Chapomatic

Condolences to TPM blogger Brian Beutler and his family. Beutler was reported as shot during a mugging and is in the hospital.

Good Lord, woman! Over forty-two thousand comments on one post?

I’ve followed the discussion on torture, specifically what it is and isn’t, and interrogation, specifically what it should be and shouldn’t be, since I met those Vietnam-era prisoners of war on video in boot camp long ago.

Several young men and women of my current acquaintance go to SERE school soon enough. They’ll have to deal with some of this. Perhaps I may have to at some point. I’ve not had the, uh, ‘pleasure’ yet, as submariners tend to die with company rather than get captured alone. I’d like to avoid such things, but not at the expense of being unprepared in the event–if it’s my job to do so, I’ll go and life will suck for a while.

All of this is long prologue to an outstanding ‘read the whole thing’ by Christopher Hitchens, who decided to get waterboarded. I thought long and hard about my own position on the subject he discusses, and this article is the first one I’ve seen in a long time that is a sufficient impetus for me to think over my own positions. I may or may not come to the same conclusions as him, but I agree with him that serious discussion with integrity is essential to discussing actions gray, and black-and-white, simultaneously.

I have had some extremely serious conversations on the topic, with two groups of highly decent and serious men, and I think that both cases have to be stated at their strongest.

Worth a read, people.

Every morning these days while I work before going to work, I put a few more CDs into the computer so I can eventually digitize the collection for potential trips to deserty areas. Being lazy but picky I do a quick Google to find the covers of these CDs and wind up finding the oddest web pages, from whence comes this mix tape. I remember hearing these songs, but that was when I was enlisted, not in college. I would have picked some different songs, even from the same albums, but it does evoke the noise coming from the barracks room down the hallway.

But there aren’t anywhere near enough people to have had a trend of “Petty Officer Rock”, so college rock it is.

Isn’t this the guy who got elected with a campaign that involved waving his son’s combat boots around in front of a crowd?

Now this is educational. I was all following the emotional line offered by this post, particularly since I read the blog in question every once in a while, and then I read the first couple of comments.

Perhaps things aren’t quite as advertised.

(After Mush Morton didn’t come back from a WWII submarine patrol, the force instituted a rule about sitting a guy’s butt in a desk after so much operational time to keep the guy from killing himself and his boat in a blaze of glory. It can be a useful, though difficult, rule.)

Arty type takes kids’ art and builds mises en scene based on the kidpix. Veddy interesting. I particularly like the embroidery on the dresses on the two ladies (”princes twins”); it’s very little-kid style and I wonder why I’ve never seen something like that before.

-h/t b3ta-

Huh. Detailer fu.

Place I thought I was going? Ain’t gonna happen. I started pulling the string–something seemed wrong about it, and indeed something was; the timing couldn’t work. I found out after I started following where the string went. Bad news sometimes requires a little digging to reveal.

So now I have some new options to ponder for the next job. Not much leeway, not much information on which to base a decision. One of the options is perfect for a guy like me: goes somewhere I wouldn’t mind being, doing something interesting, possible benefit that would match a long term personal goal. Problem is, it ain’t very dern close to Iraq or Afghanistan, or close to anything operational, and it’s not time for such a billet.

So instead I am looking at an unaccompanied billet in one of several locations, at least one of which really bothers me in terms of where it is, and still not exactly what I’m looking for.

I hope I’m skipping the cushy job for a dern good reason…

This is beautiful. I wish I were able to have seen it in person.

I like this quote in an article:

Ibn Khaldun sees the historical process as one of constant cyclical change, due mainly to the interaction of two groups, nomads and townspeople. These form the two poles of his mental map; peasants are in between, supplying the towns with food and tax revenue and taking handicrafts in return. Nomads are rough, savage and uncultured, and their presence is always inimical to civilization; however, they are hardy, frugal, uncorrupted in morals, freedom-loving and self-reliant, and so make excellent fighters. In addition, they have a strong sense of ‘asabiya, which can be translated as “group cohesion” or “social solidarity.” This greatly enhances their military potential. Towns, by contrast, are the seats of the crafts, the sciences, the arts, and culture. Yet luxury corrupts them, and as a result they become a liability to the state, like women and children who need to be protected. Solidarity is completely relaxed and the arts of defending oneself and of attacking the enemy are forgotten, so they are no match for conquering nomads.

Swiped from FastNav, some poetry.

Alright. Swiped an example from her jewelry bag to get the right size. Now I need to find a ring shop that takes me seriously, despite my terrorist mutton-chops, baggy plaid shorts, and plain white tee. And no, I don’t speak a lick of Italian. This should be interesting.

It was.

Kaboom getting married?

Yeah, we tend to suck these days at buying new stuff.

Oh, and related to the last post. This.

Yup, it’s like that.

One could do worse than to go by these guidelines.

Back from a little short time off.

The elegant thing to me about this experiment–not talking the politics, mind you–is the ability to “rewind“.

Update: Dave says in the comments there’s improvement in the detailing. Good, but is it too little too late?

John’s right. This is important. As I read it, Army’s stating that jobs doing the wartime leadership job count as significant career enhancers and backing it up with policy that sounds hard to escape.

I have directed HRC [Human Resources Command] to award Centralized Selection List (CSL) Credit for LTCs serving specifically in the TT Commander positions that have direct leadership responsibility for a training/transition team. [This means the guys are getting effective credit for battalion command - a Big Deal]

Therefore, we are creating a new CSL sub-category called “Combat Arms Operations”. It will be open to all eligible officers in the Maneuver, Fires and Effects (MFE) branches and to Foreign Area Officers (FAO). It will fall under the Operations category and will be effective on the FY 10 CSL board which meets this September.

As a bridging strategy, for FY09 we will activate officers for these command positions from the alternate lists of all four major MFE command categories - Operations, Strategic Support, Training, and Installation. Officers accepting and who serve will be awarded CSL credit in the Operations category for serving as a Transition Team Commander. Additionally, if selected by the FY 10 CSL board, the officer may opt to command in the category they are selected after completion of their TT Command. Those that do command will receive credit for a second CSL command. If chosen, and they opt not to command, they will still receive credit for their TT command. [This is a REALLY big deal - multiple commands!]

But look at what Navy’s doing. We’re sending who we think we can afford to lose, much of the time, instead of who’s good. I’ve seen guys think it’s a get-well tour–mainly because they were told that by someone they trusted–and that becomes a disappointment at promotion time because those guys weren’t getting promoted. We’re sending non-screened guys to DLI and to Baghdad and to the ’stan because they will do an IA; we’re sending JOs to IAs as soon as they move to the apartment at the shore tour location and they get out. The Navy guys doing the hard job in the only shooting war we’re fighting are guys who aren’t on the fast track–one of the readers here did a job that Army thinks is significant command, but Navy doesn’t and said guy is done in uniform. I got refused volunteer slots in a previous community because it was more important to fill (insert meaningless ‘job we’ve always done’ here) instead.

I’ve railed in my earlier career against the dumb practice of putting only guys we think are not-fast-track (and who we then don’t select and dump) in forward deployed, sensitive jobs that have more real world use than many of the jobs that historically go to fast track “obvious star potential” officers. This is more of that problem, magnified a little because we’re, you know, being shot at.

You get the people you pick. The force is shaped by who you pick. We’re by and large not picking guys who are actually doing the wartime job, save a few tokens with high visibility. Does this bother anyone out there?

Congratulations, Mike. If the name is who I think it is, he’s a good guy who survived some rough jobs and is now running the show here.

Barry’s found an absolutely brilliant piece of work here. It sure sounds like my own organization at times.

On the other hand that might be the rule of organizations that says (where is this from?) that organizations often tend to act as if their worst enemies are running it…

I still think the electrical operator’s choice of “garden weasel”, unanimously hailed as the correct answer, is still pretty entertaining.