Stay tuned.

Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith.

I hope you all have a good new year's celebration and Ill be back before you know it.

I am incensed about your remarks today concerning my and my fellow enlisted soldiers' intelligence. I also read your follow-up explanation that it was a failed joke - I hope you also do not believe the rest of the country as stupid as me, because I have a really hard time believing it was a joke after being able to view the speech (yes, in context) online.

I have a BA from Columbia University. Maybe you have heard of it. I would be willing any day of the week to put my French language skills up agaist yours. I also attended a certain private high school in Exeter, NH. Maybe you have heard of that one? I enlisted in the US Army after 9/11. Am I stupid?

I went to basic combat training with a guy who has a BS in Aeronautical Engineering. He is, literally, a rocket scientist. He also enlisted soldier in the US Army after 9/11. Is he stupid?

I currently work with another guy who has a Masters in Philosophy and was very close to finishing his dissertation for his PhD. He, by the way, is very liberal politically, but I would be willing to bet that in an exercise of debate, with him taking the other side, he would talk circles around you, or any of your 99 colleagues in Washington. He enlisted in the US Army after 9/11 out of patriotism. Is he stupid?

College degrees in my company in the enlisted ranks outnumber those in the officers'. We obviously did our homework and worked hard during our years in school. Maybe you are out of touch and do not realize just how much things have changed since you were in the military (that is if, in fact, you had an idea about it then). I think you may get too many of your ideas from movies and television, because it is painfully obvious that you have not ever taken the time to really speak with an enlisted member of today's US military.

To my relatives and friends in MA: Please, please, please do not send this elitist buffoon back to Washington the next time he is up for re-election. This is not the first time he has made disparaging remarks about the military, or the general population at large. Listen to his speeches and he will always mention the "working class". We don't have classes in the United States. Our ancestors left Europe because they hated the fact that they were part of the toiling masses which supported a small, elite aristocracy who ran everything. In America, anyone can work hard, become successful and live the good life - ANYONE. Bill Gates dropped out of college to write MS-DOS, the precursor to Windows. Wal-Mart started as one family-run store in Arkansas. Nike was a track coach's dream in Oregon. Next time you hear a John Kerry speech, listen closely and when he refers to "working class Americans" it will be in the 3rd person. That is because he does not see himself as part of that group - he sees himself as part of a small, elite aristocracy.]]> http://www.basictrainingblog.com/weblog/archives/2006/11/i_botched_the_j.html http://www.basictrainingblog.com/weblog/archives/2006/11/i_botched_the_j.html Politics Wed, 01 Nov 2006 06:11:05 +0300 Great. According to the AP, members of al-Qaeda are "activists".

An American thought to be an al-Qaida activist appeared in a videotape with the terror group's deputy leader Saturday and called on his countrymen to convert to Islam and for U.S. soldiers to switch sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Oh, and apparently someone who appears in a videotape with Ayman Zawahiri, promising to continue the bloodshed unless we all convert to Islam, is only "thought" to be affiliated with al-Qaeda?

In the meantime, Victor Davis Hanson has written another beautiful piece that is well worth reading. I wish my school had had even 1 professor like him for every 10 Edward Saids...

Here is the intro:

When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism.

Of course, the trauma of the Great War was all too fresh, and the utopian hopes for the League of Nations were not yet dashed. The Great Depression made the thought of rearmament seem absurd. The connivances of Stalin with Hitler — both satanic, yet sometimes in alliance, sometimes not — could confuse political judgments.

But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and it is even more baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

I packed up my camera docking station, so I haven't been able to post a bunch of photos. I will get them up soon after it arrives.

The children in the Gilsum 5th grade did chores around the house to earn money, collected Campbell soup labels and ordered colored pencils, and held a bake sale for two days in order to get enough money to buy the school supplies for the children. They have worked hard to help their fellow students in Iraq.

So thank yous go out to: Courtney, Drew, Jim, Amber, Keagan, Ashley, Fischer, Dallas, Brian, Kristin, Tesa, Jordan, Kelsey, Shawna, Teagan, Hunter, and the staff of Gilsum Elementary. (I apologize if I misspelled any names, or missed any of you.) I read all of your letters and I'm afraid I will be unable to reply to each of them since I am in the process of packing up to come home, but rest assured that your packages will be delivered if they have not already.

Anyone else who has been collecting supplies should hold off on sending them for the time being. We are working with the 2nd Brigade of 10th Mountain who will be comming here soon to take over where we left off. There is an address where you can send packages, but I do not have that yet. I will post it when I am able.

Thank you to everyone again who has helped make this program a success. It was so successful, in fact, that we distributed over 3000 sets of supplies not just to one school, but to school aged children all over Abu Ghraib, which is a large portion of northwest Baghdad.

For an explanation of the program, click here.

Still working on Abu Ghraib photos.

Got a brace on my right wrist. Either a sprain or a hairline fracture from falling (doctor really couldn't tell for sure, but its the same treatment). Figures though: I make it through 15-odd missions unscathed and I hurt myself crossing a ditch! A light coating of dust all over the ground makes for slippery surfaces and the dirt underneath is very hard. Nothing to worry about.

C boxes are all but gone. All I have with me now is that which I will mail and that which I will carry home.

I arranged a palace tour finally back on Slayer - I hope we can arrange a vehicle next Sunday before we get rid of them all.

Countdown to wheels up is getting low.

10,682 visits in June. Wow!

This photo is but a little preview. Recently, 3 inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba committed suicide (apparently believing that that would lead to the prison's closure). Inmates in Saddam's Abu Ghraib were prevented from suicide by binding their hands to their cell bars in the days leading up to their execution. Some of these straps still remain:

Now in the process of packing stuff up for the trip home. Long night ahead tomorrow with customs, so Im off to bed. Just wanted to check in.

There has been much talk about a withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops from Iraq, but no defined timeline has yet been set. There is, however, an unofficial "road map" to foreign troop reductions that will eventually lead to total withdrawal of U.S. troops. This road map is based not just on a series of dates but, more important, on the achievement of set objectives for restoring security in Iraq.

On 16 June, I wrote:

I would be willing to bet my next month's pay that the powers that be do in fact have a timetable. More accurately, they probably have a few tentative timetables that hinge upon certain criteria being met.

Yeah, its an op-ed, but I still think its cool.