Happy birthday to me, and also I'll see you in like a month or two

Yesterday was my birthday.

In honor of my birthday I got an oil change. This was also in honor of my upcoming replacement transmission. I don’t want them to have any way to weasel out of the warranty. Transmissions are expensive.

Also in honor of my birthday I did not go to work. This was mostly because the movers told me I had to be at home from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in case they decided to drop by. They said if they did decide to drop by and I wasn’t there they would charge me lots of money.

As it turned out, I was their first stop, so they were gone by 9:30 a.m., just in time to get me out of formation, but not in time to prevent me from having to wear a uniform. Then I had to wear one again today, so I could attend a two-hour briefing with a two-star general. If you’ve never been to a briefing with a lot of military officers, I would advise you to continue not going to them.

Um … that’s mostly it.

Tomorrow’s my last day at work, so you won’t be hearing from me until I find a computer. It’s also going to throw a wrench into the whole book-writing thing. Writing it by hand goes considerably slower. So you know, I’ll talk to you all soon.

In the meantime, everybody be cool.

This may come as a shock but ... there might be some liberal bias in the media!

According to this Reuters story, press coverage of the election was three times more likely to be negative toward Bush than Kerry.

I’m shocked. Appalled even. Except I’m not shocked.

“The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator,” the story said.

Here’s another shocker.

The three nightly newscasts and PBS were all more likely to be negative than positive, and Fox was twice as likely to be positive than negative.

Well, this proves it. Fox is a partisan arm of the Republican National Committee.
But you know, what if they are? Somebody should be. According to their own research, 85 percent of journalists are liberal. So what if somebody decides to even the playing field a little? I’m all for unbiased media, but you know what? It ain’t gonna happen.

Ever.

So at the very least we ought to have someone on both sides.

As Ann Coulter once said, Fox should admit to being a conservative news station – just as soon as the rest of the news stations admit to being liberal.

It's almost here ...

As my separation from the military quickly approaches, the following points have occurred to me. They have rudely chosen to occur to me at exactly the same time, instead of waiting in line politely. I am trying not to panic.

I’ve never been a civilian and an adult at the same time. I’ve been in the Army since I graduated high school. Since most people in the Army think they are still in high school (except they all dress the same and get shot at more often – though only slightly), I’m not sure how adult civilians are supposed to behave. For instance, without the use of 6 million acronyms, how do people communicate? Do people ever do prowl the hallways in search of subordinates whose coats are unzipped?

I don’t, technically speaking, have a job lined up. When I say “technically” what I mean is that I don’t have a job lined up. But I must be qualified for something, right? I mean I’ve been a journalist for like five years … oh wait. No, I guess that means I’m not qualified for anything. Do you suppose Iraq is looking for a new minister of information?

I don’t technically have a house at this moment. For the definition of “technically” see above. The reason for this is mostly because of number two. After doing extensive research on the town I live in, I have discovered that A) A person must make at least $200,000 a year to pay rent on something like, say, a moss-covered shed. And B) most jobs, including neurosurgery and rocket science, pay roughly $6.50 per hour. Therefore the fact that anyone lives there is a mathematical impossibility. Does anyone know NASA’s phone number? Anyway, I could always move into my parents’ house but I’d have to push my little brother off his bed (the living room couch) or squeeze into my other brother’s bedroom (a tent in the garage) and I just don’t know how well that would work.

Actually, that’s about it. Now that I think about it, it’s not that bad.

In fact, the timing of my departure from military service is pretty spectacularly orchestrated (not by me). Because of a long, complicated chain of totally unexpected events, I will get home in time to see my sister and her two children, who are returning from Germany for a few months before moving away again.

If my discharge date was when it was supposed to be, at the end of October, I would miss her visit entirely. So it would appear that God is in control after all and I need not worry. After all, it is He who determines the times and places men should live …

So, to quote Ozzy Osbourne, (which is something you should never ever do by the way), “Mama, I’m comin’ hooooome…”

Americans did not try to kill reporter out of irritation

Italy mourned Intelligence Officer Nicola Calipari Monday in Rome. He was killed when American (that’s us) troops fired on his vehicle at a checkpoint in Iraq. He was escorting freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter who had been kidnapped in Iraq.

Sgrena worked for the communist publication Il Manifesto, a “fierce opponent of the war and a frequent critic of U.S. policy,” according to My Way News.

Now let me make one thing clear before I go on. Her criticism of American policy and anti-war views in no way make her deserving of what she’s had to go through – first the kidnapping, followed by the shooting in which she was injured by shrapnel and Calipari was killed.

She has been through a terrible ordeal and my heart goes out to her – as it does to all innocents captured by cowardly terrorists.

Sgrena, however, feels that she was intentionally targeted by Americans because we found her “happy ending” to hostage negotiations “irksome.”

Basically she’s saying that because we make it known that we do not encourage negotiation with terrorists, for very good reasons which I will address in a moment, we would intentionally target a foreign journalist whose country successfully frees her from captivity by the very people we’re fighting.

“The Americans are against this type of operation,” she said. “For them, war is war, human life doesn’t count for much.”

This is an odd point of view since, if human life meant just a little less to us, far fewer of our soldiers would have lost it. By this I mean that because our attempts to “win hearts and minds” and preserve the lives of Iraqi innocents, we have had more difficulty fighting insurgents. If we didn’t care about human life, we could just drop a couple of 500 pound bombs on Fallujah and end that problem.

But yes, it is our policy not to negotiate with terrorists. The news story said, quite correctly, that, “U.S. officials have cautioned against ransoms, saying they only encourage further kidnappings.”

This is absolutely true. My heart breaks for everyone who is kidnapped because I know we can never in good conscience negotiate with their captors. It would only endanger more lives.

If, every time someone is kidnapped, that person’s country withdraws from Iraq and we give the captors what they demand, the terrorists will be running the world. Literally.

Spain went so far as to elect a president based on further terrorist threats. The terrorists tried the same stuff with us, threatening major attacks if we didn’t elect John Kerry.

How could we ever allow them to dictate our foreign policy through kidnappings and beheadings? That would be the height of irresponsibility.

However, if another country disagrees with us and decides to either withdraw troops or pay a ransom, we would never target the hostage out of annoyance. That’s not how things work. Our goal was never to lose the hostage’s life. What would we have to gain from such behavior?

I am sorry for Calipari and I am sorry for Sgrena. But if we give in to these terrorists, we will be far worse off than we are now.

I’m sure this was exactly what the White House said it was: a tragic accident on the part of highly stressed troops.

In an attempt to win us over to their side, Dean calls us evil, intolerant

“You’re already upsetting Republicans here in Mississippi. Keep up the good work,” said Jackson Miss., Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. to DNC Chairman Howard Dean just before handing him the key to the city.

This was in an Associated Press story that began by praising Dean for touring historically Republican states and trying to convert them.

Dean was quoted as saying, “We will not concede the south,” and “The South will rise again and when it does it will have a D in its name.”

So in one paragraph we declare our determination to make Republican states into Democratic states, presumably by convincing them we are right and they are wrong, and a few paragraphs later we encourage Dean to continue upsetting the very Republicans he’s trying to win over. Clever strategy.

Say you and I were on a jury together. Say seven of us thought the guy was guilty and five were convinced he was innocent, so we argue. I am trying to convince you that he is guilty, and you are trying to convince me that he is innocent, so that one of us will get enough votes to settle the matter. Of course you already are at a disadvantage, because I already have two more votes on my side than you do. So you have to convince four of us to change our votes. How do you do it?

Isn’t it obvious? You call us evil, untrustworthy, intolerant and stupid. That’s bound to bring us over to your way of thinking immediately.

Dean said he wanted to reach out to people with values. This is part of a widespread, very wise but slightly too late attempt on Democrats’ part to establish that Republicans do not have the corner on morality. I’m not saying they’re all immoral. Only that this recent post-election “we have morals too” push is a day late and a dollar short.

He said the party has room for people with differing viewpoints on abortion, and that pro-life Democrats “care about kids after they’re born, not just before they’re born.” Aside from this being the one of the only times a liberal has used the words “pro-life” instead of “anti-abortion,” this statement was otherwise nonsense so I won’t bother to address it.

“The way we’re going to win elections in this country is not to become Republican lite. The way we’re going to win elections in this country is to stand up for what we believe in” Dean said. “Now if only we knew what that was,” those standing closest thought they heard him mumble.

I wonder where he got information on how to win elections. Certainly not from his own party, which is particularly inept in that category.

In a previous speech in Kansas, Dean said the Democrats are in a battle of good and evil. He then felt the need to clarify (not unreasonably, for I’m sure there was confusion) that he was considering Democrats the “good” part of the equation.

On abortion he said it is not the issue. “The issue is whether women can make up their own mind instead of some right-wing pastor, some right-wing politician telling them what to do.”

Statistically, there are far more pro-abortion men than women. The majority of women (many of whom have had abortions) support it far less than their male counterparts because they’re far more familiar with the serious emotional problems that accompany it. I will never get an abortion because I don’t believe in killing a living child, not because my pastor tells me not to. Being a Christian doesn’t make me incapable of making my own choices.

"Moderate Republicans can't stand these people (conservatives), because they're intolerant. They don't think tolerance is a virtue," Dean said. "I'm not going to have these right-wingers throw away our right to be tolerant."

Also nonsense. I do think tolerance a virtue, but not the highest virtue. But that doesn’t matter because Democrats don’t actually want tolerance. They want people to be tolerant of them and their positions but when it comes to Christians, Republicans or anyone who disagrees with them, they fully support intolerance and discrimination.

I could list dozens of examples to back this point up, but since this is already getting too long I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you can do the research yourself.

Some thoughts (not my own) on loving your enemy and 'Thou shalt not kill'

I’m reading “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis (again) and as usual I find that his being one of the leading Christian thinkers of his time does not make him any less a leading Christian thinker of our time, except for being dead now.

What I mean is, the points he brings up are still absolutely relevant and important today as much as they were fifty years ago.

Specifically I was reading the chapter on Forgiveness, which talks about loving our enemies and the command not to kill and I found it pretty relevant today, so I’m posting a few excerpts from it and adding a few words of my own.

Lewis points out that when we hear the command “Love your enemy as yourself,” we assume, maybe unconsciously that we are supposed to try and think our enemies (which includes people we just don’t like) are nicer or more likeable people than they are, or try to generate feelings of affection for them, which is impossible.

But if we take the model of how to love our enemies from how we love ourselves, which is exactly what we’re told to do, it’s just not true. Most of us do think we are nice people (or enlightened, or humble, there are lots of things we credit ourselves with), sometimes, but we never think it of ourselves always. We are often extremely disappointed by our own behavior and look at some of our past actions with loathing and disgust. Often we don’t even enjoy our own company, but we go on loving ourselves nonetheless.

So the old phrase “hate the sin, not the sinner,” is very true. We are still allowed, even required to hate the things our enemies do. But we are required, just as we do with ourselves, to feel sorry for our enemies that they commit those sins and pray for their deliverance from them.

“Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery,” Lewis said. “We ought to hate them … but it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that a man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.”

A little later Lewis asks if loving your enemy means you shouldn’t punish him. Well, I love myself but don’t think I should be exempt from punishment for my sins. I would like to be exempt, but am smart enough to realize that punishment is absolutely necessary for my own sake.

“It is therefore, in my opinion,” said Lewis, “perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy … it is no good quoting ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew."

He went on to say, “War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect the honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it.”

This is a pretty relevant issue in the world we live in today, where in the same town random people will come up and thank me for my service while others scream that I’m a baby killer and give me the finger, demonstrating their deep and abiding love of peace.

Of course this is his opinion. There are many Christians who don’t feel this way about it, but being both a Christian and a soldier, I have to throw my lot in with him.

Now of course someone might bring up the point that this is assuming the Iraqi soldiers we killed needed to be punished. There might even be some stupid enough to think I’m saying they ought to be punished for being Muslim.

But just like any war, the individual soldiers are not fighting to kill each other for personal or moral reasons. They may believe in their cause or they may be following orders. Very few (with the exception of Ward Churchill) will try to argue that Saddam Hussein had not committed acts that deserved punishment. Whether it was our place to do it is not for me to say.

But during the honest warfare (before the insurgents and the “win hearts and minds” campaign), the individual soldiers’ job was simply to kill the enemy before being killed by him. The same principle works on both sides.

If I’m shooting at a man, of course I don’t want to die, but I’m not going to hold it against him if he shoots back.

So there you have it.