Death With Your Cornflakes

My little ones saw this morning's Globe front page and asked why the girl was wrapped up. I said that she was dead. "How did she die?" "From a bomb." "What's a bomb?" "A thing that explodes." "What comes from the bomb?" "Metal." I've got to be more careful with the paper. This is the second time in the past 4 months or so that there have been dead children on the front page of the Globe. I support the right of papers to print what they want, but it's tricky when you have to explain to children about dead children -- particularly when they die in a conflict the roots of which confuse most adults.

On a political note, why do the American papers never publish pictures of dead Israeli children above the fold?

Capt. Bruno de Salenni

I got this article, A letter from Afghanistan, from a hero, through my feed reader and had to share it. I link to it in my shared article widget too, but feel it warrants special mention.

Alive Day

Last night I watched Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq on HBO. Hosted and produced by James Gandolfini it was an inspiring, moving, horrifying and ultimately even-handed and unapologetic account of wounded Iraq War Veterans. These soldiers suffered egregious injuries, most as a result of IEDs, and their wounds are horrific. They very bluntly show their stumps, their surgery scars, prosthetic eyes and limbs. While I sometimes wanted to look away I forced myself to watch. These soldiers are fighting in a war that I support and it would have been hypocritical of me to look away.

Like anyone wounded as badly as these people were, the subjects of the show were serious and contemplative. Each is still grappling with their newly defined lives and what their injuries mean for their futures. It was an amazing television experience and Gandolfini was an unobtrusive presence -- asking questions, shaking their hands and hugging the soldiers after the interviews. Many times he was hidden by a cameraman and you rarely saw his face. Their stories were permitted to stand as testimonies to their strength, courage, luck and pluck. I don't think that they were politicized in any way. This lack of politicization, in and of itself, deserves mention in a media landscape where the soldier is a pawn in each side's never ending political chess match.

Many of these soldiers have undergone multiple surgeries -- one, 46 in 16 months -- and the care-level is a testament to the doctors and the medical professionals of this country. Many of these soldiers should, by rights, be dead. The interviewees and all the wounded and fallen soldiers, airmen and sailors deserve our respect, admiration, love and support. They certainly have mine. Everybody, war supporters and non-supporters alike should watch this show. It's important. Also, and finally, make a donation to some of the many charities that support the wounded and their families:

This is a good compendium of charities serving the military and military families. I donate to Fisher House and Operation Homefront each year around Christmas. I'm also going to donate to this organization that I learned about through this program: The Wounded Warrior Project.

God bless the troops -- the ones still in harm's way, and the ones recovering from their injuries.

The Understanding

I picked up this video via Little Green Footballs. This Marine says what the elite in this country need to hear with more eloquence, understanding and passion than any member of the elite could ever muster. Semper Fi, and thank God for people like SSG Lawrence E. Dean II.

Summer Surge

There's been much ink spilled about "The Surge" currently underway in Iraq. I've linked to some dispatches from Michael Yon, reporting from the front lines, as well as articles appearing in the Wall Street Journal. Depending on which pub you read we're losing (NY Times, Boston Globe, MSM in general); things are going well (WSJ); or thngs are hard, but the pros in our military will prevail (Yon). I'm not a Pollyanna, I think that things could have gone better in Iraq had we taken a more aggressive stance and killed people while taking and holding ground.

It appears that we are doing this now with Gen. David Petraeus's Surge. From the non-MSM it sounds, if given time, then we will actually win in Iraq. Victory in Iraq is what we all should be hoping for but sadly we're not. The Dems are running on a platform of retreat, surrender and defeat and some Republicans are growing wobblier by the day in their support of the war. As I mentioned in an earlier post we have to win this war and winning this war should be all that anybody cares about. As a nation we go apoplectic about the the success or failure of our sports teams -- how can we roll over for this?

While the insipid and cowardly politicians who supposedly run this country play politics and strive to hang onto their cushy gigs, our armed forces are slugging it out and winning. They need to be given time to win -- but that's what the pols and the MSM don't want. How un-American.

Jeff Jacoby, the lone conservative voice at the Globe has a great paragraph in his column today:

Political correctness is no strategy for victory. Islamic fascists will not hate us less if we avoid all mention of the theology that inflames them. Winning the war the jihadists have declared -- the war of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb -- begins with moral clarity. Denial is a luxury we cannot afford.

Two Good Posts

Two good posts from Michael Yon -- a freelance journalist in Iraq (former Special forces guy too).

Be Not Afraid
Operation Arrowhead Ripper Day One

Obviously the main stream media missed this buildup because, the war is, you know, lost.

God Bless our troops.

Happy hunting.

6 June 1944

Sixty three years ago today, the United States and its allies -- Britain, Canada, France & Poland -- stormed the beaches, and glided via parachute and glider into the fields of Normandy. This daring move started the final climactic thrust into continental Europe that would, elven months later in May 1945, end the war and the Third Reich.

The courage of those troops, and the daring of their commanders to attempt such a landing are unparalleled. I can only imagine the terror of waiting for the ramp to drop on a landing craft or the green light telling you to jump into the night, over hostile territory. I can only admire the professionalism and courage that it took then to fight and accomplish the mission. Thankfully, we were on the winning side of that conflict and thankfully we had leaders who felt it necessary to win, and permitted the armed forces the latitude they needed to do so.

Take a moment today, and recall the courage, sacrifice and honor of the men who invaded Normandy, all those years ago. They are growing older, and someday there will be no veterans of World War II left among us. It is our duty to remember them and what they did on 6 June 1944, now and always.

With It, Or On It

We've not yet seen "300" and may not -- it's hard enough to land baby-sitting, and when we do we typically use it to go to dinner, not the movies. We have, however, been thinking about this film, reading about it, browsed the graphic novel upon which it is based while visiting a bookstore, and watched a History Channel show about the battle of Thermopylae. We found a link to an interesting review of the film at The Weekly Standard while browsing Newmark's Door.

The reviewer, John Podhoretz, makes an interesting point about how the film is resonating with audiences. In its first two weeks in general release "300" has netted $100MM. As Podhoretz notes there are no stars involved, either in front of, or behind, the camera. The film does have striking visuals, and tells an incredible story of duty, honor, courage and sacrifice in the face of impossible odds.

Podhoretz writes:

300 is nothing more than a comic book rendering of that tale--quite literally, as it's slavishly faithful to a 1999 comic book by Frank Miller, whose violent imagery and hardboiled storytelling have now been immortalized in two successful Hollywood films (the other being Sin City). Despite the vulgarity and overheated solemnity of its approach, 300 does tell the Thermopylae story without a trace of irony. It depicts Sparta and the Spartans in all their proud, martial, vicious, nasty, unsentimental, and egalitarian glory. Director/co-writer Zack Snyder offers not even a moment of doubt that the Spartans are the good guys--believers in human freedom who oppose the Persians because they demand nothing but submission to a false god-king.

I don't think this movie has a single idea about the nature of cultural conflict, the meaning of martial valor, or anything else. But here's the thing: If you choose to tell the story of Thermopylae, you cannot escape the fact that you are choosing to tell a story of Western civilization taking a stand against rampaging barbarians from the East. And it's precisely this aspect of 300--as well as its entirely unapologetic celebration of war at its most insanely bloodthirsty--that offers the only coherent explanation for its galvanizing effect on audiences.

Kyle Smith, writing in the New York Post, points out that people seeking to draw parallels between the action onscreen and the war in Iraq or the war on terror are looking in the wrong place, since 300 hews close to Miller's 1999 comic book. That is certainly true. But while Miller foresaw no parallel, the audience seeing 300 in the year 2007 is responding viscerally to a story of a clash of civilizations that takes the side of the West against the East.

We've always been intrigued by the battle of Thermopylae. Though, and despite priding ourselves on our knowledge of history we never realized (embarrassingly) that the Greeks lost. We have, however, always understood the subtext of the battle, and have always viewed it through the lens of West versus East -- "a clash of civilizations." What the History Channel show imparted to us was that the act of Spartan sacrifice was born in and helped to foster the idea of Nation. So, despite defeat in the pass of Thermopylae and the subsequent burning of Athens (payback for the Greek sack of Sardis a century before) the Greeks rallied, as a nation, to drive the Persians from the Peloponnese. What ensued was the flourishing of the culture upon which Western Culture rests -- despite politically-correct efforts to deny this. Had this idea of nation not taken root when it did, and had the Persians remained in Greece we would live in a much different world than we do today.

The elites in our government, media-entertainment industry and educational establishment no doubt look upon such thoughts as those of a simpleton -- one who fails to see nuance. Thankfully, unlike those who see only gray in our current clash of civilizations, 300 Spartans (and 1,000 never-mentioned-Thesbians) saw things in black and white, stood their ground and fought for an ideal embodied in a national culture and a way of life. Would that such stalwartness existed amongst our "best and brightest."

Perhaps, some training in a Spartan agoge -- where Spartan boys between the ages of 7 and 19 learned to fight, steal, evade, kill and survive in combat for the good of society -- would change that. Before departing for war, as they handed them their shields, Spartan mothers would tell their sons, : "Return with with it, or on it." Collectively, as a nation, we carry our shield in some nasty parts of the world, in defense of the greatest way of life in the history of mankind. Will we return from these endeavors with our shield in hand, or will we be carried home on it? There is no return without our shield, that is not an option.