially, recognized where Afghanistan's logical friends and enemies are in the region.  Such an "agreement" or "realization" would be called "diplomacy" by some, something that has been lacking between Iran and the United States for almost thirty years.

Afghan insecurity poses a threat to the region as a whole, and Iran has as much of a stake in Afghanistan's future as the United States, if not more.  It's helpful to remember that Iran is managed somewhat tentatively by its slim Persian majority (51%), holed up mostly in Tehran and its environs.  Instability in Afghanistan invites instability along Iran's ethnically and economically repressed southeastern border, where the regionally prominent Baluchi population -- which moves between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan -- remains a threat to the Iranian state.  This from the Congressional Research Service's May 2007 "Report for Congress": "In March 2007, a group called Jundallah attacked a government motorcade which left 20 people dead, kidnapped a number of hostages, and executed at least one member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards."  I'd say that's a significant attack; if such an attack were carried out on U.S. citizens by any splinter group it would be the biggest insurrection since the Civil War.  I'd also say increased instability of southern Afghanistan -- a region known (and feared by Iranian and Pakistani authorities) for its major smuggling industry -- only presents the possibility of more attacks like this one.  Hence Iran's support for a stable Afghanistan.  If Iran is supporting Karzai's government, and supporting U.S. interests in doing so, why would Iran encourage Iraqi instability?  

Similarly repressed and militant ethnic populations exist on Iraq's borders (Azers and Kurds), and instability offers these groups freer reign too; so wouldn't it be in Iran's interest to promote Iraqi stability too?  Maybe they are, but Bush's Axis of Evil rhetoric prevents the sort of diplomatic dialogue necessary for an expansion of Iran's role (or at least of our truthful awareness of it).  Maybe it's only because Afghanistan has been so far out of the limelight that U.S. and Iranian agents have been able to "wisely understand" each other; the lack of media attention has ensured no Washington firebrands would notice.

Karzai shocked me with another of his answers:

Q: Are you going to run for another term in 2009?

A: Well, I have things to accomplish.  Who was it who wrote -- Robert Frost? -- "The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.  And miles to go before I sleep."

WOW!  Can you imagine President Bush quoting poetry at all?  Let alone poetry in a foreign language?  Karzai wins me over with that response.  I only wish our own presidential candidates were able to focus on their jobs over their presidential aspirations like Mr. Karzai. Had Bush not been wholly focused on winning in 2004, I wonder if 2003 - 2006 would've been such botched years in Iraq and Afghanistan (hmmmnn . . . I wonder if we would've gone to Iraq at all, had Bush's sole concern -- and the concern of all those riding along with him, or maybe it's better to say 'all those for whom he chauffeured' -- not been neocon re-election).

The same Outlook section also features an article by David Ignatius about a tentative development success story in Nangahar province, titled "An Afghan Province Points the Way." "You can see in Jalalabad what success would look like," writes Ignatius; "the challenge is to make that picture real across Afghanistan."  Focusing mostly on the blend of factors leading to relative stability in Jalalabad, Ignatius also examines the increasing instability in southern Afghanistan and the sad potential of a northward spread of the violence.  As evidence of that potential, he cites the minister of education, Hanif Atmar, who reports that "Taliban terrorist attacks killed 147 students and teachers over the past 10 months and seriously injured 200 others. This campaign of intimidation closed 590 schools last year, up from 350 the year before.  In areas where students are too scared to go to school, stability and security are still distant goals."

Contrarily, "the American contribution to stability in Jalalabad," writes Ignatius, "is twofold.  First there's the PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) effort.  With its focus on economic development, the team is reaching out to the very people whose support the Taliban insurgents need to survive. . . .  A second component of U.S. success here is the low-visibility but high-impact mix of combat and intelligence operations. . . . When you visit places like Jalalabad and see things working the way they're supposed to, there's always a disconnect with what you've been reading and hearing about the larger war. . . . The reality is that the larger war in Afghanistan isn't going as well as it seems to be in this province.  Roadside bombs and suicide attacks were up last year.  The Taliban is gaining strength in some parts of the country.  The Afghan national government is weak and disorganized.  And NATO's operations are a ragged quilt--with no other nation matching U.S. effort, either in combat firepower or people friendly PRTs."

Ignatius makes an interesting point with his take on the claim that "counterinsurgency wars are . . . about creating a state of mind.  Security is a habit," Ignatius wisely understands, "born of weeks and months of ordinary life."  The problem, he continues, is that "insecurity, too, is a habit, born of fear that a suicide bomber may attack your village or your Kabul hotel, regardless of how infrequent those attacks may really be."

(To be continued)

George F. Will charges Dems with Manicheism

In a Washington Post op-ed piece entitled "Waiting for Straight Talk" (Sun., Jan 20) George F. Will writes "There are decent, intelligent people who believe that equity and efficiency or both are often served by government setting prices. In America, such people are called Democrats." Putting aside Will's obvious condescension -- those of us who believe in evolution and human-induced global climate change subtly deride the nation's Evangelical science-deniers with the same language -- we should look instead at his criticism of Democratic over-reliance on Government regulation of markets. Such a charge is hard to deny. Dems tend to expect a bit too much from the government when it comes to making sure everyone gets paid the wage they want and not the wage they deserve, or the wage "the market" can sustain. "Living Wage" campaigns across the nation over the past decade illustrate the power of misplaced hope to motivate the masses.

During my first year in Charlottesville, VA, University of Virginia students mounted a large and long-lasting protest/propaganda campaign for a "Living Wage" for University employees. With the backing of the University Democrats, the "Living Wage" folks, decked out in t-shirts and buttons, flooded the school with flyers and posters demanding $10.72/hr for all entry-level employees. The "movement" culminated in a round-the-clock occupation of the President's office building, with students camping out on the front lawn and encouraging passersby to "Honk for a Living Wage!" University employees were conspicuously absent from the demonstrations, and, as it turned out, from the Living Wage Campaign's meetings as well. Perhaps they did not want to lose their jobs, or perhaps they weren't as outraged as the students themselves.

I remember being approached by one student organizer who asked me, "hey, would you be willing to get arrested?" The question struck me as odd, so odd that I actually listened to what the kid had to say. He and some of the more hardcore Living Wagers were going to sit-in until the cops came to arrest them, he told me, and their arrests would surely cause enough public outrage that President Casteen would have to compromise. "Well, no, actually I'm not willing to get arrested," I told him, "at least not for this." And, sure enough, about a dozen of the stalwart protesters wound up in the Charlottesville City Jail for a few hours one night in late spring. I've always wondered how much their protest cost the city courts. As for the "Living Wage" itself, it died away without the President's approval. Where did the number $10.72 come from, many students wanted to know. Turns out the Living Wagers borrowed the amount from a similar protest that took place in Washington DC. President Casteen praised the students' commitment to social justice, lamented their unfortunate decision to take their protest too far, and encouraged future protesters to remember that a "Living Wage" in DC and a "Living Wage" in Charlottesville are two different things. UVa employees, Casteen reminded us, begin several dollars above the state's minimum wage.

The "Living Wage" hoopla was one of my first experiences of political organizing -- if we might call it that -- on the local level. I was impressed by the entire event, especially by the students' ability to get the entire city fired up about the issue, on one side or the other. But the most powerful lesson I took away from the debacle was a bit less inspirational: it was the first time I was ever embarrassed by the confluence of idealism and over-zealousness. Well, maybe not.

Later in the article, in which Will accuses McCain of attempting to control political speech and markets (especially the pharmaceutical market) in non-Republican ways, Will recounts, "In the New Hampshire debate, McCain asserted that corruption is the reason drugs cannot be reimported from Canada. The reason is 'the power of the pharmaceutical companies.' When Mitt Romney interjected, 'Don't turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys,' McCain replied, 'Well, they are.'" Again Will throws the apostate McCain to the Dems, but this time with less simple scorn and a bit more vitriol, one might even say unselfconscious over-zealousness: "There is a place in American politics for moralizers who think in such Manichean simplicities. That place is the Democratic Party, where people who talk like McCain are considered not mavericks but mainstream."

Will's charge is laughable at best. In recent years our Republican President has presided over an expansion of Manichean American rhetoric not seen since the days of J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy. I doubt that even Richard Nixon would sling words like "evil" and "bad" around as recklessly as Bush has. Childish, over-simplifying phrases like "Axis of Evil" and "bad men" belong in comic books, not State of the Union Addresses. Worst of all, such rhetoric proves that the Bush administration holds the American public in very low esteem; only an idiot could swallow that kind of Manichean mumbo-jumbo without retching. Bush has presided over intellectual regression on a national level, refusing to engage in the sort of international diplomatic dialogue that acknowledges world leaders -- even enemies -- as sovereign heads of states that represent complex viewpoints and are woven into a complicated fabric of global issues, dilemmas, and geopolitical forces. Were we to follow George Bush with unblinking allegiance, we would have to agree that the world is made up of "good" people and nations and "bad" people and nations, and we would have to acknowledge "evil" as a real, unitary force in world politics. Manichean theology rests on a notion of an eternal struggle on Earth between "good" and "evil." When it comes to espousing such absurdly over-simplified notions of the world -- notions which, unfortunately, gain ground with seemingly intellectual work like Sam Huntington's Clash of Civilizations -- it's Republicans, not Dems, who have anointed themselves Masters of the Universe.

Trip to Colombia.

I've just returned from a three week trip to Colombia. I travelled around the city of Cali, home to more than three million Colombians, and the mountainous province of Quindío. Quindío contains some of Colombia's most beautiful mountain terrain. The lush hills are home to hundreds of small coffee plantations and plantain farms. The numerous valleys -- which must have been all but impenetrable before the advent of the automobile and modern roads -- are perfect for horse farms and cozy haciendas. The rugged terrain would be perfect for the guerilla, but for some reason which isn't quite clear to me, the guerilla have never found a foothold in Quindío. The military presence is strong, and, according to some of the people I was traveling with, the local identity of the "paisas" -- descendants of tough basque settlers -- works to ward of guerilla recruitment techniques. A successful coffee region for nearly a century, Quindío's citizens have not suffered the mass poverty suffered in other regions, where small farmers turned to illegal production of coca either by will or by force, and where youth respond to guerilla promises out of desperation or are conscripted at gunpoint. Now Quindío has a thriving tourism industry that attracts foreigners from Latin America and the broader world and also large numbers of Colombians with disposable income. In Quindío's small towns, one of which houses the national amusement park (Parque del Café), amidst advertisements for rafting trips, Senderos Ecologicos, and zipline canopy tours, it's easy to forget the reason for the large military presence. It's easy to forget that elsewhere in the country soldiers from other units patrol similar towns looking for signs of the guerilla. Other Colombian soldiers follow the sendero ecologico into ambush after ambush in the regions of Colombia where the guerilla remains strong, in many places stronger than the army.

In the city of Cali there are signs of a good deal of economic development. Notably, three or four enormous home improvement centers. Think Home Depot, but twice as big, so big that you can drive your car through the aisles (and you're supposed to, half of the store is drive-in-drive-out loading). There are also a slew of new shopping districts and beautiful restaurants designed with innovative architecture and boasting creative menus. Clearly there are a few thousand people with money to drop on new windows and tile flooring as well as chic dining. But what about everyone else? The slums are incredible, shanty towns lining dirt streets that turn to impassable mud with the first hint of rain. The overwhelming majority of Cali's residents live in poverty, and drug money offers one of the only escapes. Cali's small cadre of bourgeois citizens do not attempt to hide the fact that most of the signs of development are the result of trickle-down drug economics. The "traquetos" -- junior level narcotraficantes -- have a lot of cash on hand, and they're the ones keeping business afire at the city's shopping malls and discotechs. But narcotraffic is not sustainable, and certainly not a foundation for development. What will happen when narcotraffic crashes (if indeed it does crash)? Apparently Colombia is on the verge of signing a free-trade agreement with the United States. Perhaps free-trade will offer enough growth in the labor sector and sustainable manufacturing foundations to regrow the Colombian economy from the ground up. But the broad failures of NAFTA -- particularly for Mexicans -- do not offer much room for hope. Colombians are enjoying this period of growth, and well they should after more than a decade of total stagnation and paralyzing urban violence. But no one is without doubts, and no one will be surprised when dark days return.

Response to Mr. Karl Rove's Newsweek editorial

Dear Mr. Rove,

Supporters of your new Newsweek column have levied a serious charge against readers who stand in the way of truth by "attacking the messenger as opposed to the message." Let me say this: I'm fine with that. The Bush administration has made a habit of attacking individuals who represent positions contrary to their own, to the great detriment of the United States. One Valerie Wilson comes to mind rather quickly. Jaques Chirac and the entire nation of France surface out of the mire of this seven-year blame game too. I bet many representatives and voters on both sides of the aisle wish they'd listened to the French "message" in 2003: avoid war at all costs. Instead, most of the nation swallowed your lies, Mr. Rove, and chose to malign France and the French president while chomping happily on "freedom fries." Now look at us.

I served in your war, Mr. Rove, as a Combat Engineer with the United States Army. I went to Iraq believing that we had made a grave mistake, that we had not planned our mission thoroughly enough, and that our post-9-11 decision to spurn our global allies and "go it alone" cost our international credibility dearly. I care about things like international credibility, Mr. Rove, because I understand that our allies are as much a part of our security as the location and activities of Osama bin Laden (who, I might add, was certainly not in Iraq). You know all of these things as well as I do, so I will not refresh your memory.

I will, however, tell you that I went to Iraq with my head held high, because I believed that though we had erred in invading Iraq, we could still manage to bring a better future to the Iraqi people. I very quickly realized the extent of my naïveté. How many airstrips loaded with brand new American SUVs did I have to see (SUVs and pick-up trucks destined for absurdly well-paid Kellogg, Brown & Root contractors, men who collect salaries four-times as large as mine to manage Kurdish and Turkish workers doing jobs soldiers used to do) from the turret of my beat-up old Humvee, or from the bed of the Vietnam-era dump-trucks with which you sent us into combat, before I realized, Mr. Rove, that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with "Terror" or "freedom" or "democracy," and everything to do with profit and political gain?

Oh how you have screwed us, Mr. Rove. But I will not single you out. I know that (almost) the entire nation was behind you, even if only because your management of Mr. Bush's propaganda machine flowed so smoothly. I also know that you were doing a job, and that a man like you could not possibly care about the United States or its future. Sometimes combat soldiers say that war is just a job. Usually it's an attempt to distance themselves from the psychologically and physically brutal consequences of their task. But sometimes it's an honest statement; there are more than a few soldiers in Iraq for whom victory hold no grip over the imagination, and for whom loss is a foregone conclusion. Many among those "professional soldiers of the volunteer army" do not really care one way or the other. Most, however, care quite deeply, unlike you.

Let me ask you a few questions. I know you won't answer them, but I would like to pose them to you anyway (I've been dying for the opportunity since the election campaign in 2004, when you brilliantly organized the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against the combat veteran candidate. I've been trying to forgive the American people ever since for claiming to "support the troops" while simultaneously supporting a presidential candidate and cabinet among whom there are no combat veterans whatsoever, all the while bashing the one man who actually volunteered for combat service. I was the lone Kerry-supporting college-boy in my unit, and I watched the election coverage on Armed Forces TV. You can imagine how much fun that was for me. You can also imagine how impressed I was with your ability to make Bush into a war hero ex nihilo. I have to hand it to you.)

Okay, here goes:

1. Why didn't you and your President listen to General Shinseki when he told you that you would need at least 300,000 troops and at least five years?

2. Why did Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Bremer disband the Iraqi military and bureaucracy, a decision which sent hundreds of thousands of men with military training out into the streets with no money, food, or work, ready fodder for the jihadists who weren't here to receive them immediately, but were there teaching them to build IEDs by the time I arrived in March 2004?

3. Why did your President abandon Afghanistan?

4. Why did you and your President so callously disregard our international allies?

5. Why did you and your President make this war? I want the real answer here. But I know that you and all in your chain of command are too cowardly to tell me. Men are dying for your former boss's strategic failures.

6. When will you own up to it?

We cannot win in Iraq. Even if we "stabilize the region," which is incredibly unlikely, we have killed so many scores of civilians that any claims we make to providing a "better future" for the Iraqis are simply absurd: for over eighty-thousand Iraqis, the future no longer exists. Oh, and eighty-thousand is over one-half the number of Kurds murdered by Saddam. Have we succeeded in bringing justice?

Let's look at some more numbers:

9/11 was the worst "unprovoked" terrorist attack in world history. It is very difficult to imagine another terror attack causing more loss of human life or more destruction of American property. It is also hard to imagine a terror attack striking at more symbolic targets: the Pentagon, the WTC. So far over 4,000 soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we have somehow avenged the deaths of the roughly 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attacks, our vengeance has been worse than Pyrrhic. And how long will it take us to recover the vast sums of money we have thrown into the flames to finance this poorly managed, poorly devised debacle?

This war has destroyed several of my friends. Some have died. Some are recovering from wounds. Still others bear scars that will forever remain unseen, but are no less traumatic. These sacrifices are the job of soldiers to bear. For these sacrifices I seek no retribution and no justice. I do seek answers, because what this war has cost us most of all is an unrecoverable amount of international credibility and a precious share of our national moral fortitude.

Those who truly love this country will remember you, Mr. Rove. But they will not remember you as a patriot. They will remember you as the man who laughed while his country burned, and they will remember you as a man who lied. Just a man who lied, nothing more.

America is a land of opportunity, potential, and forgiveness, Mr. Rove. And I believe that even you, Mr. Rove, have potential to become a real patriot. You can start by using the wonderful opportunity Newsweek has given you to seek the forgiveness of our nation, something you can do by telling the truth.

Now that's not asking too much, is it? Certainly no more than your President has asked of me and every other soldier.

Serve us proudly.

Sappers Lead,
Elliott

A plea from 'Dispatches'

This line comes from Dispatches, Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr's 1978 memoir:

"[The grunts] would ask you with an emotion whose intensity would shock you to please tell it, because they really did have the feeling that it wasn’t being told for them, that they were going through all this and that somehow no one back in the World knew about it."

If that's not a statement of purpose, I don't know what is.

One last look . . .

In July 2005, I walked into my first class at University of Virginia, The Darkside of Hollywood: Film Noir.  Looking around the room at a dozen or so young students, I was nervous.  I felt impossibly far from where I'd just spent the last year of my life and from where most of my thoughts still dwelled.  Four months earlier, I waited on the tarmac for the bird that would carry me home.  The lumbering C-130 finally dropped onto the runway.  I scanned the hazy perimeter, took stock of the thousands of meters of wire I'd pounded in the suffocating summer heat.  Inhaling a last lungful of burning, dusty air, forcing a smile, I turned my back on the Iraqi plains. It was over.  With the drone of the props lulling me to sleep, I wondered about where we would all go, what we would do, what would become of us "back in the world."  I daydreamed the dream that kept me going on every mission, of sitting in an air-conditioned classroom, charged only with the task of learning and building fortifications of knowledge.  Looking at the soldiers strapped in across from me, I realized for the first time I was no longer dreaming.  I was finally on my way back. 

The War Tapes hit Charlottesville.

The War Tapes is a damned ambitious project, as far as documentaries go. The producers handed out cameras to three soldiers -- two sergeants and a specialist -- from a company of New Hampshire Army National Guard infantrymen, then charged them with the duty of recording their tour for posterity. And that's just what they did. The War Tapes brings the day to day fight in Iraq to stateside Chairborne Rangers who want a taste of what war is really about: Shit, boredom, and then more shit.

The "deeply patriotic" Specialist Moriarty rejoins the Guard after a ten year break in service in order to deploy to Iraq. Moriarty, 34, describes his deep sense of loss after 9/11, followed by intense rage and a desire to get even. "I've been called an irresponsible father and and bad husband for going to Iraq," Moriarty confesses, but he feels compelled to take an active role in what he believed to be a war in the name of justice and justified retribution. Moriarty's wife confesses halfway through the film that her husband was a "stay at home dad" (read: unemployed) for about a year before rejoining the Guard. Chronic depression and anger management issues prevented Moriarty from finding employment after downsizing cost him his job as a forklift operator. Joining the Guard helps Moriarty climb out of his depression-- in the months before his deployment, his wife reports, he was calmer than ever, sure of himself and motivated by the idea that he was involved with something bigger than himself. A father of two -- including a young son -- Moriarty remarks upon departure, "Hopefully I'll be someone's hero."

Sergeant Pink and Sergeant Bazzi -- both in their mid-twenties -- possess an intimate understanding of the war's dark nuances and absurd ironies, an awareness lacked by the emotionally unstable Moriarty. The two sergeants are razor sharp: Pink holds a double-major bachelor's degree, Bazzi speaks Arabic. Both men are masters of grunt-style leadership learned nowhere but on the job. In moments of reflection, they are able to partially distance themselves from trauma and overbearing ideology -- what Bazzi derides as "groupthink" -- so that their journals reveal lucid thought attempting to grasp horrifying and surreal images of war. Bazzi's and Pink's contributions to The War Tapes prove Paul Fussell's claim hasn't ceded ground in the 21st century: "the dominant mode of war writing is irony."

From his diary, Pink recites, "Today was the first time I shook a man's hand that wasn't there." If we were to put a break in between "hand" and "that," we'd have a poem on our hands. Ironic poetic reflection characterizes Pink's footage and journal writing; holding the camera in front of his face, using the infrared mode that turns his face a sickly green, Pink tells us, "I had a recurring epiphany: this is happening, and will have a lasting impact for the rest of my life." Later, he describes an argument between soldiers about whether charred human flesh smells more like hamburger or roast beef. And it was a serious argument, Pink insists. Deadly serious. To concede defeat would be to discount the reliability of one's very senses. Smelling is believing.

Pink takes us on a tour of the FOBs "equipment graveyard," where burned-out hulks of M-1 Abrams tanks, Strykers, Humvees, Brads, Marine AMTRACs, and helicopters stretch as far as the eye can see. Each vehicle, Pink reflects, is some son or mother or father or brother or wife who will never see their family again. Looking at the funereal rows of matériel -- more like a mass grave than a junkyard, certainly as full of ghosts -- I can't help thinking about the total waste of it all, wasted life, wasted money, wasted resources, wasted privilege. Each Stryker vehicle costs upwards of 3 million USD. One row of totaled equipment bears an unfathomable pricetag. Uninsurable, totaled goods. And the bodies. Where are they? The DoD releases the names and unit information of service members killed in Iraq, but they keep a pretty tight lip on the wounded. Three of my buddies are in a burn unit in Texas right now recovering from shrapnel and burn wounds sustained when an EFP hit their convoy during an IED search in Baghdad. Their names aren't in any papers. I've looked. Perhaps that's for the best, I don't know. From what my buddies tell me, the American public probably couldn't handle the sight of the mangled, scarred soldiers and marines who populate the San Antonio burn campus, even if they are vibrant and eager to be reassembled into everyday life. As catastrophic as the damage is to U.S. bodies, equipment, and morale, the military keeps rolling.

So do the Kellogg, Brown, & Root convoys escorted by Pink, Bazzi, and Moriarty. Pink fumes as he scans a long line of beat-up, shot-up, defenseless trucks carrying goods to U.S. FOBs. He's worried about their drivers. Moriarty worries, "the priority of KBR making money outweighs our safety," but Pink extends his concern to the "TCN" drivers (Third Country Nationals), who are paid pennies and are more desirable targets than U.S. soldiers because of the logistical importance of their loads. "[TCN drivers] are not worth enough to have any protection," Pink says with no small measure of disgust. Early in the tour an administrative soldier told him not to waste medical equipment on injured TCNs or Iraqis. In his diary, Pink writes, "if he tried to stop me from administering aid . . . I would have slit his throat right there."

Pink supported Bush prior to deployment. The 2004 elections occurred during the soldiers' tour, and while Bazzi claims to be one of maybe 5 guys out of the whole company who didn't vote for Bush, Pink gives no indication that he's changed his stance. Still, he expresses anger at Bush's May 2003 showbiz declaration "major combat operations have ended."

Bazzi loves the Army, but hates the war. He says he joined the active duty Army after high school in order to travel. And travel he did, serving one tour in Bosnia and one in Kosovo. His mother begged him not to join the National Guard, but he did it anyway. Bazzi's mother and father brought Bazzi and the rest of the family to the United States to escape the 1980s resurgence of Civil War in Lebanon. He was 10 years old when the family fled, hence the Arabic proficiency. His parents split up shortly after arriving in the U.S. Bazzi's mother describes a terror scene before the escape when militia fighters fired at the house while Lebanese soldiers returned fire from a family window. Bazzi was a combat veteran well before joining the Army, it seems. We find out after the unit redeploys that he was not yet a U.S. citizen during the tour. The camera follows him to his induction ceremony. Sticking out like a sore thumb in his desert camouflage, among several hundred immigrants, Bazzi doesn't smile when a man on stage pronounces "everyone who has taken the oath" a U.S. citizen. The other new citizens cheer and hug one another. Bazzi just clenches his jaw, glances at the certificate, then walks out.

Perhaps thinking about U.S. intervention in the Lebanese Civil War[s], Bazzi says, "I think any country should be allowed to have its own civil war without anyone stepping in." Of course, if the "coalition of the willing" had not interfered in Iraq, there would be no overt civil war to speak of. But Bazzi's sentiment rings clear nonetheless. His attitude is live and let live, fuck with me and you better have back up. Bazzi is a jokester, so he takes abuse from his platoon mates without a grudge. At one point there is a conspiracy to kill Bazzi. "Today we kill Bazzi," an older sergeant says, "he's a spy." What do the Iraqis ask Bazzi more than anything else? "How did you get a visa to go to the United States?" Bazzi seems aware of his luck, and its happenstance nature, more than any of the other soldiers. "I don't really know," he tells the Iraqis, "my parents got it for me." Eventually Bazzi refuses to translate for the squad. Constantly bearing the bad news to Iraqis -- usually in the form of rigid SOPs -- wears him down. He describes an instance when a superior asked him to tell an Iraqi man that he couldn't cross the street to take his sick child to the hospital because "that side of the street" was off limits to Iraqis from the other side of the street on that particular day. Bazzi listened to the old man's agonizing pleas and finally refused his superior's demand. "I'm not telling him that," he said, then something like "if the general wants to come down here and tell these people why they can't cross the street then he can do it." "We're supposed to be helping these people," Bazzi mutters.

The film contains a good measure of soldier pranks, including an epic battle between a giant emperor scorpion and an equally massive camel spider. Godzilla v. Mothra may very well have been inspired by desert insect fighting circuits. I fought insects and geckos on multiple occasions, but I couldn't get them to take their contenders very seriously. Some of the pranks have a slightly darker undertone. Pink watches an old sergeant working away at a block of wood with a handsaw. "Whatcha doin'?" he asks. "Making a pistol." "Why?" "Because they won't give me one." Then he reads from his journal, something to the effect of, "Point an M-16 at an Iraqi and they won't move an inch. Wave a pistol and they'll take off running. It's what Saddam and his men used to carry." Bazzi gets the biggest laugh of the film while recording a convoy in support of a septic truck. As a deluge of "shit water" streams from the truck, flooding a roadside ditch, Bazzi says, "Whoever said bein' a soldier was all blood and glory forgot about the shit."

Back home, Bazzi ends the film with a sad reflection on the ideological vacuum of 21st century American war: it ends up little more than a way for a bunch of different people to get paid. "I got a paycheck from the war," Bazzi says, "KBR's makin' money . . . Humvee company's makin' money . . . you're makin' money [to the filmmaker]." Facts that don't bring SGT Bazzi, SPC Moriarty, or SGT Pink any satisfaction. Moriarty says, "they could pay me 500,000 and I wouldn't go back." Bazzi says, "every soldier wants to go to combat," like football players want to play football-- cheers as the Middle East-bound plane takes off from Ft. McGuire, NJ demonstrate this fact plainly enough. But, Bazzi adds later, the "bad thing about the Army is you can't pick your war."

Mementos and Gratitude.

A young former Marine artilleryman came to a meeting of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society last Friday night to promote a screening of the The War Tapes, a documentary about the year-long deployment of three New Hampshire guardsmen. Coincidentally, I planned to present a poem about Iraq to the Society that evening. I looked around the room as the man spoke, wondering if the members of the Society were listening patiently, interestedly, or if they were just appearing to do so in the interest of decorum. I wondered if perhaps they were thinking, “who the hell is this guy and what is he doing at our meeting.” The young man told a brief story about the IED blasts that left him partially deaf and a victim of PTSD. “What happens to me,” he said, “is that I have trouble falling asleep.” He stood awkwardly at the back of the hall after presenting his speech, handing out flyers and nervously accepting the “thanks” of several Society members. “It always makes me feel weird when people say thank you,” I told him. He smiled, “yeah man, I mean, it’s just a job.” I wanted to tell him no, it’s much more than a job. But I stuck to my original sympathy: I don’t like to be thanked either. Acknowledged, yes. Thanked, no.

I walked toward the screening room tonight running late and feeling slightly apprehensive. I had a pocketful of flyers advertising the blog and the documentary-in-process. What would these people think of my dedication if I showed up late? Not to worry: only three people showed up for the screening. There were about thirty chairs lined up before a projection screen. The Marine – Matt’s his name – was showing pictures from his deployment to a lone attendee. Well, I thought, at least this guy’s here. When Matt left the room to set up the DVD player the other gentleman extended a hand across the aisle to me. I don’t remember his name. Somehow the name Jefferson entered our chat. “Jefferson was a good man,” the guy said. “Yeah, I guess so. I’m glad he founded my university anyway.” The guy replied, “Jefferson was an early enemy of central banking, and that’s what got us into Iraq and every other war for that matter.” “I don’t know what got us there,” I responded – choosing to hold off further commentary until I had a good picture of where this guy was coming from – “but I’m sure I have no idea what we should do now.” The guy had answers for me. “You know what I think?” “No, I don’t,” I replied. “It’s the illuminati. Ever since 1913. The Rothschilds and the Rockefellers. Central bankers, the Federal Reserve. They got their hands in everything, like 9/11, it was a total inside job.” Then he asked me, “do you believe that?” I said, “not exactly, no,” wondering if he was watching me write down everything he said.

“We’ll just give it a few more minutes, a few of my people had labs to turn in and stuff.” I could tell Matt was disappointed that only two people showed up. I thought of all the people Friday night taking his flyers with such gratitude. “I don’t even know how to say thank you for what you’ve done for us man. I’m just so grateful to all of you guys.” To their credit, four o’clock on Monday isn’t the most opportune time to get out of the office or the library. “My heart just goes out to all of you guys.” I’ve heard that one before. Sometimes older women say, “you’re all my sons.” One woman whose son died in a car accident told me, “you’re all my sons, and everytime one of you gets hurt or dies I feel like my own son is dying all over again.” I felt like she meant it. I could tell by the way her eyes drifted far away from anything in the room. Oddly enough, she was selling me a hand-blown glass lamp made by a PTSD counselor. I think that’s what got us on the topic of Iraq.

After the film, Matt asked, “any thoughts?” The conspiracy theorist and I both shrugged. Matt’s flyer had advertised, “Do You Have an Opinion on the Iraq War? Voice it! Watch the screening . . . Discussions following.” I looked forward to voicing my opinion all weekend, but didn’t feel much like discussing Pentagon—al-Qaeda symbiosis with my new friend. Thankfully, the guy split as soon as he could. I helped Matt stack the chairs. “Whatja think?” he asked. “Well, it may as well have been a documentary about my unit,” I said, “we trained at Ft. Dix, we were there at exactly the same time, everything was the same.” I sort of hoped he’d ask me more about my tour. After all, I’d already listened to his story on Friday night. But he had no further questions for me. I plugged my documentary again and asked him if he knew anyone who might be interested in participating. “It’s mostly about homecoming,” I told him. But he was reserved. “I’m not interested in stuff like that,” he said, looking away from me, “you can do a lot of good doing stuff like that, but you can get people in a lot of trouble with UCMJ.” Matt and I separated without shaking hands. I got the feeling I was making him uncomfortable.

I noticed Matt’s desert combat boots as he walked away. Riding my bike home in the blustery cold, I thought about Sergeant Pink, a soldier from The War Tapes. His wife cannot understand why he continues to wear his dog tags in civilian life. I thought about how much Matt must love those old boots. I wore my Iraq boots at drill for two years after I returned, sentimentally passing up several new issues. But I couldn’t imagine myself wearing boots with blue jeans. Sometimes I sport my desert camo “boonie hat” –Woods scrawled across the back in English and Arabic – but most of the time I’m too embarrassed. Later, as my roommate and I chatted in our kitchen, he said, “I really like that belt.” I looked down, taking note of the faded green Army utility belt holding up my jeans. “Thanks,” I said. I like it too. A lot. And I guess I like the green Army socks I wear almost everyday too. A lot. I have my trinkets too, I realized. We all need some connection. Something that ties us to that place, something physical, something more than just memory and pain. Don’t ask me why.

Sergeant Pink doesn't like to be thanked either. He says the best thing someone can say is, "good to have you back." Specialist Moriarty - another soldier from The War Tapes - says of homecoming, "the biggest frustration . . . is that they don't care." The most patriotic of the three soldiers under the spotlight, Moriarty re-enlisted in the National Guard after a decade-long break in service with the express intent of going to Iraq. A self-proclaimed "deeply patriotic man" and unflinching Bush supporter prior to deployment, Moriarty returns deeply alienated by what he experienced as a war in which the "priority of KBR making money (Kellogg Brown & Root, primary Halliburton subcontractor) outweighs our safety." "They could offer me $500,000 and I wouldn't go back," Moriarty says, "I feel like it's someone else's turn." Back at work, where his boss had promised a year earlier "when you come back it'll be just like you never left," Moriarty finds his boss's promise a bit too true. Co-workers ask to hear war stories but don't listen. They ask to see his pictures but don't look. Moriarty's frustration comes across as the most tragic emotional moment in The War Tapes. "You will look at my goddamn pictures," Moriarity fumes, "you asked me to show them to you, I'm not flashing them around, and now you will do me the respect of looking at them."

Good to have you back, they say. Thank you. My heart goes out to you. Words cannot express my gratitude to you and your buddies for what you did over there. Now be quiet, please.

New Beginnings.

So I just launched this blog today, 1 December 2007. I've imported notes from facebook.com to start things off. At the moment I'm tying up the loose ends of a very strange semester, my 2nd to last. In the spring I'll finish writing a thesis about 20th Century American war literature and I'll also finish producing a short documentary film about the deployment & homecoming experiences of 21st Century American veterans. Things have been quite busy recently.

I've also been busy figuring out how to get over to Iraq as a journalist. First I should probably graduate from college, but what the hell, I'm almost 30 years old, what difference does it make. Wish me luck. If you happen to belong to a combat unit and you think your unit might like to have an embedded reporter, let me know. I'll be there lickety split (well, give me a couple of months, at least until April).


I attended Juan Cole's presentation on the Iraqi and Afghan constitutions at the University of Virginia yesterday. I was overjoyed to discover that the situation is even more complicated than I thought, even more rotten at the core. I was interested to hear that Moqtada al-Sadr is anti-US, anti-Iran, and anti-Iraq. He doesn't like central government, no matter who heads it. I'm havinng trouble deciding whether that's good news or bad news.

Alright. I've spent too much time already today setting this account up, so I'll have to return another day for the first real post. Until then, peace in the middle east.

Nov. 11: Do you know what today is?

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the great powers agreed to an armistice on the Western Front, thus ending the First World War in Europe. "Doughboys," as the American soldiers were called, were latecomers to the trenches, arriving en masse with the American Expeditionary Force in the late spring of 1917, and engaging in their first major combat operations alongside French "poilus" and the British "Tommies" in the spring of the following year at Cantigny, were German machine guns, gas, and artillery exacted almost 100,000 casualties. The Americans would go on to fight throughout the summer and fall, losing over 50,000 soldiers to enemy hostile fire and another 50,000 to disease. Infected wounds, t.b. contracted as a result of weakened immune systems among gas victims, and the Spanish flu took the biggest toll.

The American Expeditionary Force did not "win" the First World War, however, the American troop buildup helped break German moral. To what end? We don't know for sure. We can only speculate as to how European history might have been different if the great powers had exhausted themselves fully and arrived at their own peace without America tipping the scales in favor of the Allies. Some say the Nazis never would have come to power, some say the bolsheviks would have been supressed. What we do know is that American soldiers paid an incredibly heavy cost in the European trenches, and that their "victory" convinced Americans of the unstoppable force of American ideals. I know, that's a leap: military victory --> strength of ideals? That's how the war recrossed the Atlantic in 1918, and that's how its memory would return in 1941, 1950, 1964, 1991, 2001, and 2003. America made a myth of war because America did not know what modern war really was.

The soldiers who fought on the Western Front knew the war for what it was, a place where "killing and dying, dying and killing . . . have lost touch with any fact of life save the fact of death's absolute dominion . . . the death depicted [in their writing] is never gallant sacrifice. It is not grand, valorous, brave death. It is bowel-ripping, head-shattering, body-rending death. It is the kind of death that makes men scream for their mothers, soil their trousers, dissolve themselves into whimpering wrecks. Moreover, it is death on the whole vast scale of modern mechanization."

Remember the men who served, suffered, and died on the Western Front. But remember them as humans victimized by the cold machinery of modernity, not as heroes in the cause of freedom, for the soldier caught in the machinery of war is the least free human of all.

Iraq, non-violence, and responsibility.

The following letter responds to a blog from Spring 2007, my comments begin after the long dotted line:

I tried to add this as a comment to your post, but it was too long.

I realize my knowledge and understanding of the military, combat situations, and Iraq are limited. Therefore, this is not so much a firm statement of my opinion as it is a series of thoughts and questions that I hope will lessen my ignorance of our country’s current events. I am living and working in New Zealand where I’ve been impressed by the teenagers’ intelligent, specific and well-informed questions about Bush, US current events, foreign policy and presidential candidates that, in my experience, few people their age in the States would be able to pose. One could say that this is a consequence of the United States’ position in the forefront of world events. However, their knowledge, and even their evening news, extends to the major problems of countries all over the world in a way that CNN does not touch. Their awareness of the world around them, particularly at a young age, is quite notable. It is a shame that more Americans cannot take an active interest in the world we are so dramatically affecting. That being said, I have a few questions in response to reading your posts:

You site the SOPs and the Rules of Engagement for the Iraq theater to support your point that pulling the trigger is a rare event. At the same time you reference various literature to give an idea of life in combat. How do you reconcile the lack of shooting by American soldiers in Iraq with the horrible, bloody scenes in A Farewell to Arms and more so in All’s Quiet on the Western Front? Particularly in the latter, the trauma and inability to rejoin “normal” civilian life is attributed in large part to the endless and widespread bloodshed. Even in A Farewell to Arms, a major theme is desperation driven by the feeling that “everyone always dies.” I certainly don’t mean to diminish the PTSD of veterans from Iraq, or to imply that the experience isn’t utterly horrifying. I am just asking how, specifically, would you explain American military life in Iraq in terms of the literature you mention? I also confess that I have yet to read the other two books you mention; the local NZ library has yet to order them. This could be too literal an interpretation of your references, but I’d like to get a better idea of American soldier life in Iraq from a first hand source.

You indicate that first you thought we should clean up the mess we made in Iraq, and now you feel we should get out. What brought about your change of heart with regard to our status in Iraq?

From your experience, what are the ratios of those who wanted to serve and those who joined the military in response to the pressures of poverty? You say people join because of a “desire on the part of young Americans from the underprivileged demographic to do something positive and to contribute to global society.” Do you attribute their actions more to their demographic, or to their desire to do something positive? Are you implying interplay between poverty and desire to serve, or do you think that the military is just the best way out of a bad situation?

A friend who just graduated from the Naval Academy is now based in Japan, where she has been stationed for almost a year. She promotes the Navy as more than just a branch of the military, but also as a place to meet incredible people, and as a community service and international relations organization. One example she gives is her fiancée (also in the Navy) handing out backpacks and books to underprivileged children as part of his duties. What’s more, she argues that the military can be significantly more effective than most Not For Profits because of the government’s massive financial resources. She is also someone who I respect for her independence of thought, and therefore was impressed that she has found herself more content to comply with orders unquestioningly as she has seen more of the Navy and how it works. Through experience, she has gained respect for the system and the intelligence of the institution. Obviously her experiences in the Navy are completely different from yours, particularly given that she has never been in a combat situation and she went through the academy. That understood, what is your opinion of this perspective? Are the desire for adventure, personal growth, interesting company and work, and travel legitimate reasons for going to OCS?

Thanks for your well thought out essays and a forum for discussion. Hope you are well.

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Okay. So I am going to try to respond to your questions point by point. Again, apologies for the time delay fuse.

First, I share with you a frustration in the national level of global and domestic awareness, not just among youth but also among Americans in general. I was walking down the street last night and I overheard a male college student say to his girlfriend “I just don’t like reading. It makes my brain hurt.” She replied “I know it. But couldn’t you just try, like Harry Potter or something?” He responded in the negative, quite fervently. This young man is a student at one of the nation’s finest public institutions, but he hates reading. What does that tell you? The availability of quality information on domestic and global issues at the newsstand or in the living room is deplorable. Sure, there are plenty of excellent journals, ‘zines, and blogs around, and there will always be C-Span and PBS, but let’s face it: information in the USA = an entertainment industry. If it’s not jumping out at you and making a really loud noise you just don’t pay attention (of course I refer to the proverbial “you”). Paying attention to the information that matters “hurts the brain,” causes depression, inspires a guilty conscience, and might even require the effort of effortless research. But: I try not to ask too much. Foremost I hope that people will begin to care more about the issues that face our nation and our communities. I guess that’s asking a lot, but only when personal investment in these issues reaches a palpable pitch will productive discourse begin.

One thing you might think about re: the level to which young people in NZ are very “globally” informed: there’s not that much going on in NZ. The United States provides a significant amount of news to just about every country that is not the United States. And we’re easy to criticize.

Now on to your questions:

1) How do I reconcile the lack of shooting by American soldiers in Iraq with the horrible, bloody scenes in [literature of WWI/WWII] re: PTSD, the shock of readjustment, etc.?

It’s true that combat soldiers in WWI and WWII saw, esp. in trench warfare and large conventional battles like Omaha Beach, Guadalcanal, and the Battle of the Bulge, more friendly casualties and inflicted more direct violence on the enemy. The sheer scale of these conflicts has much to do with this fact, as does the nature of conventional warfare, in which two opposing forces hurl bodies at one another until one side runs out of bodies or bullets. Obviously that’s not what we’re up to in Iraq and that’s not what we were up to, for the most part, in VN. Still, killing occurs on both sides in Iraq. The soldier’s life is constantly jeopardized, above all by the prevalence of roadside bombs and other Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). When soldiers are forced by the constraints of a combat situation to kill an insurgent, the Rules of Engagement generally protect that soldier from recrimination. However, ROE does nothing to protect the soldier from flashbacks, nightmares, or lifelong guilt, the result of what Iraq veteran author John Crawford calls “the ultimate moral sacrifice.” Of course there are those soldiers who – at least as far as we know – kill without remorse. There are those who seem to bounce back from deployment as if they just returned from a year in the Bahamas. Beware the act of the brave man. There is always more to the story. I think All Quiet on the Western Front does an excellent job of conveying a soldier’s deep frustration with the senselessness of violence, and of violent nationalism. I think the main character’s deepest sadness comes not when he loses his best friend in “No Man’s Land,” but when he returns to his native town on leave and sees his old teacher drilling propagandistic rhetoric into the impressionable minds of his young students. Can you find a similarity here? Imagine what it’s like to serve a combat tour and then return, only to see someone like Bill O’Reilly or George Bush himself corrupting the minds of Americans with hateful, erroneous, sentimentalist rhetoric that entirely misses the truth of the situation. For many veterans – myself included – this experience is a source of constant frustration. Other returning veterans have a different experience: they return even further cemented in a worldview that posits violence and domination as the solution to all international problems. Such a worldview is hard to shake. I know guys who’ve returned to Iraq two or three times because they can no longer function in civil society. They actually prefer the war zone, where life’s responsibilities are incredibly immediate, where bonds between coworkers and friends have dire importance (at least they seem to), and where the social responsibilities of the “world” are non-existent. Add into the mix thousands of ruined marriages, foreclosed homes, failed careers, life-altering wounds, etc., complicating the readjustment process for all soldiers and their families. It’s not always pleasant to return home. It’s often bittersweet.


2) You indicate that first you thought that we should clean up the mess we made in Iraq, and now you feel we should get out. What brought about your change of heart with regard to our status in Iraq?

This question is a lot easier than the last, the last being one that I could probably (and probably will) use as the basis for a book someday. I landed in Iraq in March 2004, pretty close to the one-year anniversary of the invasion. When I arrived, the future of Iraq was very uncertain, but no one thought it would get as bad as it has. We still thought that we could “win” somehow, or that Iraq would embrace the opportunity to inculcate a new political system with the help of American security and bureaucratic assistance. I never agreed with the invasion of Iraq. I thought it was a terrible foreign policy decision. Still, once there I began to hope that “something good” could come out of the US involvement. New money had been minted, the elections were coming, the constitution was under construction, and the word on the street was “Allahu akhbar, Saddam is gone.” No one – and I mean NO ONE – foresaw the extent to which the Sunni insurgency would gather strength and make war against the burgeoning Iraqi state. Political theorists were not surprised by the development of the Sunni insurgency, and even less surprised by the Shi’a power grab (they’ve been politically repressed in every Arab state since 632), but no one envisioned the horrific violence Muslims were willing to inflict on one another. Perhaps such a failure to predict the extremity of sectarian conflict was naïve. In April 2004 the Fallujah offensive successfully secured large tracts of hotly contested Baghdad suburbs and satellite cities in which Sunni insurgents were pooling their resources and mounting a power base. The combined effort of the Army and Marine Corps did not result in the killing or capturing of every Sunni insurgent, nor did the putsch destroy networks of insurgents. Rather, the insurgents fled to the North, South, and West. Suddenly cities like Mosul, Tal-Afar, Basra, Ramadi, Najaf, and the villages of al-Anbar province ignited with insurgent activity. The insurgents had arrived on fresh soil, and for the first time nearly the entire country – excepting the Kurdish regions to the North and the barren regions of the eastern borderlands – was a hotbed of anti-US insurgent activity. If we had hoped to begin the sort of Civil Affairs work necessary to fight a productive counter-insurgency, to rebuild the regional governmental infrastructure, and to begin rebuilding the economy at the local level, we quickly realized we were too late. As of summer 2004, the majority of military resources were invested in conducting counter-insurgency operations and patrols. We couldn’t afford not to. Now, three years later, our tenuous control over Iraq has slipped even more. Baghdad is completely out of coalition control. The southern insurgency is gathering strength because the British – awaiting full redeployment – are hunkered down in their Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), on orders to avoid violent interaction at all costs. The British voting public will not tolerate any more.

The surge offered a brief respite of violence in certain areas of Iraq. The same thing happens in very dangerous American city neighborhoods when police departments temporarily increase police presence drastically. Yes: putting “a cop on every corner” cuts down crime. Unfortunately, cops cannot solve the underlying structural problems that undermine all efforts to help Iraq become a stable democracy. Cops cannot build democratic institutions. They can protect them, but they cannot make people use them. They cannot inspire democratic political culture, nor can they fully protect the citizens who wish to exercise their right to political participation. Cops cannot control the decisions of political and military elites. Cops cannot control ideology.

“Cops,” by which I mean US troops, can provide a constant reminder of deep underlying structural problems and an easy target for taking out frustration caused by the glaring inconsistencies, injustices, and violence that are at least partially linked to the American presence in Iraq (fires which were, if not caused, at least kindled, by the American invasion and failures of American policy in Iraq since well before March 2003).

There is a civil war going on in Iraq that is as complex as civil wars get. Reductionists like to imagine the problem as rather simple, if well entrenched: Sunni v. Shi’a. “A battle that has raged since the death of the prophet and will rage until judgment day,” they say. Well, the reductionists are wrong. Shi’a of southern Iraq do not identify culturally with the Shi’a of Baghdad. Sunni Kurds certainly do not identify with Sunni Arabs. Militias rivaled other militias, even when religious and political affiliations are superficially shared. There are Assyrian Christians. There are Yazidis. There are also several million people who just wish it would all stop so they could go back to life as normal. Unfortunately the latter group must choose sides on a day to day basis, and even switch sides from time to time, to avoid the personal consequence of becoming an enemy of one or another violent group. It’s important to remember that the Iraqi state itself is a violent group, that police and Iraqi National Guard (ING) troops are not under the control of the government or the Coalition, but in fact quite autonomous in many cases. Sometimes the Army fights the police. Sometimes the police fight the militias. Sometimes policemen use their power and their uniform to serve the interest of insurgent groups. It’s a mess. The rule of law has no quarter in Iraq. Worst of all, from a foreign policy perspective, is the fact that the US troops are considered one of the many “sects” involved in this civil war. We are not to be trusted. We are killing. And we are killed. And we are helping others kill. All of this makes sense. We have not restored electricity. We have not cleaned the streets or removed the trash. We have not rebuilt hospitals. We have not built schools. You may as well take it as a general statement of purpose when you see scrawled on a soldier’s helmet “Fuck Hearts and Minds.” Even if the soldier doesn’t mean it, it’s the end result of all of our failed policies in Iraq. We have fucked the hearts and minds of a nation. Two nations actually, ours and theirs. Perhaps many more.

So: the idea that we are still an efficacious force in Iraq is laughable. We are holding back the floodwaters, and we may as well release the deluge while we can still get away from it. I do not propose immediate withdrawal, but I do propose a timeline with “hard targets.” I hope – note, I do not say believe – that a timeline and the consequent first steps toward American redeployment will force Iraqi political elites to the drawing board and the conference room. And I hope they will try to incorporate the violent groups who are derailing the government into their plans. Stranger things have happened. We gain nothing by staying with no commitment to return. This could drag out for a very long time if we do not terminate our involvement, and the weakness of the American presence in Iraq – crippled by a lack of funds (or a severe mismanagement of funds – thanks Halliburton/KBR/Paul Wolfowitz) and a logistically broken military – only maintains an idling civil war. I say let it burn out and fade away. Especially since we’re going to have to let it happen someday. We can’t keep selling our war debt to China (they already own about 30% of our 9 trillion USD debt). Suffice to say that the Democratic Congress will not long continue to throw blank checks or Surge Troopers down the desert drain that is Iraq today.

3) I am not going to answer this question because I think you’d be better served by looking up the Harper’s article to which I refer. The basic idea is exactly what your friend from the Naval Academy says, so I’ll just skip straight to that.

What is your opinion of this perspective? Are the desire for adventure, personal growth, interesting company and work, and travel legitimate reasons for going to OCS?

My opinion of “this perspective” is not terribly complicated. I pretty much agree: the military offers an excellent opportunity to surround oneself with ambitious, courageous, and high tempo people. Barring voyages to Iraq and Afghanistan, there are some good travel opportunities as well. You could live in Germany, Japan, Italy, Alaska, Guam, Cuba, Spain, Ireland, etc. Or you could live on Ft. McGwire, NJ, which isn’t so bad I guess. It’s not far from NYC. There are certainly better ways to travel, if travelling’s what you’re after (and given that you’re in NZ right now, I think you’ve secured a pretty good trip already). Just remember that the Officer Corps and the Enlisted ranks are different animals altogether. Officers are all college graduates. Almost none of the Enlisted are college graduates, though many are college students (less now that the cost of combat significantly outweighs the cost of college loans). What the military offers to Enlisted personnel is incredibly significant: work experience in the oldest and most successful meritocracy in the United States. Harry Truman integrated the Armed Forces in 1948, and since then the percentage of minorities serving in each branch is roughly equivalent or even surpasses the percentage of “white” service members. People come to the military for a lot of different reasons and from a lot of different places, and when they get there – as we say in the Army – they “all wear green” (or blue, if you’re a squid). For me, the Army offered a place to get to know a demographic of the American society that I probably never would’ve encountered had I gone “the college route” successfully on the first try, like most young people from “where I’m from.” In the Army I worked alongside self-proclaimed hillbillies and self-proclaimed gangstas, suburban kids whose fathers had breathed hellfire down their throats since they were small, who could not even conceive of the idea that the President might “lie,” farm boys who wore cowboy boots and boleros and cowboy hats when they went on pass, “conservative” soldiers who voted for John Kerry, “liberal” soldiers who liked treating Iraqis like dogs, and a whole lot of young men who were just kind of floating along. All of them are heroes to me, because we did what we did together. I hate some of them, but I respect them. I worked with a lot of honest, good people, whose generosity could have – and in some cases did – cost them life, limb, or sanity. And I worked with a lot of bad people. I worked with people who genuinely hated the Iraqi people. Sometimes I saw the most aggressive American soldiers, the most despicable, hateful, and downright mean among them, toss stuffed animals and candy out to a crowd of children surrounding the convoy. Sometimes I saw the hardest ones cry. I tried to understand as much of it as I could, or at least to save it for later. But I also turned mean for a time. I turned on the men in my unit who called me a “liberal, tree hugging pussy,” even while I stood next to them with a rifle in my hands. As far as I could tell, it was guys like them who got us there.

But then again it wasn’t guys like them who got us there, because they’d taken a selfless step that none of the Bush administration ever took: they swore to defend and protect the United States of America from all enemies domestic and foreign. And they paid for that promise without, in most cases, asking for anything in return, anything other than “three hots and a cot” that is.

So: if your friend thinks that the Armed Forces of the United States are better “community service” and “international relations” organizations than most NGOs, I think she is conveniently misled and might benefit from removing her rose-colored lenses. The Armed Forces have one ultimate mission: the maintenance and use of violent force in the interest of American national security. Throwing out a few schoolbooks here and there is not about community service. It’s about counter-insurgency. That’s all fine and good to me, and it paints a pretty picture, but remember that sometimes the insurgents we fight with weapons and with “hearts and minds” campaigns are working to violently overthrow regimes that are the structural cause of a given nation’s development retardation. We stand in the way, holding a backpack and a textbook and claiming moral high ground. I’ll give you an example you may be familiar with: the US Army and Navy were two of the first responders to both the Tsunami of 2004 and the earthquake in Kashmir of 2005. They did not rush to the aid of the dying thousands in order to fulfill a commitment to “community service,” they went because they were already in the area. Gathering intelligence. “Winning hearts and minds” is the key tactic of counter-insurgency. One day’s backpack is another day’s rifle. I don’t have a problem with that, in principle. I strongly believe that America should maintain a powerful national security posture. I happen to think that hearts and minds campaigns are critical to our national security. But I know that there is a thin red line between hearts and minds and blood and guts. I tend to hope that our national leaders will respect that line and keep private agendas out of international affairs. Historically, they have not always done so. Think of Latin America. Or, if you want, think of Iraq under Saddam Hussein before 1991. Where does your USNA friend think Saddam got the materiel and financial support to win the Iran/Iraq War of the 1980s? US. U.S. Us. He used some of that money to kill a quarter-million of his own people. We were deaf to the protests in 1989, and yet 18 years later we still claim to be “avenging an evil dictator.”

I love the military. I think the US Military is one of the greatest institutions the world has ever seen. I think that for a number of reasons, mostly because of the people I know who have served in the military and the people with whom I served. But I never forget that when I signed on the dotted line on 26 July 2001, I agreed to act as a killing agent – should the need arise – for the United States of America for 8 years. If you are not a combat soldier, if you are a sailor, for example, or a linguist, or a clerk, or a pathologist, or a veterinarian, you are still part of the machine that kills, and you are still responsible. That said, the military needs good people now. Perhaps now more than ever. I frequently consider returning to active duty. Every bone in my body wishes that I were back in Iraq, but frequently a little more than half of my heart wants to stay at home. I do not wish to return to Iraq to do the business of the military, but to be with my friends and my fellow soldiers as they undertake the Herculean task of enduring this lost war. If that’s the kind of commitment to service you’re looking for, head to the recruiter as soon as you can. If not, stay on the sidelines and think very carefully about your relationship to the military as a civilian. Think about what you say, but please say something. After all, the greatest fact about the US Military is that it is an extension of the American body politic. You’re responsible for the military’s actions even as a civilian. Exercising the right to vote, speaking publicly in support or dissent of specific foreign policy, paying close attention to various forms of media, criticizing, thinking, and hoping, are all important parts of affecting a positive change in our national direction.

Albert Camus wrote in Le Combat, a resistance newspaper, that pacifism is not an option for citizens of a country engaged in war. But the opposite of pacifism, according to Camus, is not violent ideology, but resistance. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi thought the same thing. The latter two called their efforts “non-violent,” and indeed they were, but they accomplished an effect better than the effect that violence could have produced: they won hearts and minds with peace and faith in civic virtue. Albert Camus argued that every citizen of a country engaged in war must find a way to bring an end to the war and must make an effort to pursue whatever means s/he discovers. The pacifist lies down and lets the authoritarian run amuck. The non-violent resister writes, carries documents, engages people in challenging conversation, and – above all – never stops seeking out injustices to correct. Every American has a responsibility to think long and hard about where our nation is headed, not just with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan, but also with regard to our comprehensive national purpose. In recent years, our national purpose has been institutionally corrupted by careless and violent foreign policy. I have chosen to resist, following my period of service with still more service in a new, non-violent form. I urge every American to do the same.