A Day Late

--Clinton L. Romesha

I’d rather have the Medal of Honor
than be president of the United States
--Harry S. Truman
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[Note: RAW will run further comments on this action.]

Were it not for a story reprinted from MilitaryTimes.com in his Purple Heart Magazine (May/June 2013) reprinted from MilitaryTimes.com, Ranger would not have known of the fourth living Medal of Honor recipient who served in Afghanistan, Clinton L. Romesha. Romesha was presented with his medal at the White House 11 Feb 2013.

Press on Romesha's MOH was scant, typified by this brief NYT piece, possibly because Romesha declined Michelle Obama's invitation to attend her husband's State of the Union speech while in town for the award, denying the President an important photo op. Romesha's action deserves some Ranger commentary.

Staff Sergeant Romesha was the section leader of the 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. During the action of 3 October 2009 in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, this small unit fought for its life in a nasty little defensive fight reminiscent of those at Wanat and Waygul.

In all, U.S. troops were arrayed for combat in a defense position which was indefensible, to no apparent military purpose; the posts were abandoned soon after each fight.

Commander in Chief Obama said at SSG Romesha's MOH presentation that "A later investigation found that Command Outpost Keating was tactically indefensible". That's what these soldiers were asked to do: Defend the indefensible." If this assessment is correct, why was this not ascertained before eight U.S. soldiers were killed and 22 wounded, and why were the soldiers not extracted? The point of combat operations is that something be achieved as a result of the killing and violence; none of these fights met that bar.

Ranger is not questioning the indubitable valor of this engaged unit -- we are asking why COP Keating was hung out in the breeze, a tasty morsel for the Afghan opposition's picking? Hanging pretty medals from a brave soldier's neck does not erase the question.

In terms of U.S. response, the press rolls endless instant replays of the Benghazi Embassy murders and the Boston Marathon bombings, events in which eight U.S. citizens were killed. We are transfixed and mesmerized by these events, and yet hardly a whisper of the eight Americans killed in this 4th Infantry Division fight. No press and no indignation from the C in C down to the section leaders. Where are the congressional committee meetings searching to assign culpability for the failure?

Oddly, the Army reports four officers (0-3 through 06) received reprimands for the action, but the names or the nature of the reprimands are not stated; as the names are not given there is no way to verify the allegation. If there is culpability, the taxpayers have the right to know the names of the accused as we pay their salaries; this is democracy.

Or does democracy die incrementally in small little fights in insignificant valleys of inconsequential countries?

Why do we blithely accept the meaningless and sacrificial deaths of eight soldiers on some far-flung scrap of land which holds no value and gains us nothing? These soldiers did not die defending our country and Constitution. Their actions in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, were not connected to the safety and security of our Homeland. The U.S. could kill every Taliban fighter in Afghanistan and that country will still never be a democratic member of the fraternity of nations.

So whither the effort, death and destruction?

It's a Wrap

The finger bone's connected to the hand bone,
The hand bone's connected to the arm bone,
The arm bone's connected to the shoulder bone

--Dem Bones

 The world's perverse, 
but it could be worse    
Sonnet for Minimalists, 
Mona Van Duyn
______________________

Being a news junkie, it was hard at first having no Internet the past couple of weeks. However, each time I catch some connectivity I become more underwhelmed by that to which I do not have immediate access. When my phone was offline again last week upon my return, I sheepishly smiled as I called in the latest service request; no phone = no DSL = freedom.

Friday was my last pirated connection, and I resolved to speed-read through a few day's worth of heads on a few sites  (The New York Times, Slate and Reader's News Service.) Most of it was boring, biased, stupid and/or irritating, and an hour later I emerged none the wiser for the scan or viewing. The tempo of the news gives one the sense of being on a treadmill, breathless from the barrage, but what has one left with?

So, for the next few weeks we'll go a little more deeply into those things already there, and just do things a little differently. Following are some highlights of my recent small brush with the medical system.

I broke my wrist May 7th through sheer distraction.  The sickening feeling of bones going "splat" as I fell on open hand prompted me to drive to an ambulatory 24-hour care clinic, not wanting to repeat a dire experience some years ago at our local hospital. That time, after sitting in the waiting room for 6 hours with a 103-degree fever and finally walking out, waiting until I could see my doctor Monday (who almost killed me with a misdiagnosis of H1N1 Bird Flu, but that is another story), I learned that one must begin vomiting or keel over in order to be "taken into a room". Since I did not feel like acting nor did I trust what I would be met with in The Room, I figured Physician's First couldn't be worse, and at 8:30 p.m. the parking lot was a lot emptier.

After a few cursory X-rays the assistant announced that it was broken and they would place a temporary splint. The woman who actually wrapped the compression bandage failed to read the big letters -- "This side to skin" -- and so couldn't achieve the attachment of the Velcro; the assistant then brought this to her attention.  When the arm wrapper left the room, the assistant unwrapped it saying, "She's new here -- from another clinic; let's try and do better." Another clinic where perhaps English is not a primary language. The second attempt at least went around the thumb, successfully securing the arm to the splint, though she chose what appeared to be a midget or child's splint, and I suggested we go for the next size up.

Next morning it was a 3-hour drive to one of Florida's better hospitals and an ER intake and some further X-rays. The blase doctor sent the films to orthopedics who verified the fracture, adding on an additional wrist fracture to the radius and ulna. When I asked if ER could make an appointment with ortho for me, he said, "I haven't been able to do that in 30 years." Everyone seemed to lack certain vital skills.


When I asked the woman in the ER wrapping my arm in a new splint to point out the new broken bone on a hard copy scan she could not, saying she "only wrap[ped] the bones", but could not identify them. After the wrap I got the hustle when two women entered the room, one hurriedly throwing a sling over my head and one shoving papers to be signed at me. Also, I was given a beige 1980's-era touchtone phone ("the new ones keep breaking") from which I could call orthopedics if I wanted to try scheduling an appointment.

Ortho was as clueless as ER, and told me I could wait days or even weeks in order to have my bones set. Explaining I would be there for two days and would like to have it looked at, I was told to call back in two days to see if possibly one of their overbooked doctors could fit me in. Why I would wait until Friday to do so was a mystery unexplained. 

My moment of oasis came when I went to the patient representative who made some calls and assured me that someone in the town would be able to consult with me prior to my return to Tallahassee.  That afternoon, I received a rushed call from an irritated-sounding member of Ortho; "Can you come in the next hour?"  I could, and was met with the most intense, most harried doctor I have met in a long time.

Saith he, "I just want to let you know that I think it is very manipulative of you to go to the ER and think that you could be seen by a doctor the same day!" He was red in the face, his eyes were crazed, and he knew he had crossed the line. I said I do not manipulate anyone, and was simply following protocol as I understood it in order to be seen by the appropriate doctor. He left the room and return somewhat composed, apologizing and explaining that he'd been in surgery all day, was strung out and that his partner had decided to absent himself whenever he felt like it. His apology was sincere, acknowledging that I did not deserve that.

What he could not know was that my day had already been filled with strife; not everyone is happy to accommodate a damsel in distress. Adding onto that I had three hours sleep and was in more than a little pain, and the absurdity of the day was almost complete. 

There would be more small unfortunate events to follow, but what struck me most was how difficult it must be for those stricken who are chronically ill, incurious, uninformed and fully at the behest of people who may not want to give them the time of day. Myself, I am grateful to have been seen by a competent doctor and been given the choice to take a conservative route. Of course, we always have the right to decline surgery, but the doctors notes in such events usually betray the antagonist posture of them-versus-us, and "procedures" are money-makers.

Until we fix (smash) our dysfunctional medical system, one's best hope is to attend a hospital where the doctors work on salary and are not profited by extraneous surgery. For that, I am grateful to Mayo clinic.

Addendum: I forgot to mention that the splint applied by the ER "wrapper" was so painful -- the wrist was at such a poor angle -- that I unwrapped it within an hour of leaving.  Thankfully, I listened to the small voice in the gut which said, "Take your old splint with you." I proceeded to re-wrap my arm in that pre-formed splint until that afternoon. Onward and upward!

Circuses, But No Bread for You

  

 im ein kemach ein Torah 
(If there is no bread, there is no Torah, Avot 3:17)

And when I have broken the staff of your bread,
ten women shall bake your bread in one oven,
and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight:
and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied 
--Leviticus 26:26

____________________

I'm back at the hotel where, last week, I was privy to the incessant drone of the news feed in the common room, as unaffected yet relentless as the spiel of the Costco greeter in the film, "Idiocracy" ("Welcome to Costco;  I love you"). In equal measure it consisted of:

--The Cleveland Three: three women held captive for a decade by apparently a lone man, a neatly tied up ball of evil from which was also recently cut the Tsarnaev Bros., Saddam, Moammer and Osama bin Laden (our very own Stalins and Adolfs -- que fabuloso!)

--The guilty verdict of the boyfriend-murderin' Jody Arias, replete with news reports worried about those who had been following the Arias trial on social media for the last year or so, much as they had been transfixed by the Casey Anthony trial before it; there will now be a gap in their lives, it seems

--A limousine erupting into flames on a freeway in California

--An unfortunate woman shot in the head with a spear from her husband's spear gun (How could it have happened! Who could've imagined!)

Today, it is Angelina Jolie's breasts -- same-same, sadly.  Adding to the inanity was the repeat footage of an errant golf ball into a body of water (being as there was a golf tournament going on in Jacksonville, this most average of United State's cities as reported by America's most average paper, USAToday.) The shot seemed to symbolize . . . something.

I was here having my broken wrist set, an injury which was the endpoint of an odd 10 days: telephone knocked out for a week, followed by DSL out in 33 states for days. The IT guy who kindly visited when my computer failed to re-sync yesterday said my lack of connectivity was unique.

Road Warrior of connectivity I remain, typing with one hand when a connection offers itself, and oddly not displeased with my limited access; it is an enforced detachment, but much of what is online really doesn't deserve viewing time. How little of what we are fed is important. Maybe this is divine intervention to allow for some perspective.

Postings will be limited over the following few weeks as my wrist heals; there will be occasional postings. Please feel free to use this space as an open forum and comment as you see fit.

Oh, and a USAToday news flash: the excruciatingly middling Tom Hanks (aka "Everyman") and Sandra Bullock have been named by the most middling paper as the Most Trusted Americans by Middle Americans.

And so it goes.  Good night, and good luck.

Violence is Golden

--Teaching the Young How to Shoot (1931)

What am I going on about anyway? What's the problem? Is there a problem? That's the problem. Maybe.  Maybe not. But anyway. Why do I think there may be a problem if there is no problem and why do I think there may be no problem if there is? Anyway.  Whether there is  or isn't a problem it's a problem how much time to spend figuring out if there is or there isn't anyway what difference does it make anyway if there is or is not a problem what is a problem is a problem anyway.

--Do you Love Me?, R. D. Laing 

_________________________

Out of 30 films currently showing in Tallahassee, 27 are listed as "objectionable" for reasons of profanity, sex, violence or crude humor. This town is not a hotbed of art house showings -- these are just run-of-the mill ground out studio productions. Most are PG-13, meaning any teen can view these, and one-third of these are rated "R", meaning a viewer under age 17 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Some of the titles indicate the film's content (Scary Movie V; A Good day to Die; Oblivion; Evil Dead; Disconnect; G. I, Joe Retaliation; Pain and Gain), but not all. The following are descriptions dished out by the local paper for these 27 films: Profanity, crude humor, strong sexual content, gross-out jokes, scary special effects, violence, drug content, graphic violence, supernatural rape, gore galore, lots of disgusting stuff, explosions galore; extreme violence, intense violence, lots of violence and things that go kaboom.

The three films sans objectionable content are aimed at the children demographic.

Why would anyone spend good money and time to sustain such an assault to the senses when you can get it all and more on the nightly news and surrounding infotainment and or "reality" programming? Who has the time for such addled nonsense? At noise levels in excess of 90 db (the range at which hearing is impaired), what is the physiological effect of being so mired for 90 minutes?

Of course, this is freedom, too -- the good old American past-time, film-viewing at the bijou.  But there's not much wholesome there anymore for you and your gal, just a cessation of the assualt when the film ends, followed an aural numbness and relief from the onslaught. That is, if and until you learn to create your own real-world madness, guided by your Hollywood personal trainers.

But we shouldn't blame Hollywood for your lack of discretion. No, if you get warped, you will get there honestly in the best sense of American individuality. There may be a medicine to bring you down, or you may have to operate at overdrive until you find your OTC palliative of choice, and that, too, is very American.

Vive la artistic license, the template, the studio system, the sequel, quadrophonic sound, forever and ever. Amen.

Weapons Guide for the Perplexed

_______________________________

Due to the spectacular shooting sprees over the last decade or so, much attention is being paid to deaths caused by firearms, but little attention is given to the much larger number of deaths which occur annually in vehicular homicides (In Sharp Reversal, Highway Deaths Rise):

Road deaths in the USA rose 5.3% last year to 34,080, the first year-over-year increase in traffic fatalities since 2005, according to preliminary estimates today from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The fatality rate — which is number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled — is projected to rise to 1.16 from 1.10. ... Crash fatalities were up for every quarter of 2012 compared with 2011, the NHTSA says.

The deaths caused by the 2,000 pound bullets known as "automobiles" are every bit as gruesome as those caused by guns, but we accept them as the cost of the privilege of living and driving in a free society. The majority of these deaths are caused by people misusing the "weapon" -- high on alcohol or drugs -- but still, we do not think of curtailing the right to drive beyond state licensing tests and drunk driving suspensions. 

The good liberals who wish to characterize gun owners as "nuts" call this comparison invalid, but both activities involve the possibility of non-consensual death at the hands of an out of control tool user. In both cases, the victims are often unaware of the act which will become an imminent threat to their life or well-being.  In both cases, astute licensure of the user and control over the form of the weapon could reduce deaths, yet we seem disinterested altering our driving habits. If reduction of the loss of life due to violence is the goal, why not focus on any weapon of mass destruction?

Some constructive suggestions to help reduce the number of traffic fatalities:

--Limit the horsepower of vehicles. In Europe cars do just fine at even higher speed limits than in the States at considerably lower average horsepowers (70-100 bhp compared to the U.S. which tends to 180-250.)

--Require all drivers to undergo Defensive Driving courses before they can get a drivers license.

--Disallow certain groups of mentally ill people from driving. Perhaps the same groups who would be disallowed firearms would also be disallowed driving licenses.

--Ban cell phones and texting while driving (duh?)

--Lower speed limits, which saves gas and lives

The aggression of a time-pressed society plays itself out in the phenomena of road rage, or worse, the mesmerized tailgating which is a part of daily-driving. People drive offensively to hopefully gain a few minutes in arrival time, risking their lives as well as mine. Both guns and cars are tools which can mete out death, whether intentional or due to inattention.

Why are traffic deaths accepted as the price of life in a free society while gun deaths are demonized? The damage wrought upon the individual is commensurate in either activity, and often just as indiscriminate.

McCain and Abel, Pt. II

____________________

John McCain used to drop big, sophisticated bombs from weapons platforms off of large mobile airfields called aircraft carriers on North Vietnam during the United States' military action there. He was never tried in court for those bombings, even though many considered them illegal actions.

Mr. McCain is now leading the charge to try the Boston bombers who used knapsack bombs as "enemy combatants". However, is it not Mr. McCain and company who daily delivered high doses of explosives on a nation with which we had not declared war who should have been tried as the "enemy combatant"? The North Vietnamese goverment has films of the U.S. dropping 250, 500 and 1,000 pound bombs blasting their country's civilian as well as military targets. Is McCain less culpable of civilian death because he wore a flight helmet and not a backwards baseball cap?

The U.S. military operated in Vietnam without an act of war or a United Nations mandate. From the NVN perspective, the U.S. soldiers were illegal enemy combatants subject to the rules of military tribunals and execution for their actions.

Can Mr. McCain not see the hypocrisy behind his call for military tribunals for these small-time bombers, while he delivered orders of magnitude more devastating destructions to the civilians of another nation under the auspices of a killing machine called the U.S. military while he himself did not face a military tribunal?

The U.S. did not asked to be bombed in New York City or Boston any more than did the Vietnamese people. We will not begin to understand the phenomenon of terrorism until we are able to view our own part in perpetrating and perpetuating the dance of death.

Somewhere, a Predator drone is launching with Hellfire missiles hanging from the fuselage, and somehow we believe that this is legally, emotionally or humanly different than the bombs that were detonated in Boston; perhaps the pilots even wear hoodies and backwards baseball caps in their down time.

Perhaps it all comes down to which country you are in when the ox gets gored, from which country you originate and to which country you return, and how good your cover and protection is.

McCain and Abel

Nothing's wrong as far as I can see 
We make it harder than it has to be 
and I can't tell you why 
no, baby, I can't tell you why  
--I Can't Tell You Why, The Eagles 

Am I my brother’s keeper? 
--Genesis 4:9

If Cain were Abel 
he would give you a flower
--R.D. Laing 

__________________

In one of our many national divisions, we are riven by how we think terrorists should be adjudicated. Those who know our legal system can prosecute criminals effectively say try them in the Federal court system; opposing them are those who think a terrorist is a new kind of animal, and that we must twist ourselves into contortions in order to deal with them; usually this involves invoking an extrajudicial approach.

President Obama seems to favor the first approach, but he has been ineffective in imposing his view. In his first term he promised to close down the black hole that is Guantanamo Bay, yet it remains an open gulag. "Terrorist Mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he of 183 waterboardings infamy, has still not been tried in court.

Leading the opposition, oddly, is former Prisoner of War and Arizona Rep. Senator John McCain, he who had previously led a principled argument against the use of torture on prisoners in the War on Terror, from both a pragmatic and a moral position. Now he is leading the call for military tribunals for terrorists on the grounds that they be re-branded "illegal enemy combatants", a fuzzy construction conferring a false military quality to their being. This is based in the false presumption that because terrorists are such an aberrant being, we must become aberrant to deal with them.

Fact: The U.S. is not involved in a low-intensity conflict in CONUS, is not in a state of insurgency nor is there a unconventional or guerrilla (UW/GW) warfare scenario either extant or ready to blossom into a full-blown war.  There has never been a combat action in the U.S. conducted by terrorists. Terrorists are simple craven criminals.

Sadly for McCain, his current posture directly opposes and perverts his previous objection of torture, namely, it would make us no better than them. It makes him seem disintegrated or worse, forgetful or a madman.  Instead, he is probably just pandering to the disjointed madding crowd, which amounts to the same thing.

The provenance of the terrorist is immaterial.  Whether U.S.-born,  immigrant or foreign national, a terrorist commits homicide, kidnaps, bombs, attempts murder and violates firearms statutes, ergo, they are criminals to be tried by U.S. courts of law. That's simple.


Next: Pt II McCain and Abel

Liquid Fears

Our fears today are diffuse and hard to pin down.
They are "liquid fears"—fears about paedophilia,
for instance, which are amorphous
and which have no easily identifiable referent 
--Zygmunt Bauman 

You make me dizzy Miss Lizzy,
The way you rock'n'roll.
You make me dizzy Miss Lizzy,
When you do the stroll 
--Dizzy Miss Lizzy, The Beatles 

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde
who comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash
with a gleam in her eye 
--Dirty Laundry, Don Henley 
__________________

The Boston Marathon bombing was not a significant terror event, but it was a media feeding frenzy.  All of the talking heads stoke and feed on our emotions -- a salacious circus that does not add to our understanding but does encourage future terror hacks. Meanwhile, we sit dazed and confused, in a tizzy awash in a flurry of speculation.

It is a mutualism borne of power-madness -- the Terrorists feed off the media and vice versa, and we feed on the rotting corpse they present us, thinking it nutritious and capable of life sustenance. These productions have become our ultimate reality show in which the audience is the prey and any amateur videographer with a cell phone, our scribes. The commentators and the terrorists share the same goal, which is creating viewership and an aura surrounding the event. 

However, whether significant or not, despite the immediate casualties they will never be more than an irritant to the United States.  In fact, terrorism that produces significant casualties (as did the World Trade Center attacks) are often counterproductive to the terrorist's cause as world response is usually one of revulsion to such slaughter. 

What is significant is our emotional response to such events as Boston and the Sandy Hook shooting. These criminal acts which should be viewed in the harsh light of clear facts in order that they may be understood and hopefully thwarted in the future.  Belying any calls to "get on with it" is the 24/7 news coverage of the events. 

Instead of actually moving on, the U.S. suffers from a feeling of exceptionalism which imparts a false sense of entitlement to safety. When we do suffer calamities, we tend to memorialize them as they have been so infrequent, witness the Oklahoma City memorial and the Twin Tower memorial. The Amish razed the school which was the site of a mass shooting in 2006, so site destruction is often equated with expulsing the violence. 

But instead of token attempts at erasure, why not do the realistic work of a modern society, members of a violent world, and seek ways to reduce the incidence while accepting their periodic occurrence. The "shock and awe" response -- "Who could have imagined it" -- is getting a little long in the tooth. 

Our factionalized society which seeks to use each succeeding violent action as a way to scapegoat their particular bugbear is totally disingenuous. The question of Islamic radicalism is a red herring; we did not ask the religion of Timothy McVeigh or the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski)). The facts we should seek include timely questions like, if the brothers were part of a larger terrorist cell, will there be follow-on attacks?

Instead we are stymied by our requisite collective outrage and distracting side streets of speculation regarding the bomber's mother's shoplifting record or Dzhokar's Twitter feed. 

The talking heads feed our emotions, insecurity and voyeuristic expectations of entertainment.  Director Bigelow's next Academy winner is knocking.

--Jim and Lisa

Débauché

  
By the time a person hears the news,
it is not news at all, but opinion.
It becomes a message of some kind,
rather than fresh, straightforward news
--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

 … Have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner?
--Macbeth 

As a teenager, Michel believed that suffering
conferred dignity on a person.
Now he had to admit that he had been wrong.
What conferred dignity on people was television 
--The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq

___________________

[What follows is a meditation on media; more military and politics back tomorrow -- ed.]

Two weekends ago I visited a friend who is a t.v. watcher, and over the course of that weekend I passed before the set for perhaps 30 minutes total, but those 30 minutes reminded me why I do not watch.

First came the superannuated momentous query on the news: "WHAT would turn an Elvis impersonator into a would-be killer?" The mind reels in contemplation of such a question. Before a cutaway to an ad, the voiceover suggested the next feature would be advice to survivors of the Boston bombing. We catch a glimpse of a woman staunchly dispensing heartfelt words from a rehab facility, presumably a victim of some other tragedy: "Don't never give up".  But -- is this news?

Earlier, the local news devoted 6 minutes of a 30-minute broadcast to -- the weather.  All that is needed in order to know whether to wear one's mac is the 5-day forecast, but instead they must dazzle with all the bells and whistles and Doppler Radar, the "forecaster" (how medieval!) giving his best guess as to how the winds will blow, with his usual 50/50 accuracy rate. [An intelligent friend once observed that he kept the Weather Channel on all day as background, and wasn't sure why it held such a fascination for him.]

Six minutes of weather patterns, while the world turns and events of import are never suggested. We are lucky to get six minutes of international news each night, hence why Lisa stopped watching t.v. news back in college.  She witnessed the "Tessification" of the media news with the advent of the dreaded "infotainment" industry.

But even before the degradation that ET ushered in, an absolutely disinterested posture seemed impossible for humans, especially when they've entered the realm of celebrity. When a trusted news reporter like Walter Cronkite grafts his opinion upon his reportage (as he did following his Vietnam visit when he declared that war to be unwinnable), the facts as presented are no longer trustworthy.

I largely stopped watching much television after Hill Street Blues ushered in the use of vertiginous shots to suggest a strained verisimilitude; cinema verite it was not. The static angles of film noir are tolerable but one feels like a seizure victim when the entire program is riddled by close ups and fade outs and a shaky hand; it's exhausting. (Needless to say, classics of the film canon, like "Blair Witch Project", are outre for me.)

Later, was a performance of Otis Redding tunes at the White House hosted by Queen Latifah.  Being a Redding fan, I stayed with this program the longest, hoping for some soulful and heartfelt renditions.  I entered to hear the underwhelming Justin Timberlake butcher a tune, straining himself beyond all credibililty, lacking an ounce of feeling. He was decked out in a too-tight suit trying to strike a cross between Sinatra (more at Michael Buble) and Daniel Craig's Bond, but he couldn't open the collar to correct effect lest his tats show. It was a truly painful performance.

There was one campy but spirited performance of "Knock on Wood by an older performer, followed by a dismal performance of Redding's anthematic "When a Man Loves a Woman" by a young man who did not appear to have ever loved a woman, who went falsetto when he failed to mine the pathos of the tune. This effort garnered him the requisite "oohs and ahhs," but in fact the performance was another dud. Latifah sang one and hit the notes, but did not inspire. Any day of the week in our town one may hear the angelic and inspired voices of simple church choir members doing a far more credible job of invoking feelings.

Nonetheless, the white people squirmed uneasily, smiled and clapped to some unfelt rhythm. But when Cyndi Lauper began a tune which she could clearly not honor, my hopes for hearing any more singers with feeling were quashed. Lauper's "True Colors" back in the '80's was masterful, but Redding is not her league. Who scheduled this lineup of abysmal failures?

Lastly, I caught a moment of the nighttime soap "The Good Wife", in which actual t.v. interviewer Charley Rose appeared in a cameo on the program doing his interview schtick. I know there is precedent for public personas making appearances on t.v. programs, but this was disappointing. This simulacrum might easily confuse a young person trying to discern fact from fiction.

Charley Rose was great early in his career on late night public t.v., when he provided a forum for people of note to explain their thinking. He was an informed and respectful host who largely took himself out of the equation, but about 20 years ago he was repackaged into the ubiquitous form of the interrupting, "gotcha" interviewer and was no longer unique. No longer what he was, this jump into pure fiction wasn't a tremendous jump for him.

My 30 minutes of t.v. time was a bridge too far.

Inglorious Bastards

   I'm aware what tremendous feats human beings
are capable of once they abandon dignity 
--Inglourious Basterds (2009)

He kept dreamin'
That someday he'd be a star.
But he sure found out the hard way
That dreams don't always come true 
--Midnight Train to Georgia, 
Gladys Knight and the Pips 

Do you think because you are virtuous, 
that there shall be no more cakes and ale? 
--Twelfth Night (II, iii)
__________________

The Boston Marathon bombings occurred almost two weeks ago -- a world away, in Twitter years -- and the reaction to the perpetrators was visceral and immediate shock along the lines of "who could have imagined such a thing." Though an understandable protestation, it is disingenuous as we have been down this road before, and outrage will not stop these events.

Most are quick to use the latest atrocity as a stump for their agenda, but we need neither a police state nor more gumption to go out into the world of fun activities uncowed. This bombing is also discrete from gun ownership issues. For those unwilling to tag violent video games, movies, television and music as the genesis of the violent impulse, guns can also not be blamed for the recent eruptions of violence.

The non-sequitur after the bombings was a renewed call for gun control by those self-loathing Americans who blame our rights for the misconduct of a few. For those who earnestly argue the point, the U.S. is a hopelessly, malignantly violent society as it is predicated upon the ownership of killing tools. However, this view is hopelessly ethnocentric.

The United States does not have dibs on violence.

Photographer friend Zoriah (former embed with the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan) recently published a harrowing series of photographs of acid attack victims, people who will live out their lives horribly disfigured and in pain, many unable to even keep food in their mouths and much worse. This horror is conducted routinely around the globe, and without access to guns. Hatred and will are the only necessary components.

Less spectacular than acid attacks are the brutalities committed daily in any ordinary life without weapons, but actions whose indelible mark will be borne for a lifetime by the victims. We are all murderers, some figurative and some literal. The Shadow said it best: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

Bottom line: Mankind is a brutal species, and removing guns to the hands of a few will not change that fact. Guns are not the Nodes of Ranvier which you may neatly remove to interrupt the perpetration of violence. At a garage sale last weekend was overheard the following exchange: "Do you suppose we should remove the pressure cookers?" And for what reason? And should we remove Borax and Jello and Ivory Snow and Popsicle sticks and anything else which might be used to go "BOOM"?

Because the will to power is so strong, and attacks render us impotent, the recourse to counter-attack is expected. We love Uncle Ruslan Tsarni's judgment -- "They were losers!" He removes the heat from his back by joining in our collective disgust. The usually-reasoned editor of The Week magazine, William Falk, called them "bastards", and otherwise poised commenters everywhere let loose with a passel of hauteur.

Comedian Sasha Baron Cohen captured Americans well in his low-brow film Borat when he has his undercover Kazakhstan newsman decked out in Toby Kieth red-white-and-blue shirt spouts a biblical litany of curses to be meted out upon our Middle Eastern enemies. At first, the crowd joins in, and not until Borat takes his invective to the absurd do the dupes get it and back off.

To us the brothers are "dummies", yet our Central Intelligence Agency missed Tamarlan Tsarnaev's recent 6-month visit to Russia due to a misspelling on a plane manifest (reminiscent of the original tragedy in the dystopian film "Brazil", wrought by a fly falling into the teletype which changed the name "Tuttle" into "Buttle" and ensuing bureaucratic errors.) Name-calling is rather schoolyard, and at best is a crude attempt to show the name-caller is inured to the harm caused by the bully. But as in school, slander usually only serves to promulgate the offense and ratchet up the efforts of the offender in order to re-establish his "good name".

The media called the older brother a "two-bit boxer"; in fact, he was the Golden Gloves champion from Massachusetts for two years. He lacked finesse, as did Serbian tennis champ Novak Djokovic, but he lacked the expensive handlers to shepherd him through the system. An interesting investigative piece at the NYT surmises that the insurmountable blocks with which he met may have contributing to his choice of violence (A Battered Dream.) The younger, Dzhokhar, was a college student at Dartmouth.

This is not a case of reifying national identities or political affiliations, it is about not participating in and perpetuating the violence. Labeling the problem stops progress; it is like doing medicine by the numbers. Inquiry opens it. For our own benefit, we should cease finding succor in name-calling.

Earth Day 2013: The Pale Blue Dot

(National Archives, Records of the Environmental Protection Agency)

“Abandoned automobiles and other debris clutter an acid water and oil filled five acre pond. It was cleaned up under EPA supervision to prevent possible contamination of Great Salt Lake and a wildlife refuge nearby.” 

--Bruce McAllister, near Ogden, Utah, April 1974

Now there is one outstandingly important fact
regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is
that no instruction book came with it 
--Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth,
Buckminster Fuller
___________________

Earth Day 2013 passed quietly yesterday, the media focused on the human-on-human destruction more to the tastes of an anthropocentric society. (For more 1970's environmental atrocities, see Smithsonian Best and Worst of 1970's.) Almost 70% of Americans though preserving and restoring the environment was an important goal when the day was commemorated in 1971; today, less than 40% think so.

Meanwhile, the brutalization of our planet continues apace. In our neck of the woods, consumption of the once-popular Apalachicola Bay oyster is down, some reports suggesting by as much as 60%. An unknown amount of the oil dispersant Corexit -- banned in Europe -- was dumped into the Gulf to make the slicks "disappear" in 2010, but in fact increasing the toxicity of the spill by a coefficient of 50 (in keeping with SNL character Fernando's dictum, "It is better to look good than to feel good.") Many people who care about their health, and who have the liberty to make a choice, have declined swimming in or eating from these waters.

The Gulf Coast doesn't have too much in the way of natural resources, but seafood was one of them until BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill cruelly arrived just in time for that year's Earth Day. On the three-year anniversary of the event, our Florida Attorney General Filed Suit Against BP Over the 2010 Spill for lost revenue in the state. 

The Environmental Protection Agency Reports: More Than Half Nation's Rivers in Poor Shape, unable to support healthy populations of aquatic insects and other creatures. 

If you can do something to help your piece of the planet stay healthy, please do it; likewise, if you can refrain from harming it, then do that.

Happy Earth Day, 2013.

Why He Does What He Does

 
And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory 
--And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, 
The Pogues 

He was quick-tempered with a
strange halting way of speaking 
--Seinfeld, Lotus episode
__________________

The answer to the titular question is, neither for love nor money, fame nor fortune. He is not gunning for the ubiquitous "consulting" position. He earns no buckaroos for the project. No -- the origins are to be found in a career with the organization in which he discovered that thinking was not allowed, at least, not aloud.

Ranger was the perennial gadfly, or "pain in the ass", depending upon whom was doing the accounting. It was the same in Vietnam. To questions concerning our function in country he would say, "It is THEIR country, after all ..."  This did not win him acolytes.

Ranger retired as a Terrorism Counteraction (TC/A) training specialist for the Department of the Army, designated a subject matter expert (SME) who, at the time, was one of few who had graduated from every school the Department of Defense ran on the topic of terrorism -- including all Special Forces training and Air Force Training in Low Intensity Conflict (TLIC). He maintained his interest in the topic following retirement, and his analyses at RangerAgainstWar are not based in idle speculation.

While in the field, he also disagreed with the official doctrine that terrorism was a great threat to our national security and one that would affect the operation of our Armed Forces, believing instead that terrorism would be a manageable nuisance were correct protocols emplaced. His view was not popular as the dynamic nature and flashiness of the terror threat provided a great moneymaker for the military.

The news media and the security apparatus of the United States were in collusion selling this fear, and the contractors in three-piece suits with leather attaches selling lesson plans two years out of the Military Police corps were a dime a dozen, their legion whisked through revolving doors.  Fear sells, and the Dod was its pied piper.

RangerAgainstWar's recent piece, "The Boston Massacre", was a down-and-dirty evaluation of the tradecraft usually associated with a well-planned and executed event. Terrorist's must use Old Special Forces tradecraft in order to penetrate the U.S. and operate in any successful manner. Their success indicates our failure at practising these methods which used to be a standard part of SF Officers Training course. (Even CIA operatives came through our course which was based on the old OSS tradecraft.)

Direct action and fancy gadgets have largely supplanted that approach, but that's another story.

Sophistication

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication 
--Leonardo da Vinci
________________

A successful act of terrorism requires a certain sophistication.  A RAW reader recently challenged this contention by stating 22 million not-very sophisticated Mexicans penetrated our first level of security, which is our borders.

Besides the obvious difference in intent (most Mexicans hope to make a new home in the U.S. whereas the intent of terrorists is to gain entry to spread mayhem), the reader is correct that support -- both active and passive -- is necessary for the success of either infiltrative endeavor. In a future post Ranger will explore the analogy between how Mexican aliens and terrorists have successfully breached the U.S. borders and gained a foothold in a future post.

For now, we will point out that it is minimally essential to gain transport (driver's license), safe house (shelter), identification documents and financing.  Beyond that, terrorists must have language facility, handling, intelligence, targeting data, swept passports and avenues of escape. Staying in country and becoming operational require all of the above, not just pole-vaulting over a hurdle.

Our media rarely provides a look at the support chain behind the terrorist.  It strains credulity to believe that two men carried out OKC or 19 the WTC attack with little or no support beyond the attack team. Both events had more active and passive support personnel than we were led to believe. Ditto the current brothers suspected of setting bombs at the Boston Marathon.

As an outside-the-box guy, Ranger has never believed the official versions of the Oklahoma City Murrah Building (OKC) bombing or the attacks of 9-11-01, both of which are seminal fear-generating scenarios for the U.S.  One event was used to start wars versus stateside militias, the other to create the new concept of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), the Long War. 

The OKC bombers were depicted as malcontent losers acting alone who pulled off a spectacular terror event, but the two ideas are contradictory. The coverage of the 9-11-01 events never go beyond the hijackers themselves, save for the mention of their ties with the shadowy organization al-Qaeda and a chart of the group's top organization. The latest sound byte on the Boston brothers (from their uncle) is that they did what they are purported to have done because they were "losers".  Case closed ... or is it?

It is perhaps a comfort to imagine that this could not have been foreseen, or as former Secretary of State Rice said following the WTC attack ("Who could have imagined?" . . . despite a prior attack at the same facility less than ten years before.)  But such disingenuousness is no longer acceptable, and ignorance is not bliss when the price is one's life. 

Being rational in the U.S. vis-a-vis violence and terror in our society is the new outre topic among liberals. We dare not racially profile, and the price for the privilege of sitting at the table of democracy is to put on one's blinders. "These things will happen," and "let's get those gun rights curtailed right quick," only this is a non-sequitur: if you are willing to suck up the routine occasional bombing for fear of losing your freedoms, then why so quick off the block to limit the rights of gun owners?

All linkages between terrorism and the society in which it occurs and from whence it is generated should be made, and the beginning is to form a profile of the suspect population.

Eyes Wide Shut

--Terror in DNA, Pavel Constantin (Romania)
RAW thinks this may the most accurate rendering
of terror by a political cartoonist 

The world has moved on 
--The Dark Tower, Stephen King 

How comforting to know we're
the "right sort of people" 
--The Watcher in the Woods (1980)

Nothing's wrong as far as I can see
We make it harder than it has to be
and I can't tell you why
no, baby, I can't tell you why 
--I Can't Tell You Why, The Eagles
_____________________

Some are hung up on the correct nomenclature to describe the recent bombing in Boston, as if not calling it "terrorism" makes it something it is not, which is a crime, and a crime of indiscriminate violence. It is something the world and the United States has seen before, yet the response is more shock, albeit a bit benumbed (save for those directly affected.)  Why should this be?

The main question to arise from the event is, "Why did it occur at all?" The biggest failure was that the Boston Marathon was not identified as a threat environment, and as a result security was deficient. What are the people in the Department of Homeland Security doing if not identifying and training relevant personnel for JUST SUCH AN EVENT? They are not organizing ice cream socials, after all.

Ranger had just written "Commando Cop" the day before the event, questioning the combat posture of regular law enforcement to effectively confront stateside terrorism. The bombing in Boston proves that all the neato paramilitary gear and vehicles in the country will not do what simple vigilance can accomplish: Identify two unattended black backpacks in clear sight, soon to maim and kill.

Such potential threats would not sit long on a parade route in Londonderry, or on a Japanese or Madrid train or an Israeli bus. Those cultures have accepted that acts of terror can occur in any public space, and their police and citizens carry on with due diligence. This loss of naivete is not exactly paranoia, but it is pragmatic.

They are not less free, and we are foolishly naive if we think we can roll back the clock by watching enough episodes of Mad Men; that is no longer our world.  We are also fools if we think the vaunted Seal Team Six will kill the bad guys in their jammies.

Nor will our guns protect us from such crimes. Terrorists do not get into counter productive gun fights; they do not fight fair.  It would be a doomed effort with no attendant benefit to their group (or their person.) All terrorist operations have the goal to increase their funding, to gain new members and to create spectacular terrorist events; this is their raison d'etre.

Even archetypal terrorist Osama bin Laden did not elect to utilize his weapons in such a scenario.  Terrorists engage only soft targets not in a defensive posture. If it is a lone terrorist, getting killed does not allow you the toothsome pleasure of reading about or seeing your maimed victims. Just ask the Unabomber or the BTK killer.

The bombings in Boston show that the U.S. has lost the counter-terrorism knowledge won after the era of 1970's and '80's Euroterrorism. Distracted by our high-tech tools and focusing on far threats, we fail to identify clear and present threat situations in CONUS.

When U.S. military installations were the targets of terror bombings there were standard operating procedure both on post and throughout most NATO nations. Israeli intelligence developed the concept that any unguarded package or case was a possible explosive device. Simple countermeasures like removing trash canisters from crowded areas were adopted. The Boston bombing could have been prevented had one person noted the unguarded backpacks hiding in plain sight.

This is not armchair quarterbacking -- this is a lament for the loss of institutional knowledge from the not-too distant past. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars on counter-terrorism experts, firearms training, SWAT tactics and all the attendant tools, but the simple and obvious was overlooked.

The police failed in crowd control and security, and this is a slam on their training and not their individual capabilities. Photos showing the Boston police drawing their guns after the explosion were both instinctual and tragic, for a gun can't kill a bomb. They were bunched up -- bad if there were a secondary bombing -- when they should have been setting up a cordon and keeping the uninjured away while treating the wounded.

The one apparent success was the Boston trauma team which had been trained by Israeli trauma personnel.  Alasdair Conn, Chief of Emergency Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, credited that training with their success in treating the victim expeditiously.  This fact is not getting the press, but it should, as the Israeli's have gained a hard-won effective protocol against terror attacks. Our police need the commensurate training that those medical personnel received.

To properly counter a terror threat, the government must utilize layers of security and concentric circles around any potential target.  Though anything can be a target, this does not mean counter-terrorism measures are doomed to failure. Effective response requires real coordination between agencies that transcends 9-5 business hours with classified OPLANS hidden insecurity vaults, written by retired soldiers.  This is our world today, and it demands a real-world engagement of all relevant personnel.

Forget analyzing the chaff on the radar, which apparently was not detected in this case. A simple-minded homeless person could have broken up this attack by asking an officer, "What is this back pack doing here?"

In disasters, "It did not happen" beats, "We'll never forget" any day.

--Jim and Lisa

Bring it On!, Redux

--Hajo de Reijger 

Bring 'em on 
--President George W. Bush (2003)

 Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn? 
--Where Have All the Flowers Gone, 
Pete Seeger

 __________________

This is probably the most foolish editorial thus far on the Boston bombing:

 

Op-Ed

Op-Ed Columnist

Bring on the Next Marathon

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

We're just not afraid anymore.

Friedman expresses the same bravado that began the enervating Wars on Terror, namely, "Bring it on!" But that machismo rings false, as any act of terror does not come with a "bring it on" response; your emotions, Mr. Friedman, are tinny and false, disrespectful and callow.

From the Op-Ed,

"We still do not know who set off the Boston Marathon bombs or why. But we do know now, after 9/11, after all the terrorism the world has seen in the last decade, what the right reaction is: wash the sidewalk, wipe away the blood, and let whoever did it know that while they have sickeningly maimed and killed some of our brothers and sisters, they have left no trace on our society or way of life. Terrorists are not strong enough to do that — only we can do that to ourselves — and we must never accommodate them. 

"So let’s repair the sidewalk immediately, fix the windows, fill the holes and leave no trace — no shrines, no flowers, no statues, no plaques — and return life to normal there as fast as possible. Let’s defy the terrorists, by not allowing them to leave even the smallest scar on our streets, and honor the dead by sanctifying our values, by affirming life and all those things that make us stronger and bring us closer together as a country."

"Left no trace"? Oh, Mr. Friedman, you are a little late off the starting block on this one.  The time for arguing "Get on with it!" is past. The U.S. is inextricably committed to a long, feckless war, one which leaves us not one jot safer from the thing with which we claim to tussle -- terrorism. If anything, our wars disallow us to ever return to normal.  Brave words now: Defy the terrorists.

That wasn't your tune a decade ago, so how dare you co-opt the loser's phrase in service of your new-found bravery? "Sanctify our values"? And what exactly would those be? And does your advice hold to those upon whom we are committing violence?  Do they just wash off their streets and commence again?

Your piece is rifled by contradictions: "eyes always on the prize, never on all those 'suspicious' bundles on the curb", yet you admit "The explosives were reportedly packed into six-litre pressure cookers, tucked into black duffel bags and then left on the ground." The Israelis do not ignore untended packages, and perhaps neither should we.  The time for you to laud that "quintessentially American naïveté" is not now. 

How easy to celebrate a human reaction as a rational impulse ("When you watch the video of the bombing aftermath, notice how many people you see running toward the blast within seconds to help, even though more bombs easily could have been set to explode there"), when you might be suggesting helpful lessons which would allow our citizens to live sensibly in the midst of the reality of such actions, while not cowering or being Pollyannaish, either.  Running toward the sight of probable secondary explosions is not helpful.

Now we've moved past the "Friedman Unit" (FU) to the Friedman Ostrich pose; neither are very attractive or functional.

The Boston Massacre

--In "Brazil", the steampunk technocrats
can't keep up with the bombers

 ~How do you account for the fact
that the bombing campaign
has been going on for thirteen years?
~Beginners' luck 
--Brazil (1985)
_________________

Two bombs were detonated at the conclusion of the Boston Marathon 15 April 2013 resulting in 3 deaths and over 100 injuries. The event proves the maxim that to counter a threat we must be right every time, while the terrorists only need to be right once.

Why Boston? Key portal cities will be the only targets of terrorism. Terrorists have limited assets, and these cities offer easy ingress and egress.  Authorities are suggesting this is the work of a lone man, perhaps a Saudi national, but the lone wolf theory does not comport with historical events.

We must assume that any ancillary team members exfiltrated prior to the execution phase. The reason is asset value.  Bomb makers require sophisticated training and are the most valued members of the team; his life cannot be jeopardized in peripheral activities.

His specialty is not reconnaissance, security or any other support function of the planning stage.  Both active and passive support provide these functions, to include materiel gathering for the bomb maker (unless the explosives were provided by a State or non-State sponsor.) The explosives must also be infiltrated, and the maker is not the mule.

The pertinent question regarding whoever executed this attack is: How did they get past Saudi police, intelligence, Interpol, ICE, FBI, CIA and the Boston Police?  Note also that neither the 3rd Armored Division nor Seal Team 6 could have stopped this event, which shows that terrorism is not a military concern.

The  targeting of the Boston Marathon on Patriot's Day is similar to the Irish Republican Army's bombings in London streets during The Troubles. The targeting of a popular sporting event will cause terror beyond the actual destruction. The terrorist's goal is always far-reaching trauma, exceeding that of the physical damage.

A down and dirty listing of the perpetrators:

• There were reconnaissance personnel familiar with Boston to select target locations

• Security teams to protect the bomb maker

• Administration personnel to provide safe houses, working areas and money, cover and transportation

• A handler for these people; this is the coach and coordinator

• A clean up team to sanitize their quarters

• A driver, and possibly a photographer to document the event.  Today, that could mean carrying a cell-phone.

The bomber(s) and handler are expendable, and did not build the bomb. They only place and arm the bomb, and ideally will be killed in the explosion leaving no live intel sources behind (though Boston police are stating at this time that the bomber was not among those killed.)

These people are all like Chairman Mao's fishes swimming in a big river. In our little city, there are groups of Middle Eastern men who frequent local coffee shops playing chess, coming and going every few weeks, fading into the background, hiding in plain sight. We are not saying they are threats, but in a free society we have anonymous people coming and going at astounding rates; not being a police state is a double-edged sword.

The Boston bombing shows that despite the U.S. invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, we have neither sufficiently or correctly identified the threat to the U.S., nor have we eliminated the motivation for attacks by these groups. While we send Special Operations Forces worldwide, a bomber gets through the levels of security cast by our supposed specialists.

Simply: All of the SWAT teams, drones and armored divisions will not protect us from a core of dedicated adversaries.

The question to be answered: From whom do the attackers obtain their operational abilities and support, and why do we fail to focus on the actual threat to our nation?

An event like the Boston bombing suggests we should reassess the logic and assumptions of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©)
____________________

Follow-on, per the IED/bombs: 

Most likely these were commercial explosives, as they were in backpacks.  They probably weighed no more than 40 pounds and no shrapnel was incorporated, keeping them light and concealable. This also implies they needed to be placed strategically to employ the surrounding area to act as shrapnel.

This means the bomb-maker knew his craft both technically and tactically.