On Country Music and "American" Values

I grew up in an environment very hostile to Country music. Seattle, Washington is known as the cradle of Grunge and maintains today, 15 years after the fact, an "alternative" music identity. I spent my formative college years at Notre Dame, which is mostly stocked with bluff midwestern Catholics and rich northeast Catholics who between them enjoyed a combination of hard rock, punk, and the occasional indulgence in pop music or hip-hop when it came down to dorm parties. My tastes then were nursed on a certain amount of assumed condescension toward Country music--it was, as my friends intimated to me on more than one occasion, the sound of a backwards, conservative, probably bigoted and ultimately embarrassing segment of America. And though I lived my next three years in the South, I maintained this attitude toward country music even if I found that land filled with good people and good values (both of which I miss to this day). It wasn't until I got to California that I suddenly found myself--very surprisingly--craving Country. Clearly, some unconscious comparison between the two disparate pieces of America thrust the issue into focus for me.

There is no doubt that Country music has become more popular of late. I even hear some Country songs on pop radio stations, which is of course appropriate because the odd Country music song (usually sung by an attractive young lady) will break into the mainstream Top 4o. Thus, I am clearly not the only one who is converting to a previously despised genre. Why? I think the reason for this is simple and often overlooked: Country music evokes the image of a happier, simpler time wherein we individually valued rightness over success and could therefore collectively be prouder of ourselves and our society.

The distinction between rightness and success as sources of happiness is one that resonates deeply with me, both because of my religion and (I'll argue) because of our collective understanding of "American Values." It isn't for nothing that the midwest and the south, where people live their lives in contempt of the cosmopolitan coasts and adhere to more ancient values and tradetions, are regarded as the repository of American culture--or at least when it comes to rugged individualism and the frontier ideal. We tend to regard the "settlers" and entrepreneurs who founded and built the states west of the Appalacians and south of the Mason-Dixon Line (excluding most of the West Coast) with idealism: these were the men and women who made something out of nothing; these were the men and women who raised our nation; these were the the people who valued independence, diligence, respect, and love; these were the salt of the earth. Yet that unconscious comparison that triggered my sudden, delicious, descent into Country music was the obvious fact that the people of the south apparent conformed to those idealized values with their own lives.

During my residence in the south I was surprised to see how kind, capable, friendly and even happy the general population was. Everywhere I found southerners from toddlers to great-grandparents acting respectful, respectful, sociable, and pleasantly independent (by which I mean they weren't needy). Near as I could make out, this was due to their lack of pretension. They could enjoy their surroundings without concerning themselves with the presence or attitudes of others. It felt overwhelmingly right and comfortable to me--I was in the curious position of feeling the need to be polite and yet also feeling no burden to be a certain person. Perhaps that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but for all that it is no less true. After all, politeness is simply, well, polite, and has very little to do with the values and perspectives that make up a character.

This lifestyle became suddenly much more noticeable by it's absence in San Diego. The cliche states that Southern California is mostly about image and style--and I'm afraid to say that it's both true and quite painfully obvious in the general unfriendliness of people. Often they are downright rude to each other, especially in restaurants and cafes, on the road, or when assuming a horrible condescending attitude toward waiters and retail clerks. Despite the fantastic weather, stunning scenery, and beautiful people, it was harder to stay happy in San Diego than it was in the rural and humid south for the simple reason that I had to deal with Southern Californians.

This is, of course, a very generalized comparison. There certainly are selfish and pretentious people in the south and kind and sociable people who live in Southern California (some of whom I met shortly after moving there, actually). However, based on the overall quality of society in both places, I would choose the South every time. I instinctively feel that it is easier to be a good man in the South than it is in California. There people's lives recall and present the kind of good, principled men and women who founded, developed, and succored our nation. We remember with pride our struggle for independence from England, our difficult settlement of the West, the idealism and honor on both sides of the Civil War, our conduct in both World Wars, our economic and social invincibility during the 1950s, and our victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Our collective national identity values good Americans for the sake of what they have given us. Such Americans are more explicitly remembered and emulated in the South than in California. They are the characters of Country music and their stories form the themes of the genre.

In addition to enshrining our cherished and idealized memories, Country music also exhorts us morally. It is the most visible media in America that generally suggests the right and good are better than success. The values of country music are traditional and unassailable, and include trust, honesty, commitment, freedom, sacrifice within relationships and for one's country, the intrinsic value of family and religion, and romance. Country music encourages these values, teaching us that happiness is not found in more things, or more status, or in hedonism; it is found in love and dedication and self-respect. And perhaps most refreshingly of all, Country music doesn't proselytize directly but expresses itself entertainingly in stories and ballads. Contrary to the opinion I was raised to hold, Country music is certainly not depressing but rather enjoyable and occasionally stirring. Maybe it's increased popularity is an expression of our collective awareness that such values and ideals are, in fact, valuable, and that they are slowly disappearing.

It is a pity that as a society we idolize Southern California so much. The main theme of our mainstream media (Movies, songs, and TV shows) seems to be success--getting the good relationship, getting the good life, and getting the best of others. More artistic media changes things up by lamenting how hard it is to get those things and often pillories an oppressive external agency. By presenting money, success, ideal relationships, and sex as our rights, pop music supports narcissism and indirectly criticizes those who don't have such things; by presenting bitterness and anger as natural responses to one's lack of happiness, pop music encourages it's listeners to be bitter and angry. In an eloquent example of life imitating art, Southern Californians make an uneasy worship to hedonism, selfish ambition, bitterness, and narcissism. This is certainly a nihilistic approach to life--for selfishness is a hunger that can never be fully satisfied and bitterness a vaccine against all true contentment. The greater pity, however, is that so many Americans continue in contempt for perhaps the one segment of society whose majority has actually seen or found happiness.

What I discovered when I moved out of the South was that the simple, undeveloped, often dumpy south nurtured a culture of greater luminence than the "golden" West. And the art of Country music told the parables of Americanism and enshrined the "American" values that choke us up at the sound of "Taps" or stiffen our backs at the sight of Lincoln's Memorial. Such "American" values have carved for us a great place in the world. Inspired by these values, we have throughout our history reached out in solidarity to give our fellow citizens and other nations hope and freedom. These values are the source of our greatness. So I needed them--and especially their expression in Country music--when I encountered the cold and contracted spirit of Southern California. I almost never knew what I was missing.

Christmas Reflections 2008

Christmas has grown in my estimation since I was a child. Like all of my peers, I feasted on the excitement of my parents, the satisfaction of new things to own, and the rather strange and interesting ceremonies involved (from midnight Mass to Christmas dinner the next day). Yet as my cognitive reasoning increased and I began to comprehend the full Christian meaning of the holiday, it became more and more important to me. I think the change had a lot to do with the consistency between the traditions and the religious meaning of Christmas. Celebrating God's incarnation as the fragile baby Jesus vindicates and elevates the Family, with which tradition dictates we must spend the holiday. The very hopelessness of Jesus' redeeming mission (what with our Original sin and all) is reflected in the stirring and improbable Christmas story--a long, mandated journey for a caring man and his young pregnant wife with the childbirth occurring at the most inopportune time. The custom of giving gifts is a joyful symbol of God's great gift to us of his son, as are the gifts of the Magi after Jesus' birth; their own difficult and faith-directed travels are also a further symbol of our own difficult path to find God. It makes rational sense to me, it is inspiring, and it makes me very glad to celebrate.

I don't share many of my Christian contemporaries' view that the Christmas spirit has been prostituted to retailers. Certainly any greed, acquisitiveness, and unnecessary extravagance are bad. But it seems appropriate for people to truly enter into the spirit of gift-giving and gift-receiving, wherein they practice charity by seeking and sacrificing (time, energy, treasure) to make their loved ones happy and practice humility by acknowledging the love of others. These two virtues are not, of course, only expressed in the exchange of gifts--they should be practiced throughout the whole of our holiday traditions, as when hosting or attending parties, decorating houses or places of work, or traveling to visit others. And though many people who celebrate Christmas don't really attach religious significance to the holiday, I am actually quite happy that they join in the spirit of my religious celebration. Naturally I hope that one day all the world accepts the truth that I believe is right, namely that which is held and taught by the Holy Catholic Church, but as that is manifestly not the state of things right now I don't think non-believers should be excluded from the celebration itself. It wouldn't be charitable at all, and certainly the mark of us Christians should be our uncomplicated and all-embracing practice of that virtue. Furthermore (as St. Paul and St. Francis notably observed), all we can do to evangelize, really, is humbly set the example without, if at all possible, making others uncomfortable. So why not celebrate Christmas as best as we know how, and hope that our actions might be a vehicle of God's grace?

Unfortunately, I won't be spending Christmas with my family. I am deployed military at the moment, which means I must stay "in theater," which is far enough away from home to exclude a visit from family. At least I won't be spending the holiday alone--35 of my comrades (among which are some of my closest friends) will be there to share Christmas day with me. Also, I am living comfortably right now in Okinawa, Japan, which enjoys moderate weather and none of the dangers of the Middle East. It is with a twinge of homesickness, however, that I notice nearly all my friends' Facebook pages testify that they are home with their loved ones. Unfortunately, that also means they will have little time to send me messages, which I read eagerly whenever they arrive. But when I begin down this path of self-pity, I am brought up short by the fact that my parents are taking this current separation much harder than I am. It has been their great struggle over the years to forge a tight, happy nuclear family, and as we all get older I know they worry that we are falling apart. There is small comfort to be found anywhere in this situation--after all, the horrible thing about spending Christmas alone is that even God had His family on Christmas. At least on Easter, we celebrate God's singular redemptive act in all it's pain and glory, and we can rejoice alone. But on Christmas we celebrate family, and all the carols and traditions support this. There is little recourse for my parents' loneliness this year, and even less for the men and women who are deployed like me, but in more dangerous places and/or with fewer comrades. I ask you who are reading this to remember these servicemembers and pray for them.

Probably the most wonderful thing about Christmas is that it recognizes the pain and brokenness of our world and yet still manages to celebrate a conquering beauty. The hardships of Joseph and Mary fade in comparison to the arrival of the Christ child, the singing choirs of heaven, and the pilgrimage of shepherds and Magi. The winter, which must have been a season of great suffering and darkness in the long ages before central heating, electric lights, and an abundance of fresh food, is yet marvelously transformed by a new snow and the untouchably clear and starry skies of the extended darkness. The songs of Christmas are more dramatic in darkness, and the presence of others is more satisfying when it helps banish the cold and darkness. And with these beautiful images I must leave you and put on my coat for the short walk home. At this solstice-time Okinawa nights carry a hint of real winter cold, which I enjoy very much. I pray that all of you who read this receive all the blessings this season has to offer, and wish you all a very Merry Christmas. There is no better time or thing to celebrate.

The Magic of WestPac

As time grew short in San Diego last summer, and my squadron's WestPac deployment loomed, it was hard for me to work up much excitement. That I would miss spending the holidays with family and friends, the long list of things to accomplish (related both to my job and my personal life), and the knowledge that I would be leaving my familiar and good life in the states for six months of unknown places and constant movement all weighed heavily on me. In that frame of mind I couldn't truly listen to those who had experienced such a deployment before, all of whom spoke of WestPac with an indefinable longing--for some it seemed like the highlight of their career (which, seeing as how most of them had flown fighter aircraft in direct support of troops in conflict, is saying a lot). Yet nearly three months into the trip I am beginning to understand.

Being abroad as a part of a group of young, capable comrades induces a carefree and deliciously arrogant sensation. Though our personal and professional burdens are heavy and the hours we work long, we are conscious of our collective freedom from the social restraints of home and proudly aware that should war erupt in the Western Pacific we will be the first to enter the fray. Robbed of the traditional cues of passing time (such as holidays and seasons) both by the tropical weather of our deployment locations and by our constant movement from one place to another, we happily find ourselves living mostly in the present--and when we do look to the future, we tend to care more about tomorrow or next weekend than next month or next year.

I could truthfully describe the time we spend here as frustrating, boring, hectic, exciting, and fun. There is an increased workload for us all that stems equally from the constant packing and unpacking of the squadron itself as we move around and from the extra time spent learning how to fly in new, strange locations. Yet for the young guys like me, many additional hours are spent after the normal working day studying for the Section Lead qualification. This is really the first career step for pilots after they arrive in the fleet, and it means (when they achieve it) that they are capable of leading another aircrew in combat, to include any of the many air-to-air and air-to-ground missions of which the F/A-18D is capable. It requires both extensive knowledge and a lot of flight preparation to complete the course of 11 "work-up" flights in which we demonstrate to instructors that we are qualified as a Section Lead, and the techniques they require us use for briefing, conducting, and debriefing such flights are specific and often "written in blood," a half-euphemism we use often to identify those procedures that were developed as a result of some forgotten mishap years ago. Moreover, the criticism of our conduct in these "work-up flights" is accordingly strict, and can last several hours or more while the entirety of our preparation, in-flight decisions, and post-flight debriefing are examined, discussed, and if necessary corrected. Though it makes for long days, we are all grateful for it--this winnowing process makes us harder, leaner aircrew, forces us to develop the necessary habits of safe flying, and trains us to focus our flights on actual combat rather than mere administrative procedures.

Of course, the best part of deployment has more to do with squadron-mates than actual flying. Living together, far from our homes, with no one else to occupy our time, we "relax" by finding things to do together. Often that is having several drinks at any number of O'Clubs and bars in the places we visit. But tourism is also fun, especially when there is the chance of finding something authentically foreign and yet undiscovered (by tourists) in the unfamiliar places we visit. Prompted thus, I have so far enjoyed a unscheduled and unguided bike tour through the compact and industrial city of Iwakuni to see the medieval Kintai Bridge and Iwakuni castle, stopping along they way back to enjoy being the only American in an (apparently) popular sushi restaurant. One weekend morning on Okinawa some comrades spent the morning driving to the island's rural and beautiful northern portion to find a beach with adequate surf, and another evening there we headed into the colorful and cheerfully dilapidated city of Naha to enjoy sushi at the touristy and famous Yoshi's restaurant. More recently I headed into the Outback to climb some waterfalls and dive into the fresh-water pools below at an Australian national park. Some places have yielded better times than others, such as the concrete pavilion behind our barracks at Kadena Airbase, Okinawa. The cookouts and drinking bouts, the songs sung drunkenly--particularly, nostalgically, "Country Roads" by John Denver--together under the stars in the heavy jungle air, the stumbling trips across the street aboard Kadena to pick up more beer all contributed to the most comradely nights of the deployment so far. Likewise the Officer's mess in Australia, scene of mustache competitions and three-man lifts, of cowboy- and 70s-themed parties (which we attended with the most flamboyant and outrageous costumes we could think up), of the creation of drinking songs, and of friendly carousing with RAAF pilots is now also a place invested with good memories.

There is something about the places themselves that is exhilarating--it has roots in their unfamiliarity and exoticism, but is also comes from our collective attitude of wonder and excitment at simply being on WestPac. I've already written of the indefinable pleasure of being catered to in Osan, Korea, and other places have their own intriguing characteristics. Okinawa is distinguished by the bright, Caribbean, almost third-world appearance of Naha city (with laundry hanging from lines strung between concrete apartments), the pockets of dark, noisy jungle squatting undiminished amid the sloppy civilization scattered across the island, and the sunsets riotous with color spreading each evening over a golden ocean horizon. Australia is a place where only Orion and Scorpio familiarly stride the night sky amongst the strange southern stars, where the reddish outback is rendered curiously bright by the slender, undersized trees that provide the vast majority of the scrub, where the large bats (alone of their species) sense the world through their vision and darken the evening sky with their great numbers, and where the thunderstorms are huge, swift, and violent. Many flights my pilot has spent circumnavigating the towering and dark cumulus clouds (whose tops reach higher than our high-performance aircraft can fly), and I have watched from above the dense rainshowers moving across the floor of the Outback and the terrible lightning striking all around my little vessel from cloud to cloud and down to the earth. In the evenings, when storms reach their climax after building all afternoon, I have stood in the entrance to the tunnel leading to our bunker with other squadron members working late, quietly smoking cigarettes and watching the thunderstorms flicker brightly, every couple of seconds, in the darkling sky. One night, watching the storm rage, lightning struck the airfield control tower merely several hundred yards away, causing us all to involutarily jump back and cry out.

There is more to see over the next months of deployment. There will be more nights of drinking and visits to new places in Okinawa, Japan, and Korea. And after that we will be moving ourselves one last time, from Iwakuni back to San Diego. No doubt when the time comes to go home it will be welcome indeed. But for now I am glad that date remains comfortably in the vague future, because despite the increased stress and strain of constant deployment (not least of which is the irritation attendant upon living in close quarters with the same people for an extended period of time) I am enjoying myself much more than I did in San Diego. This is perhaps the best-kept secret of the naval service--this is WestPac.

Christ the King and the Four Last Things

Today is the feast of Christ the King. It is a celebration of a central tenet of Christian faith. Our hope of redemption is in Christ, and our hope for eternal life lies in His Kingship, ordained over the world by its Creator, His Father. There are many things to celebrate about Christ as King. We may in wonder recall His incarnation. We may solemnly remember His great sacrifice for us, the shameful death on the cross. We may rejoice in his triumphant resurrection and the promise that holds for our own future. Or we may consider His inevitable judgment on the Last Day.

Judgment. The role of Christ as the judge of mankind is frightening. We often pray at Mass, “Oh Lord, look not on our sins but on the faith of thy people,” and indeed how much we would have to fear if our God justly considered our sins. For the exhortations to righteousness found in the Old Testament are strict indeed, and moreover the lives of the just are often fraught with adversity. Think of Job, or Daniel. These men were destroyed for their faith and righteousness, and only received in recompense a reward not even fully promised unto humanity until Jesus spoke through the Gospels. Think of the prophets—exiled by their own people for speaking the truth and chastising in the name of the Lord. Think of Moses, whose failure in faith erased all the great work he did at the bidding of God and caused him to be denied entry into the Promised Land.

Jesus exercises judgment in the Gospel that foreshadows the judgment of the Last Day. He tells his disciples he comes to bring fire and the sword. Will we, thinking ourselves pious, be beaten out of the temple by our Lord as the moneychangers were? Will Jesus dismiss us, like the rich young man, for a hesitation to give up our earthly goods (remembering that the rich young man was noted for his diligence in keeping the commandments)? Are we to be found among the five virgins who wait for their Lord with the trimmed lamps, instead of among the five lazy virgins who have no oil? And are we keeping our house in order like the good steward? We belong to the Lord whether we like it or not—He created us for himself, and sustains us with His grace; it is His prerogative to adjudge whether or not we have truly loved Him in our often half-pious, half-kind, and (perhaps) mostly-selfish worldly life. How much worse will he judge if we ignore his commandments?

He clearly communicates these commandments, so we cannot plead ignorance. First, the Ten Commandments were handed to our predecessors, the Israelites, through the prophet Moses. Later, Christ Himself further enunciated their meaning, explaining to the Pharisees that “The first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, and with all your mind. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.” Theologians and clergy across all sects of Christianity almost unanimously agree that “your neighbor” refers to all other people, not simply those close to us. It is a provocative statement. How do we love ourselves? indulgently? obsessively? do we “love” ourselves by setting high standards (so-called “tough love”)? Some of us, maybe, do not love ourselves enough. But then how exactly are we to love our neighbor?

Christ provides guidance in the Gospel reading for today’s feast. He previews His final judgment thus:

“[He] said to his disciples: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory…all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father… For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me… whatever you did for the least of my brothers you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels… what you did not do for the one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’” (Matthew 35:31-46)

Today at Mass, emphasizing Jesus’ role as the King of kings, first among all in justice, we are powerfully reminded that righteousness is properly and merely keeping the commandments. Faith, Hope, and Love are virtues to be sure, and without them, as St. Paul writes, we cannot do anything well. Yet simply having those virtues are not enough. We must do good things. We must love our neighbor, for when we fail to do so and allow ourselves to fall in to selfishness and self-indulgence--whether it takes the form of avarice, lust, spite, or greed--we are inviting damnation. Christ calls us to be vigilant against this temptation: we must gird our loins for our journey, purchasing a rod and a cloak; we must wait up for our Lord, even into the second and third watches of the night; we must keep our lamps trimmed. Only thus will we be ready to meet our King and Lord. For “as gold in the furnace he proved them” (Wisdom 3:4), and “the just man, though he die early, shall be at rest. For the age that is honorable comes not with the passing of time, nor can it be measured in terms of years…[it is] an unsullied life” Wisdom 4:7-9).

Today someone close to me died. He was young and promising, and his early death brings to mind these “Last Things:” Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. I grieve for him, and yet I cannot simply isolate the tragedy to him alone, for that would minimize it. John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire to himself… Therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Accordingly, it is important that my comrade’s life and death leave a small legacy in my own soul: his death occurring on the terrifying feast of Christ the King reminds me that I live at the pleasure of God and His providence, and that His coming judgment of me is inevitable.

How much more important now is the impending season of Advent, when I will join with fellow Christians to wait and prepare for the final coming of our Lord as the Israelites waited for His first coming. As I put my spiritual and earthly life in order this year perhaps I will better remember the Last Things and Christ’s imperative to righteousness.

First Impressions of the "Land Down Under"

During the month of November 2008 the Green Knights of VMFA(AW)-121 (my squadron) support Aces North, a war exercise with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), flying out of Tindal Air Base in the Northern Territory of Australia. On the fifth of the month we began our transit down, stopping the night in Guam and then proceeding to our destination. My own trip down under was little disappointing because instead of flying in the backseat of a Hornet, I rode in the passenger cabin of the tanker. While it was interesting to see refueling from the tanker’s perspective, and the seats were much more comfortable than a Hornet cockpit, I would have liked to see Indonesia and Papua New Guinea pass by the canopy, and to have flown myself in country (in a manner of speaking). However, it was significant for two reasons: first, I crossed the Equator for the first time; second, I got to spend a night in Darwin.

Darwin is on the northern coast of Australia; Tindal is about 300 km (115 miles) inland to the south. The tanker I rode carried most of our squadron’s gear, and had to stop at the port city so our pack-up could be inspected by AQIS, the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service. Everything was opened up and sprayed with pesticide; the inspectors checked for any organic material like wood, tobacco, food of any kind, dirt, and so on. We had been forewarned of the inspection, so we had made sure our stuff was clean and it passed though the inspection quickly. Since the road to Tindal is poor and not very well lit, we decided not to try to negotiate it that night and found billeting aboard the RAAF airbase at Darwin in preparation to drive to Tindal the next morning.

Our accommodations were terrible—closet-sized rooms with two bunk beds, two wall-lockers, one electric socket, and an air conditioner that would only work if the room key was plugged into the face of the unit. There were the bathroom area was a separate building, as was the "common room" which had a single television, drinking fountain, and wireless internet available for $8.00 an hour (Australian). I did get to watch Australian news coverage on the U.S. Presidential election, which was amazingly detailed (and optimistic!) for a foreign news organ. I already knew the results by the time I arrived at my lodging, however, as the AQIS inspectors told us the result of the election when we landed. It seems indeed like the rest of the world thinks our elections a pretty big deal. Due to the lodgings and the suffocating post-election obsession of the news, I was not eager to spend too much time on base. So, shortly after "settling" in, three of my comrades and I took a rented vehicle into downtown Darwin to see the sights.

Darwin has something of a legendary status among American servicemembers. Apparently the locals are quite friendly (in every interpretation of that word) to Americans in general and the city offers enough nightlife and sight-seeing to keep tourists interested. As it is only 12 degrees south of the Equator, it is also very tropical. I was astonished by the many kinds and many colors of foliage around the base and city area. Also, much of the base is built on stilts to account for the flooding that typically occurs during the rainy season. Mindful of the early wake-up in the morning, the four of us settled for a quiet dinner--I enjoyed some savory kangaroo meat, which tasted a bit like steak and a bit like lamb--and a few beers before heading home. Our waitress was also a foreigner to Australia, having emigrated from Scotland, and explained that many Darwin inhabitants are transplants who encounter the city on a vacation or hear about it from friends and decide to move there; essentially, it's Australia's version of San Diego (though it is quite a bit smaller). The most striking thing about our first look at Australia was the fact that aside from the funny accents and the driving on the left side of the road, it seems just like America. The people especially look and act like Americans--and I don't mean that in a pejorative way.

The next day we took the (bad) road into Tindal. It took several hours, and once out of Darwin it proceed roughly straight south through the Outback. The land is flat, reddish, and bare except for short trees with bright green foliage that seem to grow no taller than 12-15 feet in height. Overhead stretches the biggest, clearest sky I have ever seen—clear blue scattered with brilliant white clouds. The temperature climbs through 100 degrees by nine in the morning, and sunlight feels scorching on bare skin. It is amazing: a bit like El Centro; a bit like Eastern Washington; but hotter and palpably more remote than either. In the late afternoon, the heat produces towering cumulous clouds that make sunsets a riot of color. At night, the temperature stays well above 90 degrees, and the constellations are foreign and confusing. I have not yet indentified the Southern Cross; apparently in this month it is very close to the horizon. But that is one of my sightseeing priorities around here.

RAAF Tindal lies southeast of Katharine, Australia, a small town of about 10,000 people. It isn’t a very exciting social scene off base, but the Australian squadrons present for Aces North have so far been very friendly and welcoming. The base facilities are pretty nice—for example, the Officer’s Mess here is much better than a chow hall. Rather than cafeteria-style dining, we order from a menu that usually includes three to four options. The food is excellent and there is always fresh fruit and salad available. The living area is a little more Spartan. We live two to a room in prefabricated housing with a shared bathroom and common room. I was surprised to note that the SINGLE bathroom area contains no urinals and the stalls are all partitioned off by full-length doors. This is because there is no separate facility for males and females (which is apparently standard for the Australian military… when in Rome, and all that), so the male aircrew will share toilets and showers with our three female aircrew. Fortunately, and perhaps unsurpisingly, this has not been an issue - so far everyone has enough common sense and professionalism to spend all their time outside the stalls clothed.

Speaking of bathrooms, I had an odd experience with our bathroom in our classfied, "operations" bunker. Our squadron spaces are divided between two bunkers which are buried, and like our living spaces they have co-ed toilets. The first day I was there, I went to use that facility, and after I was finished I realized that there was a frog at the bottom of the bowl staring up at me. He was about the size of my fist and a very bright green. It was very startling and not quite welcome, as he hadn't been there when I first entered the stall. However, I gather that it isn't all that rare to find animals in the sewage system--apparently the residents of certain areas of base are warned of snakes coming into the toilets (this is especially disturbing considering that the twelve most deadly snakes in the world are indigenous to Australia). And there is certainly an abundance of other, less dangerous wildlife on base: the resident squadron's mascot is the ubiquitous magpie; there are trees filled with thousands of bats the size of small cats (no rhyme intended), looking like large unhealthy fruits in the daylight; and the mini-kangaroos called wallabies congregate on the base parade ground during twilight hours.

Despite the exotic nature of our environment, probably the biggest challenge of this deployment is the flight schedule. The first “go” briefs at 0100 (1:00 AM) for a 0300 takeoff, the second “go” briefs at 0600 for a 0830 takeoff. This kind of schedule makes for some odd hours: aircrew flying the first “go” will go to bed at 1300 (one in the afternoon) for a 2300 wakeup (11:00 AM). The missions look to be very tactical, however, as Aces North is the graduation exercise for the RAAF Weapons School (think Top Gun), and we should get some really good training and experience out of it. There is no doubt that it will be a lot of work, and hopefully we’ll have some time to do some sightseeing as well.

Some thoughts on deployment to the Far East

This weekend I flew to Korea. I am pretty fortunate to be in a profession and a place where, on a weekend, I can fly to such a foreign country. I say "such a foreign country" because I find East Asian countries much less familiar than European ones. I grew up in a culture that descends directly from the social and intellectual legacy of western Europe. When I lived in Spain there were many characteristics of the place and the people that seemed strange to me, but for which I had a frame of reference from literature, history, or religion. At the very least, I had a vague cultural memory of those places. Here, in spite of the obvious Western capitalism, industry, and entertainment, I sense a great divide in perspective. I can't explain what exactly it is, since I know next to nothing about Japan and Korea. I am willing to concede that much of what I feel probably springs from my imagination.

I won't deceive; I didn't spend much time in Korea. The area we visited was more American and for the benefit of Americans than (I'm sure) is the rest of the country. We landed at Osan Airbase, just south of Seoul. Alongside the north side of the runway was a line of revetments (thick concrete walls surrounding equipment or structures, meant to protect them from the blast and fragmentation effects of ordnance) and Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries. On the other side of the runway were concrete bunkers for fighters, designed I assume to shield alert fighter aircraft from bomb and artillery damage. It was an immediate reminder that the Republic of Korea -- South Korea -- is still at war with the People's Republic of Korea -- North Korea -- and the current cessation of hostilities is an armistice (not a truce) that has been in effect since the 1950s. However away from the runway, on the part of the base where we actually stayed, it was much like any Air Force base. Nice quarters, a large gym, and American restaurants bore testament to the protection of a strong military.

That evening we walked out of the gate to what can only be described as a bazaar. Tiny shops lined narrow streets, themselves crowded with street merchants and food kiosks. Nearly everything there is fantastically cheap, from jewelry to custom suits to dive bars and strip clubs. It is all clearly for the benefit of the many Americans stationed on base, and it catered well to my imperialist sensibilities. The shopkeepers, waitresses, and hosts were all so eager to please that I couldn't help thinking that so must have felt the British colonists when they browsed for oddities in the markets of Cairo and New Delhi a hundred and fifty years before. Such men might have written home to their families (as I write now) in smug tones, listing anecdotes of the "funny people" and exotic merchandise found halfway across the world. Of course it is dangerous to fall into this trap, since in reality Korea is nearly as developed as American is, but without the powerful economy and international influence. But it was certainly seductive.

One nice thing about my trip north (we stopped back in Iwakuni for the second night) was the weather. Both days and nights were archetypically early autumn, with the sun pleasantly warm, the leaves just about to start turning, and the nights brisk and invigorating. That said, there is something very different about the landscape in Asia. By some trick of the weather and the terrain, there is a thick haze nearly all the time. It isn't pollution (I asked), and it makes those stylized oriental paintings I have seen seem much less stylized and more photographic. The sun is often indeed a burnished red orb instead of a fierce light, and the mountains are shrouded and vaguely threatening in the thick air. Looking down on the landscape from above, there is a patchwork organization to the many fields -- but I mean "patchwork." There are none of the crop circles and exact squares of the American midwest, nor the spread-out towns connected by solitary roads of the American southeast and northwest (nor, of course, the vast barren sprawl of California and the southwest). It looks efficient but crowded, which makes sense because settlements are confined mostly to river valleys. In fact, despite the many concrete apartment buildings or office buildings, the landscape looks somewhat medieval.

The highlight of the trip, surprisingly, was the final flight on Sunday afternoon from Iwakuni to Okinawa. There are always many layers of clouds in the sky here, often extending (without thunderstorms) up to 30,000 feet and higher. We were flying south with the sun setting to our right, and it shone red and very distant. Off to our left huge cloud formations were lit up pink and orange; the lower clouds immediately off to our right were delicately outlined in fire. It was very beautiful and quiet in the darkling sky, and I conceived a dim understanding of why ancient societies placed their deities in the sky. Words like glory and majesty floated in my mind as I watched the scenery pass my canopy. My pilot and I remarked on how fortunate we were to have seen such a sight.

It was a interesting weekend. The flights were excellent training (always a source of satisfaction), the night in Korea was very entertaining, and there was much for me to consider. Often, focused on my profession, I am isolated from my surroundings. Yet it seems after all that there is some benefit to new experiences.

Thoughts on Faith, Hope, Hemingway, and Communism

One author I've returned to recently is Earnest Hemingway - he makes for good reading on deployment. His work is entrancing and yet simple to read, and it takes me out of the day-to-day routine. I read The Sun Also Rises on my way across the Pacific, and found it metaphorically compelling. The whole "lost generation" idea of modernity was like the protagonist of that book, castrated by cynicism and unwilling to make the extra leap of faith required to find hope in a broken world (the literal cause of castration and cynicism being the first World War, and the broken world the depressed aftermath of the same). Of course, Hemingway himself provides plenty of reason to hope in the book, from the undoubtedly real love between the protagonist and Lady Brett, to the deep satisfying beauty of rural Spain, and finally in the "beautiful Spanish children" he mentions at the end of the book. Surely there are lots of reasons to be cynical even now (when our world starts to more closely resemble that of post-war Europe), but applying hope and faith to the problems allows one to stand against them in optimism, which is one big part of being a man. A modern example of this, perhaps, is when two young people get married. Finding another to love is an act of Providence--it is a grace and something to nurture and probably has helped keep many out of cynicism and unhappiness, which seem sadly prevalent in first-world societies today.

The book I read after The Sun also Rises was the children's classic The Secret Garden, wherein a neglected and pettish little girl is suddenly orphaned in India and sent to live with a crippled and bitter uncle, whose own son is both her own age and also neglected and pettish, even though he is spoiled on account of the fact he might be crippled like his father. I won't spoil the book for you, but suffice it to say that both the girl and the boy seize upon a world of nourishment and growth, which turns out to be the legacy of her aunt and his mother, and alter for the better. Thus, while I deeply sympathize with The Sun Also Rises, I find that The Secret Garden offers a more robust view of life--a view that Hemingway is not blind to, even if he can't quite make the leap to make it his own.

Now I am re-reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. I think it is Hemingway's masterpiece, a rich tale about adversity and love and the power of ideas. The protagonist, Robert Jordan, is fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the Republicans (sponsored by and ideologically similar to the Soviet Union), and the book opens with him going to a band of guerrillas behind Fascist lines to blow a strategic bridge in support of a forthcoming Republican offensive. Along the way he meets Maria, a victim of the war (and of numerous atrocities including rape) who is hiding with the guerrilla band. They fall in love immediately and sincerely, an event which combined with Roberto's (as they called him in Spain) natural appreciation for the Spanish countryside and Spaniards causes him to spend much of the course of the next few days re-thinking his priorities.

Prior to meeting Maria, Roberto was an ideological communist, intimate with the Soviet "political advisers" who really ran the Republic and quite cynical about it all. He was ready to die for that cause, but not passionately--as a materialist, he drew tepid pleasure from the pleasures of life and suffered through it's adversities, but saw no real reason to wish to continue living. After Maria, he begins to realize that there are transcendent goods in life: most immediately, a future with Maria; in an ancillary way, that the world is a beautiful place (something that resonates with me, for I too have wandered the rugged hills of Spain) and there is something to admire in the officially condemned but quite present and fervent religion of the Spaniards. There is a transition that takes place in the book: at first, Hemingway describes the countryside in his customary entrancing, wonderful way, with Roberto as a mere part of the whole scene; later Hemingway similarly describes the countryside through Roberto's own thoughts. Also, there is a part where Roberto kills a Navarrese cavalryman fighting for the Fascist side, noticing later that his victim was a Carlist (a soldier who fought not specifically for Fascism but rather for Catholicism against the atheist Republic) and feeling sorry for the man and his family. Roberto thinks to himself, "There is no people you love more than the Navarrese" (recalling his time spent in Spain before the outbreak of the civil war) and later admits to himself "Hell! you're no Marxist. You believe in liberte, equalite, fraternite! You believe in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." I won't spoil the ending if you haven't read the book, but I bring it up to illustrate what I think is a struggle going on in Hemingway's relation of the story between the cynical and seductive intellectual ideology of Communism on one hand, and hope and faith on the other.

Was Hemingway himself raised Catholic? I don't know, but after reading a scene in The Sun Also Rises where his protagonist kneels in the Cathedral of Pamplona and prays forgiveness for being "such a rotten Catholic," I suspect so. Certainly he betrays in both the books I've cited a deep regard and almost reverence for the devotion of the simple people of rural Spain. Though there is certainly an element of condescension in his treatment of them (after all, his protagonists are all lettered, affluent men like him), he echoes a Romantic and sometimes desperate envy of "the simple life" that runs throughout this modern, marginalizing, and hedonistic society we have constructed. It is, after all, in the simple life where fairy tales are born and where notions like "forever" and "contentment" are allowed to grow. If Hemingway says he was Communist, I don't dispute that and in fact despise it--I'm just pointing out that even a dedicated intellectual liberal like Hemingway evidently was not immune to the kind of joy that proceeds from grace: the grace of falling in love, the grace of joy in something so simple as a beautiful spring day, the grace of loving those who one suffers with. I doubt it is an accident that Catholicism casts such a long shadow across his oeuvre.

On Democracy and Decency

A good government, as conceived by the colonials back in 1776, was any form of government that guaranteed “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” That last part, the pursuit of happiness, presumably meant freedom from the unnecessary taxes, stiff tariffs, and forced military quartering that the British Crown was then inflicting on their North American colonies. In 1787, the newly independent colonies sought to create such a government. Because Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness were presumably the desire of all citizens, and certainly not the desire of rulers, they crafted a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Later, in 1789, that government added a Bill of Rights, reasoning that even the most popular and democratic governments might become rather tyrannical under certain circumstances.

In fact, on close inspection, the Constitution outlining our government seems particularly crafted to avoid such tyranny. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus famously relates the response of one tyrant to another when asked how to maintain power: he took his pupil to a wheat field and systematically lopped off the top of every stalk that extended above the average height. The freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights—for example, the freedoms of speech and expression—allow people to stand out without fear of the tyrant’s reprisal. And when people can stand out, rival leaders can be born, and large groups can be organized to support them, and governments can change. So goes our own government.

It seems pretty successful. We stand alone today as arguably the most influential country in the world, both in terms of political authority, economic effect, and military power. Moreover, our citizens are quite conspicuously prosperous and successful on an individual level (think movie stars, athletes, and businessmen): and this in spite of our government changing, really, every two years. Every two years, we have the opportunity of changing a certain number of elected representatives, including (every four years) our supreme executive, the President. Yet as our current presidential election progresses, we are treated to rhetoric that is by turns extravagant and bitter and we are confronted by issues that test our racial and socioeconomic prejudices. Is this divisive back-and-forth really necessary for a government free from tyranny?

Answering this question requires a hard look the idea of Democracy. It has been tried often in the past, generally with great success (the French Revolution represents perhaps the only attempt at Democracy that completely failed). Aristotle considers the subject closely in his Politics, written around 330 BC. He concludes that a Democracy, or a government of the people (i.e. where common people govern), may take two forms. The first, and better form, is one in which leaders are determined by lottery. From the pool of eligible citizens, leaders would be chosen randomly. This, to us, might seem absurd. Would the average plumber or secretary be qualified as the governor of a state, or a senator, or even the President? perhaps not. Aristotle concedes this. He argues, however, that since it minimizes the chance for an unscrupulous—possibly tyrannical—person to become a leader, it best maintains a government truly “by the people.”

The second form of Democracy that Aristotle identifies is one whose leaders are elected. This method clearly has advantages: the people presumably will choose the most qualified candidate, or the candidate that most closely conforms to their ideal of a leader. But there are two grave weaknesses in this system. First, it allows people with tyrannical temperaments to attempt to gain power, perhaps by manipulating the citizenry into electing them (they might do this by pretending to be virtuous and humble, or by portraying their rivals as cruel or power-hungry); second, it puts the future of the state in the hands of the mob, who hold electoral power. The mob, manifestly, may not have the state’s best interest at heart, or they may not have all their fellow citizens’ best interests at heart. When the mob is hostile to a minority, as the Germans were to their Jews after the First World War, persecution follows.

Obviously, our nation has an elected government. And our Constitution protects against many of the weaknesses inherent in such a government. We cannot officially persecute others for their opinions, race, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation; we cannot stop citizens from assembling in groups or protecting themselves. Our legal system guarantees that all are equal before the law. And yet with all these safeguards, we still suffer many ill effects from our particular system.

During the current presidential election race, we must choose between all sorts of moral imperatives. Various interest groups (“mobs”) clamor for our attention on socioeconomic disparity, or governmental infringement on our privacy, or involvement in foreign military campaigns. The candidates and their various supporters are trying to manipulate us by portraying their rivals in a negative light, claiming that our nation is suffering and that they know how to fix it, and (perhaps) disguising their true intentions. How are we to choose amongst all these issues and people?

Interestingly enough, Aristotle seems to have an answer for us. He begins his discussion in the Politics with the family. Apparently the natural affection between family members and the more immediate need they have for one another (an infant will starve if its mother doesn’t feed it) creates, generally, an effective government in microcosm: here are various authority figures, like adults (especially the two parents) and older siblings, and the entire organization is oriented toward its own health and propagation. And while the Family in our country has rather broken down of late (evidenced by the staggering divorce and single-parent statistics and any one of a number of MTV shows), it is still the primary place wherein an individual will learn when it is appropriate to exercise or succumb to authority, how to care for others, and what is morally right.

Navigating the pitfalls of an elected Democracy seems to rely on our nation’s ability to function as a family, and not in the sentimental sense of that phrase. Deciding what is best for the nation, instead of what is best for ourselves, means conceiving of some kind of affection—loyalty is almost sufficient—for our countrymen and our country’s honor. Exercising this particular affection often means exercising our right to free speech, but not to hurt and degrade others; it often means exercising our right to freely assemble, but not to exclude or marginalize others. Much of our society teaches us to be selfish, and that certainly contributes to the breakdown in families--those who would politically manipulate us appeal to selfishness in order gain our support. Only by an honest examination of our own individual motives, and a conscious abandonment of selfishness and prejudice, will we be able to determine what is right for our neighbors and for our nation as a whole.

On Hate Crimes

The third article of the Bill of Rights (the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States) guarantees an individual citizen the right to speak their opinion without interference from the government. It is quite clear on this fact, reading "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." Naturally this amendment was not intended to license or condone abuses of free speech, such as calumny or libel, or even indecent speech. But the ugly fact remains that many opinions are considered indecent, and the Constitution protects those opinions.

According to our national zeitgeist, one of the more indecent perspectives is that of racism. We have a troubled history regarding race, from the outright slavery and abuse of black slaves imported from Africa or the Caribbean to the aggressive marginalization of immigrants ranging from the Irish, the Poles, the Italians, and (most recently) the Mexicans. The legacy of our civil war, fought at terrible cost and with very dirty tactics, and the influence of great men like Martin Luther King, Jr. have forced us to address, to varying degrees, these issues. Living in an enlightened age, informed by a college-educated, liberal media (whose freedom is guaranteed by the same article of the Constitution that protects the freedom of speech), we collectively and correctly deplore racism. It has become a social solecism of the worst sort.

Yet increasingly it has become a crime. And this confuses me. Because simply to harbor the opinion that one race is better or more deserving than another is essentially an opinion, which is clearly protected by the constitution. In fact, nearly all of us are guilty of this sort of prejudice in some fashion or another: employers often prefer to hire from a certain type of school, or from a certain area of town; customers are treated differently in stores because of the way they're dressed; we even tend to pick friends from a certain social set and (perhaps) avoid people from certain other sets. All of these actions are based on stereotypes, and those stereotypes inform our opinions. And this is not a bad thing, for judging others is a consequence of relationships. Yet to have a similar opinion about Black people or Mexicans or Gays is considered horribly wrong and insensitive. Keep in mind that I am just talking about having the opinion. In Canada, the Hate Crime laws have put Catholic priests in jail for speaking negatively about the homosexual lifestyle. Clearly that opinion is illegal. Fortunately it isn't so yet in America--the Constitution's guarantee holds good in this regard.

But it does not cover the instance of a racist person committing a crime. If society has determined that opining negatively about another race is morally wrong, our government has gone further and enacted laws that punish crimes apparently motivated by racism much more severely than the same crimes that are otherwise motivated. This is ludicrous. For one thing, it punishes the same crime differently, for if two equally racist men commit the same crime of robbing a convenience store, the one who robbed a store owned by someone of minority group will be punished more severely than the other (who robbed a store owned by a "normal" person). More importantly, however, "Hate Crime Law" presumes that the government can legislate against an opinion specifically, if that opinion apparently leads to an illegal act.

I used the word "apparently" twice there, because short of a criminal declaring in a confession that he or she was motivated by racism, or selected a victim because of their race, there is no realistic way to prove that a crime was actually founded in racism. People commit crimes for all sorts of reasons: they need money, they want revenge, they lose their temper, they are medically psychotic. Perhaps something along the lines of a lynching is really and truly a "Hate Crime," but it is also a first-degree murder, and we have legitimate laws on the books for that specific crime. A lynching is horrifying and degrading, but so are many murders. And the result is that some people killed another. Is there one reason to commit murder than is better than another? Is it less bad to kill for money, or because the victim committed adultery, than it is to kill because the other is of a different race? I argue no. Jealousy, greed, emotional betrayal, and anger are not better reasons to commit a crime than racism. The opinion that someone does not deserve to live is protected by the constitution (even if it is based on racial perspectives), but acting upon that opinion is wrong in the nature of the act, not the opinion. Hence we have legislated degrees of crime (e.g. first degree murder vs. manslaughter).

Prejudice against those of a particular race or any other discriminator (like sexual orientation or religious affiliation) is particularly ugly, and it has caused a lot of hurt and oppression in our country. It deserves to be deplored by all of us. But it is legal under the auspices of the constitution, and is one of the many evils necessary to guarantee that the government cannot silence our criticism or censor our ability to speak for what is right. Hate crimes violate this Constitutional right by allowing the government to punish a criminal additionally--specifically because of his or her perceived racism. These laws should be stricken from the books.

A new "Greatest Generation"

Words from a Memorial Day speech to from MajGen Kelly to US servicemen in Fallujah, Iraq:

[A] few statistics to ponder. There are twenty-five million living American Veterans. Since General George Washington commanded the Continental Army forty-two million Americans have served the colors.

A million have been killed in its defense. Another million and a half wounded. When most of us think about military cemeteries the first thought that comes to mind is Arlington National in Washington, but there are many, many more in the U.S.

Most Americans also don’t know there are 24 American cemeteries maintained overseas with 125,000 graves of our fallen—61,000 in France alone—the result of two wars that saved Europe and the world from horrors unimaginable to Americans today; unimaginable, that is, unless you are a Veteran who have seen the terrible face of war so those who remained safe in America, and those yet unborn, would never have to.

There are also memorials overseas to an additional 94,000 Americans who were lost at sea, or their remains never recovered from battlefields around the globe. With all this service and loss, we as Americans can be proud of the kind of people we are as we have never retained a square foot of any country we have defeated, we possess no empire, nor have we enslaved a single human being.

On the contrary, billions across the planet are today — and billions yet unborn — live free because our Veterans have fought and died, and, once peace achieved, we’ve rebuilt destroyed cities, economies, and societies.

Memorial Day was established three years after our terrible Civil War that finally established what kind of nation we would be. A war in which 600,000 young Americans—North and South—perished. For a century the day continued to mean visiting and decorating graves or town-square memorials to those who died serving our great nation, and celebrating with parades and civic events...

Americans should not forget this weekend or any weekend as they relax with a few days off that the country is at war, and a new Greatest Generation is fighting a merciless enemy on their behalf in the terrible heat of Iraq, and in the mountains of Afghanistan. Like it or not America is engaged in a war today against an enemy that is savage, offers no quarter, whose only objectives are to either kill every one of our families in our homeland, or enslave us with a sick form of extremism that serves no God or purpose that rational men and women can understand.

Given the opportunity to do another 9/11, our vicious enemy would do it today, tomorrow and everyday thereafter. I don’t know why they hate us, and I frankly don’t care and they can all go to hell, but they do hate us and are driven irrationally to our destruction. The best way to fight them is somewhere else and that is why we are here. For whatever reason they want to destroy our way of life and our countrymen at home should be on their knees everyday thanking God we still have enough young people in America today willing to take up the fight as our Veterans did from the earliest days of our nation.

They should know that they are protected today by men and women as good as have ever served; as good today as their fathers were in Vietnam, and their grandfathers were in Korea and World War II. In this my third tour in Iraq I have never seen an American hesitate, or do anything other than lean into the danger and, with no apparent fear of death or injury, take the fight to the enemies of our way of life.

As anyone who has ever experienced combat knows, and many of you do, when it starts, when the explosions and tracers are everywhere and the calls for the Corpsman or medic are screamed from the throats of men who know they are dying—when seconds seem like hours and it all becomes slow motion and fast forward at the same time—everything in one’s survival instinct says stop, get down, save yourself —yet you don’t.

When no one would call you coward for cowering behind a wall or in a hole looking to your own self preservation, none of you do. It doesn’t matter if it’s an IED, a suicide bomber, mortar attack, fighting in the upstairs room of a house, or all of it at once—America should know you fight today in the same way our warriors have since the Revolution.

The wonderful thing about America’s Armed Forces is that none of us are born killers. On the contrary we are good and decent Americans mostly from the neighborhoods of America’s cities, and small towns. Almost all come from “salt of the earth” working class homes, and more often than not are the sons and daughters of cops and firemen, factory and service workers, and farmers.

Most of us delivered papers, stocked shelves in the grocery store, played Little League baseball and pickup hockey in the local rink, and served Mass on Sunday morning. Some are former athletes, and many “couch potatoes” who drove our cars and motorcycles too fast, and blasted our music louder than perhaps we should have.

We are all ordinary people performing remarkable acts of bravery and selfless acts of devotion to a cause bigger than ourselves—and for millions who will never know our names. Any one of us could have all stayed in school or gone another way, but yet we chose to serve knowing full well Iraq and Afghanistan was in our future. You did not avoid the most basic and cherished responsibility of a citizen—to defend the nation and its people—on the contrary, you went after it.

You did not fail in life which the chattering class back home likes to believe is why you chose to serve and risk dying for the nation, but, rather, are the best our nation produces and have consciously put every American at home above your own self interest. You are all heroes and like many Veterans throughout our history many of us have endured things—sights, sounds and horrors—that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

I know I find comfort that because I am here those I love and have sworn to protect will never have to deal with memories so terrible. I hope you who have seen these things have the same sense of purpose and balance when you relive the scenes of violence, and of decisions made. America’s Armed Forces today know the price of being the finest men and women this nation has to offer, and pay it we do everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than four thousand of us have died in this war, and ten-times this number have been wounded. And the sacrifice continues as young Americans have gone to God since we all went to bed last night and slept free and protected.

Their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, wives, husbands, and fiancés are sitting in their living rooms right now with casualty officers learning the true price of freedom, and are only just beginning a lifelong struggle of dealing with the pain and loss of someone so dear, but they are not victims as they knew what they were about and were doing what they wanted to do.

Many of today’s self-proclaimed experts and media commentators endeavor to make them out to be victims but they are wrong, and this only detracts from the decision these patriots made to step forward and protect the country that has given so much to all of us. We who are serving, and have served, demand not to be categorized as victims—we are not.

Those with less of a sense of service to the nation never understand it when strong and committed men and women stand tall and firm against our enemies, just as they can’t begin to understand the price paid so they and their families can sleep safe and free at night—the protected never do.

What the experts, commentators, and elites are missing, what they will also never understand, is the sense of commitment, joy, and honor, of serving the nation in its uniform, but every American Veteran, and their loved ones who support them and fear for them everyday, do understand.

We should all be confident that this experiment in democracy we call America will forever remain the “land of the free and home of the brave” so long as we never run out of tough young Americans willing to look beyond their own self interest and comfortable lives, and go into the darkest and most dangerous places on earth to hunt down, and kill, those who would do us harm.

In closing I wanted to share a story that you may not be aware of that took place only a few miles from here in Ramadi. On 22 April 2nd Battalion 8th Marines and 1st Battalion, 9th Marines were in the process of turning over a Joint Security Station Nasser.

It’s in the Sophia district of Ramadi, and was once the center of the insurgency in that city. Two Marines who barely knew each other as one was coming and the other going were standing guard at the Entry Control Point (ECP): their names were Jonathan Yale and Jordan Haerter.

At 0745, and without warning, a large truck accelerated towards the ECP, careening off the protective serpentine. Both must have understood on instinct what was happening as in less then a second they went to the guns and opened fire until the massive 2,000lb blast took their lives—but the suicide bomber never passed the post they protected, and 50 other Marines and perhaps as many police didn’t die that day inside the JSS.

I spoke to several Iraqi police eyewitness and they all told the same story, but one more emotionally than the others.

He said no sane man would have stood there directly in the path of a speeding truck firing their weapons—yet two did. His officers, some as close as ten feet initially from the Marines, fired and ran when it was obvious the truck could not be stopped—and they survived. The Marines stood their ground and stopped the truck before it detonated, and saved the lives of their buddies.

At this point he reads from a letter he wrote to the family of one of the Marines. I'd rather not delve into that. But as long as America has young men like these...