Christmas on COP Copper, from '08 10:09 PM

I wrote this four years ago during my second tour in Iraq. I find it more amusing than embarrassing, so, submitted for your entertainment:

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the COP,
Not a Soldier was stirring, not even Top,
Oh, except for the Ugandans on guard in their towers,
And the Soldiers on the gunline, playing Xbox for hours,
I in my PT's and Smoke in his rack,
Had just settled down for another night in Iraq,
When all of a sudden there arose such a ruckus,
Whatever was wrong, I knew it would probably....
I burst out of my connex to see what was the matter,
When a pile of charred venison landed with a splatter,
"You killed Rudolph, you bastards!" Screamed a corpulent elf,
And I knew right away it was time to get help,
"Smoke!," I cried, "Santa's reindeer just exploded!"
"Oh, great," he said, "the gun wasn't supposed to be loaded,
"When I left they were practicing a dry-fire mission,"
"Oh, crap," I said, "can't wait for the 15-6 on this one!"
It seemed Santa's sleigh and the reindeer he was reigning,
Had just now given my Bravos some direct fire training,
I pulled out my claims card for consequence management,
And Smoke, in a low voice, offered optimistic sentiment,
"If you think about it, sir, it's good in a sense,
"We've done FA and Infantry, and now Air Defense!"
"Smoke, you're not helping," I said, as Santa started to twitch,
I could see he was thinking about where to cram the switch,
"I can't believe you jerks," Santa said in a fury,
"Rudolph was my only night-vision, and I'm in a hurry!"
"Santa," I said, as polite as could be,
"We'll figure this out at our FDC,"
"Please stay calm, and hold the switches and coal,
"I promise we'll find a way to get you out of this hole,"
We rushed to the AFATDS, to see what to do,
Me and Smoke, and Jolly Saint Nick too,
"I've got it," Smoke said, "I know how you can resume!
"Our guns will light your way, with coordinated illum!"
In two minute intervals M485 lit the night,
As Bravo Battery got Santa back in the fight,
"I'll let this one slide," he said, as he climbed on his sleigh,
"Just learn the difference between 'ready' and 'laid.'"
We watched his sleigh soar through the black desert sky,
And finally we breathed a sigh of relief, Smoke and I,
Santa's voice filled the air, over his sleigh bells' rattle,
"Merry Christmas to All, and All Hail the King of Battle!"

Merry Christmas 9:59 PM

As we come to the close of the Advent Season, I realize I have very little profound to say (well, very little relative to my normal output). I know you're all relieved :)

To my brothers and sisters in Christ; Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to ransom captive Israel.

It has been a hard year, not one given to optimism. I lose sleep over many of the problems facing our nation and often they appear insurmountable to me. But our hope rests in Him. We cannot know the hour or the day, and we can, unfortunately, be assured that many troubles lie between, but the end game is written. A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

To my friends and loved ones who believe differently or not at all, I hope the holiday has given you respite and edification. Though you don't share my religious beliefs, do take comfort in the fact that you are where you are, doing the best you can, and that there are millions of good, decent people like you doing the best they can. Civilization will suffer setbacks, even cataclysmic defeats. Odovacer will overthrow Rome, the library at Alexandria will burn, and it will most likely remain illegal to shoot Westborough Baptists (damn it all), but the human race will continue to strive and achieve. The drive to create something better than the barbarism from which we all spring can be frustrated, but it cannot be destroyed.

Keep up the good fight. Whatever difference of opinion you may have with me, religious, political, whatever, we would not be friends if I didn't consider you in some way an ally in the long struggle to ensure civilization triumphs over savagery.


To Kellen, and all my other comrades spending their Christmas on the front lines of a war that most of our countrymen are all too eager to put behind them, God bless you. I get to spend this one with my family, but I'm thinking about you and praying for you. May the Lord protect and defend you.

Merry Christmas to all.

Why I Support Legalizing Homosexual Marriage and Why You Should Too, Pretty Much Regardless of Your Religious Beliefs 5:24 PM

I pissed off my liberal friends last week with my brief rant against gun control, so I figured I’d go ahead and piss of my friends on the other side of the aisle this week with this much longer rant in support of gay marriage!

I thought of this a while ago when DOMA was not yet even under judicial review. I was still digesting the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (which will be the subject of its own rant, shortly), and I realized that if homosexuals were going to serve openly, it would be fair and necessary to recognize their spouses for both moral and administrative purposes. I did my whole walk around in circles and talk to myself for a bit, and today I’ve written the results of my internal dialogue.

So, issues with homosexual marriage.

I’m going to ignore bigotry and any variation of, “it’s icky!” Really, if you’re still arguing from there then no one on either side of the issue should care what you think. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my own visceral reactions at open physical displays of homosexuality. That’s not a moral compass, though, folks, that’s just biology and cultural conditioning talking. My glands tell me that two guys doing sexy things are kinda gross and that two girls doing sexy things are kinda hot (sorry, honey!). I am not displaying sound moral or intellectual judgment by appreciating one over the other; I’m experiencing a primitive hormonal reaction. So let’s just ignore “it feels wrong” arguments.

“Homosexuality is deviant sexual behavior and shouldn’t be encouraged because it’s akin to pedophilia.” Oh, brother. You know what? Forget this one as too close to bigotry. Fellow Christians, the minute you compare consensual homosexuality to child-rape, you just lost the argument in the eyes of any civilized person. Don’t do it. Just. Don’t.

“Allowing homosexual marriage will damage the American ideal of the traditional family unit.” Really? How? “Hey, Michele, I noticed Jim and Steve moved in together and it made me think, ‘why don’t I go try sex with men?’ I’m leaving you and the kids to discover myself! Bye!”

Seriously, I don’t know about you, but no matter how many gay dudes I see in committed relationships, I’m not going to be tempted to abandon my smoking hot wife and wonderful kids for a life of knitting sweaters with Larry in Vermont, even if he looks like Daniel Craig (yes… considerably). Besides, gay people aren’t ruining the family unit- we’re doing that all by ourselves. After all, they can’t reproduce kids by accident and then treat them like inconveniences or a means to get a bigger welfare check. Only we can do that. Well, they could, but not with their preferred… oh, you get what I mean.

That’s two common arguments down. So, how about an argument that can hold water? Is there an argument that speaks to my own beliefs and which I cannot dismiss with pithy sarcasm?

“The Bible (and therefore God) condemns homosexuality.” You see what I did there? I ignored the one-man, one-woman variations and everything because they are too easy to shred given the old notables of Judah and Israel were known to have harems that would make Hugh Hefner jealous (you know, accounting for historical differences in hygiene standards that is).

So, the bible condemns homosexuality.

Yes. It does. Unquestionably, in multiple verses of multiple books of the Torah and in Paul’s Letter to the Romans (maybe a couple other places, others with more experience as biblical scholars can probably find a few more citations), there are clear proscriptions against homosexual conduct, no matter how I try to spin it. You got me.

But, and I say this without sarcasm, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, does that make any damn sense?

I mean, really. This is the scenario you’re purporting: God creates one of his children hormonally swayed so that he will be attracted to the same gender, and then tells him that his (or her, whatever) sexual and romantic feelings for another consenting adult are inherently sinful while ours are one of the foundational elements of His plan for us.

“Oh, no,” you say, “It’s not natural, it’s a choice. They could choose not to be gay.”

Deep breath.

Okay, since we’re on this uncomfortable topic, I’m going to make it even more uncomfortable by using first person while talking about sexuality. You brought this on yourself, invisible straw man who lives inside my computer (and sometimes my head).

I don’t know about you, but when I turned the corner from childhood into adolescence I noticed that the girl sitting across from me in home room was filling out and that it made me into a stammering idiot because the birds and the bees were screwing up my whole universe with all kinds of inappropriate thoughts and daydreams. Oddly, my friends, Joey, Jake and Anthony inspired no such fantasies. No, my pimply faced young companions inspired only camaraderie and competition. It wasn’t as if I looked at them, looked at the girls and DECIDED I was heterosexual. So, you see, I NEVER GOT A VOTE ON WHO I WANTED TO HAVE SEX WITH. I’m just guessing that you didn’t either. And if you didn’t, and I didn’t, what are the odds Liberace or Elton John did, just because they like dudes?

So, I reiterate, some poor schmuck who is born gay but wants to obey God is left either trying to pretend he’s straight when the idea is as physically repulsive to him as his idea of a good time is to me, or simply alone.

HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT!? DOES THAT SOUND LIKE THE GOD WE WORSHIP?!?!

Does that sound like the God who takes any paper thin excuse he can to forgive us and accept us into his Kingdom? Does that sound like the God who sent his only Begotten Son, who became mortal and, took on the guilt of all our sins, who humbled himself to Death when he didn’t have to, all to save us? Does that sound like the God who commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves and pray for our enemies and, and, I mean REALLY? Does it?

Isn’t it, JUST possible that when Jesus fulfilled the Law, freeing us from Kosher restrictions, the absolute necessity of circumcision, etc, that was one more cultural meme that just didn’t apply anymore? And isn’t at least possible that Paul, who is kind of a misogynist amongst other things, let’s face it, inserted some of his own ideas on morality when he was writing down the inspiration God had given him? I mean, this is the dude who said it is better not to marry, but better to marry than burn. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for what most other parts of the bible portray as the fundamental human relationship. Paul was a great man of faith, but he was not Jesus. And Jesus has not a damn thing to say about homosexuality in any of the gospels.

But Paul, you say, did take pains to separate his opinion from divine guidance in many places, so, no. Paul’s strictures against homosexuality are divinely inspired.

And maybe you’re right. I am a Christian, and I don’t get to shake scripture like a magic eight ball to make it give the answer I want, so maybe you’re right and same-sex romance is a sin in the truly eternal and cosmic sense of the word. I don’t like it, I hope it’s not, but I have to admit that is a valid and more legalistically correct interpretation of the scripture than I can offer.

So what?

You heard me, so what? What does our shared religious trepidation with regard to homosexuality have to do with US law? Oh, I’m not questioning your right to believe that two men or two women do not constitute a marriage in the eyes of God, I’m questioning your right to say it doesn’t constitute a marriage in the eyes of the United States. We are a Christian nation only in the sense that Christianity is the predominant religion of the population, not that we are allowed to use our own religious beliefs as basis for legislation, you know who does that? Places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, basically all those Islamic radicals whom I’ve made it a career and an obsession to resist. Yeah, I’ve no interest in being like them.

Yes, most of the Founding Fathers were either Christians or deists with Christian traditions, and they referenced God frequently in their work. They did not, however, use scripture to justify law- the declaration and the constitution, in their mechanics, were inspired by enlightenment thinkers like Locke, Voltaire, Hobbes and Montesquieu, not by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (none of which say anything about being gay, anyway). I’m not saying the faith of the founders didn’t play an important role in their motivations for creating a liberal (classical liberal, not left/right liberal) republic. I’m saying that even those, often very religious, men did not see fit to impose law from scripture on those who might not believe, or even on those who did believe. So why are you trying?

Because you don’t want people to think it’s okay. If gay marriage is legalized, it will be society signaling its acceptance of homosexuality. And if it is a sin, then people shouldn’t think it’s perfectly acceptable.

Ever downloaded something from pirate bay? Ever watched porn, used profanity, overeaten, drank too much, smoked a cigar or cigarette, been angry at God, or put your own desire for financial comfort over his command to be generous with the poor? Yeah? Me too. Guess what, brother? We’re all freaking serial sinners. You can recognize it and reproof it, but if you don’t legislate against me for my frequent use of the F word and tendency to overindulge in both chocolate and scotch (keeping in mind that I am a follower of Jesus Christ and I AM supposed to know better), why in God’s name would you allow yourselves to oppress some poor sap because he likes dudes?

Seriously, if we’re going to get all self-righteous, let’s go after human traffickers, or the terrorists, or, for Christ’s sake, somebody who is actually hurting another human being. Because THAT we have authority over here on Earth. This kind of sin? That’s between a person and God.

If you liked this piece, please tune in next week so I can piss you off by telling you how gender integration in the military is a big failure (and it’s all the Left’s fault) and the unilateral unphased repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a giant, criminal blunder (and it’s all the Left’s fault).

Citizenship, Responsibility and the Peace Corps 11:58 PM

This post comes from a few different places. First is my long held belief that the right to vote and run for office shouldn't be a matter of birth or even passing some citizenship test (which, apparently, a lot of birth citizens can't pass anyway), but actually require some meaningful display of civic awareness. This variation of representative democracy was portrayed, perhaps most famously, by Robert A. Heinlein in the novel Starship Troopers. First one to mention Paul Verehooven's godawful film adaptation with anything other than scorn gets blocked both from this blog and my FB feed. That movie is an abomination and that bastard will never get another dime of my money.

Another military science fiction author, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Tom Kratman, has recently taken the service-for-citizenship idea and expanded greatly upon it. While Heinlein did a good job laying out the skeleton of the idea and explaining the philosophical justifications for it in Starship Troopers, Kratman has, in his “Carrera” novels, fleshed it out and looked at a lot of the finer points. Some of which I'll get into later.

The third place is a recent conversation I had with some friends at church who have worked in Africa doing humanitarian missions with the Peace Corps. For not the first time it occurred to me, where the hell was the Peace Corps when were rebuilding Iraq? I'm not criticizing the people IN the peace corps, I'm wondering why the hell the federal government didn't deploy an obvious asset to an environment that seemed to exactly fit their mission profile? I have no idea what the PC's numbers or assets actually are, but I do know they exist to help less fortunate countries rebuild infrastructure, agriculture, medical and educational facilities, etc, etc etc,

So why the hell was I, Lieutenant Watson, United States Army, assessing sewage systems and elementary schools instead of focusing on hunting and killing insurgents when we have an entire federal organization that is supposed to do all that “soft power” stuff?

I'll come back to that question in a moment.

Going back to the idea of service for suffrage; I've received some outrage (oddly, never from those who have served) at the idea. The most common (and valid) argument is that all the governed should have a say in what their government is doing on their behalf. At face value, that is a most reasonable stance. I mean, you are going to suffer the consequences of your elected officials' decisions, why should you submit to their rule when you didn't vote them into office? Universal suffrage is the only just system.

Well, there's just one problem- it doesn't seem to be working so well anymore.

Our system has proven itself vulnerable to “bread and circuses” mob psychology at its worst on one hand and manipulation by crony capitalists on the other hand. Voting is free, given to you just for being born here and thus many people treat it as being worth what they paid for it. Which is to say- nothing. Few are informed on the issues, and those who are face choosing between two professional politicians running along dogmatic lines rather than trying to do what's legitimately best for the country. Run for office ourselves, you say? Perhaps, but in order to avoid becoming part of the orthodoxy you're going to have to crap a fortune to compete with the existing political machines, and even then the Ross Perots of the world have met with little success, whether that's a good or a bad thing is debatable.

I posit, from the state of our economy and the tone of politics, that giving people the vote for free has failed. The result has been the creation of a class of political and corporate oligarchs, not Jefferson's merit-based “natural aristocracy,” but a society run by manipulators of currency and opinion, rather than by statesmen.

Furthermore, while it's true that all are affected by the decisions of the nation's leaders, not all are affected equally. By casting your votes you, the Great American Public, will decide who has the authority to order me to war, and, just as importantly, which legislators will decide my budget and resources to train and equip in between wars. And yet you will certainly not bear the blood price if you choose wrongly. Think on this, for the last twenty years, no Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces has had legit military service. In this election, neither presidential candidate had served. That means that Somalia, the operations in the Balkans, Second Iraq and Afghanistan were all ordered and administrated by men who were unwilling to risk their own lives when they were my age. But they were sure as hell willing to expend me and my comrades like pieces of ordinance. I learned at my daddy's knee that a leader's moral authority springs from never telling a subordinate to do something you'd be unwilling to do yourself. So... where's the moral authority?

Before one of my friends from my side of the aisle points out Bush Jr.'s service in the Air National Guard, just don't. Okay. Don't. He served from 1968 to 1974 and magically never went to 'Nam? Yeah, I'm sure that was a coincidence.

So what to do? Universal compulsory service? Require everyone to serve and thus earn their full citizenship whether they like it or not?

Two problems. One- you can't force civic virtue. You just can't. I can't make you love this country as much as I do, no matter how hard I try. I never believed in that False Motivation crap for small things, much less something as esoteric as Patriotism. Two- we don't need everybody in uniform, and what do we do with those who either by lack of will or natural aptitude would be disasters in uniform? We don't have enough clerical and admin tasks to take them all.

Germany and other European states do require universal compulsory service, but you have to read the fine print- if a young man or woman is a conscientious objector, or just doesn't care enough about their country to put up with the hardships of the service, he or she can spend their term changing bed pans in a nursing home, or something equally innocuous. How does this make one value their vote more and thus exercise it more carefully?

Which brings me back to the Heinlein model. No compulsion to serve, and no penalties for refusing to serve, save that you don't get to vote in federal elections or run for federal office. Voting is exercising rulership of your country- those who would rule must serve. Authority must equal responsibility, else we are doomed.

There still remain a few problems. Kratman addresses one, both in his novels and in conversations I've had with him. Some of us join and stay in the Army not necessarily out of patriotism, but because we like it. Oh, patriotism generally runs high in servicemen and women, but it not necessary to be a patriot to be a good soldier. Additionally, I fully acknowledge that people like me often have a very specialized field of knowledge. Oh, I'm pretty well educated, but I'd be a disaster as a President because my knowledge of economics and some other key subjects is strictly beer-and-peanuts level.

So I don't get to vote, and I definitely don't get to hold office, while I'm serving actively. Think about it, if we're going to admit that we need a system where citizens are self-selected rather than just given the franchise willy nilly, it's not the Justin Watsons of the world that need to make up the bulk of the body politic. I'm a lifer. I freaking love the Army and I'm obsessed with warfare. I'd be launching cruise missiles at every country whose ambassador looked at me funny! Not to mention what I'd be doing to insurgents and terrorists. I wrote a law of war essay on that very topic which got me 20 hours on the area (West Point punishment, if not familiar and curious ask me in the comments).

No, the body politic shouldn't be comprised primarily of Spartans, but of men and women who did a term or two, not primarily because the work appeals to them, but because it's the right thing to do. And who, hopefully, learned to place the goals of a group ahead of their own, learned to care more about their comrades' well being and their mission more than their own comfort and safety. We cannot ensure this for every veteran, but future citizens are more likely to learn it in the Army than working at Mickey D's.

So what about once we've taken every potential citizen volunteer with the aptitude and will to fight? Just because you're not a warrior doesn't mean you should be cut out of the political process. Even I know that.

Now we come back to the Peace Corps.

I asserted earlier that simple forced drudgery by itself is not enough to inspire good citizenship out of folks. To value something, they must feel that they've earned it and I don't believe playing post office does that. Hardship, danger, hopefully at least a touch of adventure- these are the things which make experiences all the more valuable to a young person. To those who cannot or will not fight in the defense of the republic to earn their citizenship, the peace corps, beefed up and refocused on US foreign policy priorities, provides a way to serve and to experience the big three I mentioned above without pulling a trigger. By doing the work that the Army has been forced to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, they not only free up our combat forces for their main purpose, they will be ginning a generation of young men and women who have seen the rest of the world and thus appreciate what we have here, who have experienced other cultures and thus may be able to relate better to those who come from different back grounds, and, most importantly, have subsumed their own desire for comfort and safety to go out into the world in service to their nation and, yes, to humanity.

I'm well aware that getting such a system enacted would take a miracle. The proles want their entitlements, the CEOs want to be able to continue buying legislators wholesale, so even if I could get some popular support for this notion, both sides of the main stream media would destroy it before you could say boo. But we better think of something, because we've got more than just a fiscal cliff to worry about. We have millions of Americans in love with rights and derisive of responsibilities- this is not good.

It has been one hell of a month.  I’ve been back from our NTC rotation for about ten days now and I’m settling back into routines at home and work.  I intend to write, both privately and professionally, about my experience at Fort Irwin, but I’m still collecting my thoughts on that whole mess, so I’ll summarize by saying; 1 day of fun 28 days of absolute, mind numbing idiocy.  I love my command, I love the field, but I hate NTC with the fire of a thousand burning suns.

But enough of the negative waves, man.  I’ve been having a blast settling back in with Michele and our girls.  Thanksgiving weekend was a much-needed and appreciated break, though it went by in a blur. I seem to remember it was mostly fun.  Since my friend, Eric wasn’t going home for Turkey Day and his girlfriend is currently holding down a post deep inside enemy territory (somewhere in the vicinity of Boston, People’s Republic of Massachusetts, exact location classified), we had him over for dinner with us.  We are such nerds that after the obligatory stuffing of the faces (Michele did a fantastic job with the chow this year, don’t worry all you 21st Century enlightened types, I did help, but Michele was the mastermind) we (the three adults) played Settlers of Catan, talked about religion, politics and movies and (after the kids went to bed) watched BSG: Blood and Chrome and Caprica.  Have I mentioned lately that the new Galactica universe is, in my not so humble opinion, some of the best science fiction ever filmed?  Well, it is.  I mean, okay, they botched the series finale of BSG pretty badly, but the first two seasons were sheer genius and the third and fourth seasons had moments that eclipsed even the awesomeness of the first two seasons, though they also had doldrums to rival the made-for-TV Babylon 5 movie Legend of the Rangers.

Anyway, even though it’s a little late, I figured I’d publish the top ten things I’m grateful for with a self-indulgent explanation for each.  Attend:

1)      God and all His Works.  Okay, I know this post is technically over since this bullet can cover everything that follows, but it is the first and foremost thing for which I’m grateful.  As painful, sometimes horrific, as existence is; I’m grateful for it.  I’m grateful to experience and think and feel my way through life in this limited, carbon-based bipedal body.  Thanks, God.


2)      Michele.  I could write about my wife every minute until my dying breath and it wouldn’t capture how deeply I love her or how much I’ve come to rely on her.  She’s put up with every quirk and neuroses in my considerable repertoire, changed the bandages on my wounds (this is not a euphemism, my wife has literally changed bandages on wounds I sustained in combat) and borne two wonderful children to us (without a drop of anesthesia)- and that’s the three second highlight reel.  Beneath the self-deprecating attitude, the manic perfectionism and the meticulous decency with which my wife goes through life is a soul forged of high-carbon steel.  She would have made a fine Roman matron or Spartan queen.  I’ve admired few people the way I admire my wife, quite aside from the fact that she owns my affections.  We have our challenges, like any marriage, but in seven years I’ve never for an instant regretted asking Michele to marry me.  Convincing Michele Glosup to become Michele Watson was the smartest thing I’ve done in my entire life.


3)      Evelyn and Maeve.  Along with Michele, our children make up my whole world.  Being a parent is the hardest, scariest, most stressful job in the world.  Appropriately, it is also the most rewarding.  Every day I’m here, well almost every day, I get to see two amazing little people growing and learning, seeing fully formed personalities develop from habits and quirks, and having them look to us to arbitrate their whole worlds.  It’s humbling and wonderful to have to explain the most awkward questions to your four year old daughter- and enlightening!  Your children will ask you questions you haven’t figured out yet as soon as they can talk.  Having kids is (or should be) more impetus to be a better person so that when they’re old enough to realize you’re another human being the same as them, your life is still one they can admire, your memory a legacy worth keeping.


4)      Mom and Dad.  Last sentence of bullet #3?  Totally my parents.  They busted their asses raising my brother and me, and were each admirable as individuals despite having their fair share of flaws.  Those are quite literally gifts that keep on giving, because I see so many people in this world, from angry teenagers to disenchanted middle aged officers and NCOs, hurting deeply for lack of them.


5)      Being Born a Middle Class American in the Late 20th Century.  Look, we’re going through a rough patch (though I think our grandparents might laugh at that claim), but the fact is being a middle class American in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is hitting the freaking jackpot.  We enjoy liberty, security and, yes, comforts and luxuries that only the very uppermost echelons of the socioeconomic stratosphere would’ve known in centuries past.  I live in constant fear that we are sacrificing the first two for the sake of the second two, but that’s a subject for another post.


6)      The United States Army.  I’ve said before that it’s lucky that I have a country I can serve in good conscience, because I might be a soldier regardless.  I bitch, a LOT, about the bad aspects of the Army.  In part that’s because I’m like anyone else and I’m not immune to feeling sorry for myself.  In larger part, it’s because I am constantly and genuinely incensed when the realistic necessities of forging an effective combat unit are eschewed in favor of some politically correct nonsense being pushed on us by the powers that be- often flying under the false flag of “taking care of the Soldier.”  I can’t even mention an example here because it will derail the post into a rant, but what I’m getting at is:  A lot more of my stress comes from my professional life than my personal one.  Yet being an officer in the United States Army is still at the core of my identity.   

There is straight-up magic in being a part of a good unit.  It is perpetually hard to describe the experience, just as it is hard to describe anything based on the spiritual-emotional aspects of life. 

There are men to whom I owe my life.  Even amongst those I didn’t like all that much, and who weren’t overly fond of me, it was and is understood that we would risk our lives to protect each other and accomplish our mission.  There are exceptions.  We have a few cowards and far too many fools in uniform, but even in this dark age of namby-pamby idiocy, they are still the minority.  There are still thousands of damn fine men and women out here fighting for a country that pays lip service to them on July 4th and November 11th and would rather forget that there’s a war on the rest of the time.    


7)      Friends, Comrades and Mentors.  The protagonist of my favorite book says in the second to last chapter of the novel, “my luck has always been people.”  To name a few, not to the disparagement of those unnamed; my big brother James, Jason Taylor and Wayne Hall, who literally saved my life on a really bad day in Iraq, LTC Latham, who took me under his wing from the inauspicious beginnings of a remedial English class (long story), Stacy, who is the closest thing I have to a big sister, Jake and Joe, who have been like brothers to me since the sixth grade, Tucker, who lived with me for two years and still managed to be one of my best friends, a feat matched by only one other person so far (and she volunteered for the job, he didn’t!), Eric, who is one of the most committed fighters I know in the long struggle we wage between civilization and barbarism,  Kellen and Julia who are the best friends Michele and I could ever ask for, Sam, Bethany and (again) Stacy, for reminding me that however insoluble our political differences seem, there are good people and patriots on both sides of the aisle.  Finally, but by no means least; Douglass Dicenzo, Robert Blair, Christopher Swanson, Jeffery Loa, Carl Eason, Derek Hines, and James Puckett.  We will never forget.  


8)      Books.  Author Jo Walton (whom, I’ve admittedly not read yet) said in an interview, “if you love books enough, they will love you back.”  Stories have power, in my case, the power to maintain, arguably, to restore sanity.  Fiction, like acting, isn’t about telling a convincing lie, it’s about using an art form to entertain and to tell something true, if not factual.  Before I believed in God, my father read to me from Heinlein and I knew how a man should act.  When I was turning the corner into puberty I read Herbert’s Dune books- I memorized the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear (it’s still useful) and I learned from Duke Leto that the only coin which can buy loyalty is loyalty.  More recently, I read as JK Rowling proclaimed to the children of the world in the seven bestselling novels EVER that dying a hero is better than living as a coward (and what’s your message, Stephanie Meyer? Oh, yeah, you want your shiny vampire boyfriend, you make me sick).  I read Tom Kratman’s barely disguised and scathing critique of our political and military institutions and felt kinship born of frustrated devotion to duty.  

I’ve long since lost count of the number of Truths I learned from books and have since verified in real life.  If you don’t read, I recommend you take it up, there’s no limits to what you can experience and learn with literacy and an imagination.  


9)      Art and Science in General.  The fruits of humanity’s hearts and minds may be like crayon scribbles when you compare them to the raw majesty and terror of the universe itself, but look at how far we’ve come!  From little more than exceptionally clever primates 12,000 years ago (any time before the invention of the written word is a dark age to me, see above) to a space faring civilization today.  Do you know how short a period of time that is?  Earth herself is about four billion (that’s 4,000,000,000) years old and the universe several billion years older than that.  Imagine what we will accomplish if we don’t kill ourselves and a meteor doesn’t paste us before we can get all of our eggs out of this basket.  We are all the inheritors of Socrates and Leonidas, Leonardo and Locke, Christ and Buddha.  We are heirs to millennia of creativity struggling against the dark tide of barbarism that always threatens to drag us under.  


10)   Beer.  Come on, you saw this one coming.  Chimay, Duvel, Franzikaner, Paulaner, Blue Moon, Shock Top, Yuengling, Sam Adams, Modello Negro, Dos Equis and Killian’s Irish Red- I love it all!.  As a great man once said, “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

WADD/Straw Poll 10:43 PM

Best intentions to the contrary, I've had a hell of a time getting any writing done. It's easy to blame it all on being a battery commander. The new job is, admittedly, not conducive to writing... or sleeping... or doing anything other than BEING a battery commander. (Sidebar: this is not a complaint, I freaking love being a commander, and I have an excellent collection of men, NCOs, and officers under my command, this is unquestionably the peak of my career). That's not all, or even most of it, though.

While I don't think I've ever struggled with writer's block, I have an affliction that impairs my output nonetheless. I have Writer's Attention Deficit Disorder. Seriously, I don't think there's been a time since I was fourteen years old (I'm three months away from thirty now) that I haven't had at least three ideas for novels, hell, for full on epic sagas, running around in my head. To date, I've completed precisely zero first drafts. I usually get somewhere between ten and twenty thousand words into a story and then- I go to the field, or I go to Iraq or Afghanistan, or I watch Lord of the Rings and decide I should be writing an epic fantasy instead of a alternate history, or watch Battlestar Galactica and decide that military science fiction is my first love and I should be writing about powered armor and spaceships not magic. Oh, I'm also in the Army, so, yeah, write whatcha know and all that. Then, for good measure, I'll read The Cat Who Walked Through Walls and decide I want to do some multi-verse hopping brain trip through the World-as-Myth.  I can't stay on one project to save my life and once I come back to an old one, I usually discover I hate everything I've written and need to start over from scratch.

This is all the more frustrating since I've probably got several hundred thousand more words to go before I can start reliably producing solid prose. I'm not sure if all the false starts count or if the word count only locks in once you've got a full manuscript.

For grins I've decided to throw up synopses of all the crap running around my head and see what ya'll think. What follows is a working title and brief description of each story idea I have pounding on the inside of my skull, what I'd like from anyone caring to comment is which ones you might be persuaded to pay money to read and which ones leave you cold from get go. If anyone wants to take the time to rank order with commentary, I'd offer my sincere gratitude and throw in an autograph on the first novel I get published some day (caveat: don't hold your breath, it may be awhile). I'm not promising to order my schedule by the results of the poll, but you'll still be helping me out by assuaging my curiosity.

Here goes:

#1: The Reliquary Wars (Science Fiction): Several thousand years into the future, a colony world that has long lost contact with Earth and degenerated into a pre industrial state of existence is climbing its way back towards modernity. Perhaps the most important resource on the world is the knowledge found amongst the ruins of the original colony settlements which were founded with the full advantage of advanced technology. With nation-states now having worked their way back up to the computer age, the books, databases and artifacts found in the ancient ruins confer large advantages to the parties that can find them first. The use of these “cheats” has advanced technology far faster in relation to the social and political institutions of the various civilizations of the new world than what occurred in our own history. As a result, nations still practicing feudalism are equipped with technology roughly equivalent to our own. Monarchs, feudal lords, shamans and chieftains face the daily question of how to maintain control of their subjects while simultaneously creating effective work and military forces in an environment which requires a large number of skilled workers, researchers and soldiers rather than ignorant agrarian surfs, superstitious mobs and spear fodder. Into this world walks Nathan Day, scion of the middle class which has sprung into existence relatively overnight. Conscripted into a war over a newly discovered ruin, Nathan's service will propel him to the royal court of the world's most powerful Empire where he will be instrumental not only in winning battles and campaigns but in shepherding his society and the world through the technological and social changes that threaten to tear it apart.

#2: Lords of Contagion (SciFi, Zombie Apocalypse, Post-Post Apocalyptic): The brilliant and sociopathic Dr. George Rome uses RNA resequencing to create the rage virus long envisioned by authors of many zombie apocalypse stories. Only the brilliant efforts of nano biologist Erica Hernandez allows the survival of the human race. She creates nanite antibodies which are infectious, just as the virus itself is. Unfortunately, Rome's virus mutates at an accelerated rate, requiring the remaining human population to conduct periodic anti-virus updates to ensure they don't fall prey to newer versions of the rage virus. Fast forward three generations, those organizations capable of reproducing Hernandez's anti-viral nanites have evolved into the real powers of the world. The human population, now at less than one hundred million world wide, has stabilized and even started to rebound, but the savages afflicted by Rome's Virus are showing disturbing signs of intelligence, applying tactics where before they had been mindless ravenous beasts, and, even more disturbingly, evidently gaining the ability to reproduce sexually (don't think too hard about it in a graphic sense) rather than solely through infection. As if this were not bad enough, the factions dividing the American continent; the Washington Remnant, the Mormon Free State, the San Joaquin People's Republic and the Great Lakes Confederation have allowed their relative success at beating back the zombie hordes to foster complacency and even rivalry amongst themselves. The situations is now a powder keg, with the remaining human population eyeing each other suspiciously and ignoring the obvious warning signs from the afflicted. A few clear thinking individuals work to preserve the human race regardless of factional lines, but the polities controlling the antivirals have established the tightest control on their citizenries since the fall of the Soviet Union, and they have no intention of relinquishing that control, even in the face of possible extinction.

#3: System Patrol (Science Fiction, Young Adult): One hundred years into the future, governments and corporations have finally begun to fully exploit the resources of the solar system in the form of asteroid mining, solar relay stations and extensive zero-gee manufacturing, agriculture and research. Shortly following the creation of wealth come those who wish to take it by force rather than develop it honestly. The first space war ends in 2115 with ad hoc forces facing one another in orbit around Mars, mineral rich asteroids and Earth itself. Countries scramble to create viable space forces to protect their offworld interests. Twenty years after the end of the first war, the space powers have managed to avoid the outbreak of another general war, but corporate and covert privateering is commonplace, as is Cold War style brinksmanship between the great powers. We join the class of 2139 of the Western Coalition Space Academy as they come of age personally and come to understand the ambiguities of the solar system in which they will serve. I'll admit this one is heavily inspired by Heinlein's Space Cadet, but with less of a globalist view of the universe. I'm a nationalist who is extremely skeptical of the value of the United Nations. I can believe in strong alliances of countries with aligned interests and values but I do not consider a one-world (or one solar system) government desirable, nor achievable short of massive and multiple genocides.

#4: The Throne of Albion (Fantasy, Alternate Universe): It is the early 19^th century, by subversion or conquest, the whole of Europa has has fallen under the sway of the Marquin dynasty. Only Albion, a land in which industrial advancement and sorcerous knowledge are both at their peak, has successfully resisted the conquest of the Marquins, but the noose is tightening. In an attempt to maintain a modicum of independence while assuaging the Marquins, King Alfred II of Albion agrees to marry Alecta, a powerful sorceress in her own right and youngest daughter of the Marquins. For some years his strategy works, but eventually his bride of convenience sows insurrection and discord amongst his kingdom and finally kills him. Now the King's illegitimate daughter Miriam finds herself on the run with only an apprentice wizard and a smith's son to guard her. To find aid for the loyalist forces of Albion, she must cross the channel to Eire and treat with the querulous Gael tribes and Fae courts that have long eschewed contact with the rapidly industrializing world of man, then return to Albion to oust the assassin queen from the throne.

I have a couple more, but these are the ones that keep me awake at night right now. All opinions are welcome, though I understand if science fiction and fantasy are not your cup of tea, none of these may sound appealing to you.  

Warehouse 13; Sci Fi's B- 6:45 PM

Between the cancellation of Caprica, the addition of WWF (seriously, wrestling?  On the Science Fiction channel?  WTF?) to their lineup and the changing of the channel’s name to Scy Fy (WTF does that even stand for?), I had just about completely written off the Sci Fi channel as a noble but failed experiment.  Then my father-in-law and brother-in-law had to go and show me Warehouse 13.

Now, at first I was extraordinarily skeptical as we tried to jump in at the end of season two- not a good place to begin.  None of the show’s strengths were showcased and many of its shortcomings were at the fore.

During our last stay in Houston there was considerable dead time to fill and Michele’s brother and father convinced us to give the show another try with predictable results.  It sucked us in.  For those not familiar, the premise of Warehouse 13 is that certain brilliant individuals or particularly dramatic events in history imbued inanimate objects with supernatural qualities, some good, some bad.  Our protagonists are Agents of the Warehouse, the organization that finds and secures these artifacts so as to avoid letting them harm innocents out in the world.  The idea is neat enough and some of the historical references give you that warm and fuzzy I’m-so-smart feeling when you figure out what the magical artifact is right before they reveal it on the show.  Add to that some reasonably likable characters; the pudgy, brilliant and oft-be bothered Arthur Nielson, mentor of the younger heroes, the neophyte cyber-nerd-cum-secret-agent Claudia Donovan, and the also-brilliant, responsible, earnest but vulenrable Secret Service Agent Myke (pronounced Micah) Bering and you’ve got a fairly entertaining yarn.

There are flaws… ohhhhh, are there flaws.  First of all, Secret Service Agent Peter Lattimer, the male lead, gets only so much mileage with his, “look I’m such an immature slob, but I go with my gut and that’s supposed to make up for the fact that I can’t go five minutes without making a funny face or over-selling my slapstick to the point that it sucks all the oxygen out of a scene,” character.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s entertaining about 40% of the time, but he eventually just starts grinding my nerves into dust.  Also, they expressly set his background as a Marine, and imply through his choice of athletic wear that he went to Dartmouth.  I’m calling BS on both counts as he displays no martial skill throughout the course of the first three seasons, nor does he display intellect that could be described as anything other than pedestrian.

Despite all of this, Pete is good for a gag and the writers (notably, Jane Espenson of BSG and Buffy fame) know how to play for laughs.  So, after you drink enough of the Warehouse kool-aid, it’s not that hard to forgive Pete for being an idiot in hero’s clothing.  The REAL burr under my saddle about this show is the way they handle the action. 

Look, I know TV shows and movies in the past just accepted as axiom that villains would monologue and pass up on opportunities to kill the hero(s) and that the heroes would return the favor until the dramatic climax of the show.  You know what?  Too many people have bucked that trope and it DOES. NOT. WORK. ANYMORE.  Not that heroes and villains can’t make mistakes, but when an obvious solution is staring the heroes (or villains) right in the face and authorial fiat insists they remain retarded- that’s EFFING ANNOYING.  So often our intrepid heroes end up in the dramatic pointing their-gun-and-exchanging-dialogue scene with the villain of the week when the easiest thing in the world would be to stun the bastard (yeah, they’ve got ray guns with a reliable stun setting, they don’t even need to cap people most of the time) tie him up AND then question him.  Does this ever occur to them?  Nope, they point the gun indecisively at the bad guy until the baddie finds a way to smack the ray gun (called a Tesla, yes, after him) out of their hand and engage in a dramatic martial arts fight, or use an artifact to make a daring escape or, worse, somehow take control of one of the heroes.  It’s MADDENING.  It snaps my suspension of disbelief when, week after week, the heroes do stupid shit that anyone with an ounce of common sense, much less combat trained former-marine-former-secret-service-super-duper-secret-WH13 agents, wouldn’t do.  Once or twice in a show is easy to get over, repeatedly and reliably at the end of every dramatic arc?  Oh, no, that’s not a venial sin, that’s a mortal one.  I actually got so mad at the season 3 finale I chucked the remote across the room.

Even given the sloppy resolution of the show’s action, it’s still a fun show with characters you can care about.  And it does fall squarely in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy vein, so good on the network for actually airing it.  It’s also fun to see a parade of guest appearances from veteran actors of great science fiction shows like Star Trek: Voyager, Battlestar Galactica (keep your eyes peeled for Caprica Six and Colonel Tigh), and Firefly (awww, Kaylee and the Doctor, finally together).   I recommend it for any fan of the genre.  It most certainly does not reach the level of greatness of BSG ’03, which I recommend without qualification to anyone of taste regardless of genre preferences, but it is a good way to kill 45 minutes for all of us nerds.

Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole 6:55 PM

I was very excited when I started seeing the buzz for Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops: Control Point.  As a soldier with aspirations of writing genre fiction, I’m always happy to see a veteran succeed in getting people to pay for scribbles on dead tree.  As a show of solidarity, I actually paid full price at a Barnes & Noble rather than downloading a kindle version or waiting for used copies to show up on Amazon.  The premise was exciting; modern military hardware plus MAGIC equals CHAOS- in a good way.  Moreover, I was excited to read in his “Big Idea” spot on John Scalzi’s blog that Cole was focused on depicting not just the action of the military, but the bureaucratic reality which leads, frequently, to absurdity.  Like many Science Fiction and Fantasy readers, I always enjoy the merging of the fantastic and the realistic.  So it was with great enthusiasm I dove into the book.

***Minor Spoliers May Follow***

Control Point definitely delivers on all the aforementioned anticipation.   The book delivers a complex, unique universe that melds the thrill of combat, the moral complexities of asymmetrical war and unconventional security threats (in this case, individuals with the ability to lay waste on an epic scale with no weapon other than their own minds), and the inane contradictions and asinine drudgery of the military lifestyle.  The magic, despite being based primarily on elemental bending with the addition of dimensional gating (reference the Marvel Comics X-Men character Blink for an idea of what that entails) and a few other talents, was exciting and fun.   The combination of magic with MAC (Modern Army Combatives) makes for a very cool visual, but does make the system more closely resemble “bending” as depicted in the Avatar cartoons.   Regardless, the magic system is logical and well-designed in that it allows for superhuman feats without making the characters into untouchable demi-gods.  A bullet still puts a wizard down.

Unfortunately, as many reviewers have already noted, the book does suffer from one very serious flaw.  The protagonist, Army Aviator First Lieutenant Oscar Britton, is a wishy-washy child who seems, at least by his actions, more interested in his own survival and freedom than in any concept of the greater good.  This would be workable if Britton were being presented as an anti-hero, but this doesn’t appear to be the case.  From his lengthy mental moralizing about how awful the US government is to deprive magicians in general of their rights and how brutal they are with, “probes,” that is those who manifest ability in a prohibited school- anything other than elemental bending or healing- Oscar is supposed to be a conscientious everyman hero. 

From the get-go we are exposed to the “system” by its representative, the arrogant and overbearing aeromancer (airbender) who goes by the call-sign Harlequin.  Harlequin is, in many ways, another permutation of the overbearing “fed” overriding and bullying the noble and competent hero from a lower echelon of the security apparatus (Oscar).   In the opening chapters of the book we are treated to a battle between Oscar’s aviation unit and Harlequin’s SOC (Supernatural Operations Corps) team on one side and two “selfers,” magicians who have refused to be drafted into the SOC or be confined.  By the time the good guys are on the scene, the selfers have killed a bunch of high school teachers and students.  We are then treated, mid battle, to Oscar agonizing and refusing to put down the more dangerous of the two because she’s a teenage girl.  Look, I get it, no one wants that on their conscious and yes, shooting a fifteen year old girl is different than drilling a military-age-male a new butthole where his forehead used to be, but she’s a superpowered murderer- able to kill you and who knows how many other people at this point.  Your job description as a military officer does not include the divine right to feel good about yourself and the things you have to do.  It does include choosing the least painful of terrible options.  I've little patience for people who flinch because something makes them feel icky. Do.  Your.  Effing.  Job.

Which is exactly what Harlequin does.  Oscar freaks out when Harlequin appears to kill the girl selfer (in actuality she’s put into a super-secret black ops group for probes, but we'll get to that later).  With that brutal example in mind, Oscar runs when he manifests his gating ability.  This decision is justifiable, given what he's just seen.  The book then treats us to some exciting chase sequences as Oscar accidentally summons magical beasts and murders two men in his attempts to escape Harlequin’s pursuit, all the while griping in his head about how unfair the system is.

Ironically, Oscar’s moral objections to the system are fairly well-justified when examined rationally.  In this universe Americans who manifest an authorized magical ability immediately get the choice to go-to-war-or-go-to-National Institute of Health Monitoring Facility.  Those who manifest an unauthorized ability disappear, ostensibly killed, but more often recruited into a black ops unit called Shadow Coven to do the impossible and deniable for Uncle Sam.  It’s a completely unjust system and the protagonist is correct to find it objectionable. 

The only problem is that when you look at the actual results, Harlequin, champion of the status quo and the nasty fascist overseers, actually does a hell of a lot more good than Oscar. He also seems a hell of a lot more concerned with duty, and the good of the nation than our oh-so-righteous hero.  When Oscar goes rogue after manifesting his gating ability, he ends up killing two people- yet is too busy worrying about his own situation and the horrible, unjust evil system that Harlequin props up to feel much guilt about it.  And it IS!  It really is an unjust evil system that doesn’t even give a nod to our long-held national value of individual liberty- but by the time Oscar is captured, he’s acted like such a selfish douche that he makes Harlequin look like a noble and responsible officer and, by his own actions, provided ample justification for the oppressive methods the government uses to regulate magic.

After being captured and having a bomb implanted in his heart, Oscar is coerced into the secret, publicly disavowed Shadow Coven as a contractor.  He is immediately transported via dimensional gate to a world known as "Source."  Source is populated by diminutive and often hostile creatures dubbed goblins and many other magical creatures.      

The action Oscar experiences with the SOC is plenty satisfying; raids on Apache insurgents, fighting a powerful and nasty Russian selfer in the sewers of NYC, fights with goblins on the alternate world of the source.  Unfortunately we are treated to more of Oscar’s self-centered moralizing and, as a new treat, a large dose of wishy-washy flip-flopping as Oscar begins to see the value of the SOC and enjoy his role within it, only to start agonizing again because those SOC guys are so darn mean.

Along the way we get a mixed bag of supporting characters, a de jure love interest healer, the teenage girl we thought dead from the beginning of the book ends up on Oscar’s badass Black Ops “Shadow Coven,”  alongside a nerdy necromancer, a vanilla terramancer (earth bender) who can control animals and a psychotic team leader nicknamed “Fitzy.”  Fitzy reminds us that the SOC is still baaddd no matter how many lives they save or how much it looks like de-regulating magic would be a total disaster.  His poor treatment of a friendly goblin is apparently justification enough for high treason.

I get where Mr. Cole is coming from, especially as a military officer.  No one wearing the uniform wants to look like the German Wermacht officer at Nurnberg saying, “I was just following orders.”  Questioning the wisdom and morality of our national policy is the duty of every citizen, military officers not excluded and perhaps especially emphasized (though we are, rightly, required to be more circumspect with our opinions in public forum).  But Oscar is not, at this point, a strong enough character to make rebellion seem like a viable option.  If the choice is between the unjust system that, however flawed, still works or following a moral midget like Oscar Britton, the unjust system may be the better choice.  Myke Cole makes Uncle Sam look pretty bad at points, but the folks with the stars and stripe on their shoulder still aren't the SS and given that, Oscar looks less like a principled champion of the downtrodden and more like a selfish jerk who gets a lot of people killed for his own reasons.  At the end of the day, I just can’t cheer for him.

I know the bulk of this review seems negative, but it’s mostly because of how much dissonance there is between the great story and setting and the weak protagonist. It’s actually a mark of the brilliance of the setting that I would STILL recommend this book to any fantasy reader, especially those with a military bent.  Cole, perhaps thanks in part to his experience as a hardcore D&D player, has a real and unique talent at creating “source material.”  The universe is worth the price of admission.  Despite my issues with Oscar Britton, I will be picking up the sequel and look forward to reading more of Mr. Cole’s work.  I think he’s got a great talent, he just needs to fine tune his process for flawing a character without making him unapproachable.

Minor Virtues: The fabricated quotations from various articles, books and individuals that head each chapter were well written, fun and definitely gave a tantalizing peak at a rich history behind what was happening on-screen.   The cover art.  Pretty awesome picture in a genre where the cover art often ranges from meh to ouch.

Minor Flaws:  Oscar’s initial aviation unit doesn’t seem terribly well defined and why weren’t the SOC using 160^th SOAR little birds or MH-60s instead of NJ National Guard OH-58Ds?  We don’t really use Kiowas to ferry troops into battle, we use them for reconnaissance and as light attack bird.  If putting a thermobaric hellfire onto the selfers had been an option, the Kiowa might have been a good option.   I suppose it is possible a Scout unit could get tagged for the job if every Pave Low and UH-60 in the armed forces were accounted for at the time...

In Memoriam 3:46 PM

Last Tuesday, in accordance with my mother's last request, I scattered my parents' ashes.  I found a nice little cove, one not too far away from one of the beaches my family used to play at on weekends when Dad was stationed at Fort Hood.  God provided appropriate weather effects, it was a cool gray day but the rain held until after I had scattered their ashes into the water and had a long time to pull myself together.  I was satisfied with their resting place, I hope to go back some time.

James, my older brother, called to tell me that Mom was ill, perhaps terminal, with some sort of lung infection on Easter Sunday right after my Sunday School class.  My chain of command was completely understanding, I was on a plane to Houston on Monday morning.  My brother met me at the airport and filled me in, warned me to brace myself.  The next few days were a miserable dredge, waiting on test results while my mother lay, semi-conscious with a tube down her throat to force oxygen into her remaining functional lung tissue.  We passed a few days like that with mom in a state of semi-consciousness and unable to communicate in any case due to the tube.

James and I split our time between his apartment and her hospital room.  I learned that half a fifth of Glenn Livet is effective anesthetic, but the side effects aren't worth it.  After a couple days, they managed to stabilize her enough to remove the tube from her mouth.  It was the same day her tests came back positive for cancer in her kidneys, stomach and cranium.  At that point, though, the doctors believed there might be some way to treat the infection that continually filled her lungs with fluid, then begin her cancer treatments.

She was off her tube for a couple days, I don't remember how many to be honest, because the whole miserable experience runs together in my head.  Then her O2 levels crashed and she had to be intubated again.   They discovered that her lungs were filling up not from pneumonia but from a tumor in her lungs that continued suppurating.  Since the cause was not bacterial, the antibiotics they had pumped into her system were ineffective against the lung flooding, though they were keeping sepsis and several other problems at bay.  The only possible solution to her lung fluids was an invasive surgery to cap the tumor and filter its suppuration directly out of the body through a tube rather than letting it fill the lungs.  Just the catheter from the lungs couldn't drain the stuff fast enough.  Unfortunately, Mom was nowhere stable enough to survive such a surgery.

For another day or two the doctors hemmed and hawed, describing stop gaps and temporary measures to keep her alive, but none willing to broach the real issue; how were they ever going to make her better?  Was there even the slightest chance that she could have another few years or even months or weeks of enjoyable life left?  We tried to corner them, but most of them evaded answering the question.

Finally the kidney and respiratory doctors, bless them, cut straight to the point.  Mom's full biopsies were clear, the cancer in her body was widespread and metastasized.  Even an otherwise perfectly healthy woman with that much malignant cancer couldn't expect to live more than six months tops even with radical chemotherapy.  With no way to treat the ulcer filling her lungs with fluid, Mom was never even going to get that far.  Given that her usable lung tissue was shrinking daily, it was doubtful she would ever regain consciousness.  With the drugs and technology available they could keep mom's heart beating for weeks, maybe even months, but they could never get her off that damned lung ventilator.  She would spend the remainder of her days with a tube down her throat.

Our mother and father, once James and I were each respectively old enough, had both made it abundantly clear to us their wishes in a situation such as this.  I wouldn't call it an easy decision, but it was a simple one.  James and I agreed to let her go.  We ordered the doctors to stop all treatments except the lung ventilator and pain medication on Wednesday morning.  That afternoon she died.

Much to my shame, one emotion trumped my grief and sorrow.

Relief.

For the most part my relief was for her, and it was the understandable kind.  Compared to months or years of chemo, Mom's death was quiet and dignified with minimal suffering on her part.  She didn't have to endure the agony of the cancer eating her vital organs, the less-than-pleasant side effects of radiation treatment, or the dementia that would have resulted once the cancer started destroying her brain.  She died in her sleep, surrounded by her children and friends.  I think most children would be happy their parent could have that rather than a lingering miserable end.

But that's not all of it.

To say that Mom could be difficult would be akin to saying that water can be wet.  She lived her life entirely based on her own emotional state.  Hard facts, logic, clinical research- these sorts of things had no place in her life, just her gut.  And heaven forbid you get on her bad side.  My mother could teach all the Yiddish Mamas in the world a thing or two about imparting a guilt trip.  But, for all that, I loved her.

No, the guilt comes from the fact that I know she's been miserable pretty much ever since our dad died, ten years and a little over a month ago.  The last decade has been a dreary slog through life for her, while I've been busy building; my storybook marriage, my (thus far) successful career, my wonderful family.  I'm guilty because I know that while I was busy becoming one of the happiest men on the planet, my mother was enduring, devoid of her husband, and with only James and my admittedly too infrequent phone calls and visits to anchor her here.  I'm guilty because I can't help but feel happier for her gain than I am sorry for my loss.

God has finally called my mother home to be together with my father again.  She's certainly happier now than she has been at any point since March of 2002.  Even though I know what society expects of me, I can't help but feel relieved that she's gone and happy for her that her suffering, spiritual, physical and psychological, is at an end.

Which is not to say that I'm not sad, or that I don't mourn.  But if I'm honest, I'm really mourning the woman she was ten years ago.  Cantankerous, illogical, stubborn and so full of folksy-down-home-mason-jar wisdom that it made me want to wring her neck sometimes, but also fiercely loving, fanatically supportive, loyal to a fault and alive in a way most people never are.

My mother lit up a room and commanded love and respect from people just by being herself.  She was a source of constant hilarity, some of it intentional, even.  She could talk to just about anyone and have them spilling their deepest fears and hopes in an hour. She loved so completely and unquestioningly that it felt like a force of nature.

My friend Jake who, along with Joseph Turner, was very much another brother to me and James, was able to see Mom before she died, though she was intubated and unable to speak at the time.  Listening to him talk to her cut through much of my baggage with my mother, and made me feel both better and a little jealous.

Where I had spent years worrying over my mother's time-bomb medical status (life long chain-smoker, unhappy and stressed to the gills, and eating crap food and approaching her 60s, I knew we were going to have a problem eventually), or angry at her for her really awful financial decisions, or, as aforementioned, guilty because God had given me so much and all I could give my mom was the money to keep her afloat and what love I could keep untainted by all the other crap littering our relationship, Jake remembered her as she was- an amazing, loving woman who would open her home to anyone willing to show her courtesy and respect, who loved him as one of her own sons, and who, along with my father, showed him what a stable, loving marriage looks like, and how it was possible.      

I often credit my Dad with being the good example in my life, with some reason.  Gender role models are strong, and I have both consciously and unconsciously emulated my father for as long as I can remember.  But the pain of the last ten years had cast a shadow over the not inconsiderable gifts I received from Mom, both inherent and learned.

The two of them really did show me that marriage was worth it with the right person and could be a source of happiness and strength.  I feel sorry for a lot of folks who never learned that lesson.  As little as my marriage and family with Michele resemble what I grew up with, it was from Mom, as well as Dad, that I learned how to be a husband and father.

She also taught me to speak up when something appears to be complete and utter bullshit.  Granted, this trait has gotten me into trouble nearly as often as it has come to good, but I wouldn't be who I am without it, and I'm proud of her for imparting it to me.

And she gave me passion.   Not that Dad didn't feel deeply about things, he did.  He loved his duty and family and, at least by the time I can remember, wasn't afraid to express it.  But it was Mom who gave me the irrational stubborn cussedness that has seen me through the worst of it.  It was Mom who taught me to embrace those I love wholeheartedly and show the same dogged loyalty she displayed towards us.

On the phone with my friend and comrade Kellen, I described Mom's life as a tragedy sandwich.  Her childhood was marred by violence and atrocity, so much so that both her parents were dead before her fifteenth birthday and she spent many years traveling here and there by herself  or with whatever company seemed welcoming (my mother was, in fact, a carnie for awhile).  It was only after she met my father that she established some semblance of normalcy and contentment.  Not that their marriage didn't have issues, we had plenty of bumps and apparently some of the worst happened before I was even born but, by and large, those were good years for her- for all of us.  Then, right as I left the nest, she lost her anchor, and spent this last decade getting by instead of really living- a shadow of the vibrant, formidable, amazing woman who raised me.

I feel sad that she's gone, sad that I couldn't or didn't do more to make her last years better.  But more than anything, I'm happy for her and Dad and proud of both of them.  They made mistakes, huge gaping ones, but they gave me a happy, safe and loving home for eighteen years.  In this world, that's a gift not to be underestimated.




 

The “end” of the Iraq War kind of rolled right past me. Odd, I know, since my adult life thus far has been shaped, in large part, by my participation in that war. It affected how I view the Middle East, how I view my profession, how Michele and I have grown our marriage and raised our children. Most dramatically, from a philosophical perspective, it changed how I view my own country and my duty.

I deployed to Kuwait in late February of 2006. Shortly thereafter my unit was moved from “strategic reserve” at Camp Buehring to Southern Baghdad. For the first three months it was, to tell the truth, kind of fun. It was just dangerous enough to feel like we were doing something real, but our company wasn’t taking any casualties. I’d lived in Germany and Korea, but Iraq was something new to me, dirty and dangerous as it was. Finally I wasn’t in a classroom or going through a BS FTX run by half-baked observer-controllers, many of whom hadn’t even deployed before. I was in the shit. I was going to be a genuine veteran. When my kids asked me what I did in the Army, I wasn’t going to have to say, “well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”

I was an odd duck in the company. I was a brand new lieutenant of Field Artillery in an Infantry company where all the other lieutenants had been working together for well over a year. They were all pretty cool about it, I wasn’t ostracized or hazed or anything. I was just new and, being a 13A with no Ranger Tab, necessarily a different breed. All the platoon leaders and the XO were good guys, but the company commander was an outstanding officer. He was an incredibly hard worker, which in and of itself isn’t that remarkable- many career officers are super-A personalities. No, what was remarkable about him was that he pushed himself and his subordinates that hard without being a douche about it. At the time it impressed me, after experience with God-only-knows-how-many superiors in the intervening years, it now astounds me. In the short months I served under the man, I received just one ass-chewing. The Commander explained my shortcomings in performance in such a calm, professional and meticulous manner that when he was done I knew damn well that I had thoroughly deserved it.

Sadly, I never really got the chance to act on his corrections. A few days after that uncomfortable conversation we were riding back to the FOB from a council meeting when an EFP ripped our M1114 Humvee apart like a beer can. The driver and I were blown clear and wounded, me badly but not catastrophically, the driver was in much worse shape but he lived and recovered. The Commander and his gunner were killed instantly. The medics, with help from the infantrymen and God, stabilized both of us, got us on a MEDEVAC bird and my war was over. I was to go back to Iraq for another fifteen months in 2008-2009, but it was that moment in Southern Baghdad and the weeks in the hospital that followed that changed something in me.

While I was in Iraq I hadn’t worried about public opinion regarding the war. I was too preoccupied with the excitement and trepidation of finally being “at war,” and with the challenge of learning a job for which I had received almost no training. Oh, the Army trained me to be a Fire Support Officer, I could’ve integrated howitzers, mortars, attack helicopters and fixed wing close air support into the Commander’s scheme of maneuver all day long, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea then what Information Operations, PSYOP, Civil Affairs and the like were supposed to accomplish. So the protests, the recriminations, the divisions that we’re occurring back home meant little to me while I had a job to do in Baghdad.

They meant nothing to me, actually, until I found myself flat on my back in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center watching the news. Watching the protests, hearing that treasonous sack of shit Michael Moore call Al Qaeda in Iraq and Jaysh Al Mahdi, “the minutemen,” filled me with rage. Seething, poisonous rage. The 76% had sent us to war in 2003, and when things got complex, got bloody, got ambiguous, suddenly they showed up in droves to protest, comparing President Bush to Hitler, droning on about US war crimes etc, etc. I saw idiot college kids re-hash all the crap their draft dodging cowardly excuses for progenitors had taught them. All that was bad enough, but I actually found something that started pissing me off even more. It was just one phrase, bandied about by, I believe, the majority of the protest movement:

“I support the troops but not the war.”

I understand the good intention behind this statement, and five years hence, I’m a bit more rational about the whole matter. But that sentence, intended to allow civilians to advocate America’s surrender in Iraq while simultaneously assuaging their consciences that they weren’t stabbing the military in the back the way their worthless forefathers did during the Vietnam War, still gives me heartburn. My not so humble opinion is that once you’ve paid in blood, there are no refunds. I can’t make Specialist Blair or Captain Dicenzo or any of the other thousands of Americans killed un-die. I can’t re-grow the limbs or even stop the nightmares of those who’ve survived catastrophes far worse than what I’ve been through. So what’s the only thing to do with so much death and suffering? For FUCK’S SAKE YOU MAKE IT MEAN SOMETHING.

Protesters, pretending to be “supportive” of me, were trying to render my comrades’ deaths meaningless by conceding victory to a bunch of raggedy ass insurgents. It doesn’t matter that there were or weren’t nukes at that point. It doesn’t matter that the whole venture was a genuinely stupid idea. Once you’ve paid in American lives, you HAVE to secure a victory, otherwise you piss on the graves of those who laid down their lives in the defense of the Republic. The time to protest the war is before the first shot is fired, not while your own men and women are struggling to win it.

With the full benefit of hindsight, I freely admit that we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq when we did. We were already committed in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea were clearly bigger threats, and our Army was NOT in proper shape to occupy (yes, occupy, let’s not mince words) a country of 30 million people. We did it anyway, but it was an unreasonable mission, and the Sec Def and Commander in Chief were irresponsible to commit us to that mission without first building our ground forces to a size commensurate with the mission. I wish it hadn’t happened but it did, and now, for the moment, it appears to be over.

So how do I feel about it?

To quote one of my favorite fictional Jews; “I’ll tell you- I don’t know.”

Despite all the divisions and recriminations surrounding the war, all the fumbles by leaders at all ranks both civilian and military, we did one hell of a job in Iraq. We stomped a multi-headed insurgency into the ground. We established, however briefly, a modicum of peace after seven years of war. And we did eliminate a family of murderous rapine lunatics that ruled absolutely over 30 million people.

On the other hand, Iraq looks about as stable as a house of cards constructed by an alcoholic with palsy once we leave. Sectarian violence simmers under the surface. There doesn’t seem to be a leader who can breach the gap between the various factions. Perhaps the last ten years have made me a pessimist, but it’s hard to believe that the current Iraqi regime will long survive without direct US military support.

I don’t know which idea depresses me more, the idea that the current Iraqi government will collapse and those who put their money on us pay a horrifying price in lives due to their “collaboration” with us, or the idea that we’re heralding the withdrawal of combat forces only to have to re invade the country two, or five, or ten years down the road. I’m not ashamed to admit that I hope it’s over. I’ve had enough of Iraq. After one very short and one very long tour I’ve no desire to ever lay eyes on that place again.

But I’ve watched the footage of Vietnamese in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) clinging to the skids of our UH-1s in 1975, and even though that war was over before I was even born, I burn with the shame of it. Will we do the same thing in Iraq? Abandon those who believed in us because it’s the easiest option? You know that’s part of the reason we’re fighting in Afghanistan still- we abandoned those we had supported during the Soviet War and, surprise, they were overpowered by those more ruthless and even less interested in anything we would recognize as civilized behavior. It’s not all pie-in-the-sky idealism when I talk about living up to our moral commitments as a nation. Inevitably you do reap what you sow.

So I can’t really celebrate. I want the war over more than any Berkley educated surrender monkey could ever dream, but I can’t escape the conclusion that either it isn’t really over, or we’re about to suffer yet another blot on our national honor which will take years to fade. God, I hope I’m wrong.