Thursday, July 14, 2005
Operation Truth needs our helpOperation Truth, the largest OIF/OEF veterans organization,
wants to run an ad in the Washington Post challenging the Bush
administration to live up to its promise to "support our troops" by
fully funding healthcare for veterans. You can read more about it here. 11:29:31 PM |  If you can support Operation Truth, please do. Any amount helps. $5, $10. Whatever you can afford. I gave $25 yesterday. How about matching my gift with your own, even $5? Operation Truth has done a lot for veterans regarding PTSD funding, and they are continuing to work hard by "speaking the truth to power" about these two wars. Please help them. 
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"Am I Next?": The endless tragedy of a futile missionThe Washington Post has a heart-breaking piece
about a platoon in Ramadi that has lost a number of soldiers. Ramadi is
the most dangerous place in Iraq. Its roads are littered with IEDs and
road-side bombs and snipers. The stress is too much; one soldier is
paralyzed by his PTSD in country and a nineteen year old soldier from
this unit killed himself. The article tells the story of one soldier's
death, John Wayne Miller, and how it has affected the rest of his
platoon. The soldiers are rightly asking what the point is of their
missions: 10:07:11 PM | This is a powerful article that profiles the day-to-day struggle just to make it through a tour in
Meanwhile more terrorist attacks kill more Iraqis and Americans, and
everyone shakes their head and asks "Is this really working?" The more
important question to ask is: "Is this really worth it ?" Well is it? Is it worth so many lives? I read today that the Iraqi government estimates 800 civilians and police have died each month
the past ten months. No one tracks how many civilians are killed by US
soldiers, so those numbers aren't known. As they are the numbers are
staggering, aren't they? Americans are dying every day, too, though to
some they are "soldiers," that inhuman entity that is both expendable
and "exceptional," and therefore they don't count the same as Americans
here at home. I came across a right wing-nut comment on a blog
yesterday that said Bush's war on terror is a success because no
Americans have been killed since 9/11. I asked him if he didn't think
soldiers were Americans. I didn't hang around to hear his answer
because these days I'm too quick to anger and I'm having enough trouble
sleeping. The last thing I need is to make myself upset over some
anonymous commenter out in cyberspace. I've always been troubled by Bush's "stay the course" argument. I have pondered the quagmire we find ourselves in,
and I've wondered if we should stay to ensure the situation doesn't get
even worse. With every passing day, with every story like this one of
young people's lives lost or ruined, I'm more convinced that we need to
get out now, with the understanding that we'll be paying the Iraqis for
years to come to help them rebuild what we tore apart. (At least we
should -- if we're to own our actions, we have to pay up.) I don't think there is a "good" solution, or even a "right" one.
We've created a horrific mess. I don't hold out any hope that this
administration will withdraw anyway. They can't apologize for anything
or admit they've made a mistake, even when it involves something small.
This is huge. They will never admit fault, and to them withdrawing
would be a tacit admission that the whole thing was a bad idea. We have
three and a half more years with these people. How many more will die?
Can we bear to count them?
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Hey France: Happy Independence Day, Y'allI know your revolution got going 216 years ago only to be delayed by a
not-so-diminutive soldier with a taste for Corsican wine (Agitprop has the links). But in the end you ended up with a democratic republic and one of the most beautiful capitals in the world. That's not so bad. 7:18:24 PM |  Day and night outlawed in the City of Lights. With that out of the way, there's plenty of time for heated political arguments, stinky cheese, lovely and mellow Pinot, and the challenging beauty of contemporary art. In 1990, I went down to the Champs Elysses and watched Greg Lamond ride in for his third and final Tour de France victory days after Bastille Day. The night before I'd seen the first part of Pedro Almodovar's "Labyrinths of Passion," Antonio Banderas' first film. I left before it was over because I was still really just a kid and it was a porno (who knew?!) and there were men in trench coats in nearly every aisle. But the crepes I had on the walk home made up for it.  Here's S and I kissing in front of Rodin's "The Kiss" in 2000. I miss you, France. Have a wonderful Bastille Day!
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The compounded tragedy of a young man's murderWho would have guessed that my mention of a young man's murder
on the streets of University Town would gather so much attention. I've
received a number of hits through Google since that posting and I've
had an exchange in the comments regarding a reader's "two sides to any
story" argument and the issue of "self-defense." 6:35:53 PM | I understand that this murder, like every other, is a compounded tragedy: besides the life lost, there are the ruined lives of the killers. I can imagine that if you know the accused men you'd be anxious to prove they weren't motivated by pure malice and hope that people don't judge them too quickly or harshly. It must be frightening to face the future when it's so filled with doom. That twinge in your gut that comes from regret can be overwhelming. And the desire to remake the past is strong. I've felt it myself. There are five meditations that the Buddha had his students practice every day and that are part of the zen I practice. They concern our desire to have stability in a life defined by change, and our desire to erase the past by denying our responsibility for our own actions: 1. I'm of the nature to grow old. There's no way I can escape growing old. 2. I'm of the nature to have ill health. There's no way I can escape having ill health. 3. I'm of the nature to die. There's no way I can escape death. 4. Everyone and everything I love are of the nature to change. There's no way I can avoid being separated from them. 5. My actions are my only true possessions. Yes. It's important, I think, that we end with that: My actions are my only true possessions. We do own our actions, whether or not we want to. We cannot go backwards and redo what we've done. In theory, when we recognize how important our actions are, we take care to behave in a way that lives up to our idea of ourselves, so our future isn't filled with days of regret over what we can't undo. We have to own up to what we've done so we can begin to act rightly today and therefore "correct" the past. The present is made up of all the moments that have come before, just as the future will be made up of those past moments and the ones we are living right now. If we take responsibility for what we've done and take care to behave better today, we not only improve our present but also impact our future positively. The men who killed Tombol Malik are responsible for his death. They went too far, for whatever reason. I don't think it matters if Malik started the fight or they did. They bludgeoned another human being with their own hands, feet, and weapons. They fled, leaving him to die, and did not call 911 to get him help. Those were their actions. They own them and they can't go back in time to undo them. Malik, a young man full of promise just like them, is dead because of their actions. The two men who are accused of Malik's murder have entered a plea of self defense. They do not deny killing Malik. They think his murder was justified. In the coming months, the case will be reported, I'm sure, and we will hear "both sides" of the story. The argument that there are "two sides to every story" while true (and often there are as many sides as there are witnesses and actors), does not obliterate facts. There are facts. In this case, there are the facts that Malik is dead and the two men accused of his murder were found with bloody weapons. These are undeniable facts. They are not up to debate or question. Last semester I taught Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" in a couple of my classes. The film shows the same event from five different perspectives. Even though each of the actors has divergent motivations and conflicting memories of the event, there are a couple of solid facts: a samurai is dead and his wife was raped. These are not disputed. I reminded my students of this when they wrote their papers. "Truth" can be elusive, and often there is no way to prove or disprove an event happened one way or another. But there are often solid facts. We have gotten into the business of denying that facts exist lately, which is disturbing to say the least. However, Malik is dead. That's a fact. The two men accused of Malik's murder deserve a fair trial. I know that our justice system is horribly flawed and many innocent people have been punished, even with death, unjustly. But these men have not denied killing Malik. That is not the question here. Motivation is. We own our actions, the good and the bad. If Malik started this fight, something his friend vehemently denies, it doesn't matter. He was killed by two men who could not control their anger. They should accept responsibility and be punished.
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Seven more...So it's official. S will be in Afghanistan until February. He's still
going to get to come home for two weeks in September. I don't know if
he'll get to go to Qatar or not. 4:05:00 PM | He was a part of the massive mission that followed the SEAL fiasco. He and his team spent weeks out in the field with no break and no showers. They came back to base to pick up additional supplies and nothing more. The email I received from him today was brief, as usual. I don't know what's happening next. I think he's going to Jalalabad for a few days, but besides that I'm clueless. I feel like he's drifting away, more of a rumor than a husband. It's been nearly six weeks since we talked. He's been unable to communicate with me in a substantive way for months. I have no idea how he feels, what's going on. It's frustrating and disheartening. I try not to worry about him, and remind myself that he was trained for these long missions in Ranger school and in LRSLC (long range surveillance leadership course); both schools were 14 weeks long (LRSLC has since been shortened) and involved long stretches of no sleep and little food. I don't know. It's all such a mess.
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Last update: 8/3/05; 12:28:34 AM .
