I have some papers to grade, so here are some links in the meantime:

Iraq Now points out the win-win nature of the 12 chemical shells the Poles found.

The sister of one of the pilots killed at the Pentagon crash has some words for the American public regarding the 9/11 commission.

And watch Saddam play a rousing game of Paper Rock Scissors (via Smash).

Posted by: Sarah at 05:11 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I wanted to write something really special for the Fourth of July. I read through lots of my old posts, through old emails home, through papers I wrote when I took that year of ROTC, searching for inspiration. But I just didn’t have anything else to add. I realized that when you live every day as an American – when you are proud of your country and wear your service flag and regimental crest pins every single day – then you don’t need to step it up a notch for 24 hours in July. Independence Day to a diehard patriot is like Valentine’s Day for newlyweds: it’s simply a day where the rest of society notices what you cherish daily.

When I took the Military Science class, the first year of ROTC, we were required to write an autobiography. Most of the students in the class were in their third week of college; I was a senior with a strong background in writing. I had a bit more experience to draw from than the rest of the class. The teacher, our beloved Captain R, told me mine was the best ROTC autobiography he'd ever seen and that he was passing it out to every Soldier he knew. I didn't think it was anything amazing; it was just the truth. I read it again yesterday, and I still feel the same way (though I must resist the urge to revise). Excerpt:

I am one of the oldest students in the MS 100 class, since I find myself rapidly approaching the ripe old age of twenty-two. As a senior in the class, I have been surrounded by people who are just beginning the scholarly journey I started long ago.

The most important part of this journey for me was last year, when I was a student in a French university. I spent an entire year on study abroad, which accounts for my tardy enrollment in Military Science as a senior. This was a pivotal moment in my scholarly life as a French major, because my outlook on the future has been radically changed by this time I spent away from my homeland. I found that France was nice, but it was not home. I felt aimless and rootless. I had a difficult time placing myself in a society into which I did not easily fit. I found myself standing up for my own country and facing people who were hostile to that for which my country stands. I found myself shying from the French thought and becoming more American than I ever imagined I would be.

I had always been a patriotic person. My favorite holiday is Independence Day, and I won the Daughters of the American Revolution award in high school. But once faced with people who did not respect the basic tenets of the country which I held so dear, I found within a great longing for my motherland. I returned from this year in France with a confused sense of what it is I want to become as a French major and a heightened sense of who I am as an American.

And then I began MS 100. Originally, I had just thought that it would be a better option than Health and Wellness. I would learn something to which I had never before been exposed: how the military is arranged and how it runs. I soon found that I enjoyed the class more than I had previously foreseen. On the first day of lab, even without a uniform, I envisioned myself part of something larger than I could fathom. As the cannons blasted and words were read, words of unity, justice, and freedom, I felt so proud. I felt very proud of my country, very proud to call myself an American, and proud to have called myself an américaine in France.

I never imagined that standing there in the group with me on the first day of lab was a young man who would one day be the most important person in my life. I signed up for MS 100 because of the paintball and rappelling; I'm happy to have stayed because of the values the military represents. The closing paragraph of my autobiography is ironic, considering the turn my life took when I met that young man in ROTC.

I had an argument with a foreigner the other day. He comes from a country where military service is mandatory and therefore seen as a burden and a hindrance to young men. Therefore, our opinions on the ROTC program clashed fiercely. What I said, on behalf of my experiences, was that the ROTC is a wonderful program, one that can provide students with a taste for the military, however diluted this taste may be. And through this experience of MS 100, a scholar can decide if he has been called to become a part of this greater collectivity of brave men who devote their lives to the country I cherish so much. I am proud to associate myself with these ideals, even if only for one year.

I believe these things every day of my life; I don't need to act any different today. I'll fly my flag, wear my pins, and be grateful that brave Americans today and yesterday have fought and died for what I cherish. Just like I try to do every other day.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:02 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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I have seen discussions of whether President Bush -- reputation for being a complete idiot -- meant to say "reign" or "ring" in his note. I think he said it exactly right.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:01 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It's the perfect day to watch my favorite commercial again.

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Good lord, what a nightmare.

MORE TO GROK:

Apologies for being vague: the reason I think it's a nightmare is because the US might have to testify on behalf of that monster. Not because I'm hoodwinked.

Posted by: Sarah at 09:45 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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My husband just called and told me about his new job: working with the Iraqi police in Najaf. It sounds like this job is much more rewarding than guard duty, though it can be frustrating for both the Iraqis and the Americans at times. He said a lot of what he's doing is motivation, speaking encouragingly to both Iraqi teens and the police. He said the police chief has really taken to him and they talk often. The police chief is frustrated about the situation in Najaf; he said that civilians sometimes come up to him and hit him with their slippers. He said (not a direct quote), "Back in Saddam's days, if you hit the police with your slipper, your whole family would be dead. But here I am, getting hit with slippers." Sometimes the police chief speaks a little too fondly of the law and order under Hussein, at which point my husband reminds him that Saddam killed many people. "Yeah, I guess he did kill my uncle..." the police chief admits. My husband said that they receive lots of praise from Iraqis in Najaf. The Iraqis are always telling them how brave they are and saying they're happy that the US came. They also say the Americans are good people for trying to avoid hitting their monuments and holy sites. Sometimes the Iraqis get frustrated and beg the Americans to just go in and kill all of the insurgents and get it over with, but my husband patiently explains why they can't do that. My husband said that the people he works with are very supportive, but that they all, Americans and Iraqis, spend a lot of time being frustrated.

I told him it was great to hear these stories because we here can lose sight of how regular Iraqis are feeling. We get so much gloom and doom. I'm glad I got to hear firsthand from him that the Iraqi men he works with are supportive and honorable.

MORE TO GROK:

Good analogy. Incidentally, all of fad's posts that I love are the ones he wants to delete...

Posted by: Sarah at 09:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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One Hand Clapping has a moving entry on the current events in China and the power of one man. I've said it before: would that I had an ounce of his conviction.

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Wow. Yesterday's LGF (2 July) was a doozy. I laughed, I gasped, I ohmygoded. If you didn't see it all, go back. And follow links. And adopt the phrase "the deuce" into your vocabulary.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:24 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Carla's right: this cartoon brings a little smile to my face. So does this story.

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There's nothing that makes me smile quite as big as doing our online banking and seeing Electronic Check Tikrit as a transaction. Good to know he has access to money.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:26 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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As I finished the Band of Brothers series the other day, it was hard not to view the end of WWII through the lens of the war in Iraq. Germans were forced to bury the dead bodies in the concentration camp. Civilians were threatened at gunpoint; some were shot. The soldiers made it to Eagle's Nest and looted Hitler's stuff. There were so many images that I knew we could never get away with today.

Does Dick Winters feel bad about taking Nazi silverware or Lewis Nixon for drinking Hitler's booze? Does Ronald Speirs regret making a souvenir of the Nazi flag? I hope not. Did David Webster feel guilty about taking his anger out on a raving shopkeeper after liberating a concentration camp? He shouldn't have to. Should Easy Company have forced regular German citizens to clean up the concentration camp and bury the emaciated bodies? Perhaps. That's what a war of attrition requires.

Some have written lately that this war won't be won with our accommodating nature. The only way to win a war, they argue, is to kill. Or crush the enemy's spirit. We don't do that today. We drop food rations with bombs, and we apologize for Abu Ghraib while one by one our contractor's heads are being ripped off. We're too damn nice.

The fact is, we Americans do not like staring into the face of evil. It is in our progressive and optimistic nature to believe that human beings are basically good, or at least rational. When we stare into a cave of horrors, whether it is in Somalia, Beirut or Tikrit, we see a tangled morass we don't understand. Our instinct is to get out as quickly as possible.

Amritas has a wonderful post up asking many questions that don't have clean answers: Will we get our investment back? Is it worth it? If the US isn't going to take advantage of their forces in Iraq soon, why bother? Is it really 'noble' for American Soldiers to sacrifice themselves to rebuild and police another nation when they could be doing their real job: defeating the enemy? How do we win the War of Ideas?

I add another: Can the war be won while being nice?

The Germans were done. They surrendered, turned over their weapons, marched dutifully to POW camps, and accepted defeat. The war was over. Iraq is not the same game. There will be no surrender, no dutiful march, no end short of death. I don't think our society (or our media) will let us do what we need to do in order to win. We've won several battles -- al Sadr is done, sovereignty is transfered -- but we have a long way to go to win the War of Ideas, to defeat the fantasy ideology.

I have no more answers than Amritas does. I hope history shows that our blood was worth it, that Iraq, despite her many flaws, can develop into an ally and friend. I don't want to find that we should have just taken the silverware and left.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:10 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Bad guys: 1
Good guys : 0
Thanks, Michael Moore.

MORE TO GROK:

It's interesting that Bubba wrote "I resent that some will be willing to call me 'traitor' when they haven't served one fricking minute, but that is life I suppose" because my students and I were discussing that very idea last night.

We were discussing logical fallacies, and one of the examples of begging the question was "If you haven't written short stories, you shouldn't be criticizing them." I asked my active duty students if they thought that the same idea applied to soldiering was also begging the question.

They started talking about how criticism of the war doesn't really bother them, unless it's mission specific (e.g. you should have done this differently in Fallujah) and the speaker has no military background. They said that general criticism doesn't matter much to them. I then asked about the flipside: chickenhawks. They laughed and said that sometimes it's irritating to hear people be overly hooah when they don't actually have to pick up the rifle and head down there. One student said it's especially annoying to hear Congress do this. Nonetheless, they seemed to agree that this still fell under the begging the question fallacy.

In class, I preface everything I say with the general disclaimer "I've never been in the military, but from my point of view...". I don't want to be seen as one of those irritating hooah people, though I've sorta earned the right seeing as my own husband's life is at stake. And if I could click my heels together and have already been through basic training, I'd go down there in a heartbeat; the problem is the getting there. If I enlisted today, it would be a long road to war, and my schedule would not match up with my husband's. I am perfectly content to have a military family, but a dual-military family includes headaches I'm not sure I want to face. Right now there are too many couples who won't see each other for four years because of alternating deployment rotations, and I don't want to put my family in that position. Thus I remain hooah from the sidelines.

Anyway...begging the question? I don't know. My students seemed to say yes.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:45 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Real Life struck today. I attended a three hour briefing on Pell grants, the head boss visited from Heidelberg, I wrote a quiz for class tonight on the sly while the boss wasn't looking, and now it's time to shovel the food in my mouth and head to class. No time for love, Dr. Jones.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:17 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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