A large, slow-moving river runs through the center of my new life. (Read more in In The Fray Magazine, Dec 08)
On the Day of Calamity – anthologized
the Sons of Light Shall Battle with the Company of Darkness
The Democrats were poised to take back Congress, and even though we didn’t know too much about politics, my friends and I were all jazzed . . . (read more)
Email from Afghanistan
I arrived in Bagram Air Force Base (BAF), Afghanistan on Sept. 27th, 2008, and over the course of two days, turned in my ammunition and sat through briefings about vehicle safety, family discord, suicide awareness, and mental health. Collectively, soldiers call them the “don’t-beat-your-wife classes.”
BAF is a sprawling military base full of shipping containers, new construction, gravel fields, military vehicles, hangars, fast food restaurants, Port-A-Johns and strangers in Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, French, Polish, and Egyptian uniforms, or with Lockheed Martin t-shirts, or Slavic accents and Kellog Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Haliburton) ID tags hanging from their necks. People would salute me and wear reflective belts at night, which, having newly arrived from the highly kinetic Kunar Province, felt ridiculous. (Read more of my essay on atlantic.com)
Letter to the Editor — Ron Paul
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When I saw this hit piece published in my alma mater’s daily, I couldn’t let it stand unchallenged. My rebuttal was published today. |
Iran is NOT coming to get me
This brief (300-word) letter to the editor appeared in the Daily Iowa, October 16th 2007.
In last week’s Republican presidential debate, all the candidates except for Ron Paul went on ad nauseam about the Islamo-fascist regime bent on destroying all of Western civilization.
This would be quite an accomplishment for a nation whose national GDP is comparable to the state of Alabama’s.
The sentiments are echoed by many prominent figures in the press who have propagated an inexcusable misquotation with frightening efficiency. Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.”
The war cheerleading smacks of the same duplicity that led to the invasion of Iraq. Even the supposedly liberal New York Times subsequently apologized for deliberately suppressing stories that questioned the invasion of Iraq.
The Iranian threat is not nearly as dire as depicted. We have faced a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear North Korea. I agree with former CENTCOM commander General Abizaid: we can live with a nuclear Iran. Their regime is not suicidal.
Military action against Iran, no matter how precise and limited, would certainly escalate, erase our modest gains in Iraq and Afghanistan, instantly jeopardize our soldiers overseas, destabilize Pakistan (who already has nukes), and cause terrorism against us to skyrocket.
I doubt the sincerity of those making a hysterical case for war. James Madison warned us “the means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
If we are supposed to be so scared of terrorists that we start a third war in six years, that we accept concessions already made to our constitutional liberties, it seems like a no-brainer to do something about our completely porous borders.
The fear-mongering is completely hypocritical so long as our borders are ignored. It’s analogous to a child on a playground, sticking out his chin. “Hit me, so I can have my war.”
Enough is enough.
See it in the Daily Iowan. (I didn’t choose their title.)
250-word version published in Fayetteville Observer, Nov 5th, 2007.
On the Day of Calamity
This story appears in The Steel City Review, Fall 07 issue.
UDPATE (Nov 7): It has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
the Sons of Light Shall Battle with the Company of Darkness
It was a warm November second or first. The clouds spent the day gathering and breaking apart and gathering again.
The Democrats were poised to take back Congress, and even though we didn’t know too much about politics, my friends and I were all jazzed . . . (read more)