Double Deuce

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars.”
-T.E. Lawrence, from the dedication to his wife in Seven Pillars of Wisdom

I have said the hell with it, and am going to purchase the Rosetta Stone Arabic language program. I contacted Rosetta Stone directly, and asked if I qualify for their government discount, but they said no, since I was buying it directly as a private individual. This whole issue has left a bad taste in my mouth.

Having finished the Powers book of short stories my parents-in-law sent me, I am left without reading material. I think I have one more book left, but after that they will be all gone. Nobody around here seems to have any good books, and we don’t have the library here like we did down south. Somebody sent our company a huge box full of old issues of Reader’s Digest. Seriously, some of them are fifteen years old. I don’t really need to read articles about the hot new show, Seinfeld, or the newfangled fad for computer nerds called the “World Wide Web,” invented by Al Gore. I have turned recently toward doing more prewriting for my books.

I am having a hard time coming to grips with certain policies, lately. Particularly those laid down by General Order #1. I can agree that allowing soldiers to drink alcohol whenever they want may end up hurting our mission here; but I cannot see the harm in giving soldiers a couple days of R&R every month where they can go to an LSA and have a couple beers. I also agree that blocking certain websites on government-owned computers is not only a good idea but necessary to maintain discipline and bandwidth. I think it is dangerously close to a violation of rights, however, to block websites if a soldier takes his personal laptop to the internet café and is surfing on his own time. As an old-fashioned, Christian guy, and as a combat leader, I don’t want my soldiers to be tainted spiritually or distracted from the mission; but as a realist, I realize that not everyone relaxes in the same way, and sometimes being distracted from the mission is precisely what is needed to raise or maintain morale. Also, it would be great to be able to have a damn drink every once in awhile. It would certainly help me sleep some nights.

I am trying to organize a poker game, but not many people want to play. You would think that there would be more people up for a good game of cards here, but I guess times have changed. You say Texas Hold ‘Em, and nobody shows up; but if you’re playing Halo with multiple XBOXs and TVs, it’s a full house. It’s too bad.

Oh-Bee-Kay-Bee

Herod howls: "Sly slaughter
Rules now! Let us, by modes once called accurst,
Overhead, under water,
Stab first."
-Hardy

I cannot understand the logic of many decisions made by our internet web-filtering software. It will not let me download Shockwave, so that I can begin my Arabic lessons over the internet. I am going to have to lug my computer down to the internet café and download the software there. The filter also prohibits me from accessing blogs, so I have to send all these entries to my long-suffering wife, who posts them for me. Thank you, baby. The software, anyway, is called Websense. I have visited their website several times to try to contact them and reason with them, but I have trouble finding contact info. Oh well.

In addition to studying Arabic, I have decided to keep a journal. In talking to several veterans on the internet, several of them happened to mention that they wished they had kept journals. Even when not much happens, they say, you should write down a little summary of what you did that day. I think this is probably a good idea. I will begin tonight.

I read a story that said the Pentagon is asking Congress for funding to research space-based weapons. I am sublimely pleased with this development. I just wish they had asked for and were granted a much larger amount. Space will become, very soon and for the foreseeable future, what the sea was during the colonial era, and what the air is now. We need to control it as completely as possible, as soon as possible. The nation or group that controls space will control the world, and all worlds we inhabit in the future. Extraorbital space will not be so vital for awhile; but low and high orbit will be incredibly important. A mass driver or series of lasers placed on satellites, or on the moon, will be the ultimate hole card in international diplomacy. Imagine no more need for cruel, destructive ground war. I am going to write my congresspersons to let them know the depth and width of my fervent support for this idea.

I am growing a mustache. This is not so much a conscious decision to change my personal appearance as a) something to prevent boredom and b) a secret plot to annoy our sergeant major. Also, I am curious to see what I’d look like. My dad used to have one. I also shave my head, and I have never seen anybody with a shaved head and a mustache. I wonder how ridiculous it will look. Only one way to find out. And it’s not like I have anybody to look good for, here.

Binos

Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake
In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break
On his particular time and personal sight.
That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night.
-Frost

Got to talk to Mom and my best friend Nick tonight. That was nice. Everything is about the same at home as always. People keep working, people keep getting sick or getting healthy. Babies are born. Marriages are performed. The sun goes down. The sun comes up.

Everybody asks me when I talk to them, “what’s going on there? What’s going on with the war? Anything exciting? Anything scary or fun?” I have no answer for most of these questions. We play video games, we sleep, we work out, and we work. We always work. Going on seven months now without any of us having a full day off. But we survive and don’t complain. There is very, very rarely anything exciting that happens, and this always seems to perplex family and friends. It’s war, I can hear them thinking, there has to be something interesting to relate. But there’s really not. We have won, and not a last-minute, one-yard squeaker of a win, but a running-of-the-scoreboard type win. We have won so much that it is becoming boring here.

Advisors to the Iraqi army and police are leaving all over the place, going back home or to rejoin their units, because many Iraqi units are to the point now where they can function on their own or with very little support from us. The main reason many of us are still here is to support them logistically, rather than militarily.

Of course, every once in awhile there are flare-ups or incidents. But hell, World War II was over in 1945, and there are still Nazis in Germany. Soon the old-school, has-been Iraqi terrorist will supplant old Nazi war criminals in popular culture: the subject of documentaries, a throwaway joke on the Simpsons. A barber in Baghdad who has trouble forgetting his al Qaeda past, instead of a Colombian milkman who greets his best-tipping customer with “Buenos dias, mein fuhrer!”

Jen has apparently sent me lots of movies and TV shows to watch. I can’t wait. All I have here is my Home Movies season 3 collection, and a couple Family Guy and Futurama box sets I bought on the black market here. I’m looking forward to watching some of my favorites, like Newsradio and Aqua Teens.

Because of people going on leave, I will be moving up to HQ to fill in for a few weeks. I am not looking forward to it. I like being as far from the flagpole as possible. The increase in number of meetings I have to attend will be the worst part. I hate meetings. Although if you think about it, the endless meetings are another sign that we’ve won. When people start acting like we’re in garrison, you know we’re in the home stretch.