The Razor

Several years ago I received a folder with photocopies of one man’s experience as a waist-gunner in a B-17 over Germany during World War 2. The man’s name was Arden Yoder, and I started putting together a web site in honor of his memory. However like many of my “projects”, it fell by the wayside. All that I have are a few scans that have sat on the server untouched – until now.

Arden lived a relatively long life, passing away at the age of 76 in August 2001. His memoir deserves better than a single post in a blog, but it’s the best I can do for now.

Here’s his gunnery school certification:

Here’s a picture of Arden’s plane, the Nine O Nine:

Mr. Yoder’s hometown newspaper announced his return. It’s hard to imagine a newspaper doing this today.

According to his obituary, he was married to his wife Beryl for 52 years, had three daughters, Beth, Teri and Linda – who died in 1988. He worked as a UPS delivery driver until 1969 then at a Photomat until he retired in 1989.

One by one the Greatest Generation passes into history. All the while a new Greatest Generation – those currently serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, are taking their place. While we must work to celebrate the lives of World War 2 veterans, we shouldn’t forget those who sacrificed in other conflicts including Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Panama, Persian Gulf and of course Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s a day of remembrance for all those who gave their lives in the service of Freedom.

Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, passed away over the weekend at the age of 98.

Records show Sendler’s team of some 20 people saved almost 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.

Under the pretext of inspecting the ghetto’s sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler and her assistants entered in search of children who could be smuggled out and be given a chance to survive by living as Catholics.
Babies and small children were smuggled out in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages. Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.

In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis’ death camps — Sendler wrote the children’s real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.

When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips — which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate’s yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded.

Her valor went unrecognized in her own homeland until recently when President Lech Kaczynski nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Unfortunately for Ms. Sendler she never got one because her accomplishment didn’t poke a thumb in the eye of the Bush Administration, so Al Gore, the IPCC, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY and MOHAMED ELBARADEI, and of course, Jimmy Carter received the prize instead. Now since she’s dead, she’s no longer eligible – not that it would have mattered any since her legacy lives on through the thousands of people alive today thanks to her heroism.

I hate cop funerals. I hate them with every fiber of my being. Northeast Philly shut down today for the funeral procession of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski. Here are a couple of photos taken from philly.com (more there).

Liczbinski’s murderer will not be granted such a ceremonious and solemn funeral. The local mosque will not even bury him.

“We don’t tolerate that kind of behavior,” (Tariq El Shabazz, managing director of the mosque) said. “Their actions are not from Islam. You don’t dress like a woman, you don’t rob people or transgress against them or commit murder. On all three grounds, they are dead wrong.”

Two of the three bank robbers were wearing full burkas when they entered the Shop-Rite to rob the Bank of America branch inside it last Saturday. After holding up the bank and getting away with $38,000 Liczbinski was the first officer to pull them over. He was shot 5 times as he was getting out of his patrol car.

This is pasted from Babalu, which I found after Dave Price cited it in this post.

IT IS THE SOLDIER

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

(? Charles M. Province)

UPDATE: I received this in an email and it raises some important points about the poem:

For some reason this poem strikes me the wrong way.
Although I strongly sympathize with what the author is
trying to convey (proper respect due to our military),
it is a disservice to suggest that the rights
enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the
Bill of Rights, both civil documents, were somehow
“given” to us by the military. They are, in fact,
among the unalienable rights either endowed to
humanity by a “creator” (if you are so inclined) or by
the simple fact that we exist as humans. The military
protects these freedoms under the direction of a
legitimately constituted government, to be sure, but
it does not grant them. Perhaps this is a subtle or
semantic difference, but an important one.

Indeed, a critical aspect of our presence in Iraq and
Afghanistan is to promote the concept of “good
governance” and the notion that it is legitimate
government structures (both civil and military) which
are the sources of the common good.

One of the beauties in our system is that the military is controlled by elected civilian leadership – another example of the rock/paper/scissors balancing act that the Founding Fathers built into the system. The writer’s last point is especially worth noting. Iraq will be all the more successful if it maintains civilian control over the military. Having it ruled by another dictator, even one who supports our policies in the region, would tarnish our efforts there.

The world lost one of the “good guys” today.

Is clearly, without a doubt, General David Petraeus. Former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen agrees:

I think the most significant persons would be General David Petraeus and the magnificent men and women who serve in our armed forces. They know what is going on here when leaders say the war is lost or that they are terrorizing Iraqis. But these men and women keep doing their job in dangerous, precarious positions. They are making a positive difference in Iraq. They are protecting our country.

But will the magazine? If it does I will be shocked in ways that can’t be described without involving a live high-voltage cable and a bathtub of water.

However Petraeus is the man of the year. He’s the best American general since World War 2 and the world since Israeli general Moshe Dayan.

But Time won’t acknowledge it – I guarantee it.

So here’s my salute to the true 2007 Person of the Year.

An AP via Yahoo story no less…

The 40-year-old al-Azawi, who has gone back to work managing a car service, said relatives and friends persuaded him to bring his family home.

“Six months ago, I wouldn’t dare be outside, not even to stand near the garden gate by the street. Killings had become routine. I stopped going to work, I was so afraid,” he said, chatting with friends on a street in the neighborhood.

When he and his family joined the flood of Iraqi refugees to Syria the streets were empty by early afternoon, when all shops were tightly shuttered. Now the stores stay open until 10 p.m. and the U.S. military working with the neighborhood council is handing out $2,000 grants to shop owners who had closed their business. The money goes to those who agree to reopen or first-time businessmen.

Al-Azawi said he’s trying to get one of the grants to open a poultry and egg shop that his brother would run.

“In Khadra, about 15 families have returned from Syria. I’ve called friends and family still there and told them it’s safe to come home,” he said.

This matches what StrategyPage has been saying for awhile, most recently here, in a story about the recent cave whining attributed to OBL and broadcast by al-Jazeera – which is now in hot water with jihadis for broadcasting the tape..

Bin Laden doesn’t discuss how the Americans defeated him. It was done with data. Years of collecting data on the bad guys paid off. Month by month, the picture of the enemy became clearer. This was literally the case, with some of the intelligence software that created visual representations of what was known of the enemy, and how reliable it was. The picture was clear enough to maneuver key enemy factions into positions that make them easier to run down.

One of the greatest strengths of the American military has been its relatively flat command structure, and a professional NCO corps that is able to function autonomously. This has given it the ability to change tactics quickly and learn from mistakes. What works makes it way quickly through the organization, while a culture that tolerates a level of failure allows risk taking for sergeants to experiment. If it sounds like the entrepreneurial culture found in large, well-run companies – it should because in essence that’s exactly what it is.

This is probably the single biggest change between the US military of 2007 versus that of 1967 and especially that in World War 2.

Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, can’t fail – and can’t lose because God is on it’s side, and failure is about as tolerated as well within that organization as the mob. No wonder OBL, or more likely, someone channeling OBL from beyond the grave is sitting in a cave pouring out his heart into a tape recorder.

Last week the Family traveled to southern California to see the Marine – the Wife’s son. The Marine was in the field for the first few days of our trip, but was able to spend a day or two with us. It was the first time I had seen him since 2000, and back then he had left with his trailer-trash wife after putting us through an emotional wringer. Then 9-11 hit and things changed. I took the opportunity to reach out to him through his email account two weeks later…

Given the situation in the world right now I am taking
the opportunity to contact you. Whether you respond or
not is up to you.

Contrary to what you think, there are still people
here who care about you. The world has become a much
more dangerous place in the last two weeks, and you
are in an organization devoted to the protection of
our nation. Your safety is on every one’s minds, and
if you wish to pretend that it’s not then go right
ahead. Ignore this email.

However if there is a part of you that wants to change
the situation, I want to offer you the opportunity to
do so. That’s why I’ve decided to contact you without
your mother’s knowledge…

The world has changed. Everything that happened before
09/11/01 has little relation to today. It is a time
for new beginnings for those who choose to do so. The
choice is yours.

His trailer-trash wife intercepted the email when he was on his way to Afghanistan and twisted it around. Several weeks later, after I saw his picture in the newspaper and received several letters returned to me unopened by his father, I received a long letter dated 10/06/01…

As you sit in your comfortable house with your high paying job and your college degrees, you look down on me as your dumb marine infantryman. Let me explain something to you. If it wasn’t for “this” dumb grunt with a GED you wouldn’t have the freedom to look down upon me. You are what is wrong with my country. You are weak minded.

The Marine didn’t know me. He knew a caricature of me painted by his father – who assumed I was a typical college educated liberal and who also knew nothing about me. He didn’t know about my blue-collar upbringing and the stories of my dad’s experiences fighting in the Philippines during World War 2 that were some of the few memories I had of my father before he died. He had only spent a few weeks with me and his mother when he was 11 – so he assumed the worst.

At the time he was writing that letter, I was writing this.

Currently there is a strain of logic that is appearing on college campuses and salons of the Left as America goes to war. This logic is what is called the “rape victim asked for it” defense of the indefensible. This logic which has been repeated in the letters to the editor of this and other papers states that the terrorists are not at fault for the attack on the Pentagon and WTC – we Americans are. The terrorists were merely reacting to American policies abroad such as the support of Israel and continued sanctions on Iraq and are therefore ultimately not responsible for the 7,000 dead. The American government is – and since the government represents the will of our people, we Americans are to blame for the death and destruction of September 11, 2001. All that remains is for a call for reparations to the families of the dead hijackers.

Although I consider 9-11 as a metanoia, or spiritual conversion on my part, one of several things that hadn’t changed was a deep respect and reverence for the military, the men who were in “the Service” as it was then known. My father was one of these men, as was my brother-in-law who brought me home a tiny jacket embroidered with a map of southeast Asia and the slogan, “Fighters by day, lovers by night, drunkards by choice, ready to fight. Cu-Chi Vietnam.” Unlike my father my brother-in-law didn’t speak about his experiences in the War – not because his war was Vietnam but because he was a quiet man. Kind of like me – when I’m not pounding away at the keyboard.

Dad on the bottom left 1945 Philippines

So Friday rolls around and the Marine is supposed to be at a “meeting” with his men to discuss the week’s training. We popped into his girlfriend’s apartment to see his kid when lo and behold there he is.

28 years old. Thin but well-built, with tattoos spiralling around his neck and arms. He was in a hurry to get back to the meeting and I only had a few moments with him.

“There’s so much I want to ask you,” I said.

“Go ahead. Ask anything,” he replied as he prepped to leave.

The first question that came to mind after knowing about where he’s been and where he’s going: “Was it worth it?”

He answered the question in a unique way, and as he did so it dawned on me that how he viewed Iraq and the GWOT and how I viewed those things were different. He answered the question by talking about how the aspects of his work were just part of the job to him.

And over the few remaining hours together, there wasn’t much talk about the big picture (except to knock a few of the Useful Idiots like Nancy Pelosi). To him going to Iraq and fighting wars was just a job.

I design computer systems. He designs ways of keeping his men alive as they clear out apartment blocks filled with bad guys hiding behind women and children. I go to work in a suit; he goes to work wearing 50 lbs of ceramic plates in his flack jacket. I wield a keyboard – he has medals for pistol and rifle marksmanship.

But beyond that we are common men with jobs to do, there is one key difference between us:

He’s a hero. I am not.

He’s better at being a hero than I am. It’s his job, and personally I don’t want fighting terrorists to become my job – which is why I worry when Democrats thrust their heads into the sand and minimize what terrorists have done in our country, and have said they would do given the chance.

Being a hero is an important distinction between the two of us, and one that I respect. I hope he understands that what he does is more than a job. I don’t go to work with the fate of my nation on my back. I am not trained to exercise a license to kill when called to do so in defense of others or our country. I don’t know if it’s his natural humility or his youthful vision that keeps him from seeing the differences between us.

He’s a United States Marine. I wish I was a United States Marine. Hoo-rah.

My stepson – a Master Sergeant in the Marine Corps – will be shipping out of Camp Pendleton much sooner than we thought. It’s a secret where ‘out’ is at this point, but I doubt he’s deploying to the Bahamas. As a consistent supporter of the Global War on Terror, his mother and I are rightfully proud and support his mission whatever it is.

He has a wife and children. In my eyes he is full of untapped potential that the Marine Corps has missed. He is a soldier intellectual without knowing it, an avid historian who remembers long-forgotten wars and draws his own, unique conclusions. He would excel in an academic setting, especially one with a strong military bearing like the Navy Academy or West Point.

He was one of the first Marines into Afghanistan in 2001. He served in East Timor as a peacekeeper. He has been to Iraq and holds his own controversial opinions. He has a sense of duty that I admire, and a sense of humor that I envy. He is strong, self-assured, handsome and brave – all the things necessary to make women swoon and men follow him without hesitation into battle. If your son is a Marine, my stepson is the man you want leading him.

When discussing death he is nonchalant, stating simply that he wishes to be buried in Arlington so that his service to our nation isn’t forgotten. He reminds us that he has willfully chosen this path, and that he did not join the Corps for its safety and security. He’s also looking forward to going.

Hearing him talk so casually about his own death frightens his mother and me. However, one of the things that scares me more is a President promising ‘consequences’ to an Iranian regime that supplies munitions to kill American soldiers – and doesn’t deliver on that threat.

According to the New York Times, Iranian-made explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by U.S.-led forces last month. This is nothing new. In August 2005 then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed that captured munitions from insurgents came ‘clearly, unambiguously from Iran.’ In March 2006 ABC News reported US military and intelligence sources had caught shipments of EFPs at the Iran-Iraq border.

What has the Bush Administration done? On February 14, 2007 President Bush insisted he was ‘going to do something about’ the Iranian arms flow into Iraq. Soon after he authorized face-to-face negotiations with the Iranians. These negotiations have done nothing to stem the flow of munitions into Iraq from Iran, while at the same time handed the Iranians a propaganda victory by forcing the ‘Great Satan’ to the negotiating table.

Iraq is not Vietnam – contrary to what some believe. However there may be another analogy between the two conflicts that holds. Consider the flow of arms into North Vietnam from the USSR through China during the 1960’s and 1970’s. At the same time the Soviet Union supplied technicians and advisors to North Vietnam, many of whom manned anti-aircraft batteries that shot down American aircraft. How many of those munitions and advisors carved the names of American soldiers into the wall at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC?

What were the consequences for the Chinese and Soviets? Nixon’s visit to Peking in 1972 and ‘detente’ with the Soviets. Republican that I am I never bought the rehabilitation of Nixon and still hold him more responsible for our failure in Vietnam than Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.

Coalition forces have captured members of the Iranian Quds Force in Iraq, something that President Bush acknowledged back in February. The presence of this Iranian Special Ops unit, the use of Iranian munitions, and the recent video captured by US intelligence showing Iraqi insurgents firing Iranian rockets at coalition bases provides overwhelming evidence that the Iranian regime has American blood on its hands.

Will the ‘consequences’ be the same for them as it was the Chinese and Soviets?

It’s one thing to send men like my stepson into battle; it’s another to expose him to danger because our leader lacks the will to take the fight to his true enemy.

And that frightens me more than anything.

Scott Kirwin is a freelance writer living in Wilmington Delaware.

As a consistent hawk on the Global War on Terror I have often heard “Well if you’re so gung ho about the war why don’t you go fight it yourself?” The truth be told I have given serious consideration to doing just that several times. Unfortunately each time I come to the conclusion that at my age and with my doughy physique I wouldn’t cut it in the Service. Even the lowliest Marine, the weakest airman, sailor or grunt could easily wipe the floor with me. It’s not something I’m proud of, but Truth trumps Pride – or at least it should at my age.

I’ve also come to realize that there is something much worse than putting yourself in danger: it’s putting a loved one there.

According to his girlfriend, my stepson – a Master Sergeant in the Corps – will be shipping “out” of Pendleton much sooner than we thought. It’s a secret where “out” is at this point, but I doubt he’s deploying to Canada or Japan.

He has a girlfriend and children. In my eyes he is full of untapped potential that the Corps has missed. He is a soldier intellectual without knowing it, an avid historian who remembers long-forgotten wars and draws his own, unique conclusions. He would excel in an academic setting, especially one with a strong military bearing like the Navy Academy or West Point.

He was one of the first Marines into Afghanistan in 2001. He has been to Iraq and holds opinions about the locals that are so politically incorrect that I shudder to hear them. He has a sense of duty that I admire, and a sense of humor that I envy. He is strong, self-assured, handsome and brave – all the things necessary to make women swoon and men follow him without hesitation into battle. If your son is a Marine, my stepson is the man you want leading him.

When discussing death he is nonchalant, stating that he wishes to be buried in Arlington so that his service to our nation isn’t forgotten. He reminds us that he has willfully chosen this path, and that he did not join the Corps for its safety and security.

But I don’t think he understand that his comments are blows to the gut for his mother and me. In fact, he’s excited about going. It’s easier to make the choices for a child than watch him make his own, and suffer the consequences. But we’re proud of him all the same.

Link to story

“It’s so quiet and so calm; it gets kinda spooky,” said Carranza’s cousin, Capt. Ismael Carranza, 72, a retired pilot for Continental Airlines who has made several pilgrimages to the site from his home in Grapevine, Texas.

But the scene in Wharton State Forest will be very different Saturday when Ismael Carranza joins Legionnaires from Mount Holly Post 11 of the American Legion for the 78th annual commemoration of the young pilot’s death. The solemn event, held every year on the second Saturday in July, draws about 400 people to New Jersey’s Pine Barrens—a more than 1 million-acre natural preserve with unique history, folklore, flora and fauna. Mexican and U.S. dignitaries, Carranza family members and Latino-Americans have attended over the years.

Guests have been known to weep at the story of Mexico’s “Lone Eagle,” just 22 when he crashed on July 12, 1928, and died. Under orders from his commanding officer, Carranza was attempting to fly home after a much heralded goodwill mission during the early days of aviation in the United States.

He doesn’t think he is, but he is.

There are certain defining moments in my life.
The first was the death of my father when I was an adolescent.
The second was my acceptance to school in San Diego.
The third was the kiss that began the relationship that led to my sixteen year marriage with my wife and best friend.
The fourth was acceptance of my new role as a father.

The fifth came on a crystalline blue day 5 years ago.

For weeks afterward I was too stunned to speak. But over time I was felt like the main character in Harlan Ellison’s classic work “I have no Mouth and I Must Scream.”

5 years ago, I had no mouth and I wanted so badly to scream. Three weeks later, this journal was born.

It has functioned as my mouth since I published this piece – still one of my favorites – that takes me back to the weeks following that strike when the world abruptly and irrevocably changed for all of us. It remains poignant and relevant to me today:

In a sense this is an attempt by minds to make sense of the nonsensical. By providing motive to the attack, people feel better. They can take comfort in people having been killed for a reason, that the attack was some kind of message which we now must heed.

The attack was meant to change us, and it did – just not in the ways that the attackers wanted.

It has steeled me to the fight. It has energized me with a fire that I have passed along in these writings and newspaper columns since then.

I have found my mouth but strangely as I remember that day so long ago when everything changed, I feel that the best way for me to remember those who have died in this fight for our survival is to do so with silence.

It’s the best commemoration I’ve come up with so far.

Silence.

But the anger will flow again, rest assured. I have a mouth, and I will scream.

Steve Irwin died today, killed by a stingray’s blow to the heart while filming on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. While alot will be said about his having died the way he lived, there is something that will be forgotten in his obituary that I believe needs to be said.

Steve Irwin’s interaction with wild animals may have been comical and educational, and was predicated on the assumption that Irwin was a professional who “knew” how to handle the animals. However, we call the animals “wild” for a reason. They are not domesticated and completely predicatable. They may be familiar and that sense of familiarity may lull us into a belief that they are in fact benign, but as so many animal tamers and trainers have found, that belief can be fatal.

I am saddened by Steve Irwin’s death. He helped bring out the child-like joy of animals that many people have forgotten about. He has helped the cause of wildlife conservation with his humor and wit much more than Greenpeace’s heavy-handed guilt trips.

However his death should stand as a warning that the ultimate wildlife conservation will not include our poking them with microphones and videotaping their every move: it will entail our leaving them alone to live – and die – as animals in the wild.

Syria Delenda Est

Terrorist Op-Ed In Washington Post

Face Up on the Guillotine – The Democratic Revolution

Swiss: Israel Violating Geneva Conventions

Photoshop Fun

Hamas Kidnaps Israeli Soldier

A True Uniter for the Democratic Party

Terrorists Using Women for Cover

Hope for Virginia and Democrats

Buying an Election in Virginia

Should We Celebrate Zarqawi’s Death

Ann Coulter Calls 9-11 Widows Witches

How NOT to Win Friends and Influence People

Oh Canada…