| Fanatics |
[17 May 2009|06:00am] |
George Santayana defined fanaticism as "redoubling your effort after you've forgotten your aim". "Enhanced interrogation", or torture, is the target of the latest salvo fired off by certain partisan fanatics of a particular political bent in their ongoing campaign to purge the nation of any lingering vestiges of Bushism. But with their scattershot approach, there was bound to be some collateral damage and unintended targets. And the latest most prominent victim of friendly fire--blue-on-blue, as it were--is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi has been taking fire from partisan fanatics of a different political bent lately. As some Republicans have gleefully pointed out, she was the ranking Democrat present at a 2002 House Intelligence Committee briefing concerning the interrogation of suspected terrorists. At this briefing, the Representatives were made aware that waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" had been approved for use. Today, Pelosi deployed a smokescreen, saying that the CIA had lied to her about their use of waterboarding prior to the 2002 briefing.
But Pelosi is trying to make a distinction that just isn't there. She knew about the use of waterboarding in 2002. Whether it was prior use or potential use makes no difference. She expressed no outrage and no misgivings. She said nothing for years, nothing until it was politically expedient to make an issue out of it.
And I don't care. As I have long argued, September 11, 2001 changed us. I'm not talking about any kind of superficial flag-waving change, but we as a nation and a culture had never experienced anything like that day in our history. It changed us, and we reacted to it in all kinds of ways. Some people curled into the fetal position and watched CNN obsessively. There was a surge in military enlistment. And some people acted inappropriately. I know I thought and said things that I am not entirely comfortable with now. If I had been in a position of power at the time, I'm sure I would have not objected to using "enhanced interrogation techniques" on suspected terrorist plotters. I think most people, had they known what waterboarding was, would have quickly agreed to its use--just as most of our elected officials did. I don't blame Speaker Pelosi for temporarily losing her moral compass. We, as a nation, lost our way. And we are just now finding it back again.
But fanaticism won't show us that way. Certain Democrats were so intent on redoubling their efforts, so hell-bent on expending as much political ammunition as they could at Bush & Co. that they neglected to check their aim. Speaker Pelosi is a victim of their friendly fire. Fanatics on both sides of the aisle are so concerned with inflicting damage on their enemies that they don't even care about damaging their friends--or their country.
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| A Little About My Job |
[17 Feb 2009|09:56pm] |
I work in a hospital on Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan. It's not a bad job--it's a good blend of the exciting and the mundane. I work with Canadians, Dutch, British, Germans, Australians, New Zealanders, Afghanis, and of course other Americans, as well as a few other nationalities. As an Army medic--a jack of all medical and soldierly trades but master of none--I have a variety of duties to perform.
One of those is to grab patients from incoming Medevac helicopters and move them to whichever part of the hospital they need to go. I always thought it would be cool to be a flight medic--the guy on the Medevac chopper who's responsible for their in-flight care. Now, after about a hundred instances of seeing what they do, I'm really glad that's NOT my job. It's uncomfortable, it's noisy, it's boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter, and you don't really get to DO much with the patients--they are usually either already ventilated and neatly packaged up or they have just been diagnosed with glaucoma or something and they need to be moved to a higher level of care quickly. As a flight medic, you just need to monitor the patients--just maintain inertia and try not to let your patients die on you in the air.
Yesterday we got a call from the command post. Two patients coming in on a Medevac: one guy with an arm injury, and another with a "possible" head injury. Sounds pretty routine. The rumor floating around among the command staff is that it's two locals who didn't stop at a checkpoint then got out of their car and ran when they were confronted. Our guys opened fire, yadda yadda yadda, the two guys are on their way here. EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) is checking the car to see why these guys were running; if they find something naughty, then these two will be upgraded from Local National status to Enemy Combatant status.
There's a new crew of Medevac Blackhawks and the flight medics that go with them. Things have been pretty quiet lately, so their job has been pretty easy. Most days, they don't even fly.
The command post calls and says the bird is four minutes out and that these guys are now officially Enemy Combatants. EOD found the trunk full of homemade explosives. We strip off identifying insignia on our uniforms and go out to the Medevac landing pad to wait for the helicopter. I've done it a hundred times, but it's still a part of my job I enjoy. It usually goes really smoothly: The bird smoothly lands; the crew chief smoothly jumps out, opens the patient door, and waves us in; we smoothly move up to the bird; we smoothly unload the neatly packaged patients on their litters and smoothly move them into the hospital--and we're heroes. Fun stuff.
Today the bird comes in moving faster than normal. It lands hard, bouncing on its shock absorbers. I see the unmistakable movements of someone performing CPR through the window. He stops long enough to wave us in--through the window. We rush up to the bird and he points at the door handle. I fumble with it a little--I've never actually had to open one of the damn things. Dave, our big British medic, flings the door open. Blood flows out the doorway, whipped to a spray by the rotor wash. There's two bandaged naked bearded dudes on the floor of the chopper. One of them isn't even on a litter. The flight medic is bagging this one (you know, the squeeze balloon thing that you see them use on TV to breathe for a patient) and points excitedly at him with one hand: "This one! Grab this one first!" Well, OK, I grab the guy by the ankles and start to drag him out of the bird. His arm, though, gets caught up in some equipment hanging off the other litter and I can't pull any more. The flight medic jumps up, all frantic now, and changes his mind--he now points to the other guy. I let go of the first guy, and my gloved hands peel away all sticky with blood. The flight medic tries to untangle everything, and I get the distinct impression that I'm watching the Simpsons episode where Homer accidentally sets the house on fire: "Aaaa! Fire, fire! What do I do? (singing) When the fire starts to burn, there's a lesson you must learn, something something then you see, you'll avoid catastrophe. D'oh!"
We fling the guy on the litter into the back of the ambulance, and Dave, now in the driver's seat, takes off for the hospital. I rush back to the bird, but the flight crew are still all agitated and they literally push me away. The guy still on the bird has been legally dead for twenty minutes or more. I run back to the hospital just in time to catch the docs pronouncing the other guy dead as well.
They're both dead, and I'm glad. They were about to go blow something up...to kill a lot of people. Soldiers...a government official...I don't know. I know most of the victims we see are innocent bystanders. Men missing legs and arms, unable to provide for their families. Children with horrible wounds that will cripple them for life--eyes torn out, dirty shrapnel holes in tiny limbs and bodies. We're not innocent, but the people who set those bombs off have absolutely no regard. None. People like those two dead motherfuckers who bled out all over the floor of that chopper, gasping their last breaths. Fuck them. They're dead, and I'm fucking happy about it. If they were Americans or British or something, I'd be crying about it. But they're not, and I feel fucking great about them being dead. Good job killing them, infantry, but next time get head shots. It's too bad we had to waste fuel and effort trying to save those two pieces of shit.
We go back to the office and laugh. Is there something wrong with that?
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| Screw you, CNN. |
[05 Nov 2008|12:27am] |
Okay, what I said before about not voting? Yeah, I lied. I sent in my Early Voting Ballot two weeks ago. I voted straight-ticket Libertarian (Straight-ticket votes are only acceptable for third parties. If you vote all "R" or all "D" down the line, you're an idiot. I won't even debate you on how much of an idiot you are, you stooge.) and "no" on all the constitutional amendments except the one that prohibited taxes or fees on the exchange of real estate. You never know, I might be one of the landed gentry one day.
I've been using cnn.com to track the election results. It's the only news website that seems to load correctly on my Afghani Internets. And it's infuriating!
No mention of third parties whatsoever. In many of the races, the Demican and Republicrat are separated by 3 or more percentage points. The other votes are obviously going to someone! This is reprehensible. If a candidate's name or party is on the ballot, the results should be reported.
There were many Propositions, or legislative measures referred to the people on this year's ballot in Arizona. But CNN only choses to report on...wait for it...gay marriage and illegal immigrants! The immigration measure is hardly even newsworthy as it makes very small specific changes for very vague reasons. Screw you, CNN, you tripe-smearing hacks.
And lastly, though 95% of the precincts are reporting and Chambliss has an 8-point lead for the Senate seat from Georgia, CNN refuses to concede that the Stupidcrats might not get their longed-for supermajority over the Retardicans this year. Not that I have any particular taste for the stinking theocrats, but the two major parties are only good for one thing each: making sure the other one doesn't suck up all the power and influence.
Better luck next time, CNN. Though Fox News is about as obnoxious as they come, right now I prefer their blatant bias to your subtler shades of slander.
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| I'm Not Voting. |
[04 Nov 2008|05:10am] |
Which state do you live in? Is your state likely to vote red or blue? Do you know that your vote is very likely to count for NOTHING? Literally? No matter who you favor? It all depends on where you live.
YOU don't vote for the President. Your STATE does. And unless you happen to live in Maine or Nebraska, this means that votes for the minority (losing) side are simply thrown out. Your vote will NOT COUNT.
All that time you'll spend carefully selecting your candidate, driving to the precinct site, and standing in those long lines will count for exactly NOTHING.
So how about if you want to vote blue, for instance, and you live in, for instance, California? There's not much reason to bother voting if your state is already bound to go your way. You'll be just another voice in the mob.
So please consider voting third party. If any one of the minor parties get 5% of the popular vote, then that party will be entitled to federal matching funds in the next election. The two major parties in the US have an iron grip on our political system, and they will do anything they can to prevent an outside voice having a say. Breaking their stranglehold would be a real recipe for change.
So why, you might ask, is Duncan-O not voting this year? Consider my situation: I'm 10,000 miles from home in Afghanistan. Sure, I could mail in an early voting/absentee ballot, but these aren't even counted unless the race is close enough that the relatively few number of absentee ballots could make a difference. And the fact that I'm registered in Arizona (whose popular votes are sure to go overwhelmingly to McCain) means that my ballot will sit in storage, unopened, uncounted, and unread. My third-party vote won't even count toward that elusive 5%--yet another bias against fairness in the electoral process.
And with all the fossil fuels spent getting that ballot across those 10,000 miles, how could I proclaim my carbon-neutrality and still look myself in the eye?
No, I'm not voting. What a waste of time.
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| Electa Trifecta |
[04 Nov 2008|04:21am] |
It's Election Day, and here's my third and final installment of "Elect." With the first one of these I did, I really was trying to relate a message. But, in the end, it's all just a bunch of crap that I've pulled off the Internets...some of it amusing, some of it disturbing, most of it downright wrong. Kind of like this election! And democracy in general. Enjoy!
( Lots of pics! )
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| Today |
[11 Sep 2008|02:31pm] |
Today is 11 September. Today is the third day in a row I've had to watch someone die.
Even though it makes perfect sense, I don't understand it. I've seen more blood and death in the last month at this hospital than I have in all the rest of the time I've spent deployed.
I searched houses in the tip of the Sunni Triangle in Iraq.
The Iraqis served me orange soda.
I drove like a madman through the streets of Kabul.
It may as well have been Amarillo.
I strolled through mountain villages in the Panjshir Valley, the most dangerous place in Afghanistan for the Taliban and the Soviets.
I was greeted with smiles.
But then I came to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. BAF, with all of its bullshit rules and regulations, a place so far removed from the conflict that I could swear I'm at Boy Scout camp. Except I keep finding myself literally praying that the human being lying in front of me won't wind up in a rubberized black bag like the others.
Tomorrow is 12 September. I have the day off. I'm hoping I won't have to watch anybody die.
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| Random Pics |
[04 Jun 2008|06:00pm] |
Mixed forces.
Several interesting elements.
Some Italians and me.
Forty-three flags.
Colors: Afghanistan, NATO, ISAF.
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| Elect |
[22 Apr 2008|04:16am] |
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| Bloody Boots |
[11 Apr 2008|02:34am] |
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music |
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Bad Religion, "Lost Pilgrim" |
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I've been storing up all these crazy ideas for blogs. See, I want to be so clever and so creative. I want to never post anything lame...so I wind up posting nothing at all. Why am I so averse to writing about regular day-to-day stuff? Maybe I'm dissatisfied with my life. Maybe the time just gets away from me.
At 5am this morning, a man came staggering into the aid station. He was doubled over with intense pain in his right abdomen. I could feel a hot mass under the skin and muscle. We called in our M.D. She said it was most likely acute appendicitis and he had to be evacuated, NOW.
We hauled ass through downtown Kabul, the .50-cal, the SAW, and the M-240B swiveling in their turrets, electronic anti-IED countermeasures frying the airwaves. We bounced over the potholes in Ambush Alley because it's the fast way. And when we got to the proper hospital, the surgeon looked sharp and began prepping for an appendectomy immediately.
We saved someone's life today. I felt retarded. I fumbled for equipment. I flubbed simple things like checking his blood pressure. I fished for an IV and still fucked it up, dripping his blood on my boots. But I am remembering things I had forgotten.
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| Sticks to Kids |
[10 Jul 2007|03:29am] |
| [ |
music |
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New WS-anxiously awaiting new BR |
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Yeah, I know it's an old meme. But I've got some catching up to do...
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words: - fucking (12x)
- kill (9x)
- shit (4x)
- fuck (3x)
- suck (2x)
- crap (1x)
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| SOUND OFF!!! |
[10 Jun 2007|08:50pm] |
Screaming all day long:
KILL!!!
SHOOT 'EM IN THE FACE!!! RELOAD!!!
YOU'RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEEEEE!!!
KILL!!!
I'M GOING TO CUT OFF YOUR FACE AND IMPERSONATE YOU WITH IT UNTIL IT ROTS OFF!!!
KILL YOURSELF!!! JUMP OUT THAT WINDOW AND IF YOU'RE NOT DEAD WHEN YOU HIT THE GROUND, TAKE A PIECE OF GLASS AND CUT YOUR THROAT!!!
KILL!!!
I'M GOING TO CUT YOUR THROAT AND HOLLOW OUT YOUR CHEST!!! I'LL RIG UP YOUR HEAD TO FLAP BACK WHEN I STEP ON YOUR FOOT!!! I'M GOING TO USE YOUR TORSO AS A TRASH CAN!!!
GO AHEAD AND FINGER-FUCK MARY JANE ROTTENCROTCH WHEN YOU GET BACK TO YOUR UNITS, BUT WHILE YOU ARE HERE YOU WILL COMPLY WITH THE STANDARD!!!
KILL!!!
KILL!!!
KILL!!!
I'm starting to see the point of this place.
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| I Hate WLC |
[07 Jun 2007|10:27pm] |
I hate WLC.
I hate this place so much. It's everything I hate about the army. It's maddeningly anal retentive about the most pointless things, things that don't even have 'discipline' value, whatever that is. They waste my time. They take ALL of it.
And they're not even creative about it. At least in basic they would torture you in ways that were funny. This is just stupid.
So I'm going to get out of it. And I'm taking the coward's route, once I figure out the best way to do it.
Yesterday I thought of just leaping off a roof to my death. But there's really no drama factor to that. So I considered sneaking away, putting on all my wet-weather gear, and running around in the heat until I drop dead from heatstroke.
I'm pretty fast. I think I can at least get myself hospitalized with serious, irreparable damage before they finally catch me.
Today we had to cut out stupid little fucking name tags for our stupid little fucking canteens.
When they passed me the scissors and tape, I toyed with the idea of slashing my wrists and throat with them. That way, they would be distracted by the great gouts of blood spewing from my body while I use the tape to seal off my nose- and mouth-holes. Ha! Ha! Try explaining that one, jerk!
Tomorrow, I'm sure, will provide an even better opportunity.
I hate this place so much.
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| Loofah |
[06 Jun 2007|01:43am] |
Right after I first got to Ft. Bragg, they moved me in with another new soldier. We shared a crappy little barracks room which adjoined another crappy little empty barracks room by way of a shitty little bathroom. Now, sharing a small room with someone can make little problems seem like big ones, but for the most part we got along.
Then they moved two other dudes into the other room. And our bathroom was suddenly cluttered with lotions and conditioners and body scrubs and puffy frilly things that grown men were apparently using to scrub their bodies.
Not for me, thank you very much, I said. I'll stick with my good, old-fashioned bar of Ivory soap. Besides, any dude who uses something called a "loofah" has got to be some kind of girly-man.
So I went on tediously working up lather, spinning that damn bar between my hands for all it was worth. And little problems became big ones. Those damn loofahs! What the hell is going on here! The country is falling apart around our ears, and you sissy boys are using those things like they're NOT the epitome of decadence!
And soon it seemed as if everyone had a loofah. Everyone except Duncan-O, that is. I had lost the battle for the nation's soul.
And a somewhat masculine gray-colored one was on the shelf at Wal-Mart for 94 cents.
I took my shame home with me, stepped into the shower, and with tears in my eyes saluted that bar of Ivory one last time. I bled a few drops of "body wash" onto my pain, and began to scrub.
Oh, the lather! Oh, the suds! And the soothing, mildly abrasive scrubbing motions! And before I knew it...I was clean. In less than half the time it normally would have taken. I stepped out of the shower, into the light, tears streaming down my face, tears of joy this time: "As God is my witness, I will never go dirty again!"
Sometimes all it takes is shedding a shortsighted bad habit to feel free again.
***
In other news, I go off to WLC (aka "Warrior Leader Course", aka "Stupid Shitty Stuff That The Army Makes Me Do") for two weeks tomorrow.
With possibly no Interbuttz throughout the duration.
Oh, the pain.
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| In other news... |
[28 May 2007|10:27pm] |
I finally got a Wii. In the immortal words of Iksandr the Great, "Fucking mint!"
Except that Boxing makes me want to punch people for real.
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| Smug |
[28 May 2007|09:33pm] |
It's a Friday night, and I'm out howling at the moon. My phone rings, and the name on the screen brings my revelry to a jarring halt. What could she want?
Shantel wants a favor. She needs her cat's litterbox changed. And as my inebriated mind struggles with this irritating and ludicrous request, she pushes on ahead: "It's the toxoplasmosis...the doctor says it's very dangerous for my baby."
All I can manage to say is "I didn't know you were pregnant."
We had gotten to Fort Bragg at the same time, three years ago, two new faces adjusting to the sea of regulation and camouflage. We were split up into different units, but she was a girl I went out of my way to keep close to me.
I think back to one morning when my knock on her door wakes her, and she steps back inside her tiny barracks room, wordlessly inviting me in. She sits on her bed and leans back against the wall, her round breasts revealed through the thin cotton of her tank top. She curls her legs under her, flexing, then stretches, pointing them at me across the room. She relaxes, draping her body across the sheets, her muscles unbunching under so much light brown skin. Only across the room, but I'm so far away. She's smiling a little, now, and her dark eyes flash.
It wasn't long until we had drifted apart. Shantel had joined the Army to get away from an abusive husband, and my heart went to her...but most people just keep making the same mistakes.
She looks at me now in her empty, unfurnished apartment, the swell of her baby starting to show underneath her loose blouse. Her eyes are significant once again. "My husband left me." Her cat nuzzles up to my leg. The words "you had your chance with me" come to mind--it's the kind of thing I've said to my married friends in lighter moments, said in front of their husbands so they would know I was joking.
But there's no joke here. The words hang in the air between us, tangible in the silence. They hurt both of us, so I leave them unsaid.
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| I Hate CSI |
[18 May 2007|01:12am] |
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You know what? I won't lie...I've enjoyed several episodes of CSI. Yearlong deployments can drive a man to extremes...
But I hate CSI for what it's done to 'Mercan culture. How can a show so formulaic have so many concurrent parallel spinoffs? Oh, wait...'Mercan culture...formulaic...I just answered my own question.
I hate it because it's popular.
And also, relatedly, for its completely fantastical influence on our legal system. Do you know how unrealistic it is, with all the brutal crime out there, that law enforcement would actually expend the resources that they do on that show?
This may sound trivial, but it's not. In a recent Central Park rape/murder trial that should have been an open-and-shut case, the defendant was acquitted because the jury knew all about soil samples that weren't taken properly. They learned it on CSI. Okay, I'm paraphrasing from skewed memory, but I read about it from US News and World Report "The CSI Effect". Dig for it if you hate me.
And I fucking hate the characters. The Goth chick? Kill her. Not brutally, because that would justify her pathetic existence. Just erase her from the record. And the older blond chick? Yeah, in the piss-drinking episode, the New Age doctor apparently got under her wrinkled skin with his sales pitch. And I'm supposed to identify with that. Or care. Or something. Just...yeah, kill her too. But brutally this time.
In fact, just detonate real-life WMD's in Miami, Vegas, and New York, if only so that the continued existence of these shows will become so untenable that they will be forced to cancel them. That would be worthwhile. That's how much I hate that stupid vacuous vapid lowest-common-denominator piece of shit show.
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| Starship Troopers |
[16 May 2007|07:54pm] |
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music |
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FNM: "Everything's Ruined" |
] |
Just finished reading Starship Troopers...I don't know why I never picked it up before. I liked the movie quite a bit for its cleverness as a tongue-in-cheek propaganda film, but after reading the book I see the film now as almost a mockery of the values that Heinlein extols, values that often lie very close to my own.
So my question is this: How offensive (if at all) is the idea of a society whose members are free to do nearly everything--save vote, the right to which can only be earned by two years of "Federal Service"?
Service is not necessarily military service but is by philisophic necessity dangerous. In Heinlein's words, the reasoning is this: "...we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life — and lose it, if need be to save the life of the state. The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus equated to the ultimate authority (participation in government) a human can exert." In short, you have to love your home enough to risk death for it.
A sentiment which, incidentally, lies very close to my own.
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