Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Into Thine Hand I Commit My Spirit

Michael Yon has written a solemn and touching tribute to a memorial erected by soldiers in Afghanistan:

Arghandab, Afghanistan
New Year's Eve, 2009

On this small base surrounded by a mixture of enemy and friendly territory, a memorial has been erected just next to the Chapel.  Inside the tepee are 21 photos of 21 soldiers killed during the first months of a year-long tour of duty.  The fallen will belong forever to the honor rolls of the 1-17th Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and they will join the sacred list of names of those who have given their lives in service of the United States of America.

Read the rest...

Do Americans Care about British Soldiers?

Michael Yon has written another powerful dispatch.

A young British soldier was shot and critically wounded in Afghanistan while Michael was using his satellite phone nearby.

Michael covers the amazing effort that the American Military put into action to save this soldiers life and the incredible multi-service organization that manages the aeromedical evacuation teams.

Soldiers’ Angels, a volunteer-led nonprofit played an important role in helping British Military personnel and the soldier's family track the soldier's progress from his first treatment in Afghanistan to recovery at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

Read Michael's post here: http://www.michaelyon-online.com

Sangin, Afghanistan, photo essay from Michael Yon

 Michael Yon sends back photos from Sangin, Afghanistan as he follows the Ghurkas and Brits during another night and day of intense desert heat, IEDs, and other threats to survival.

He captures the essence of life on the front lines in the military and discusses how enlightened self-interest on the part of Afghan civilians will determine the future stability of Afghanistan.

This part of Afghanistan seems to combine primitive living conditions and rare touches of 21st century technology.  If it ever gets stabilized, it will probably become a tourist attraction again for those travelers who yearn to visit more primitive cultures.

His latest despatch is titled Common Sense & Common Thoughts.

Rhetoric vs facts and who cares

When both sides of an argument appeal to your emotions, how do you determine who is telling more of the truth?

Reader Julian Gall from the UK made some pertinent observations about the discussions on global warming and they are worth sharing.

David,

Maybe the Wikipedia article is biased too but anyone is free to edit it and make corrections if they wish. Articles that people can't reach agreement on often get a "this article is contested" sticker. This one hasn't. Doesn't mean it's correct of course.

Living in the UK, I saw this film when it was first broadcast which was a while before it became popular on the internet. The press here published a lot of analysis at the time, some biased no doubt, but not all. In particular, a couple of people shown in the film were very upset that their views had been selectively quoted and didn't reflect their true position. That raised alarm bells for me about the film. Likewise, obvious errors in Gore's film have done the same.

I have no doubt that there is some truth in "The Great Global Warming Swindle", but I don't think the film helps its case by calling all the Global Warming arguments "lies", as if there is a huge conspiracy to fool the public. I'm generally averse to conspiracy theories because they imply that the only people who are well organised and successful are the people we're against. I don't think anyone can be that well organised, full stop.

I read a lot around the subject of global warming because I want to understand what the position really is. I can't say I've read anything I could recommend that is independent and unbiased. That is a sad reflection on the level of debate. What I do detect lately is more measured comment on the side against manmade global warming; a gradual shift in that direction. The only conclusion I can reach at the moment is that no one actually knows. When someone (on either side) tells me the answer is plain but that the other side is trying to fool me, I get very suspicious of their motives.

The deeper issue for me in things like this is, how do we know who is telling the truth? Gore's film appeals to some people who believed in manmade global warming anyway and they present his confirmation of their views as proof, which it isn't. Durkin's film appeals to some people who have never believed in it, or who are opposed politically to the people who do. It confirms their beliefs but offers little in the way of proof either. Napoleon Hill said that everything has within itself the means of determining whether or not it is true. I try to apply this and often find there is one little giveaway that makes me suspicious about the rest. I certainly found this with Gore's film but I found it with Durkin's too.

                                                                                                                -- Julian Gall

It appears to me that there is room for improvement in presenting facts on both sides of the global warming argument.

Julian and I seem to share many common views on the climate issue. Appeals to emotion are very seductive, but are invariably a sign that persuasion, not reason is at work.

I agree that neither side has completely clean hands and hope that we, as a planetary community, do nothing irrevocable before the next cooling trend which is estimated to begin in 2010.

Michael Yon on General Petraeus

Michael Yon brings us an incredibly important message from General Petraeus about values.

David H. Petraeus, General, United States Army

Michael's dispatches are always worth reading. This one should not be missed.

Another poignant story from Michael Yon

Desires of the Human Heart

In a Baghdad neighborhood where residents have been subject to methodical slaughter, the 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas has found an abandoned Christian college to be an island in the storm.

Michael captures the desolation and the toll of human life from the continuing civil war in words and photos that evoke the End of Days.

"Most of the families in the vicinity have fled. People are murdered nearby every day, and during just one of the days I was with 1-4 Cavalry, they reported finding three murder victims. The Iraqi police and our soldiers told me that murders are down since the security plan began, yet our people still found fourteen human bodies over the period of one week. The enemy kills entire families including small children."

"The people who could leave have mostly gone. Many of the wealthy and the educated have abandoned Iraq. The lights rarely come on here."

And yet Michael writes,

"And on these empty streets, a practiced eye regards the slivers of hope that are strewn among all the chards of broken glass."

Whatever the result from this war, we are incredibly indebted to Michael Yon and the others who bring us the ground-level view of soldiers dealing with a disintegrating civilization.

Civilizations have fallen into barbarism in past ages and we have evidently not learned enough to prevent this from happening again.

Why is General Brooks making trouble for Michael Yon?

Michael Yon is reporting from Iraq and is doing an incredible service for the morale of our military men, but there always are those who seem to have an agenda that justifies misusing their authority. In this case, it appears to be Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks.

Get the whole story on how reluctant hero Michael Yon ended up in Iraq as a freelance blogger who is 100% financially supported by readers and is being treated shamefully by General Brooks. Read Tabla Rasa.

I feel that Michael has consistently told the unvarnished truth in his firsthand accounts about what is happening on the missions when he accompanies the troops and he is highly regarded by the fighting men who know of his work. This is one of his photos.

Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks was the former chief PAO (Public Affairs Officer) of the US Army. He is currently the deputy commanding general - support for Multinational Division-Baghdad.

In 2005, when the military attempted to appropriate this famous photo by Michael Yon, Brooks apparently intervened on Yon's behalf. Now, he seems to be determined to make it as difficult for Michael to report as possible.

Michael calls them as he sees them and his viewpoints seem to be aligned with the fighting men he lives with. He obviously cares for the men he goes on mission with and for many senior officers, but his views of some high level military decisions are not always flattering and this makes each dispatch compelling reading.

At a time when the military needs favorable media coverage as never before, General Brooks seems hell-bent on keeping Michael from reporting! This general's agenda needs a little examination and a lot of publicity.

I think Michael Yon's writing has earned him the right to better support from the military. Read Michael's dispatch and decide for yourself.

Cathy Seipp has left the blogosphere...

And we are the poorer for her untimely and fatal illness from lung cancer.

She has been a brave and witty woman to the very end. If you have not read Cathy's World, take a moment to read her blog.

She will be missed.

Yesterday, when I read her daughter Maia's account of her condition, my personal sense of loss was so great that I thought she had already passed away. One of her friends wrote me this morning and let me know that Cathy is still receiving visits from her friends and family. Our thoughts are with her.

UPDATE: Cathy died at 2:05 today.

Ernie Pyle is Dead

Independent war correspondent Michael Yon made favorable comments about some mainstream media correspondents in Iraq.

Michael's thoughtful dispatch from Iraq compared the wartime environment in which Ernie Pyle wrote to the environment in which today's war correspondents struggle to survive.

He made the point that journalists in previous wars might have spent long tours with combat forces and they don't do that now. That doesn’t mean good journalists are gone. There are plenty of those, but mostly they are somewhere else, or they only come to Iraq for quick tours.

Michael had praise for NBC correspondents Brian Williams and Richard Engle who were clearly concerned about accurate reporting. He mentioned other journalists who are doing a good job of reporting and suggested that it is time for bloggers to stop attacking mainstream media war coverage and start offering alternative sources.

Michael suggests that instead of looking for mistakes in coverage, the common cause might be better served by well-informed bloggers searching all sources for the reports that get it right and driving readers to them.

Michael has the ability to capture the experience of soldiers at war and makes the ugliness of war painfully real. He cares about the men whose lives he describes.

Michael's dispatches are now being featured on Fox News. This one is well worth reading.

Poised between darkness and light...

Michael Yon is a freelance journalist with the last battalion of American soldiers in Mosul, at this critical moment while Mosul is poised precariously between progress and descent into chaos.

The other American forces have been withdrawn from Mosul to support Baghdad and Anbar and Michael gives us an understanding of the difficult choices that are being made at many levels.

Michael has just written Desolate Roads Part 2 of 2 . It is a uniquely personal view of an oft-repeated and therefore timeless moment in history, the delicate balance between recovery of civic sanity or descent into madness and degradation.

Read Michaels compelling account of American and Iraqi forces struggling to give Mosul a future in the face of terrorists who seek to destroy Iraq, that they might rule by fear.

Reading the accounts of journalists who are actually in Iraq with American forces is an eye opening experience. There are no simple answers, but there appear to be brave and honorable men who seek to find a way to help Iraq heal itself.

May it come to pass that they are successful...