War Post

Reacting to the ban, soldiers said the real reason for the curbs were their negative comments about the war, including scepticism about George Bush’s claims about progress. Soldiers in the field and former soldiers, in blogs posted on sites such as Black Five, an unofficial site run by former paratrooper Matthew Burden, said the regulations would be inoperable with most troops obeying the rules but dissidents finding ways round the ban.

Mr Burden, editor of The Blog of War, a book pulling together accounts from the field, also criticised the decision: "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has - its most honest voice out of the war zone. And it’s being silenced."

More.  

 

Looking for the price of black market goods in Baghdad or a Slate-style daily round-up of Iraq’s newspapers? IraqSlogger has that and more, from a "Kirkuk Police Blotter" to categories about insurgents and journalists that are more substantitive than anything in the newspapers quoted on Slate. For example:

The Sunni fundamentalist website Islam Memo reports that joint U.S.-Iraqi forces are raiding civilian residences in Fallujah and breaking up TV sets of families who are caught watching the banned Zawraa TV satellite channel. At least one resident, Kamel Ahmed Hamadi, of Nazzal district in Fallujah, was detained. One person reportedly asked the raiding force in English about freedom of the press and as a result got a slap in the face by an American soldier, Nazzal district residents said.

"Safavids are Forbidden to Enter" was scrawled under a sign that reads "Welcome to Baghdad" at the Mahmudiya intersection, south of Baghdad, according to an Islam Memo correspondent. Safavid is a reference to the Persian Safavid Empire that invaded Iraq during the 16th and 17th centuries and massacred thousands of Sunnis. It is a derogatory term used by Sunni insurgents and fundamentalists to describe the Shia, their militias, and even Iraqi security forces. Two IEDs that were placed under the sign exploded when a police commando force attempted to wipe out the graffiti, killing and wounding several policemen.

The site went up recently and splits much of its content as "StateSde" anad "IraqiSide." Most of all, the latter includes an "Iraqi Diary;" the most recent post is from a woman in Baghdad writing about her 22 year-old cousin, a Sunni, who was killed because his fiance was Shia. To the question of why it also includes a "humor" link, the editors say they based the decision "in part because Iraqis and U.S. troops have a wickedly morbid sense of humor."

Graphic via Iraq Slogger.

November 6, 2003 

 

There’s been a recent surge in attention the blog is getting and I feel a little overwhelmed. I’m one month into an eighteen month deployment. We haven’t even done anything yet. Soldiering is boring work with scarce and brief moments of intensity. I’m in for the long haul. There isn’t going to be a tidy coda after two hours of Josh Hartnett mugging for the camera. Credits won’t ever roll and house lights don’t go up for a long long time. On top of it, I’m in the National Guard. The guard isn’t cool, it’s a place for unrepentant masochists with a lot of karma to work off. We’re gluttons for punishment that jones for a monthly grunt fix. If I were cool, I’d join the friggin’ Ranger Battallion and start talking shit about how I’m gonna try out for Delta or SEAL team six. In real life I’m a geek. I’ve never read Black Hawk Down. I miss the city and I just want to get back and finish school. This “war on terror” crap has totally ruined my semester. Okay, at least this time I have an enemy. Now who was it again? I did a month guarding the West 4th station from 8pm - 1am (terrorist hours?) which was cool for about two days. Anways, I love everyone for all the wonderful things they’ve shared with me, but we haven’t even started to roll yet. Oh yeah, my company motto it “Let’s Roll.” Todd Beamer’s last words are now ubiquitous and tiresome. I’m certain he cringes everytime he hears it.

 

I just found this hearty, compassionate treatise on why blind war is the best war. And, yes, Blackfive is a very popular milblog.

"It is always wrong to take the risk of killing a child, whether we do it or they do," she will say.

"Why so?" I ask.

"Because it endangers the innocent," she replies.

"If that is the reason," I answer, "then you are wrong.  It is best that we bomb without fear."

Her eyes grow wide.  "You are mad," she says.

"Not so," I answer.  "Consider:  when the enemy seeks to kill our child to motivate us to surrender to his will, is it not because he believes that the danger to the children will move our hearts?"

"It is," she must agree.

"And when he hides among children," I add, "why?  Children do little to deflect artillery.  Must it not be because he knows that we — we ourselves — fear for the children, even his children?"

She nods, silently.

"Then it is proven," I say.  "It is our love of these innocents that endangers them.  If we did not care if children died, they would be in little danger."

"That cannot be," she replies in anger.

"But it is so," I contest.  "If we did not care if our children died, they would not be targets.  There would be no reason to target them, because we would not be moved by their deaths.

"If we did not care if their children died," I add, "there would be no reason to clutter military emplacements with their presence.  If it were not that we are horrified by the deaths of children, the enemy’s children would be clear of all places of battle — because they are, except for the fact that we love them, a hindrance."

She bites her lip.

"Of course, we cannot cut out our hearts," I tell her.  "Nor should we — as we wish to remain men, and good men, rather than monsters.  Yet it is our love that is the chief danger to the innocent now — to our own innocents, and theirs also."

Read the rest here.

 

Let’s start this up every Friday now: a range of comments and descriptions of life in Iraq from a breeze of milblogs.

From Back in the Sandbox:

We finally caught one of the million lizards that are running around this place. Everday when I walk back to my room, I see these little guys scurry into a hiding place. This one was caught in our work area. They’re hard to get a picture of and even harder to catch. On my first deployment, I saw Camel Spiders all of the time. That’s not the case this time, but that’s fine with me. I’d rather live in a place with these little lizards than those ugly spiders.

At Half a World Away, "Sack," a National Guardsman at Camp Anaconda, gave a very detailed description of watching Tiger Woods win the British Open last weekend, and wrapped up his various critiques of the coverage - "SSG Johnson and I thought it was comical that after Sergio got off to a terrible start, they didn’t show any coverage for him like 10 holes" - with this:

Well, back to the daily grind. Today is our 4th month anniversary, so we are 1/3 done with our time in country. Our section celebrates this milestone by going "out to eat" at BK or Pizza Hut. I think I’ll have a whopper tonight.

365 and Wake-Up (featured in the WSJ’s milblogging piece two days ago) described returning home in January:

Back Home

     After 18 months away the 1-184 IN returned to the sunny shores of California last Monday.  It has only been a week since A Co touched down, but when I look back at my days in Baghdad they seem somehow vaugely unfamiliar.  It is almost as if I were watching the actions of an unfamiliar other move through my memories. As the memories reconsolidate I will be posting again to finish filling in all the gaps in our deployment… but for now I am just enjoying the free air.

Matthew Burden at Blackfive offers fiery, conservative war rhetoric and little document about soldier life. But here’s a letter from an Israeli soldier posted on that site today, if only to show that ideology is a pretty busy highway:

This is our time to rise to the challenge, put on the helmets and the bullet proof vests and make sure that the northern border is secure.

We shall fulfill any mission in a most effective manner, in face of any challenge.

If we shall not fulfill our mission we shall forfeit the right to exist.

We shall not lose this war, which we did not start.

Our duty is to serve as a defense force of the Jewish People, and to secure the peace of mind of the civilians in northern Israel.

If we shall not do it, no one will do it in our place.

For two thousand years we waited for the establishment of the Jewish State, and we are not going to roll back because a bunch of terrorists assume that they can scare us.

He who cannot defend Liberty does not deserve Liberty.

If we will not be able to fight until our last drop of blood, in order to secure the Liberty of our People on its own soil, our People will not enjoy Liberty.

There is time to talk and there is time to act.  At this time, when missiles and Katyushas afflict the North all the way to Haifa, in addition to the two kidnapped soldiers, the ten soldiers killed and the dozens injured, it is time to fight and not to talk.  We are the force, which has been chosen to fight, and we shall perform in the most effective manner.

I will be the first one to enter the battle and the last one to come out, and will do everything in my power to get you out alive and well. On Friday, with God’s help, we will rejoin with our families. However, I cannot do it alone. Once we cross the northern border, you should exercise full alert and full responsibility toward your fellow soldier.

 

To be sure, Blackfive is a conservative military blog - heavy on the spreading of freedom, the horrors of sharia and Islamic paradise, and the horror of Democrats. But it is a very popular milblog, award-winning, and mentioned in nearly every press article I’ve read on the phenomenon of "milbloggers." In fact it might be the most popular, which is why I’m sharing two recent posts from Blackfive, which can be considered soldiers’ and veterans’ documents from war time.

The first, a post today: the Star Wars revelations from "Froggy," a former Navy Seal named Matthew Heidt, on the mounting violence around Israel.

 

Worst Case Scenario… Coordination
Posted By Froggy

With the now burgeoning war between Israel and Lebanon, things on this planet could get very, very ugly. 

It is well known that Lebanon is a client state of Syria and further, that Syria is a client state of Iran.  There are reports that Iranian defense officials are now in Damascus possibly pulling the strings on a coordinated assault of Israel by Hamas and Hizbullah.  Israel has already buzzed Syria’s dictator’s house, and the leader of the "militant wing" (is there a non-militant wing?) of Hamas is also under the protection of the Syrians in Damascus.  If you think that this is a potential nightmare scenario for Israel and the US, it gets worse.

Remember North Korea?  They are very close with the Iranians as well, and it is postulated by intel sources that they have been sharing nuclear and missile technology for the past two years.  KJI has no cash since we froze most of his assets in foreign banks for running a massive US currency counterfeiting operation, and the Iranians are wallowing in cash and hate the US as much as NK. 

So what if this entire international drama: NK missile launches and Hamas/Hizbullah kidnapping of Israeli soldiers is designed to initiate 2 major and geographically separated wars for the US?  If Israel and Syria end up mixing it up, the Syrians could invoke their mutual security pact with Iran.  In order to defend Syria, Iran would have to traverse Iraq, and then… it is on.  Meanwhile, if the Norkos decide to re-unify the Korean Pennisula at the same time, we would be in quite a difficult position. 

I know it sounds farfetched, but they don’t call ‘em the Axis of Evil for nothin’ now do they?  We could expect exactly ZERO assistance from a NATO that is too pussified to be of any use at this point in the middle eastern front, and besides, the Euros are rooting for the Palestinians anyway.  In NK, we would almost certainly have to go nuclear in order to have any chance of saving the 20,000 US troops and their families in ROK, which would make the Chinese very anxious.  The Chinese might just take the opportunity to retake Taiwan, but you never know.  By the way we have a defense pact with the Taiwanese, so who knows what could happen?

Let me say that I am in no way predicting that any of this will come to pass (please God No!), but I throw it out there for consideration and comment.  Discuss amongst yourselves- topic: the end of the world.  Discuss.  I feel Veklempt, very Veklempt. 

The second: this video clip by "Uncle Jimbo," another contributor to Blackfive, which was linked recently. Jimbo is a Retired Special Operations Master Sergeant whose real name is James Hanson, and somehow he’s an aspiring political and foreign policy writer. The video clip is a reaction to a recent Democractic Congressional Campaign Committee ad that included American soldiers’ coffins among shots of Hurricane Katrina, rising gas prices, and the war in Iraq.

It seems like they’re only making noise, but their voices are among the most popular of the milblogosphere.

I wish this war were the American Revolution. Then romance would flutter, the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot the aural ring to any bemused thought of machine death or injury.

But it’s not. The eloquence of Tom Paine’s war talk gives way to what today? Stock political speech? Nielsan ratings fast talk amid digital flags and toupees and studio makeup? Pass the easy targets. What is the most memorable thing said about this war in the past 3 years? Who said it?

The soldier letters, blogs, bestsellers, and even the discredited early war TV network movies are quite a mix of war record, for sure. My own reluctance to open up my thoughts on this blog comes right out of clear concern for heaving this topic of "soldier letters" as some kind of mass to help an argument - same concern for soldier blogs. There is no monolithic opinion, save for general expressions of politics revealed in the trumped type for the heroes’ effort of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The need for articulate, public war talk is no more equal on a national holiday than on any other day when soldiers die in Iraq. The Presidential use of the 4th of July to say the war is being won is predictable, if not condemnable on the same day that national papers are counting the percentage increase in bodies in the Baghdad morgue. But I don’t want to argue the war with Bush speeches and newspapers.

That’s not why I brought up Tom Paine. The need for voices is no more pressing today than it was last year when I first wrote these sentences about Paine, "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" early notes for an essay dealing, through reflection and contrast, with the war in Iraq. I still don’t exactly know why I wrote it, or for what point. Where does a political pamphlet that was read, cheered, and condemned a few hundred years ago fit into contemporary war talk? I suppose, at the least, Common Sense was popular. At the least, it rang.

Who writes about the war these days with any kind of ring? I ended the essay that opened with Tom Paine with this Harold Pinter poem. By heaving language and undermining the concern for being offensive, it mocks rhetoric with a point, which seems such a necessary step in figuring out how really to comment, critique, and talk about our current war. And it rings.

American Football
(A Reflection upon the Gulf War)

Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

 

GBZI Sport Apparel is one of the premium sponsors for the military blog network MilBlogs.

I posted Captain Brown Hugh’s message on the comment section of a few military blogs (milblogs) yesterday, trying to solicit some reaction from the sites’ authors or readers on the scam soldier letter. One advised me, "freddy, I got that e mail too. I dismissed it as BS and promptly deleted it."

Okay, sure. I know. It’s BS— a 419 scam from Nigeria, most likely. But can there be no commentary on it beyond that it’s phony? After all it’s a fake soldier letter during wartime, with the simple promise of millions in exchange for attention and correspondence, really. And I can’t help thinking that this letter, as it’s bounced around the web, is getting more public screen time than authentic soldier letters.

"I can tell ya what that Capt. Brown Hugh stuff is…full of s..t" commented another milblog reader. "This is similar to many internet scams going on…too bad it’s so hokey…and plays on military morality! Stinks to high heaven!"

What is a play on military morality? After all, what is military morality, and how does one play on it, besides purporting to be in possession of millions of stashed dollars in Karbala? Marines possibly gunned down two dozen civilians in Haditha in only the most publicized recent report of Iraqi deaths, and Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo images of the American military acting on its unworldly rhetoric have long been embedded in the public view of this war. I hardly think "military morality," then, is so static, let alone certain. Did the commentator mean to suggest that "military morality" is considerate, even smart, like a smart bomb?

Then again, if I’ve taken anything from reading many military blogs recently, it is that they are a residence for the monolithic language of Operation Iraqi Freedom, of freedom and patriotism, and of justified war.

But at least this 419 scam has worked its way into the milblog lexicon. One reader thought a post applauding a recent Ralph Peters’ article in Armed Forces Journal was "good… (too good for [the blog’s author] to get a ‘Brown Hugh-o-gram’)." Apparently posting the phony email as a comment was an insult to this blog post on Peters, a retired army general who writes Op-Ed for the New York Post, and authors books like New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy.