Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor for National Review Online, has a very meaningful interview with Stephen Mansfield, the author of The Faith of the American Soldier, which explores what part religion plays in the lives of U.S. Soldiers, entitled “God & Man on the Frontlines.”

Lopez introduces her interview with the following quotations:

“When soldiers step upon the battlefield, they immediately confront the kind of horror and hardship that has moved men through the centuries to reach for the spiritual," writes Stephen Mansfield. Death and destruction, "the loneliness and the fear, the boredom and the rage" all "drive men to the invisible; each forces the soldier to decide what he truly believes, making the battlefield as much a test of faith as it is a test of arms."

Lopez gets right to matters of the deepest significance to Soldiers, whether they are religious or not. But from Mansfield’s investigation, most Soldiers share a common need to find honor in their profession of arms. They need to believe and accept the morality of a conflict to be able to risk their lives, and feel confident that they will be honored and respected when they come home:

NRO: What does honor mean for the American on the battlefield?

MANSFIELD: Honor on the battlefield results from living by a code that rescues the warrior from barbarism and elevates the profession of arms. It means understanding soldiering as a spiritual service as much as a martial role. Honorable soldiers are devoted to the moral objectives of their nation in war, are willing to lay their lives on an altar of sacrifice, are courageous in subduing the enemy yet compassionate to civilians and prisoners, are devoted to a godly esprit de corps, and are eager to master the art of arms by way of fulfilling a calling.

NRO: How important was it that the Iraq war be addressed in theological just-war terms?

MANSFIELD: It is vital for a government to establish the morality of a war before sending soldiers into battle. The traditional just-war concept has to be satisfied. Soldiers don’t want to fight simply to defend a nation’s vanity or to support a corrupt vision. They want to know they are doing good. This is essential for them and for the nation that is going to welcome them home again. I have talked to hundreds of soldiers during the research of this book. Almost every one of them mentioned his or her need to believe in the goodness of their nation’s purposes in war.

This is precisely right in my view. This is why, despite every effort to stir up those dissident voices in the military, the media comes up empty. There are very few Soldiers who have any cause to think we are misguided, that things go badly, that we doubt or don't believe in what we're doing here. Some might call us deluded, or brainwashed, but the simple fact is, for us it’s simple.

Radical Islamic Terrorists, supported by State Sponsors of Terrorism, on September 11, 2001, inflicted the gravest harm to our country and its citizens since Pearl Harbor. Our newly energized, progressive, and muscular foreign policy resolved to take the fight to those states and non-state actors who represent the gravest terrorist threat. Sometimes that fight is against a terrorist haven like Afghanistan. Sometimes the fight needs to be taken up against a state sponsor, like Saddam (or Libya, Iran, Syria, North Korea).

It matters a great deal to us that President Bush viewed the war with Saddam as inevitable. This showed wisdom, foresight and resolve. And it was correct. President Bush was prepared to go to war with the coalition at hand, but only after working through every effort of the UN and its “inspectors,” trying to bring Saddam to account. The strategy was to draw Al Qaeda into a fight on our terms, and they responded overwhelmingly. And they have been devastated, with no follow up attacks in the U.S. We have seen a wave of consequence from the fall of Saddam, and the first free elections in the Middle East.

All of these outcomes make the world a better, safer place, despite all the hysteria and hand wringing and (false) claims that America used to be loved and respected (when was that, exactly, not in my lifetime), but now we are viewed as the “biggest threat to world security.” If you’re a Marxist, Socialist, Dictator or other denier of freedom to captive and oppressed people, I suppose that’s true.

Lopez asked Mansfield to identify the one story from Iraq that every American should hear:

NRO: How much time did you spend over in Iraq? What's one story every American should know from your time over there?

MANSFIELD: I was in Iraq for several weeks. I discovered many moving stories of faith and heroism, but they are all summarized in the comment a journalist made to me on the C130 flying out of Baghdad International Airport. He said, “I came over here expecting Animal House and Debbie Does Dallas. Instead, I found Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan.” That captures a good deal of what I experienced.

In response to questions about our Soldiers by my debating partner at Debate Space, The Liberal Avenger, I’ve detailed the many ways that troops today are held to a far higher standard or behavior than any fighting force in history, and overwhelmingly meeting that standard.

Finally, Lopez explores with Mansfield the extent to which the President’s character and faith affects the military:

NRO: Does the commander in chief's openness about his faith affect the troops in any practical sense?

Mansfield: Both while I was in Iraq and in interviews we conducted here in the states, soldiers spoke often about believing that George W. Bush’s faith and character were important to them. There were many references to the near depression in the military during the Clinton administration. Yet, with the Bush presidency, soldiers began to feel as though they were valued and that they were an extension of the president’s moral resolve. Even among soldiers who were disillusioned by supply problems or wearied by their hard months in the field, the belief that the president is a moral man conducting the war for righteous reasons made all the difference in their fighting spirit. Character really is the core of leadership.

Again, precisely right in my experience and opinion. Soldiers will not want to follow a leader they don’t respect, and they won’t abide evil, hypocrisy, or evil actions that so many on the left have directly suggested or broadly intimated. Character is essential, and character is reflected in commitment, courage, honesty, honoring vows, and other behavior that reveals character or lack thereof.

Critics don’t understand the incomparable value of their military. Honor bound. Committed to timeless values of duty, faithfulness, honesty, and integrity. Following through on their commitments, their responsibilities. Keeping true faith and allegiance. Being accountable and holding others accountable.

This is the character of the war we fight; these are the character traits of the men and women who fight it.

David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey respond to the surprising and outrageous report from Amnesty International (AI) in Amnesty Unbelievable, published in National Review Online.

By way of introduction to Rivkin's and Casey's arguments, an excerpt:

First and foremost, Amnesty’s report is emphatically not an honest assessment of American compliance with international law. Rather, it is an assessment of how well the United States complies with Amnesty International’s political and ideological agenda — equivalent to the grading of individual members of Congress by domestic advocacy groups. This is obvious from the report’s three fundamental measures of a good human-rights record, which are applied to every included state: (1) whether the death penalty has been retained; (2) whether the International Criminal Court treaty has been ratified; and (3) whether the U.N. Women’s Convention, and its Optional Protocol, has been ratified. All of these criteria involve controversial political issues where there is fundamental disagreement between right and left and — from Amnesty’s perspective — George Bush’s America fails on all counts. This, of course, is what you would expect, since the president is a conservative, elected by increasingly conservative American voters.

Rivkin and Casey go on to observe that AI's biggest complaint and the apparent loci of their animus is that “[h]undreds of detainees continue to be held without charge or trial at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”

This, of course, is the installation that Amnesty’s secretary general, Irene Khan, characterized as “the gulag of our times.”

As many of those more familiar with what real Gulags were (and are) like, this is likely "highly improvident hyperbole," as Rivkin and Casey conclude, as it is not likely that Khan is unfamiliar with the actual “modern equivalents” of the gulag: "Castro’s Cuba, North Korea, China and, until recently, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.)" Khan does indeed trivialize the excesses of such regimes, past and present by comparing the (comparatively minor) excesses of a few without command direction, with gross atrocities committed in the thousands and millions with mechanical precision as part of authoritarian government policy.

Rivkin and Casey make the obvious distinction between those held at Gauntanamo and "political prisoners," which used to be the natural constituency of AI, but no longer:

Of course, the men held at Guantanamo Bay are not political dissidents. They are captured enemy combatants. Under the laws of war, they can be detained until the conflict, or at least actual hostilities, are concluded. This has been the practice of the United States, and of every other major power in Europe and elsewhere, for centuries. It is not illegal; it is not immoral. In fact, this rule is one of the first and most important humanitarian advances made in warfare. The right to detain is the necessary concomitant of the obligation to give quarter on the battlefield, to actually take prisoners alive.

Regular readers may recall my post commenting on Bill Whittle's excellent Sanctuary essay, which precisely identifies how our enemies in the Global War on Terror invalidate the very basis of treating these individuals as Prisoners of War.

At the same time AI slams U.S. Policy as violating the very protocols and conventions in question, by their own admission what they draw attention to, is no violation at all according to those very conventions. And of course, AI knows this, but they’re just being rhetorical. That, or they don’t know the substance of the very protocols they’re so hot to enforce. Rivkin and Casey again:

As Amnesty International knows, the U.N. Convention defines “torture” as “severe pain or suffering.” That means that there is some level of pain and suffering, which is not severe, that does not constitute torture. So long as coercive interrogation methods do not cross that line, and are not otherwise “cruel, inhuman or degrading,” they are lawful. What constitutes “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment is not defined in the treaty. The meaning of these terms depends very much on the situation and individuals involved. The European Court of Human Rights, in a case dealing with British interrogation of IRA terrorists, concluded that a series of stress methods — including hooding, stress positions, loud noise and sleep deprivation — did not constitute torture, and were “inhuman” only when used together.

Amnesty International used to be an organization that stood as the (sometimes solitary) voice against oppression, real oppression, real torture, real crimes against humanity.

If our national support for the Death Penalty, as established in the legitimate laws of this democratically elected Republic, and our refusal to yield sovereignty to international organizations and protocols as legally decided by our Executive and Legislative Branches, makes us a target worthy of special attention to AI, then they have lost belief in their charter.

This is extreme folly, and in my mind completely surrenders any moral standing that AI would have otherwise been entitled to in their long and dedicated service, the record of which recent leaders of that organization have steadily sullied. Soon, they will be the moral equivalent of the UN Committee on Human Rights, if they are not already.

Where on earth are the Trustees? What do the founders and supporters of AI think of this report? Are domestic U.S. Politics so valuable to you, that you will sacrifice the very soul of your organization? Are American Conservatives and Libertarians so beyond the pale, that you need to brand us as evil as anything you can conceive (and yes, observe) in the world today? Do you think this is some nightmare you will wake up from, and if you just tough it out, you will never have to deal with U.S. Republicans or Conservatives again? Do you want to fight true oppression, or do you want to play politics, because if it’s the former, we can work together, but if it’s the latter, you’re irrelevant to us (and to your very charter).

Rivkin and Casey conclude:

In the meantime, Amnesty International should reflect that its extravagant and unfounded claims that the United States has violated international law, and that its officials should be the subject of criminal prosecution, work to undercut its own mission. Amnesty claimed that “[w]hen the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity.” In fact, it is Amnesty International, and similar NGOs, who have granted that license. They have done this by failing to distinguish clearly between American interpretations of international law, including the Geneva Conventions and Torture Convention, with which they may disagree as a policy matter, and actual illegal conduct. It is hardly surprising that repressive regimes claim that the United States has violated the law, thus permitting them to follow suit, when groups like Amnesty persistently state that American policy at Guantanamo Bay is illegal even though this is simply not true.

And that’s precisely the problem. If those on the left – both domestically in the U.S. and their dedicated supporters like AI internationally – continue to debase their arguments with this kind of hateful and unhinged rhetoric, they only plow the field for the fascist and dictatorial (and now terrorist) abusers they were created to combat. And that doesn’t just make them against our efforts, but on the other side. How can it be otherwise, when they fight the propaganda war for those who wage war on humanity?

Austin Bay has posted a moving Memorial Day tribute, in which he speaks of behalf of Tejanos in Action at Travis County International Cemetery, where this group of Hispanic vets has honored indigent American veterans buried in the cemetery.

Perhaps it may be said that these fallen veterans sacrificed out of proportion to the benefits they enjoyed -- they gave their all to a country that may not always have honored them in life in measure to their devotion. In some profounder sense, in honoring these heroic dead, Bay speaks forth a timeless caption for this Memorial Day, for all memorial days of this great Republic:

The mission of each generation is to take what we have and do better, do more with it. Liberty gives us this chance, to choose to take a sad and forgotten plot and turn it into a beautiful, peaceful place.

Take what we have and make it better. That describes America, not just its veterans.

That is why, for all the negativity, for the politically correct attempts to highlight American transgression, evil, faults, and failings, we still need to remember this gift of Liberty.

We may take two steps forward, and then drop back one. We may even at times be pushed backwards, but we keep moving forward, trying to correct for the failings of the past, our failings, and in the end make something greater than it would have been without the mistakes. We learn, we grow. For going on now 230 years, we remain the bruised sometimes but never broken, single-best example of Democracy in action.

And it is in no small measure – it is in the most hallowed measure and degree – due to the Veterans we seek to honor this Memorial Day holiday.

To all who have gone before, to all who will follow them, May the God of this Universe, of all creation itself, look upon your service to a grateful nation, and raise us up, call us to our better natures, and in lifting our heads, acknowledge not only the service of the Fallen, but acknowledge too that Heavenly Father who may give them their eternal rest, and give us resolve for our earthly struggles. he can, He says He will, let us be mindful of our charge. Amen.

I often mention that I think James Lileks is the best writer on the web. (I am gratified to see him referred to that way from many illuminaries I respect, so I believe I am in good company.) I also admire his lifestyle choices, stay-at-home columnist and newspaperman (mediaman? mediaperson?) and dad to his Gnat.

For free form prose, he's idiosyncratic, which I enjoy, but he's also precise in his imaging. He has this ability, in my view unique, to string together sequences of otherwise disparate thoughts or tableaus, and by his very construction create resonance, one to the other. He makes connections, in the sense that they weren't there before he built them.

He writes in a way very reminiscent of the way he collects. I am fascinated by the sensibility that can gather together (and make somewhat immortal online) everything from WWII training posters, clips from C grade films, freakish '50s kische, pinup art, and somehow end up creating an almost hallowedness about his subjects.

(No, really! I think he gives his subjects a certain dignity they wouldn't otherwise reflect. That, and they'd likely never see the light of day if he didn't dust them off and post them.)

From his Institute of Official Cheer to his postcards, matchbooks, old newspaper ads, and my personal favorite, Patriotica. Unusual, exotic, the kind of things you get mesmerized over at antique barns, what little of it you find. Odd things, things that can make you smile and you don't even know why.

But it fits somehow with everything else Lileks writes about, is devotion to his so called flotsam and jetsam, that he carries around with him like an old family suitcase, full of grandpa's treasures or what was left in old Aunt Ruth's cabinet in the dining room or what Cousin Hank kept up in the loft in the garage.

Maybe I just like his humor and devotion to all things nostalgic, but I think it's more than that. And his post from Thursday I think helped me to understand.

Lileks gave it away, talking about Minneapolis:

I see the town in terms many wouldn’t recognize – either the history long vanished my own history no one would know, or particularly care about. In New York or Chicago or any other large city there’s so much history you can explore it forever, but sometimes it feels like there’s not enough here to keep me going forward. Every place I go is thick with history, and half of it’s meaningless, the result of the inevitable accretion of tracing the same route for too many years. The history that actually means something is a phantom, and somewhat of a bother. What would it be like to live somewhere and not see what had been there before?

And he threatens to leave for Arizona, but even as he says it, something in him resists. And I don't think even Lileks knows what that's about.

But of course you’re running away from yourself when you do something like this, right? Well, no. Wherever you go, there you are. But at least in Arizona, you’re warmer, and CRIMINEY JUDAS I’m tired of being cold all the time. You oughtn't be cold in May. I walk outside to the gazebo – can’t sit down, the seats are wet – and I can see my breath. Which is nice, because it means I’m alive. But still.

Despite his complaints about the cold, Lileks loves this city too much. He's too connected to it to be able to turn away from the history he feels compelled to preserve. It's not history that most people would recognize, but it's the history of neighborhoods, of greasy diners and forgotten souls. It's 5 bars on a single block, with Catholic and Presbyterian Churches a block apart like Monastic book ends. It's knowing streets and buildings by the business that was on the corner two or three proprietors ago, before they tore down the big sign and built the addition in the back, butting right up to the back of the Savings and Loan that isn't there anymore.

He carries this flotsam of memory, some his, most collected from others or part of a verbal history that "newspeople" often absorb just from being around a copy room in any old city. I know this feeling well.

I've experienced this first hand, but second and third hand too, in places you pass through, Scranton, Springfield, Buffalo, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, fading factory towns that made it big in the 19th century and struggled in a downward spiral through the 20th, and Lord only knows what will come in the 21st. Certainly industrial parks and business friendly zones and lots of tax incentives, but no future you can be sure of.

First hand, I know it from Binghamton and the "Triple Cities," as they called it, Binghamton, Johnson City and Endicott, but it was really more like a dozen cities, the Maine, Endwell, Vestal, Vestal Center, Appalachin, Port Dickenson, Kirkwood, and on and on. I spent 6 years working in one part of town or another, and had the good fortune to work for one of the last old time shoe stores before it went bust. Maybe some of you remember them: a pair of brothers, usually Jewish back then, started up a Shoe Store, selling Floersheims, maybe later Bostonian, and they would get really angry if you tried to just buy your shoes. They wanted to get out the shoe scale, and measure your arch as well as heel to toe, and even visually inspect your foot to see what kind of last (shape and placement of arch relative to rest of the foot, how high the arch, how long) would be best for you. (This was serious business.)

But just like the guys who worked down at the old Binghamton Press (before it merged with the old Sun Bulletin sometime after Gannett scooped them both up), when you work in an 80 year old retail store, you get exposed to a lot of city history that has otherwise vanished from view or public discussion. Except for the old timers, and you have to want to listen to them or you don't hear the history. You don't connect the people or the stories.

If Lileks experienced Minneapolis like that, and I would bet as a newspaper reporter he did, he's carrying around a lot of old city history that is entrusted personally to him. And if he turns away, or forgets, or says, forget all this cold and heads for Arizona, then that history is lost forever. I think he feels that weight of responsibility, like the Last of the Mohicans, or some droid with a hologram message left by some dead guy waiting for just the right person for whom it was intended.

Does a city ever really exist that way? The way we remember it and imagine it is, even when half of what we think we know is a recollection, or a story, and not just ours but everyone we ever heard tell about it?

It's a funny thing, this attachment to a place and time that is really an attachment to a place somehow set out of time and preserved.

Lileks straddles the fence (Back Fence, yet another good feature available from Lileks), and keeps his options open:

If in five years I discover that the Minneapolis I love is a thing of fiction made of old photos and postcards, it’s time to till the soil. When I came back here the thought that I’d drive these streets as an old man was a comfort, and it may well end up so. It’s also possible I end up braking into a skid on some March sleet and get broadsided as I pass through Lake Street for the 95,933rd and final time, and my last thought will be: so much sun you could have had. So much sun.

Christian Carnival #71 is up over at Techno Gypsy.

No posts from Dadmanly or Gladmanly this time, but lots of interesting reading at the Carnival. Check it out!

Michael J. Totten is back from his extended visit and hands-on experiment in birthing Democracy in Lebanon, and posting at TechCentral Station.

Totten had been "blogging from the Inception" at Spirit of America, where he reported live-blog from Lebanon throughout their recent liberation from Syrian control.

So what occurred in Lebanon? And what does it bode for the rest of the Middle East?

Totten quotes Student leader Nabil Abou-Charraf:

"Our revolution is about much more than ejecting Syria from the country and establishing democracy in Lebanon," he told me. "It is also important that we heal the old wounds. We cannot go back to the past, to the civil war. We want to rebuild our country." He tapped the side of his head. "And that includes rebuilding our minds. Lebanon has been so divided. We stand not only for freedom and independence, but also national unity and a new, modern, common, tolerant Lebanese identity.

A new, tolerant Lebanese identity, where the most popular symbol -- aside the cedar-adorned Lebanese Flag itself -- has been the Muslim crescent and the Christian cross. Not exactly the Lion and the Lamb lying down together, but just about as remarkable.

Again from Abou-Charraf:

"This isn't just about Lebanon, either," he said. "You want to know what we're doing? I'll tell you what we're doing. We are resolving the clash of civilizations."

A clash of ideas. And since the Cedar Revolution ignited following the assassination of former Prime Minister Hariri, without violence. Thanks to the courage, determination, and tolerance of the Lebanese people.

Chrenkoff reviews the latest commentary from Fouad Ajami in The Daily Star, We have George W. Bush to thank for the Arab democratic spring.

Ajami opens his commentary with a startling admission from a Kuwaiti merchant:

"George W. Bush has unleashed a tsunami on this region," a shrewd Kuwaiti merchant who knows the way of his world said to me. The man had no patience with the standard refrain that Arab reform had to come from within, that a foreign power cannot alter the age-old ways of the Arabs. "Everything here - the borders of these states, the oil explorations that remade the life of this world, the political outcomes that favored the elites now in the saddle - came from the outside. This moment of possibility for the Arabs is no exception."

For those who would make the facile argument that democracy cannot be imposed from the outside, reality in the Middle East has always belied that prediction, and those who know the Middle East best know this well.

[Start Digression] I came across a reminder today (blogosphere somewhere, my apologies) of a bit of wisdom from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, I paraphrase, "better that the Arab do something tolerably than (British, U.S.) do something perfectly." The Great Lawrence himself saw the limits of what the outsider can do, but then, he was the ultimate outsider, wasn't he? And wasn't one of his greatest internal contradictions (among many), that he could see clearly what he could not briong himself to do? His own history starts in support of, but in the end, confounds his assertion.

The Middle East has a long history of imposed solutions, but never before has anyone imposed freedom. And this will end the end suggest a tolerably Iraqi solution, rather than some perfect American construction.[End Digression]

Ajami reports a Syrian view of the tumultuous events that led to the liberation of Lebanon:

I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George W. Bush's words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future.

Is this the devastation to American prestige and credibility abroad I hear so mcuh about from the left side of the aisle? Sounds like the threat was very credible.

Ajami notes something else from his visit:

Unmistakably, there is in the air of the Arab world a new contest about the possibility and the meaning of freedom.

Americans should not underestimate the tremendous significance of these ideas among Arab intelligentsia and society as a whole. Of course there is and will be resistance, but perhaps as futile as trying to turn back the clock or undo the march of progress.

Ajami finds his metaphor in an ancient Arab symbol, the horse:

As I made my way on this Arab journey, I picked up a meditation that Massimo d'Azeglio, a Piedmontese aristocrat who embraced that "springtime" in Europe, offered about his time, which speaks so directly to this Arab time: "The gift of liberty is like that of a horse, handsome, strong, and high-spirited. In some it arouses a wish to ride; in many others, on the contrary, it increases the desire to walk." It would be fair to say that there are many Arabs today keen to walk - frightened as they are by the prospect of the Islamists coming to power and curtailing personal liberties, snuffing out freedoms gained at such great effort and pain. But more Arabs, I hazard to guess, now have the wish to ride. It is a powerful temptation that George W. Bush has brought to their doorstep.

Chrenkoff concludes:

I couldn't help but to chuckle, recalling the words spoken by Osama bin Laden in December 2001, reflecting his belief about the decline of the West and the rise and the appeal of his style of militancy: "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." Well, the "weak" American horse has bucked first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, and now, as Ajami writes, America is presenting the people of the Middle East with "the horse of democracy". People might hate the fact that it's not an Arab thoroughbred but an Arab-American stallion hybrid high on neo-con steroids, but in the end a horse is a horse. You don't look the gift one in the teeth, and who cares what sort of a horse it is as long as it ultimately takes you where you want to go?

And is it so suprising that where they want to go starts with freedom from dictatorship and oppression?

Gladmanly has a new post up, with a review and commentary on Casting Crowns, a Contemporary Christian music CD by a band of the same name.

Excellent music and lyrics, a real blessing for my early morning and late evening quiet times. (Or even the busy get myself ready for the FOB Job times.)

Oh boy. Two new debates raging over at Debate Space.

In You Don't Support Us, I respond to the Liberal Avenger’s questions about my You Don’t Support Us post, and respond to questions about whether there is any basis for prisoner abuse allegations.

In Doing More Damage Than Good, I respond to the Liberal Avenger’s questions about John Cole’s recent post about criticism of the press, Hugh Hewitt, and general thoughts on press criticism of the military.

Check them both out. Debates continue in the comments, and there's generally plenty of good points to go around. Enjoy.

(Via Instapundit.)

Newsweek obviously believes desecration is in the eye of the beholder. (Or, they just want to stick it in our eye.)

Amazingly, Newsweek editors responsible for an edition that ran in February in Japan, depicts a soiled American flag with its staff broken, stuffed in a garbage can.

You would think Newsweek would be more culturally sensitive. After all, some Americans view the U.S. Flag as sacred as others view, oh I don't know, say a Koran.

Of course, Newsweek probably understands that, whereas insulting a sacred object in Muslim countries can get you arrested, whipped, stoned, mutilated, raped or executed, doing the same to a sacred object in America is just being journalistically adversarial. No riotous mobs will storm your offices, set fire to your presses, stone or necklace your writers.

And of course, if by your brazen disregard for the consequences of editorial decision-making gets some innocent civilians or American soldiers killed, well, at least it didn't happen here. Oh, and it just demonstrates the damage that the Bush Administration has done to America's prestige in the world. Couldn't have anything to do with the U.S. Media throwing U.S. Flags in garbage cans. No. Of course not.

Today I stumbled across what must clearly have been a very dedicated effort in the form of Bill Whittle's Sanctuary essay.

Bill is a fine writer, and his thoughts broad and deep on the struggle against Islamic Terrorists and Anti-Iraqi Forces, all centering around the military notion of Sanctuary. The term Sanctuary, for those not familiar, refers to the lynchpin of the Laws of War (and every protocol attempted since the dawn of civilization straight through the Geneva Conventions), namely that there is a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. This distinction, though greatly abused at times in all conflicts, is a non-trivial appeal to humanity even in the midst of our most brutal and violent practices, War.

And it is this appeal, this distinction, that our enemies in the Global War on Terror are determined to obliterate. They actively seek to kill civilians, they target non-combatants such as medical personnel, they make military use of Mosques, they pretend to surrender, they appeal for help and then detonate explosives. And our forces respond overwhelmingly with supreme restraint, compassion, and humanity, even to the risk and loss of their lives.

If you still are unsure what is meant by Sanctuary -- which Bill has made transcendant in the grand purpose of America itself I think -- think of the most durable civilizing influences in ours or any society. Think that place where we are better than we imagine. Think about the ideals and credo of America. Remember that you live in freedom and (relative) prosperity.

So, here's just a small sample of Bill's work:

Our soldiers are fighting and dying to install what any sane person can see is a widely-representative democracy, heroically elected at great personal risk. Opposing them are a shadow army of former secret policemen, state torturers, and foreign invaders of every stripe who kill Iraqi policemen, behead innocent Iraqi cabdrivers, and detonate car bombs at the opening of new schools and children’s centers. There may be an explanation for this support I am not seeing. I, for one, can not get past the idea that millions of Western Progressives would rather see a nation re-enslaved, or erupt in civil war, or have twenty thousand of their countrymen come home in boxes than admit that they were wrong.

And they have the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to claim the moral high ground?

I am trying my level best to understand how and why someone who professes to be for freedom for artists, homosexuals and women – not to mention unlimited personal expression of every stripe -- can take the side of 8th Century religious fanatics who brag about murdering writers, stoning women, beheading homosexuals and instituting moral policemen at every street corner with unquestioned authority to beat, jail or execute anyone suspected of being insufficiently pious.

I used to wonder why civilizations fell. No longer. I see it now before my eyes, every day. Civilizations do not fall because the Barbarians storm the walls. The forces of civilization are far too powerful, and those of barbarism far too weak, for that to happen.

Civilizations fall because the people inside the Sanctuary throw open the gates.

In another segment, Bill is in Aspen and happens upon the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. And he picks up a program to discover that this year's recipient of the Annual Freedom of Speech Award is Garry Trudeau.

My readers may remember my recent complaint against the clueless Trudeau (clueless to Military, clueless to blogs, clueless to MILBLOGGERS needless to say, but also clueless to our efforts in Iraq). So I am certainly no (longer) a fan of Trudeau or his reactionary "Doonesbury." But Bill, he nails Trudeau dead to rights.

Now I had met Muhammad and Omar, two of the brothers from Iraq the Model when they appeared at Roger L. Simon’s house in Los Angeles. These two ordinary men faced murder and beheading in their defense of freedom in Iraq, a nation awash in Ba’athist murderers, Al Qaeda savages and former Saddam secret policemen. These men stood openly for democracy in a land where simply being a policeman is likely to get you killed. Of course, this is merely physical and moral courage; the sort of thing easily dismissed in the sanctuary of Aspen, Colorado. No, real courage is awarded to the man who has taken the biggest pay cut in defense of free speech, and so the real honor must of necessity flow to Garry Trudeau -- a man who has dared criticize the President of the United States! A man whose endlessly repeated panels of the White House antenna farm reminds us of the true meaning of freedom and courage, for he, supported only by tens of millions, the entire celebrity universe of stars, the mainstream media and his multi-millionaire TV star wife, has selflessly risked …

I’m sorry, I drew a blank – I completely spaced!

Oh! I remember. A man who courageously allowed his secretary to selflessly risk irate e-mails in order to attack Chimpy McHitler, and who asked for nothing in return but a few tens of millions of dollars… that, my friends, is the standard-bearer for the modern liberal’s idea of courage.

You need to set aside an hour and read Sanctuary in its entirety, both parts. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

Sanctuary:
Part One
Part Two

[NOTE: Previous reference to Bill being a contributor to Winds of Change was in error and has been deleted. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.]

My readers know I share some of Bill's passion and grave concern, but Bill, I couldn't have said it better. I likely couldn't have said even a fraction of the excellent work you've done here.

As a member of the U.S. Military in Iraq, let me say something very clearly to Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, CBS, ABC, and any other media organization of any integrity.

You are creating greater risk for me personally. You are creating incredible hostility in Muslim countries due to incessant negative reporting out of context and ignoring orders of magnitude of good news in doing so. Yet, in your jaded imaginations, you believe every misconception you spin is ever more confirmation of what you always knew about the U.S. Military. These unrelenting Vietnam analogies are like press versions of drug addled flashbacks.

You create added danger for my soldiers. You feed into enemy (yes, enemy) propaganda efforts in yielding unlimited access to pre-staged voices with calculated intent. You are entirely ignorant of the countries you claim to cover, and you know as little about the U.S. Military, its culture, climate, training, procedures, and ways of operation. You diminish and demean our service.

You cause greater concern, fear and worry for our friends and family. You expand pinpoints of data into grossly distorted exaggerations of fact, and paint broad brush strokes of violence without any context or comparison to relative levels elsewhere. You have no sense of proportion or equivalence. You have no regard for collateral damage, and yet see imagined carnage with every surgical strike, precision bomb, or targeted raid. You can speak of cities destroyed with the destruction of a single building.

We daily see the gross distortions. We cannot recognize the caricatures you scratch out, neither in our fellow soldiers, nor in the battlespace we inhabit. Your vain and callous search for what you indignantly claim as objectivity is really nothing more than neutrality in the face of absolute evil. Even though you are neither architect nor sponsor of that evil, you are accomplice in its result. And you continue to ignore the consequence.

We are proud of our Military, our Country, and how, for over 200 years, the U.S. has tried to improve both ourselves and the world around us, usually for little thanks and much scorn and insult. We police ourselves. Every scandal you report, from My Lai to Iran Contra to Abu Ghraib, has been first reported to authorities by military personnel. And that has resulted in prosecutions and punishment. And what do you stress in your reporting? The sins, crimes, and misdemeanors and rarely if ever remark on the ability and willingness for us to identify and correct malfeasance in our ranks.

Never, never claim to support the soldiers, you don't, you never will in any meaningful way until you can see your prejudices for what they are, work to eliminate them, and for once try to view the world with an open and not a closed mind. You need to rethink how you consider the idea of a just war after 9/11. You need to acknowledge that you don't know the modern U.S. Military or the men and women who serve.

Only then can you hope to develop any kind of truly objective view of your world.

And if, after all that, you still think the U.S. causes more harm than good in the world, then there really is no hope for you at all. You are a citizen without a state. And that's too bad, because there is no greater country in the world than the U.S.

Man, this isn't what I intended to write. I got mad. See what happens?

This is what prompted my unhinged state.

Arthur Chrenkoff posted an excerpt from an LA Times editorial that followed the usual "X is wrong, (insert any wildly tangential logic possible) it must be Bush's fault."

As Chrenkoff describes it:

Many in the media are trying to downplay the "Newsweek" incident because the US has already such bad image around the world that it couldn't possibly get any worse - or as "The Los Angeles Times" editorialized, "For all the administration's huffing and puffing about Newsweek getting the story wrong, it has produced such a catalogue of misdeeds at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that almost any allegation is instantly credited abroad ... The US has already been convicted in the court of world opinion for its treatment of its prisoners, and that's the administration's fault, not Newsweek's."

According to the "LAT", the solution was simple: "Shutting down Guantanamo and giving suspected terrorists legal protections would help restore our reputation abroad. Crowing over Newsweek's mishap won't."

Chrenkoff's response was different than mine, but an aside, and back to his in a moment.

What drivel. When the "Court of World Opinion" seats judges the like of Castro, Putin, Kim Il Sung, whatever Party Hack runs Red China these days, Khaddafi, Chretien, Mugabe ... Okay that's really tiring.

And outside of Bush, Blair, Howard, and the majority of Eastern European leaders, is there anyone else that doesn't have either their heads in the sand or their hands in someone's pockets? No seriously, with the U.N. too busy making illicit fortunes for their principal apparatchiks or setting up sex rings in monitored countries that exploit children (sometimes paid for, and often rape, statutorily so), is there any other set of countries in the world that are making any serious effort to make it safer or better? Or that puts up with so much abuse as thanks for its sacrifices?

Geez. Breathe deeply. Shake your head. Drink some water. Okay.

In answer to the Times prescriptions for how to restore our reputation abroad, here's how Chrenkoff ends, it will be worth the wait:

A more balanced coverage wouldn't go astray either. After spending the last three years reducing the American war effort to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and assorted other incompetence and brutality, to complain that America's image worldwide is so poor that people will now believe anything smacks somewhat of the chutzpah of a man who killed his parents and pleaded to the court for leniency on the account that he is now an orphan.

Okay, I feel better for the moment. Just keep me away from a paper.

UPDATE:

Kevin at Command T.O.C. responds to my post on his blog:

I have read the many blogs but Dadmanly summed up the outrage from the right/Milbloggers. And he also reinvigorated my belief that I want Newsweek to continue even if they make a few mistakes.

In his rant on the media, he says that that media does not support him or understand him. To this I say, correct, and, moreover, I do not want the media to support him. Not because I do not want the media to support the military but because I want the media to distrust everything about the powerful.

My Counter Response:

I wouldn't call what I posted a rant, at least not in any comparison with the wildly insulting variety commonly seen on blogs (both sides).

That being said, I respectfully disagree. I too want a skeptical press. I want a watchdog press that uncovers hidden or secreted facts. I even want a press that advocates for openness and transparency.

But an adversarial or antagonistic press? This is one of the many hangover symptoms of Watergate and Vietnam.

The press doesn't need to enter the fray, as they often do (and always promoting the point of view of our adversaries). Throughout the Middle East (and across the Globe, really), the anti-American perspective is represented in GREAT abundance. The U.S. press serves no public benefit hawking wares that are widely available elsewhere. Unless of course, they are actively trying to change public perception of facts at hand. That makes them adversarial, certainly, but it also displays a bias for one side over another. And that's not journalism, that's political.

And there is a another fallacy in [Kevin's] logic. Wars are fought by men and women who have no more say in decision-making than any other citizen, and in some cases less, since we are constrained by our oaths of enlistment and duty to serve the U.S. Congress and the Commander in Chief.

As such, we are not the powerful as we would be in a non-democratic state. You attack the military as if we were the powerful; on the battlefield yes, in the public arena, not at all. [Kevin's] beef is with the political leaders such as the President (all of Congress voting in support by the way), not with the fine men and women of the U.S. Military.

Christian Carnival VXX is up at A Penitent Blogger.

Dadmanly has a previous post linked in the Carnival, Bible Illiteracy about David Gelernter's review of Bible Literacy Project report.


Gladmanly has the second part of the sermon, "It's Not Just me and You. Love GOD."

There are many other fine posts from Christian bloggers in the Carnival. Check them out, and be blessed!

I really enjoy John Schroeder's blog Blogotional. John's been a very gracious reader and linker to Dadmanly, Gladmanly and Debate Space, but more than that he's been a very good example of an experienced Christian Blogger from whom to learn.

Today John has sneak peek review of the new Narnia movie, from the book written by C.S. Lewis. John includes a link to the Narnia movie trailer, which he relates brought tears to his eyes.

I agree with John, and share his enjoyment of both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien's great Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy, as well as the rendering of the story of the Christ as the central feature of both great works.

John is determined to see the movie in its proper context:

I am trying to develop a mindset that allows me to enjoy the movie in the same way I enjoyed LOTR -- a great depiction of a story I love. The trailer sure does excite me.

I'm going to check it out as soon as it gets done loading. You should too!

Commander of the 42nd Infantry "Rainbow" Division, New York Army National Guard, gave two interviews, both linked by Mrs. Greyhawk in today's Dawn Patrol at Mudville Gazette. These interviews with MG Taluto underscore what I've been communicating through occasional posts here at Dadmanly and in answer to questions about the military situation here in debates at Debate Space.

As described on Dawn Patrol, with link to Fox & Friends interview video:

Major General Joseph Taluto, Commanding General, 42nd Infantry "Rainbow" Division, talks to FOX News from Tikrit about ongoing efforts in the fight against the insurgency. Before the interview begins, there is a live audio feed from Oliver North calling from Western Iraq where he is embedded with Marines engaged in Operation Matador. Video by 22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.

As described on Dawn Patrol, with link to WRBG video:

Major General Joseph Taluto, Commanding General 42nd Infantry Division, talks from Tikrit to reporter at WRGB in Schenectady, New York. Says despite increased suicide bomb attacks, Tikrit is still a stable city with a capable police and army force; says Iraqi force recruitment is still on the rise. Video from 22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.

David Gelernter, in Bible Illiteracy in America in the May 23, 2005 issue of Weekly Standard Online, reports on findings in a report recently issued by the Bible Literacy Project. The report makes clear that young Americans know very little about the Bible, but Gelernter is more concerned with the fact that a sizable number of Americans don’t know why they should. At a time when secular minded activists think it appropriate to eradicate any Biblical references from educational settings, this inattentiveness to core American values is very troubling.

Gelernter identifies Abraham Lincoln as “America's foremost prophet,” and uses the famous passages of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural to underscore what is the oldest of American traditions:

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right..." Lincoln's speech "reads like a supplement to the Bible," writes the historian William Wolf, with its "fourteen references to God, four direct quotations from Genesis, Psalms, and Matthew, and other allusions to scriptural teaching." "The best gift God has given to man," Lincoln called the Bible. "But for it we could not know right from wrong."

For Lincoln, and many of our greatest Americans before and since, God and His wisdom revealed to man underlies all the strength and structures of our American Experiment. This is enshrined in the writings and institutional artifacts created by the founders.

Gelernter then proffers what he believes should be the first question asked in our history books: “What made the nation's Founders so sure they were onto something big?”

And he amplifies:

What made John Adams say, in 1765, "I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence"? What made Abraham Lincoln call America (in 1862, in the middle of a ruinous civil war) "the last, best hope of earth"?

Among all the other influences, intertwined among all the great philosophies of governance, saturating every product of the intellect that nurtured the great ideas that eventually sprang fully formed as our Constitution, first and foremost was the Bible. And the founders read it faithfully.

Gelernter references a major paper by Fania Oz-Salzberger, published in 2002, which documented how the Hebrew Bible heavily influenced the thinkers and writers who constructed our founding governmental forms and documents. Oz-Salzberger describes the “nearly perfect” Republic of Israel, which, “precisely because of its transcendent origin, it was an exemplary state of law and a society dedicated to social justice and republican liberty."

To Gelernter, much of what passes for modern rights activism trying to enforce an inviolable “wall of separation” between church and state would be infuriating to the Founders.

It is a perfect reflection of the nation's origins that the very first freedom in the Bill of Rights--Article one, part one--should be religious freedom. "Separation of church and state" was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The idea that the Bill of Rights would one day be traduced into a broom to sweep religion out of the public square like so much dried mud off the boots of careless children would have left the Founders of this nation (my guess is) trembling in rage. We owe it to them in simple gratitude to see that the Bill of Rights is not--is never--used as a weapon against religion.

And by extending his argument to the period of our Civil War, Gelernter vividly portrays a “biblical” Lincoln, one who translated a very personal and private faith into a commitment to preserve and defend what he viewed as God’s gift to mankind, through the vessel of America and the profound achievement of Liberty expressed within its institutions. This belief he maintained, in spite of the challenges posed by two sets of contrasting orthodoxies, gripped in a mortal struggle as an expression of their God’s will.

As the Civil War approached, both North and South saw their positions in biblical terms. Southern preachers sometimes accused abolitionists of being atheists in disguise. Lincoln rose above this kind of dispute. "In the present civil war it is quite possible," he wrote in 1862, "that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party."

Yet Lincoln made continuous reference to the Source of his strength. Gelernter holds that Lincoln understood the promise of America, and struggled mightily to redeem and transform that promise:

Lincoln was America's most "biblical" president--"no president has ever had the detailed knowledge of the Bible that Lincoln had," writes the historian William Wolf. Lincoln turned to the Bible more and more frequently and fervently as the war progressed. His heterodox but profound Christianity showed him how to understand the war as a fight to redeem America's promise to mankind.

Lincoln was not the average church goer of his age. He had an unusual but distinctly American brand of Christian faith. Gelernter describes the specific scriptural grounds that Lincoln adhered to:

Lincoln never joined a church, but said often that he would join one if "the savior's summary of the Gospel" were its only creed. He meant the passage in Mark and Luke where Jesus restates God's requirements in terms of two edicts from the Hebrew Bible: to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Lincoln's religion was deeply biblical--and characteristically American.

In Gelernter’s view (and mine), the Bible still shapes American destiny. Or better perhaps, the Bible still has the power to preserve the promise of American destiny. This is all the more true today in our Global War on Terror, as an almost biblical project, “One that sees America as an almost chosen people, with the heavy responsibilities that go with the job.”

Gelernter concludes:

The faithful ask, in the words of the 139th psalm, "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?" And answer, "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me." Secularists don't see it that way; but the Bible's penetration into the farthest corners of the known world is simple fact. Most contemporary philosophers and culture critics are barely aware of these things, don't see the pattern behind them, can't tell us what the pattern means, and (for the most part) don't care.

I understand the concerns of some Americans about establishment of religion by the state, or government dictating the terms and conditions of worship. These are real concerns, and we should try to understand what might be legitimate boundaries between government activities and religious expression. (But surely no inseparable wall with religious people and expressions on one side, and government employees and officials and absolutely pristine secularity on the other.)

But equally important, we need to maintain a knowledge and awareness of the great Judeo-Christian foundations in the history, the culture, the ideals, and the creeds of this American Republic. We owe it to the generations of Americans who motivated, labored, fought, served, and often died in America's cause. Often with the name of God on their lips.

Two excellent post mortem summaries at Winds of Change. (Note: In this case, I don't think this story will be truly "post mortem" for years, as Newsweek's carelessness and utter disregard of the outrage and violent response this would cause will reverberate (and kill) for years to come.

As if the U.S. Military needed any additional baggage. As if we aren't already elbow deep in fighting our way out of other sinkholes Newsweek, other media, and other anti-American interests have dug with propaganda against our fine military members.

Dan Darling fairly grieves over the utter inconsequence of Newsweek's sort of apology, full apology, and now retraction against ongoing and future violence. In the same way, he reaches the grim conclusion that none of our outrage against such press perfidy will change the future here forward, either. This one's an unmitigated Al Qaeda victory in the public relations war. But he ends with some hope, hopefully not unfounded:

The bottom line, however, is that al-Qaeda scored a propaganda victory this time around. This ain't red or blue issue either and all the people who have (accurately) pointed out that al-Qaeda is using the war in Iraq or what happened at Abu Ghraib as a recruiting engine need to consider that much the same is true of this story. Let us all do what we can to make sure they don't score another one, yes?

Joe Katzman soundly demonstrates how media bias, prejudices, ignorance and lack of intellectual diversity at media outlets like Newsweek virtually guarantee this kind of journalistic abuse.

Lack of political diversity within the media is preventing it from questioning the wisdom of stories like the one Newsweek ran, a simple act that would have forestalled many deaths. Having that kind of political diversity on hand might have given Newsweek some people in the newsroom who would familiarize themselves with stuff like al-Qaeda's manual (we have them here, on a far lower budget), or have good enough relations with military and intel sources to elicit that kind of information. People who would treat extreme claims from captured terrorists with more skepticism - which, as Greyhawk notes above, is utterly warranted. People who might have insisted on following the rules Tapscott cites above.

Lots of great links, other fine points, no need to repeat them here,
follow the link.

As a Soldier, I am part of the U.S. response to U.N. neglect, corruption, and apathy, as I have discussed previously at Debate Space, my joint blog with The Liberal Avenger. This commentary on the latest Mark Steyn commentary on the issue struck home.

(Via Paul Mirengoff at Powerline)

Mark Steyn, writing in the Chicago Sun Times, reminds us of the recent terrible Tsunami that killed 300,000 people and generated a flood of international aid and goodwill, spearheaded overwhelmingly by the U.S., followed by Britain and Australia.

Steyn points out (astonishingly) that a vast amount of aid has been languishing for many months due to Indonesian bureaucratic logjams and incompetence (and no doubt corruption).

Steyn provides some tragic details:

Five hundred containers, representing one-quarter of all aid sent to Sri Lanka since the tsunami hit on Dec. 26, are still sitting on the dock in Colombo, unclaimed or unprocessed.

At the Indonesian port of Medan, 1,500 containers of aid are still sitting on the dock.

Four months ago, did you chip in to the tsunami relief effort? Did your company? A Scottish subsidiary of the Body Shop donated a 40-foot container of "Lemon Squidgit" and other premium soap, which arrived at Medan in January and has languished there ever since because of "incomplete paperwork,'' according to Indonesian customs officials.

Steyn uses this subject worthy of commentary in its own right, as an object lesson in the argument raging over the nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador of the U.N. (No, not Secretary General of the U.N. but you might think so for all the hand wringing and hysteria. Now wait, that's an idea...)

Steyn ties the two with humor:

Which brings me to the John Bolton nomination process, which is taking so long you'd think the U.S. Senate was run by Indonesian customs inspectors. Writing of near-Ambassador Bolton's difficulty getting his paperwork stamped by the Foreign Relations Committee, National Review's Cliff May observed that "the real debate is between those who think the U.N. needs reform -- and those who think the U.S. needs reform.''

Steyn deftly draws the parallel he's after to sink the hook:

On the face of it, this shouldn't be a difficult choice, even for as uncurious a squish as Voinovich. Whatever one feels about it, the United States manages to function. The U.N. apparatus doesn't. Indeed, the United States does the U.N.'s job better than the U.N. does. The part of the tsunami aid operation that worked was the first few days, when America, Australia and a handful of other nations improvised instant and effective emergency relief operations that did things like, you know, save lives, rescue people, restore water supply, etc. Then the poseurs of the transnational bureaucracy took over, held press conferences demanding that stingy Westerners needed to give more and more and more, and the usual incompetence and corruption followed.

But none of that matters. As the grotesque charade Voinovich and his Democrat chums have inflicted on us demonstrates, all that the so-called "multilateralists" require is that we be polite and deferential to the transnational establishment regardless of how useless it is. What matters in global diplomacy is that you pledge support rather than give any. Thus, Bolton would have no problem getting nominated as U.N. ambassador if he were more like Paul Martin.

Steyn explains for those who may not be readily able to identify the Canadian Prime Minister Martin, and highlights both Martin's high visibility in showing support after the Tsunami, and the fact that in contrast to the very public pledge of $425 Million, only $50,000 has actually been allocated. For Steyn, "Canada's contribution to tsunami relief is objectively useless and rhetorically fraudulent."

Ah, but Steyn's not done, not by a long shout. He concludes with what is Bolton's most strongly negative characteristic that infuriates his enemies.

John Bolton's sin is to have spoken the truth about the international system rather than the myths to which photo-oppers like the Canadian prime minister defer. As a consequence, he's being treated like a container of Western aid being processed by Indonesian customs. Customs Inspector Joe Biden and Junior Clerk Voinovich spent two months trying to come up with reasons why Bolton's paperwork is inadequate and demanding to know why he hasn't filled out his RU1-2. An RU1-2 is the official international bureaucrat's form reassuring the global community that he'll continue to peddle all the polite fictions, no matter how self-evidently risible they are. John Bolton isn't one, too. That's why we need him.

That is why we need him, and why Bill Kristol is right to urge a Senate vote on confirmation prior to the recess.

Scott Johnson at Powerline, Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail, and Austin Bay all have important things to say about the Koran Desecration non-story and resulting violence caused by Newsweek's irresponsible "reporting."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave an interview today and described the unsubstantiated report of Koran desecrations "appalling." (From Yahoo news.)

"I think it's perfectly plausible and even likely that there were those who used this event to stoke anti-American sentiment for their own purposes," she said.

Now, the real question is, was she referring to Al Qaeda types, desperate for some added fuel to whip up lagging support among their constituencies? Or was she referring to liberal media types (same as above)?

Debate Space, a joint construction of the Liberal Avenger and I, presents a new topic for debate, what are the basis for moral frameworks and where do they come from?
That and lots of other civil discussion over at Debate Space.

Blackfive lists his favorite MILBLOGGERS, and kindly includes Dadmanly on his list. Thanks for the plug, Blackfive, I'm flattered to occupy your list with so many excellent MILBLOGGERS.

Now I'll have to check out all the others I'm not acquainted with yet -- and so should you!

More media hyperventilation, this time from the BBC. Folks, this media outlet lost its prominence along with its journalistic integrity and objectivity many years ago. It's really tragic, considering what a terrific organization it used to be.

Chrenkoff dissects BBC reporting of Operation Matador, and a rather obvious example of data sampling to get the desired atmospherics.

Chrenkoff notes:

Fortunately, BBC is there to remind us that every seemingly good-for-America cloud has a silver lining:

"The BBC's Jim Muir, in Baghdad, says the operation appears to have exacerbated tribal tensions in the area."

In case you didn't quite get it, BBC is quite keen to let you know that the offensive against the terrorists has also done a lot of collateral damage, hence a handy video-report, tagged "See the damage caused by Operation Matador", linked to in the upper right hand corner of the above mentioned-story.

And what is the damage they are reporting? The only footage was of a single bombed out house. Chrenkoff relates the breathless BBC reporting on Qaim, a town of 50,000 people:

The original BBC report quoted before captions a photo of a tent "Many people have fled to the desert as a result of the US campaign", while the story itself says only that "About 250 people fled Qaim into the desert as a result of the fighting and are currently receiving assistance from the Iraqi Red Crescent."

To add the final insult to journalistic injury, the BBC fails entirely to note that much of the violence in Qaim was the result of townspeople turning against Al Qaeda elements:

Plus, as the indispensable Bill Roggio notes, fighting seems to have been taking place in Qaim between Al Qaeda forces and the local Sunni tribe. It begun even before Operation Matador, and the American forces are said to have been invited into the city by the elders to help mop up Al Zarqawi's men - all facts reported in the American media, but which seemed to have escaped BBC, as it salivated over the destruction of Qaim.

Bill Roggio provides greater detail in his post, and speculates why press accounts don't mention the witnessed heavy fighting in Qaim, which is supported by accounts in The Hindustan Times:

"According to witnesses and the US military, the offensive triggered intense clashes in the town of Al-Qaim between fighters loyal to Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq and the most wanted militant in the country, and a rival Sunni tribe in the border city."

Chrenkoff concludes:

It must be remembered the local leaders in Qaim requested US intervention. It is possible the price to be paid was a commitment by the locals to fight the jihadis themselves. The tactics used in Qaim may be much like those used against the Taliban in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom: local fighters acting as the infantry while the US provides backup by cordoning the city and inserting Special Forces teams to coordinate air, artillery and other forms of support. This can explain why US forces have not entered the city.

There will no doubt be more to this story. Keep an eye on Chrenkoff and Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail for the latest updates.

Mudville Gazette reports on the continuing outrageous behavior by Newsweek, in running anonymous, unattributed stories about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanimo.

Afghans are rioting, people are getting killed because of misplaced outrage at what appear to be fraudulent (or at least highly suspect claims) made by Newsweek. And yet, the "journalists" behind this National Inquirer reporting not only fail to take any responsibility, they decide to double or nothing with additional, unattributed, unsubstantiated claims. All the while acknowledging that these stories might incite further anti-American violence.

How about, "Newsweek Lied -- People Died!"

Not just against the war, but on the other side.

I recently blogrolled the blog of a contractor soon to go to Iraq, Caelestis.

Check out the surf. He writes well, and has a perspective somewhat different than we MILBLOGGERS who are deployed in uniform. He has a good intro with Deploying as a Contractor, and I also enjoyed his Take on Iraq.

Welcome back to the sandbox, Caelestis!

I have been having several extended debates with The Liberal Avenger and many of our readers over at our joint blog, Debate Space. One of those debates, discussing and comparing military service and Vietnam era draft avoidance in the context of Bush, Cheney, and Clinton, touched on the differences in how leaders are perceived by soldiers.

That debate helped me to understand the popularity of both Bush 43 and Reagan, and I thought that train of thought very important, so I reproduce it here.

Military men and women have a very keen eye for fair weather friends. Bush had the great advantage of having biological and philosophical antecedents with rock solid military credentials: Ronald Reagan and Bush 41. Kerry had no such advantage, in Clinton, Gore, and Kennedy (Ted).

Question from LiberalAvenger:

What were Ronald Reagan's rock solid military credentials?

Dadmanly responds:

I never would have guessed this term "credentials," would have so many shades of meaning. If this debate has taught me anything, it is that people have many different senses of what it means to be credentialed.

I meant that Ronald Reagan was given great credit by the military, not that he was some big military hero. He was extremely popular with soldiers, much like Bush 43.

As to his actual military service, quoting from a CNN biography:

During World War II, Reagan's poor eyesight kept him from combat, and he was assigned to make military training films. He was discharged as a Army captain in 1945, but not, he later said, before developing a disdain for the inefficiency of the military's bureaucracy.

I think I figured out why Presidents like Bush 43 and Reagan were so popular with the troops, and why others like Clinton and Carter (and even to an extent Bush 41, believe it or not).

Military members believe strongly in the mission of and purpose for the U.S. Armed Forces. They tend to be conservative, and they share none of the reluctance to use the military to support or fulfill U.S. National Security objectives as long as those objectives are sound. They also tend towards the macho, and strong figures like Reagan or Bush, while otherwise polarizing and divisive, were and are nothing if not powerful and assertive. I need not describe some of the frequent stereotypical comments about others for you to surmise correctly what those might have sounded like.

Reagan was a staunch anti-communist. As a cold warrior in the 80's, I can vouch that the prevalent feeling in the U.S. Military was likewise anti-communist, especially those of us in the know about Soviet and Communist activities, and in tune with what was a very strong "heartland" animosity towards the communists. Ascribe its source where you may, but also consider it one of the earliest precursor to the "Red State - Blue State" divide. (Only then, the point of divide was antipathy towards the "red" menace.)

I fault Reagan for many of the failings foreign policy wise as his next two successors. Much was left unattended to. But there is no question that standing up (with strength) to the Soviets and pushing against their interests was rather (though not universally) popular with the military. (As I stated, I hated him at the time, but have I think a wiser awareness now.)

It may seem counterintuitive for someone not in service, but soldiers don't restrict themselves to narrow personal interest. Once you are the type of person who is willing to serve, with all that that entails, you are likely to be quite ready to place the national interest above your own. Sure, there are grumblings from some about "we have no f'ing business being here," but that's the exception, and within military culture, that kind of negativity and resistance is frowned upon.

Reagan and Bush 43 conveyed a strong sense of valuing the military and being willing to use it without fear or hesitation, and showing deep conviction that doing so was the right thing to do for America (whether or not it was or they had to follow through, placing their soldiers boots where their mouth was). This then dovetails with my observation about (macho) military perceptions of strength and strong leadership.

Not to be partisan -- I don't mean it that way -- Republicans of late have done better with image and perception in this regard than Democrats. Not that that's all it is, its fueled and supported by real issues and real decisions and stances. But I am often impressed by how much nonverbal communication goes on that all of us underestimate. Military men and women are trained to be obedient, and respond in an instant to the commands and directives of those in authority over us. I think that's why we're so attuned to some that fit that communications model, and tune out or can't hear or respect those who don't communicate strongly in that way.

We know strong leaders, and we respect strong and forceful leadership. Any amount of indecisiveness, uncertainty, or even "nuance" could get us killed. Hence all the stories, mostly apocryphal, about fragging during Viet Nam. Soldiers grouse about poor leadership and uncertain or flawed leadership more than any other single thing, and some will translate those complaints into mental "lists" of who the first one to get it will be. Those comments go away when leadership is strong, decisive, but fair and always mindful of the cost of decisions upon soldiers.

My eldest daughter graduated from college today. I missed the ceremony, but I sent the following commencement note from her very proud Dadmanly.

Jilly Beans,

I have looked forward to this day for so long, but I can’t say I’ve known what I was going to say or how I would feel. (I certainly never thought I’d MISS it by being deployed here in Iraq.) So I grope around for some words to contain this swell of emotion, like some old guy in a movie, rummaging around for the glasses that are right on top of his head.

But this is a first time experience for you, too, so maybe like we have, all through this adventure called life so far, we can help each other make sense of it all. I know that’s supposed to be my job, but I don’t think you realize how important a role you play in how my life goes on from here.

Sure, you’re the one who needs to figure out what you want to be when you’re all grown up. You’re the one who has to figure out this whole credit card thing and debt load and loan repayments. And you’re the one who has to decide where to live, and what job to take, and what friends you try to keep for life and which ones you kind of say, “We’ll have to meet for lunch sometime or hit the clubs,” but you know and maybe hope you won’t. And you are the one who gets to walk around like France’s last Emperor, knowing that you paid your dues and you’ve arrived and you know all these things about yourself you didn’t know before.

Change is what you will be all about. But that’s cool, because you’ve gotten really good at change. You need to help me with change.

You got used to not living at a parent’s house, but still needing to take care of that thing you now call home, even if it’s a room and a ½ share of a kitchenette and bathroom. You got used to college courses, a whole lot of reading and writing. You learned the politics of the dorm committee. You became expert in Foreign Relations, dealing with the different nations of girls within the school, the turf, the rules, the secrets and scandals, and all the fun.

You mastered a big city. A very friendly one, with a great baseball sports franchise right next door, but a big city nonetheless. You are a subway woman, you never thought you would be. You did the whole spring break thing, and went native in the process. Ah, the tropics. You got involved in counseling and helping other people and being involved in your school and your community, and you are so much more aware of everything around you than you used to be. You know how to help your Dad navigate even when it’s his 5th time through the neighborhood.

You have dealt with all the roller coaster emotions of your friends and loved ones, you’ve felt the loss, and grieving as things change and sometimes go away even when they are the very best things. And you’ve experienced when the very best things turn into not so good things in ways you didn’t expect. You've gotten strong along with that heart that beats for those around you, with those eyes that see clearly all the interconnectedness in tugging bands between the things and people you care about the most. You’ve found love and lost love. You’ve fought and made peace. You’ve impacted those around you. You find your own wisdom, and you write your name on it and claim it as your own. You are strong and brave. You need to help me be brave.

You have prepared yourself for life on your own terms. You are ready for the scary ride to start, the big coaster, with the wooden railings and clackety clack wheels, the one that when you were a child was the scariest thing you could think of, being your own woman, and now you have learned that there are scarier things, and being your own woman can still be scary, but not as scary as exciting. In fact, you don’t even think about scary anymore, because you are too familiar with how scariness evaporates in the doing. Fear describes the field before the winning team runs past, and is no memory at all after the game is over. You need to help me see the hope that you see.

Change has become your companion, and you wear it like blue jeans, in comfort and with fades and little tears, and it fits you like those jeans. And everything you do is future now, new things, adventure, new challenges upon the old, and all kinds of decisions that will be your's alone to make. Mom and Dad and Mrs. Dadmanly and all those fans and supporters are all lined up in the cheering section, but Jilly Beans takes it from here, and she’s ready.

So what am I talking about, these things I say I need your help with: change, and bravery, and hope?

There was a little baby in a bassinet, as often, in a carriage for a bed, a tiny little puff of love that was her father’s joy at a time when I felt much like you feel now. Full of promise and everything new, but with this beautiful little person to be responsible for.

There was a little girl whose hair was like the flaxen wheat that brushed her face in the apple orchard. Who giggled and laughed and ran us all around in circles, with salamanders and toads as pets, so many pictures of this sprite fill the recesses of my memory. The dirndl dresses, the German school, all those older German ladies and stern gentlemen in Gasthauses, who melted like butter when this joyful little American Girl danced up to their tables. So much chocolate and kisses they had for you. Who came back to the states and brought her joy to bear on our suburban dreams. So many smiles you brought to us. How could we keep you in this happy present, and shield you from any pain or sadness that might come your way?

There was a young lady, who could be quiet but loved more to laugh and tell funny stories, the long ones that went on and on and on until we figured out your clever tricks. (But we never tired of the stories that were part of them.) So many days where we could just be silly, or go on trips, and Cape Cod became a Martha’s Vineyard of our own, with our own special beach, our special places, our favorite foods.

There finally was a young woman, who went away to school and started on this grand adventure, but sent us many emotional postcards on her way, that we still were able to enjoy her journey from not too far away. And all the adventures since, the classes and the upsets, the new experiences and trips and becoming an adult.

So what do I need your help with? How to move into this future with you. I will always be your Dad, but I want to be your friend, too. I will always love you more than life itself, but I want for you what makes you happiest. I will always be so proud of you, the person you are, your caring nature, your wonderful humor, the way you invest in people, and I will always be your biggest fan in taking on and making yours the life that you will lead.

My little girl is grown and on her way. She’s still my girl, I’m still her Dad, but there’s this big wide world that made this date with her to get this life going, and I’m here, waiting at home, hoping it all turns out alright, more than alright, I want this woman who is my child to be wonderfully and blessedly successful in her making of her happiness. I need to step back into the shadows of the porch, sit down and rock away the evening of my parenthood.

I know you’ll have great stories. I know you’ll do great things. I know that you know how to be happy, and I know that God gave you to us as this very precious gift, and He knows the purpose and plan that He has for you, and it’s a fine and wonderful thing.

You go with all my love, great pride in your accomplishments, and great faith in your capabilities. You go with my heart, but you leave yours with me as well.

Love always, your Dad, your friend, your biggest fan.

(Via Winds of Change)

Bernard Lewis, writing in Foreign Affairs , introduces the thesis that, for Muslims, the political terms “justice and injustice” are the nearest equivalent for the western sense of “freedom and slavery.”

He describes the inspiration that struck Sheikh Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi, a professor at al-Azhar University in the early nineteenth century, who had the opportunity to visit Paris following the arrival of Bonaparte in Egypt.

Lewis explains that in Arabic, the western sense of “freedom” would generally be translated into a word viewed as the opposite of “slavery,” rather than in some sense of the ability to exercise and enjoy rights as we understand them.

Sheikh Tahtawi was originally puzzled by the frequency and ubiquitous manner in which the French spoke of freedom, as Lewis elaborates:

“[Sheikh Tahtawi] obviously at first shared the general perplexity about what the status of not being a slave had to do with politics. And then he understood and explained. When the French talk about freedom, he says, what they mean is what we Muslims call justice. And that was exactly right. Just as the French, and more generally Westerners, thought of good government and bad government as freedom and slavery, so Muslims conceived of them as justice and injustice.“

Lewis goes on to explain that, among the many Arabic words that would be translated to the English word, “justice,” the most common, adl, means "justice according to the law" or sharia. And Lewis stresses a point not often noted in modern commentary about Middle Eastern politics:

“If a ruler is to qualify as just, as defined in the traditional Islamic system of rules and ideas, he must meet two requirements: he must have acquired power rightfully, and he must exercise it rightfully. In other words, he must be neither a usurper nor a tyrant.”

And further,

“Muslims have been interested from the very beginning in the problems of politics and government: the acquisition and exercise of power, succession, legitimacy, and -- especially relevant here -- the limits of authority.”

Lewis approaches the challenge of growing democratic traditions in the Middle East from an almost forgotten tradition of political legitimacy in Arabic political traditions. He suggests that the ruler’s authority derives from a “contract between the ruler and the ruled in which both have obligations.”

Having recognized and identified these not widely recognized strains in Arabic political history and culture, Lewis by no means underestimates the challenges to dust off and apply these traditions to modern states and societies. Here, he acknowledges the deep entrenchment of autocratic and despotic rule prevalent in the Middle East, despite no historical roots in the Islamic past. Lewis also identifies another vital component missing from the Arabic political consciousness, the absence of any notion of citizenship.

For all this, Lewis sees hope in the Iraqi experience (and experiment). For one, Iraq enjoys the significant dual benefits of infrastructure and education. According to Lewis, leaders prior to Saddam were able to invest their significant oil revenues in transportation and education related infrastructures. In spite of the grave damage done by Saddam (and subsequent sanctions), “an educated middle class will somehow contrive to educate its children, and the results of this can be seen in the Iraqi people today,” states Lewis.

Lewis also acknowledges the traditional status and position of women in Iraq, in terms of their access and opportunity, if not in some western sense of “rights.” Lewis draws a parallel to a similar strength of western democracies:

“In the West, women's relative freedom has been a major reason for the advance of the greater society; women would certainly be an important, indeed essential, part of a democratic future in the Middle East.”

As presented here, the source of Lewis’ cautious optimism lies not in western hopes and aspirations for the Middle East, but in Muslim political traditions. Lewis concludes hopefully, and urges steadfastness and patience, resolute in purpose:

“The creation of a democratic political and social order in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East will not be easy. But it is possible, and there are increasing signs that it has already begun. At the present time there are two fears concerning the possibility of establishing a democracy in Iraq. One is the fear that it will not work, a fear expressed by many in the United States and one that is almost a dogma in Europe; the other fear, much more urgent in ruling circles in the Middle East, is that it will work. Clearly, a genuinely free society in Iraq would constitute a mortal threat to many of the governments of the region, including both Washington's enemies and some of those seen as Washington's allies.

“The end of World War II opened the way for democracy in the former Axis powers. The end of the Cold War brought a measure of freedom and a movement toward democracy in much of the former Soviet domains. With steadfastness and patience, it may now be possible at last to bring both justice and freedom to the long-tormented peoples of the Middle East.”

Greyhawk was prominently featured in a USAToday article on military web logs (Blogs).

Just in case there is anyone who somehow got here without learning much about Greyhawk, Mudville Gazette, or MILBLOGS, immediately check out a fine self- and other-introduction from the Point Man of the MILBLOGS, Greyhawk of The Mudville Gazette.

Thanks for all the help and support, Greyhawk! Really, we couldn't have done it without you.

Chester at The Adventures of Chester has significantly stepped up the breadth and quality of his ongoing reporting of Operation Matador, with a Significant Event Log of Marine operations there.

Chester, along with Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail, The Belmont Club, Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping, and Winds of Change among others, have done an outstanding job of nearest real-time reporting of what I believe will be the final turning point (as in turning over in the grave) of the Iraqi "insurgency."

In practical terms, I am convinced it will spell the end of significant Al Qaeda activity in Iraq. And this is more significant than most in the mainstream media realize, as without Al Qaeda and other outside agitation, funding, fighters, and munitions, this insurgency ends.

Nearing the end of a long slog, Semper Fi!

The latest Christian Carnival is up at Semicolon.

Gladmanly has Part One of "It's Not Just You and Me" Love GOD included in this week's carnival.

Enjoy!

As soon as I read this, it made perfect sense.

Arthur Chrenkoff has some thoughts on George W. Bush's foreign policy. He recognizes the Serenity Prayer as the basis for the strategic decisions about what challenges to confront, and which realities to accept. As Chrenkoff describes it:

In fact, Bush is a realistic idealist, or idealistic realist, and his foreign policy faithfully translates into cold hard realities of international politics a simple prayer attributed to the theologian Dr. Rheinhold Niebuhr. I'm sure you know it - framed, it adorns many a kitchen wall from Poland to Portland, or dangles from many key-chains around the world:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer. That's it. Cynics may dismiss the notion of such a simple concept driving major decisions with national security implications, but is it really so fantastic an idea?

Millions of Americans who have changed their lives in dramatic ways rely on this simple prayer to help them navigate between the struggles which they can overcome, and those forces and realities on the ground that are unbending to human will, or at least out of the individual's power. And so they learn sanity and readjust thinking that had run down a squirrel hole.

Had not our strategic thinking in Foreign Policy suffered from an addiction to a kind of appeasement of status quo power balances, resulting from the unique challenges that two nuclear Superpowers presented? Weren't we far too comfortable enabling the very sovereign dysfunctions, in remediation of which all our diplomatic efforts were focused?

Otto Von Bismarck (who I doubt was big on serenity) defined Politics as the art of the possible. Haven't the most successful politicians (and leaders) in history been those who pushed the boundaries of what was considered possible, their achievements would not have been considered possible, until they in fact achieved them.

Again, Chrenkoff on its implication:

This is it, in essence: there's plenty we would want to do - every autocrat in the world deserves to be deposed and his people given freedom and democracy - but for various reasons we cannot make it happen everywhere at the same time, so for the moment we'll only pick those fights we can win.

Iraq took courage. North Korea and many other places require serenity. Fortunately, W has got the wisdom.

And the courage to reach for the possible that no one else can accept.

Battle on the Syrian Border, reporting on the Marine Assault on Qaim, along the Euphrates River and Surrounding Area.

Best coverage:
Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail
The Adventures of Chester
The Belmont Club
Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping

Part of an overall plan to systematically eliminate insurgency from pockets of resistance, allowing new Iraqi Army and Security Forces to take on security of the country.

Finally hitting major supply lines from Syria, in area believed by many ex-Baathists to be a safe haven. Safe haven no longer.

Insurgents choosing to stand and fight, best fighters, well trained, foreign Jihadists. Good for us, not blended back in to ambivalent civilian populations. They will be soundly defeated, further degrade insurgent capability.

The beginning of the end. Expect to see a flurry of high visibility attacks against civilian targets in a final desperate effort to regain PR advantage, even as they lose their last best hope of maintaining resistance.

This is an attempt at something different. I realized most probably don't have a very good idea what life is like for me here. Not that you probably have much of an idea of what it's like here in general, but I'm not sure I do either. (I am a FOBBIT, as they say, and have only convoyed to the supply/logistics hub about 20 KM away.)

I have one of the more boring, although not unpleasant, jobs on the FOB. (That's a Forward Operating Base, that's where all the Soldiers over here live and work, when they're not roaming about, unless they're at a "Camp," which is considered more permanent, although a lot of times, more primitive, dusty, dirty, and not at all comfortable. As a First Sergeant, I have a certain luxury of position here on the FOB. (But my schedule can by first in, last out.)

While I am responsible for everything and everyone in my Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC), responsibilities are delegated down through Platoon Sergeants and Section Sergeants (often Staff Sergeants), who really carry out the heavy lifting, management wise. We control the activities of over 100 soldiers, comprising the Battalion (BN) Staff, Maintenance and Motor Pool, Mess Section (they oversee KBR contractors but do not cook here), our HHC orderly room and supply, and our Analytic & Control Element (ACE), which is under the Operational Control (OPCON) of the Division G2, but administratively under HHC. All 158 of us are under the direction of my Captain, the HHC Commander, and his First Lieutenant, the HHC Executive Officer (XO) (a kind of Commander in Training).

So not glamorous. I decide who does what details: FOB Security, PX Security, working the Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) facility, Dining Facility (DFAC) Guards, and escorting Iraqi Army (IA) soldiers down at the IA area within our FOB. I make sure things are kept clean and in order, people are where they're supposed to be, that discipline is maintained, training is conducted (heavy when we prepared, lighter now), that trouble and problems and insubordination are dealt with properly. I baby-sit, I'm Mom and Dad, I'm the good guy and the bad guy depending on what the leadership is doing at any given time. I am the Senior Non-commissioned Officer (NCO, versus a Commissioned Officer) for the Company. Hence, First Sergeant.

Our natural enemies are the Staff Officers and the Battalion (BN) Commander they work for, a Lieutenant Colonel (LTC). The BN's Senior NCO is the Battalion Command Sergeant Major (CSM), who supports the LTC but is considered my "NCO Advisor," although in many ways he's a "dotted line boss" in addition to my CPT. I say Natural Enemies humorously of course, but that's because they are not in my hair at present.

We do some training, but mostly do our respective jobs and try to keep busy and entertained.

Our Commanders (BN and Company) describe our most important missions as the ACE (Intel Work for the Division), running the Interrogation Support Element (ISE) within the Detainee Confinement and Control Point (DCCP), and FOB Security (all those details the troops enjoy so much). And that's about right.

We have a first class motor pool, whose mechanics take care of not only our BN vehicles, but the vehicles of the two Military Police (MP) Companies on post, and the non-tactical vehicles (SUVs) the Division staff and DOD contractors and DA Civilians drive around the FOB. They maintain our vehicles without any being dead lined, shipped the entire fleet over here with no losses or damage, and have spare parts on hand to cover us for our entire tour without replacement or restock. They are considered the finest Motor Pool in all of Iraq, and they are good. We've had vehicles all tore up from blasts, or completely broken down from years of neglect, and they have them humming and back online within the day.

My ACE is outperforming the active duty counterparts they replaced. Many of these soldiers are older, prior active duty, with lots of maturity and outside civilian skills that make them better analysts, more dedicated, and often more persistent. They are chasing after bad guys who probably thought they were off the radar screen until we came to town. They have significantly aided security and interdiction efforts in our part of Sunni-dominant Iraq.

My Mess Section covers 4 meals a day, makes sure food handling is done to exacting standards, and they even find time to organize social events and donation drives for local Iraqi schools (teachers and kids).

The HHC and BN staff deal with time constraints and pressures with paperwork, forms, promotions, job appraisals, training records, and on and on and on. We are pretty friendly at HHC, even if under pressure from time to time, so it's not unpleasant and we laugh a lot (they like to tease me quite a bit, more on that some other time). BN Staff, on the other hand, have to work in a fishbowl with the LTC and CSM over their shoulders. I'm glad we don't have their job. (That, and they have to listen for hours and laugh at the right moments. That will cause some post traumatic stress disorder I have no doubt.)

Otherwise, we are well, still no injuries or accidents, and we are in a dull routine with everything. We've started sending people home for two weeks leave and bringing them back, the whole process takes about three weeks. But it goes well and people are happy for the break and to go home (or Germany or wherever). I am down on the helipad or waving goodbye to a convoy at least once or twice a week with soldiers going home. I take pictures of them all, I shake their hands, I wish them a safe and happy and enjoyable visit back home. I am glad they go, sad they go; glad they make it back, sad they have to be back. We are already on our way home, mentally.

We are beginning to plan for the pack up home, it's getting closer every day.

We have a lot of troops detached or assigned to other places, working at remote sites or training Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police. I give them a lot of credit, they have more nerve and guts than I would have I think. If there's an attack or explosion, if there were 100 men in line one day, the day after an attack there's 500. They won't give up, and the ones I hear about are true patriots who care about making the most of this amazing opportunity for them.

We laugh a lot, we joke and tease, we have lots of stories to tell, but they will be hard to translate. Maybe some of them will only be for each other. That's not to exclude those outside this experience, but rather to comfort and console those of us who have given so much of ourselves and our lives in service to a grateful nation. A kind of shared nobility, masked in cutups and taunts and exaggerated stereotypes of ourselves, in jest. No one thinks himself a hero, because heroes in our eyes don't come back home. And we want to come back home.

Oh, by the way. I am one of the very few people who has his own room (my CPT and the XO and two of my Sergeants First Class or SFCs are the only others). Not even the BN Commander, CSM, and BN Staff can claim that. But we have more room to work with. That, and I have a government laptop with my own Internet line, so that is how I have so much time available online. I am on it until late, and wake up with it in the a.m.

But that also means I can find time to Blog!

Can there be any soul more jaded than the intellect who sneers at anything that he has not endorsed, with cool and detached disdain?

George Packer, writing in Footnotes, in the New Yorker, puffs out airy pronouncements of what Iraqis think of their "dime store democracy," corrupted by venal powerbrokers who sniff past their American benefactors as they grapple for the spoils. He draws Hershfeld-like caricatures of the political players (apropos I suppose for the New Yorker), followed by the usual uninformed exaggerations of emerging civil war. If this is civil war, George, I'd say it's pretty civil indeed. With little evidence but press pool reporting from the Green Zone, Packer declares:

The stakes would be lower if Iraq were not fighting a desperate insurgency that looks more and more like a civil war. Every banal decision, every job offered or withheld, carries the risk of driving more Sunnis to take up weapons, and of forcing Shiites and Kurds to cling tighter to power. Iraq has never had a unifying visionary politician—a Mandela, a Havel, or a Gandhi. The man who comes nearest, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, isn’t a politician, and, as a Shiite cleric, he has a limited ability to unify; his electoral intervention on behalf of the Shiite coalition tarnished his lustre as a truly national figure. “The Hour is great,” Carlyle wrote, “and the Honorable Gentlemen, I must say, are small.” But you create a democracy with the talent you have, and Iraq’s politicians are confronting the most vexing existential questions.

I see. No Gandhi, no Havel, and certainly no Mandela, the cause is lost and the effort wasted. (Had Saddam only let such as these live.)

What tripe. How ethnocentric is this? If we happened upon just the man, or woman, who will know how to weave this tapestry that will be Iraq into form, why would we presume upon the Iraqis to know who that would be? What that person would look like or sound like?

The problem with hindsight in spectacular events of momentous historic import, is how rarely we can see them coming in full form. Surely three months into a new government is a tad premature to call the emerging creature malformed. And what does Packer mean by saying that Iraqi politicians "are confronting the most vexing existential questions." Most vexing questions about their existence? Or that they're sitting around in cafes muttering dark thoughts and frustrations over the non-meaning of life? These aren't French or U.N. politicians, they haven't been in the game long enough to reach that level of ennui I think.

I do not know George Packer, but I surmise he was against the War as a foolish and peril-fraught endeavor. But I would be willing to bet that, prior to the war, he made statements to the effect that the U.S. can't impose democrary by force, that we were foolish to think we could create American style democracy, etc. etc. In other words, my guess, he used the informed wisdom of the continentals as a bat against the naive policy of Bush and the neocons.

And yet he concludes, with not a trace of apparent irony:

Two years ago, there was a moment when the Americans might have molded Iraq after their own desire, for better or worse. Their incompetence surprised no one more than the Iraqis. The country has long since hardened into its own shape, and whether it holds together or breaks into pieces is largely up to the Iraqis who now have it in their hands. But the least debt that Americans now owe Iraq is to realize that the footnotes will control the lives of Iraqis for years to come, with plenty of time left for great improvement or great damage.

Iraqis have been surprised by coalition incompetence? That would be news indeed. The stunning success of coalition military efforts, the utter ineffectiveness of the insurgency, its only recourse the targeting of Iraqis, all followed by stunningly successful elections -- these have greatly reduced the level and effectivness of an "insurgency" which easily have been far worse.

The notion that we might have been successful had we only "molded Iraq after our own desire," is the height of doublemindedness, or deceitful argument. The entire point of this exercise is for Iraqis to fulfill their own desires, for their own rule, of their own government.

Over at Debate Space, I respond to some questions posed by Liberal Avenger about draft avoidance during Vietnam, as it relates to Clinton, Bush, and Cheney.

There are a number of other discussions ongoing at Debate Space:

Homosexuality and the Service: Liberal Avenger quizzes me about my stance on Dont' Ask, Don't Tell, as a serviceman, Father, Conservative and Christian.

In Town/Gown Interaction, I respond to Liberal Avenger's questions aboiut any contact I have with ordinary Iraqis.

Why Two Personas? expresses my confusion and dismay over what I perceived as a one way when we talk together (civil), another when I'm wiht my Liberal friends (uncivil).

In Religious Expression and the Public Square, Liberal Avenger and I discuss claims of a new Theocracy contrasted with claims of a new Persecution.

What's up with Bolton? is Liberal Avenger's questions about how a MILBLOGGER reacts to news that Colin Powell doesn't support Bolton as Ambassador to the U.N.

All of these are good, civil discussions with some very animated debate in our comments section.

Enjoy, but with civility.

(Via instapundit)

Les Jones reports on one of the discussions at BlogNashville, led by Dave Winer. It didn't turn out too well, and it underscores what the Liberal Avenger and I are trying to do at Debatespace.

In depth discussion, even if if includes disagreement, can be civil, as I think we and our commenters demonstrate. In fact, it is precisely at these points of difference and conflict, that we serve ourselves best by letting the best of ourselves serve.

Adventures of Chester had a very interesting post about Iran a while ago, and I've been meaning to comment.

He poses the question, "What role might we bloggers here in the US play? How can we help?"

He suggests that we can publicize large popular protests. We can to draw attention, we can possibly lure in mainstream news media or at least alert blog audiences. He points out, correctly in my view, that Iran is in a stronger position than Syria or the outgoing regime in Ukraine. Iran will surely deal harshly with any rebellion. And lastly, Chester observes that upcoming elections on June 17th could offer an opportunity or catalyst for change.

He recommends we build a network of linkages with Iranian bloggers now, develop partnerships, and look for creative ways to build redundant channels in case the government starts taking out bloggers in reprisal (as they already imprison them).

I would be curious about other other ideas.

Mustang 23 at Assumption of Command posts about the feeling I think all of us in Iraq feel from time to time -- or every day!

He calls it Cabin Fever. The dull monotany, every day the same. DFAC pseudo steaks, FOB security details, Combat Logistic Patrols. The occasional mortar even or small arms fire. The power flipping off and the generator flipping on (sometimes). That one guy who can't sleep and will somehow find a way to wake you up. The guy with feet that smell so bad you could use his socks as WMD. Phone and internet, but not enough time and always a goodbye.

We have clerks and staff guys, pleading for us to let them go on routine convoys, just to get off the FOB and see or do something different.

We've been here over 100 days now, but after the first 30, we were already calling it FOB Ground Hog, after a certain movie with Bill Murray.

This sounds nuts, and you don't want anyone to get hurt, but the latest attack gives you all something new to talk about. How the jerk insurgent did this bonehead thing, or they dropped some rounds in the lake, or they hit a septic truck, or they tried to ram the gate only to find three more rows of concrete wall or a hailstorm of lead that stops them 100 meters out. The gallows humor. (My LT responds to suicide bombers as one more step towards a smarter planet, with one less stupid guy.)

Go read about Mustang 23's day. I did, it was interesting to me to see that someone else's life here can be as boring as mine! (Mrs. Dadmanly tells me boring is good, because boring is usually safe.)

Okay, I'll bite.

Has Garry Trudeau even read a military web log? I'm only one, and I haven't read all the others, but I have seen quite a few. They are all very different, but not one of them reads like the one Trudeau dreamed up for his Doonesbury cutouts.

Does he have any idea what the military is like? Does he know anyone in the military? I'd be very surprised if his "research" for this latest series went farther than the Daily Kos or Democratic Underground.

Hillbilly armor humvees. Please, can somebody dream up any new strawmen for Garry? We're National Guard, and half of our vehicles were up-armored with factory grade steel before they left Kuwait; the rest were line hauled. Since we've been here, we use the light skin for around the FOB, but even those, as many as we want can get up-armored. We just won't bother with some of them as they will be shipped back home, and other than for convoys the up-armored are difficult, costly to maintain, and more prone to accident. (Everything is a trade-off my friend, even body armor presents risk as well as protection.)

And other supply and equipment? My word, we waste more than armies usually have. Our soldiers have been the best equipped, trained, supported, and supplied soldiers in history. Our guys are complaining about a lot of things, as they always will, but they aren't complaining about their Rapid Fielding Initiative (RFI) goodies or their advanced weapons and equipment. And we're National Guard.

I am sure Garry thinks he's very clever, but it should occur to him that to properly satirize, lampoon, or profile critically in caricature, your result needs to remotely resemble what you lampoon. And it wouldn't hurt for you to have some positive goal in mind, either. Trudeau fails on both counts.

I remember enjoying Doonesbury a very long time ago. But then, I didn't used to have much respect for the military either, until I devoted 20 years and 18 months away from my wife and children in service to our country.

It really is sad that Trudeau can't find any true and realistic stories of soldiers that he wants to tell. But that's okay, because MILBLOGS will do it for him.

UPDATE:

John Schroeder of Blogotional and Mustang 23 of Assumption of Command both offer gracious and well-appreciated support for our beef with Doonesbury.

Thanks John, and thanks Mustang 23. I have very much appreciated your support and encouragement. You both do fine work, and I couldn't ask for a higher class of readers. Which of course is true of all of you, and if you don't know John and Mustang 23, check them out. :)

Mrs. Dadmanly took Little Manly to a local Italian Buffet. We live in a very traditional Italian, working class suburb, and this restaurant is a tradition in itself. Renowned as a caterer for weddings and banquets, it expanded greatly with an adjacent wedding night hotel and a weekly Italian Buffet rivaling the best of fine Italian cuisine in a town of exceptional Italian restaurants.

Mrs. Dadmanly and Little Manly were joined by her two sisters, who are the unexpected blessing of marriage to a large Polish family. The restaurant has a pair of strolling musicians, with an accordion and mandolin, and they play Italian classics, big band, Sinatra, just about what you’d expect.

What they probably don’t often play is Polka.

Mrs. Dadmanly didn’t say whether it was her request, or whether by a twist of irony or humor, the duo started to play polka, “Roll Out the Barrel,” to be precise.

If that weren’t enough, Mrs. Dadmanly started clapping and whooping, with her sisters saying, "Oh brother," and trying to turn invisible in this plush Italian setting.

If you know my wife, you would know she’s just getting started. It stops being embarrassing exactly, after a decade or so, and once you’re beyond a certain point, it’s like your clothes are gone, there you are, and there’s nothing more to do but go the rest of the way and make a grand statement.

So Mrs. Dadmanly went up to the guys and asked them to come to our table and play, picture on these instruments, “You are my Sunshine."

(We’ve raised Little Manly to pray every night as we put him to bed, and our ritual includes singing “You are my Sunshine.”)

These musicians honored her request, and Little Manly was mortified.

Mrs. Dadmanly admits that she keeps forgetting that “her little boy” is a little man now, and Mom continually embarrasses him. "Get over it Little Manly,” she thinks, “or I should say get used to it.”

The next morning, Little Manly told a lady in our bagel shop what I did to him previous night, and she told Little Manly, "Your mother is a crazy person, and you take my phone number, and you call me anytime she does that kinda stuff to you again."

Then, as the crowning embarrassment, Mrs. Dadmanly accompanies Little Manly on a Class Trip after the Bagel Shop. In trying to be the FAIR MOM, she tries to keep a few boys "in line," listening to a museum narrator at the Shaker Museum. And this included Little Manly, who now won’t speak to his mom, because "He was not doing anything,” and she’s his Mother, and she’s not supposed to do that to him, if she’s “going to come on one of these trips."

Mrs. Dadmanly reports that she was the official “scrooge mother of the year,” when she picked Little Manly up at school.

(He really was pretty well behaved, the museum staff picked Little Manly to be the JUNIOR instructor, to teach all his classmates
how to use a loom and weave.)

She also reports that the ice melted later, after she had shared the details of her adventures with me. She hugged Little Manly, kissed him on the cheek, and asked, “Guess who that is from?” and immediately he said, "My Dad!"

They are my sunshine, even thousands of miles and a continent or two away from home.

Designs of the Times. That is admittedly one heck of a title, for a thoughtful post by Jason Von Steenwyk at his Countercolumn blog.

For those who may not be familiar, Intelligent Design (ID) is a growing approach to reconciling a faith in God and the genetic, archaeological, and other scientific artifacts that have been used to support the Theory of Evolution. I am not the expert by any means, but my understanding is that Intelligent Design presupposes the existence and active working of God in bringing creation about, but that the actual mechanisms He used to create the fantastic diversity of life include a designed, planned evolution.

Intelligent Design posits that this incredible diversity of life in all its forms, the amazing symbiotic collection of survival strategies, the ability of life to fill every niche imaginable, the development of astonishingly complex life components, can only be explained by the existence of a Designer, a Consciousness and Intellect who created these mechanisms, and many more we can't even begin to fathom.

From here, adherants to one strain or another of ID go their separate ways, and there are some otherwise devout believers who maintain their faith, their knowledge of God, acceptance of Jesus as His Son, and even the truth of the creation as described in Genesis, but suggest that God's time and timescale are not ours, and that the Genesis sequence of God's creation of life might correlate with the evolutionary pathway God designed.

It's an intriguing argument, but passions run high, for and against, within both secular and religious communities.

Jason Von Steenwyk's post on Intelligent Design touches on ID, and discusses it in light of recent court rulings on science education in Kansas. What brings Jason to the focus of his headline is the way with which the NY Times uses the headline to mischaracterize ID.

John McCandlish Phillips writes about the hysteria surrounding a purported "slide into theocracy," writing in "When Columnists Cry 'Jihad,'" in the Washington Post, Wednesday, May 4, 2005.

Phillips rightly observes that anyone with a good grasp of modern American cultural history can not convincingly argue that America is sliding from secularity into theocracy.

Phillips corrects the grossly stereotyped presentation of Evangelical Christians as wanting to force all of America into church, or persecute those who deny Christian faith. Rather than an offensive war, Phillips describes this as a defensive struggle, one for the very right to worship as we see fit:

Evangelicals are concerned about the frequently advanced and historically untenable secularists' view of the intent of our non-establishment/free exercise of religion clause: that everything that has its origin in religion must be swept out of federal, and even civil, domains. That view, if militantly enforced, constitutes what seems dangerous to most evangelicals: the strict and entire separation of God from state. This construct, so desired by some, is radically out of sync with much in American history that shows a true regard for the non-establishment of religion while giving space in nearly all contexts to wide and free expressions of faith.

And for those under- or maleducated alarmists who think that the "wall of separation" is an actual construct in the constitution (rather than a letter written by Jefferson), or that separation of church and state means no one in government can talk about church, and no one in church can talk about politics (unless its of a politically correct or judiciously liberal bent), Phillips points out some facts of the founders intent:

The fact is that our founders did not give us a nation frightened by the apparition of the Deity lurking about in our most central places. On Sept. 25, 1789, the text of what was later adopted as the First Amendment was passed by both houses of Congress, and subsequently sent to the states for ratification. On that same day , the gentlemen in the House who had acted to give us that invaluable text took another action: They passed a resolution asking President George Washington to declare a national day of thanksgiving to no less a perceived eminence than almighty God.

That's president , that's national, that's official and, alas, my doubting hearties, it's God -- all wrapped up in a federal action by those who knew what they meant by the non-establishment clause and saw their request as standing at not the slightest variance from it. It's a pity our phalanx of columnists cannot crawl into a time machine to go back and reinstruct them.

My apologies for the break in posting; we suffered a couple of days loss of connectivity, and I was starting a new project.

Regular readers may recall a recent series of debates I have had with The Liberal Avenger, an anti-war blogger who had questions he wanted to ask about the war and our efforts here.

The Avenger and I have launched Debate Space, a joint blog that allows us to ask each other questions, go back and forth a bit, then invite readers to join in the discussion via comments.

As many readers on both the left and right have commented, it is rare for a civil debate of this kind to take place without insult, attacks, and an inability to respond with rational argument. But so far, we are that rare exception.

I invite my readers to spend some time at Debate Space. The questions are good, but the answers are better.

The Christian Carnival is up at Kentucky Packrat. Our other Blog, Gladmanly, has a featured post.

Long time readers will perhaps remember that I am a big fan of Abraham Lincoln. One of my church family sent me Carl Sandberg's Abraham Lincoln, which up till now I have only been able to sample.

In reading the first few chapters of The Prairie Years, I am vividly reminded of the historical context in which Lincoln came of age. He lived on the age of wildedrness, and he briefly mustered as a Captain in a Black Hawk indian war along the edges of the then frontier. Subsequently, he enlisted for a short stint as a private. ("Rank" within militia forces in those days must have been more "mutable" and transitory than one might think.)

Lincoln's early years are filled with all forms of hard labor, pick up trades, and the rudimentary evolution of both frontier commerce and legislative bodies. It makes fascinating reading. This helps remind us that when Lincoln began his most memorable speech at Gettysburg with the phrase, "Forescore and seven years ago," that was only one generation away from those who had a personal experience of the Revolution and our struggle for Independence.

Sandberg did an excellent job, not only in capturing the frontier spirit of the day in all its freshness and raw energy, but also in locating priceless artifacts of the emergent local political systems.

Lincoln shows early promise in making polical connections, and raising himself up by his own bootstraps. You can begin to see the greatness of his intellect emerge in these early artifacts, such as this early statement of principles, as printed as a handbill by the Sangamo Journal at Springfield, IL, March 9, 1832:

That every man may receive at least, a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the scriptures and other works, both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves.

It always surprises me when I see these sudden glimpses of a time when religious faith and spiritual conviction were a central part of community discourse, and the driving purpose behind public policy.

Is it really such a danger to the public good if people of faith return to public life, and resume our historic conversation on morality and civic virtues? Will we be that much in danger if America should once again produce men (and women) with the moral character of Abraham Lincoln?

May the "worst fears" of our detractors come true.

Victor Davis Hanson's latest piece in National Review Online asks a question long overdue in the continuing struggle over America's perception of ist place in the world. The question has often been posed, "Why do they hate us," as if we should or could do anything about that. This is the left's greatest character flaw, the need for us to be "liked." (Think the Sally Field the Inferiority Complex School of International Relations.)

Hanson asks:

In short, who exactly does not like the United States and why? First, almost all the 20 or so illiberal Arab governments that used to count on American realpolitik's giving them a pass on accounting for their crimes. They fear not the realist Europeans, nor the resource-mad Chinese, nor the old brutal Russians, but the Americans, who alone are prodding them to open their economies and democratize their corrupt political cultures. We must learn to expect, not lament, their hostility, and begin to worry that things would be indeed wrong if such unelected dictators praised the United States.

The United Nations has sadly become a creepy organization. Its General Assembly is full of cutthroat regimes. The Human Rights Commission has had members like Vietnam and Sudan, regimes that at recess must fight over bragging rights to which of the two killed more of their own people. The U.N. has a singular propensity to find flawed men to be secretary-general — a Kurt Waldheim, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, or Kofi Annan. Blue-helmeted peace-keepers, we learn, are as likely to commit as prevent crimes; and the only thing constant about such troops is that they will never go first into harm's way in Serbia, Kosovo, the Congo, or Dafur to stop genocide. Even worse, the U.N. has proved to be a terrible bully, an unforgivable sin for a self-proclaimed protector of the weak and innocent — loud false charges against Israel for its presence in the West Bank, not a peep about China in Tibet; tough talk about Palestinian rights, far less about offending Arabs over Darfur.

This jealousy and dislike of America and our position in the world is unavoidable and inevitable, as our very position breeds the resentment described. it is the price to pay for our National Security, and while we wish that others would see fact and reality, as well as the moral authority with which we wield our power and influence, but they don't. That comes with the territory.

Hanson concludes:

It is the wage of the superpower to be envied. Others weaker vie for its influence and attention — often when successful embarrassed by the necessary obsequiousness, when ignored equally shamed at the resulting public impotence. The Cold War is gone and former friends and neutrals no longer constrain their anti-American rhetoric in fear of a cutthroat and nuclear Soviet Union. Americans are caricatured as cocky and insular — as their popular culture sweeps the globe.

All that being said, the disdain that European utopians, Arab dictatorships, the United Nations, and Mexico exhibit toward the United States is not — as the Kerry campaign alleged in the last election — cause for tears, but often reason to be proud, since much of the invective arises from the growing American insistence on principles abroad.

America should not gratuitously welcome such dislike; but we should not apologize for it either. Sometimes the caliber of a nation is found not in why it is liked, but rather in why it is not. By January 1, 1941, I suppose a majority on the planet — the Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, France, Italy, Spain, and even many elsewhere in occupied Europe, most of Latin America, Japan and its Asian empire, the entire Arab world, many in India — would have professed a marked preference for Hitler's Germany over Churchill's England.

This reminds me of a recent American President, who was reputed to crave attention and adoration, and pretty much got what we wanted (at least on a personal level). He was very popular, at home and abroad, and many felt that he relied overmuch on polls to make decisions. "What would be a popular decision," he seemed to ask himself on all major issues of the day.

Those of us who lead for a living know that, doing the right thing, or making the right decision, is often the least popular thing there is. That's what leadership is all about, taking a stand against the advice of all those who would rather walk away.

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters has taken up the cause of Judicial Confirmation, and precisely identifies the real reason Senate Democrats have taken to adapting the Filibuster to preventing appointment of certain judges nominated by the President:

Judicial nominees like William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown (who won 76% of Californian votes in her last election to the State Supreme Court) have been called "extremists" and "Neanderthals" for their "deeply held personal beliefs", as Chuck Schumer put it, which has become code for "Catholicism" and opposition to abortion. Instead of honestly debating the real issues, the Democrats have chosen to smear people of faith in the hope of driving them underground, to steal their voices and to scare them away from the public square. They want the overwhelming majority of Americans who profess faith in God to shut the Hell up, and leave government to the atheists.

I am convinced this is quite true. Clearly, Senate Democrats can't publicly say that's why they are against these candidates, but surely this is why. And as a Christian citizen of the U.S., that offends me even more than the insults and character assassination they are using to achieve their ends.

Captain Ed has an answer to the pressure for people of faith to remove themselves from the public square:

No thank you. We are all Americans, and our government should reflect the values held by the mainstream, not just the faithless.

I have been meaning to link to this all weekend and struggling to tread water on so much of interest.

Captain Ed of
Captain's Quarters links to a commencement address given by Judge Janice Rigers Brown, by way of introduction to this extraordinary jurist. And quite the introduction it is!

Captain Ed introduces the piece to set the context:

One of the most significant travesties of the judicial confirmation war that the Democrats launched after losing the Senate majority in 2003 has been the damage done to the reputations of those jurists nominated to the federal appellate bench by George Bush. Ten of the thirty-four nominations sent to the Senate by Bush have not only been blocked by the minority through the unprecedented use of the filibuster, but they have been vilified by Democrats as "Neanderthals" (Ted Kennedy), "extremists", "theocrats", and worse. Three of these nominees have declined to pursue their nominations, effectively curtailing their careers in public service, in order to restore their reputations and spare their families any further degradation at the hands of rabid Democrats insistent on pursuing strategies of personal destruction. Seven have valiantly decided to fight for their rightful place on the appellate bench.

This is perhaps the most offensive aspect of the current struggle within the Senate for an up or down vote on Presidential nomination of judges. It would be one thing to argue for or against any particular nomination, but to neglect such principled argument in favor of character assassination is deriliction of duty on the part of Democratic Senators.

Without further ado, Janice Rogers Brown, in her own words:

Abigail Adams, writing to John Quincy Adams in 1780, said: “These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. ...Great necessities call out great virtues.” That was a critical time for America. This is an equally critical epoch. You and your peers may well be the most important generation of lawyers since that founding generation. The question for the framers was whether we could form a government based on “reflection and choice” rather than conflict and accident. They answered the question in the affirmative. What strikes me as I read the notes and letters of the founders is their supreme confidence.

The question for you will be whether the regime of freedom which they founded can survive the relentless enmity of the slave mentality. It will really be whether you want freedom to survive. The answer may be no. There are many reasons to forsake freedom.

Some will do so because they are ambitious and can only make their mark by setting out upon a new path. Abraham Lincoln described this dynamic many years before he became president. He said there will always be people among us (from the family of the Lion or the tribe of the Eagle) who “scorn to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor,” who thirst and burn for distinction, and who will obtain it “whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving free men.”

Some may reject freedom because security has always been more comfortable than freedom and infinitely more comforting to the “herd of independent minds.”
Perhaps the most likely reason for a negative response is the fatigue engendered by the “accumulated decisions of so many revolutions.” Freedom requires certitude and we are now so enlightened that, in Pascal's phrase, “we know too much to be ignorant and too little to be wise.”

I, of course, hope that this generation will rise to the challenge; that our present great necessities will call forth great virtues. Perhaps that is why, when I tried to think about what I might say to you as you commence your life in the law, only one word, one image, surfaced. The word, the image, was “Light.” Sometimes sharp and white, like the flash of a lighthouse beacon. Sometimes the soft, full radiance of sunrise. But, always, light. How odd, I thought. But then the brochure for the Columbus School of Law arrived with the motto of the Catholic University of America emblazoned across its cover. Deus lux mea est. God is my light. And then there was the Cardinal's dinner, held in San Francisco this year. The program began with a wonderful film about the university which was entitled — are you ready — “Sharing the Light.” Aha! At this point, even the dull witted must begin to see ... the light. And finally, leafing through a book of essays seeking inspiration, these words leapt out at me: “The night is for spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.” (Romans 13:12)

What remarkable rhetoric from a jurist. What clarity of thought, what grounding of reason within a cogent moral and historic framework. But wait, there's more. Judge Brown concludes her commencement address with some very real concerns, and some hope for her audience as they make their way as Americans:

Which brings me to my second question — which will be much harder. What is the American Way? If you find this more difficult to answer, it is not surprising. The American Creed has not been forgotten; it has been repudiated. “Historically, American identity has had two primary components: culture and creed.” The former is defined by our heritage from Western Civilization; the latter consists of a set of universal ideas and principles articulated in our founding documents: liberty, equality, democracy, constitutionalism, limited government, and private property. On these principles there once was wide agreement. Indeed, the Creed was hailed by foreign observers, ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Gunnar Myrdal, as the “cement in the structure of this great and disparate nation.” As Richard Hofstader notes: “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.”

And now the final question on today's quiz, suggested by Japanese philosopher Takeshi Umehara, who theorizes that the breakup of the Soviet Union is only the precursor to the collapse of Western liberalism: In an era in which “people everywhere define themselves in cultural terms, what place is there for a society without a cultural core,” defined only by a fragile political creed which — like Tinker Bell — is close to expiring because no one quite believes in it anymore?

In some ways, it seems we have been moving backward: bringing chaos out of order instead of the other way around. At least that is how things stood until quite recently when, in one instant of anguish, pity, grief, and rage, we had a moment of awful moral clarity. All perspectives are not equal. Evil is not merely a matter of opinion. Suddenly and undeniably, we understood that there are ideas worth defending to the death. There are lies that must be defeated at all costs. Freedom is not free. And it will never be the lasting legacy of the lazy or the indifferent. For what we ultimately pursue is a true “vision of justice and ordered liberty, respectful of human dignity and the authority of God.” What we need is to revive our passion for freedom and our determination to defend vigorously, rationally, and without apology, our way of life, which is unique and deserves not scorn nor diffidence, but devotion.

I am not intimately familiar with Brown's record of jurisprudence, but what I have read strikes me as very sound.

Could the primary (unspoken of course) objection with Judge Brown perchance be her strong religious faith? And her ability to recognize its essential underpinning within our constitution and founding documents?

Follow-through, ladies and gentlemen of the Senate. Ensure up or down votes on the nominations of qualified jurists, by limiting the use of filibuster on Executive Branch nominations of judges. Some excellent jurists of exceptional moral fiber are waiting to accept their assignments.

John Schroeder, writing at Blogotional, has a very interesting account of his visit in 1991 to Chernobyl (some 7 years after the nuclear accident). He has some useful insights into what is often highlighted as convincing evidence against continuing development of nuclear energy sources.

Part 1: Nuclear Memories
Part 2: More Chernobyl Memories
Part 3: Chernobyl: Some Final Thoughts

On the occasion of the upcoming BlogNashville event, I wanted to post some thoughts that I hope are incorporated within some on the discussions at the conference. The two concerns I have are in the areas of Operational Security (OPSEC), another area of more personal security, the health and well-being of loved ones. There's no military acronym for the latter, so for lack of an alternative (and to try to be clever), I'll call it (Heart) Security or HEARTSEC. (NOTE: I am not yet proficient enough with HTML to make a "heart" symbol appear, but imagine that's what you see.)

OPSEC is an important concept in modern military operations, one easily misunderstood and often underestimated. All reconnaissance efforts, if successful, exploit weak or failed OPSEC of the other side. Good OPSEC means denying your enemies an opportunity to gather all the small bits of information that eventually leads to a partial but highly suggestive picture of overall plans and operations.

In Iraq, that might mean force disposition, capabilities, weaknesses and targets of opportunity. We greatly underestimate our enemy's capabilities to exploit essential elements of friendly information (EEFI).

Americans as a rule are terrible at keeping secrets, we love to talk, we like to connect wiht those around us, and we love to tell stories. When soldiers are entirely segregated from civilian populations (loved ones, family or otherwise), they are clearly unhappy, but they are unable to violate OPSEC with as much ease or regularity.

The greatest difference in lifestyle and living conditions between today's soldier in Iraq and any in previous conflicts, is also one of our greatest vulnerabilities in terms of OPSEC. Soldiers have ready and immediate access to the Internet and cheap telephone service to their friends and families back home. When anything happens on the Forward Operating Base (FOB), chances are, linked in families back home hear all the details within hours, if not minutes. (Local commanders in many cases wisely invoke Internet and telephone blackouts for short periods in the event of significant injuries or deaths.)

Frankly, much of the most popular ("live action") combat reporting on the web makes me nervous. Many of these young men (and women) are not at all careful or discrete about their identities, unit compositions, and even very minute operational details. All of us understand how popular such accounts are, people back home and even fellow soldiers are really hungry for knowledgeable front line reporting. But this same accuracy and realism may be providing our enemies -- who gain some advantage they wouldn't otherwise have if we ignore their collection or reconnaissance capabilities -- with useful information for planning more effective attacks (and by the way, allowing them at least some useful battle damage assessment (BDA) information).

Which then brings me to my second concern with such reporting. The effect all this "real-time," embedded soldier reporting has on our families and loved ones back home. I remember the day not too long ago, when press accounts of an incident included a unit identification, that allowed a young woman just enough information to realize that her husband's unit had lost personnel. She spent several frantic hours seeking to verify that her husband was safe. He was, she was overjoyed, until a few moments later when she realized the occasion of her joy would spell tragedy for some other family.

On a personal note, long time readers of my blog may remember the day, early on in my deployment, when we conducted our combat patch ceremony. On that particular day, I related in a post that many of us also experienced our first real combat, with a mortar attack in the parking lot of our dining facility (DFAC).

I send a lot of my posts out to friends and family by email, and I had enough sense to realize that I should tell Mrs. Dadmanly about the incident before anyone had the chance to ask her about it or express concern for me or for her. I happened to reach her on her cell as she was on her way with Little Manly on some errand or activity.

She sounded okay to me on the phone, it was the weekend and I knew I'd be talking to her again Sunday after church, so I felt I'd done what I needed to do.

By the next evening, my Pastor and a concerned man of the church both contacted me, and told me that my wife had come into church that Sunday morning, crying and distraught. What I had taken to be "good news" (in that none of us were hurt), brought home to her the risks and dangers we faced as a normal part of our life deployed. They took her aside after the service and prayed with her for my safety and for her peace and assurance in God's protection, but both of these gentlemen strongly challenged me to consider whether it was a good idea to share too many (especially graphic) details with my famly back home.

I spoke to Mrs. Dadmanly later, and she felt that I should share even these events if I really feel the need to share them, that she would find resources and people to help her "weather" whatever burden I needed to unload. But I was convicted that day, that I have 200 fellow soldiers here to share those kinds of experiences with, and that the last thing I want to do is cause any greater worry or concern or fear or uncertainty for my family than they were already going to experience.

So my blog will never include those gripping accounts (unless they are borrowed from somebody else), and no doubt I will have less readership as a result. That's okay, my family is more important.

So ladies and gentlemen MILBLOGGERS, I urge you all to consider carefully how much information you share "real-time" with our eager audiences back home. Hopefully, when I get back home, there will still be quite an audience for all the "war stories" I'll have to tell, safe and sound, back home, a lifetime away from violence.