Baking soda as dandruff treatment

It's working ... so far.

In the Army, I was diagnosed with seborrheic dermatitis. To fight it, I used dandruff shampoos with active ingredients zinc pyrithione or selenium sulfide. I haven't tried dandruff shampoos with salicylic acid, ketoconazole, tar, or sulfur.

Zinc pyrithione didn't work, but the selenium sulfide was effective for years. Supposedly, though, it's normal for dandruff shampoos to stop working when the scalp or perhaps the dandruff-causing fungus develops "resistance" to the active ingredient. That's what happened. Suddenly, one night my old, regular dandruff shampoo stopped working. After I showered, my entire scalp experienced a sudden all-over dry tightening sensation, itched, and that was that - my dandruff shampoo was ineffective. I tried zinc pyrithione again and it didn't work. I switched brands to another brand of dandruff shampoo that used selenium sulfide and it didn't work, either.

I continued using the selenium sulfide shampoo, even though it was no longer effective as an anti-dandruff agent, simply because it seemed wasteful not to use it up. I also was reluctant to try the expensive, seemingly harsher salicylic acid, ketoconazole, tar, or sulfur based shampoos. So, I resigned myself to the situation.

About 2 weeks ago, I googled the problem and found websites discussing natural remedies for dandruff, including baking soda or sodium bicarbonate. (Another popular natural remedy is apple cider vinegar.) Baking soda works against dandruff supposedly due to its mildly abrasive ex-foliating and fungicidal properties. It appealed to me because it's natural, I have a box of it at home I wasn't using, and the method is uncomplicated. So, for the last 2 weeks, I've used baking soda to wash my hair. The 1st week, I applied a rough palmful of baking soda per daily wash and emptied half the 1 lb box in the process. The 2nd week, I've tried much less baking soda per daily hair wash, about 1 teaspoonful mixed with water, and it's been as effective.

So far so good. The baking soda has substantially reduced the dandruff since the 1st time I used it. After 2 weeks, I'm pleased with the result and plan to continue washing my hair with baking soda. My scalp itches far less, though it still itches somewhat; I don't know whether that's due to the dandruff condition or the baking soda treatment. I purposely skipped washing my hair one day to see whether the dandruff would recur. It didn't, although I decided not to push my luck by skipping a 2nd day. I just hope the baking soda doesn't stop working at some point like the dandruff shampoo did.

Baking soda has many other suggested household cleaning and hygiene uses and is touted as a cheaper, natural alternative to commercial cleaning products. With my success so far with baking soda as a dandruff treatment, I'm tempted to experiment with baking soda for other suggested uses such as teeth whitener and a booster for laundry detergent and bleach.

Eric

Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood murders

The murders by Nidal Hasan on Fort Hood on Thursday are bad enough in and of themselves. But making his act worse is that Hasan was a field-grade Army officer with the sacred duty to lead and care for soldiers, moreso as a psychiatrist and, therefore, medical doctor. (He's still alive, but while Hasan still holds his commission and license, I am loath to consider him a doctor and officer any longer.) As such, Hasan's crime is a gross betrayal of everything that was honorable and beneficial about who he was.

Hasan acted out as a radical Islamic terrorist (yes, he's a terrorist - it's an obsolete notion that Islamic terrorists are limited to card-carrying, dues-paying members of recognized Islamic terrorist organizations), but he reminds me more of recent high-profile murderers George Sodini, Seung-Hui Cho, and Charles Carl Roberts. They were mentally diseased men. Hasan's acts likely will cause honorable Muslim American soldiers to be scrutinized and perhaps alienated in a profession in which shared trust is essential, and I would not be surprised if Hasan intended for that to happen. Rather than turn on our own, though, I hope and trust the military community will instead reaffirm the fraternal bonds among soldiers.

Here's the statement from APAAM on the Fort Hood shootings:

STATEMENT ON FORT HOOD SHOOTINGS FROM ASSOCIATION OF PATRIOTIC ARAB AMERICANS IN THE MILITARY

At a time of deep sorrow in the midst of this horrific tragedy, our thoughts are first and foremost with the Fort Hood shooting victims and their families. One can only imagine the unspeakable pain and loss they are and will be dealing with in the weeks, months and years to come.

It is unfortunate that whatever demons possessed Nidal Hasan, that he chose to deal with his problems in this way.

In the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, it is more important than ever that we not make the same scapegoating and broad stroke mistakes that were evident in the aftermath of previous tragedies. The Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military urges the media, government officials and all of our fellow Americans to recognize that the actions of Hasan are those of a deranged gunman, and are in no way representative of the wider Arab American or American Muslim community.

In fact, thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honorably everyday in all four branches of the U.S. military and in the National Guard. Additionally, many of us have willingly stepped forward to fulfill our duty with our fellow soldiers in both Afghanistan, Iraq and other locations around the globe, including most of the member of APAAM. Indeed, many of us are today currently deployed in both countries, honorably serving each and every day.

There have been three Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to three of our nation's heroes. One of those heroes is Arab American Petty Officer Michael Monsoor, US Navy.

About APAAM
The Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military (APAAM) was created shortly after September 11th, 2001, in an effort to organize current and former Arab- Americans in the military. There are approximately 3,500 Arab- Americans serving in our Armed Forces. Based on the fact that there are no other formal organizations representing Arab- Americans in the military, APAAM has the distinction of being the first official organization for Arab- Americans in the Military.

Media Contact:
Ray Hanania
APAAM Media Coordinator, Vietnam Era Veteran
rayhanania@comcast.net

Eric

Winners always want the ball when the game's on the line.

Here's another resonant quote from one of my favorite movies, the under-appreciated The Replacements:

Shane Falco: I read Blitz!
Coach McGinty: [confronts Falco] Winners always want the ball when the game's on the line.

I've failed to live up to this principle and my failure must stop. I would add to the Coach McGinty quote that winners - even when they fail, which happens - want the ball when the game's on the line.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

My mom gave me hard news, but it's not devastating yet, at least until the test results come back. It's incentive to clarify, focus, and accelerate what I'm doing with my life.

After winning 8-5 in Philadelphia last night, the Yankees are up 2-1 on the Phillies in the World Series. I'd like to see the Phillies win. I thought about rooting for the Yankees because they're a NYC team, I'm not an anti-Yankees Mets fan, and I usually root for the team that defeated my team to be eliminated as soon as possible. I can't hate on the Phillies like that, though, because the last 3 years, ever since Carlos Beltran struck out looking with the bases loaded, making the last out against the Cardinals in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, the Mets have defeated themselves. They've choked, whereas the Phillies have developed into a high character team that combines their talent with hard-nosed, resilient tenacity. They're a tougher team than the Mets and I respect them as champions. I'd like to get Bobby Valentine back as Mets manager.

Knicks and Nets both look like bottom-dwellers this season. Knicks are holding out for Lebron James and/or Dwyane Wade and the Nets are holding out for a move to Brooklyn. It's doubtful either will happen.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

Shoe recommendation: I've been using these Florsheim shoes for work for about a year. (I've probably exceeded the recommended lifetime of the shoe, because the inside liner is shredded and the fancy Comfortech insole pads have holes worn into them. I've even paid to change the heels and back inside liner to extend the shoes' life.) They've served me well. The shoes are exceptionally light, they're comfortable, and I like their traditional look.

Interesting blog: Half Sigma, a pseudonymous blogger who's a Stuy grad and NYC lawyer. He often discusses human biodiversity and links to other thought-provoking, non politically correct blogs. One of the blogs he regularly references, Roissy in DC, reminds me again how wrong I've been about women. I still find 'game' repellent and resist it, but it's hard to deny the obvious. For example, according to Roissy's blog, my attempted "court" in Korea, which I've viewed as the best I could give Traci, was the opposite of what I should have done. I can't deny that everything I tried in order to bring us closer not only failed, but actually made her colder towards me. Recently, on a night out with co-workers, a female co-worker spoke derisively of an ex-boyfriend's pained reaction to her initial rejection; while I thought his reaction spoke of deep romantic feeling, she said women want men who are "strong".

Barefoot running makes sense to me - I'm going to look into it. When I was in Basic Training, a drill sergeant (who had a busted foot!) made fun of me for running on the balls of my feet. At West Point, an upperclassman criticized me for walking on the balls of my feet. Others in my life have pointed out, less meanly, that I tend to walk on the balls of my feet. My intuitive logic was that landing on the balls of my feet and easing onto my heels provides more spring and less jolt on the landing, whereas a heel strike transfers energy directly through the heel up through my joints. Indeed, although I'm not an athlete and suffered from occasional bouts of knee pain as a teenager, I seemed to experience fewer foot and leg problems than most of my fellow soldiers. Eventually, I was shamed into walking with a heel-toe step and I wonder if that contributed to my foot problems earlier this year.

Stuy bowling - my high school obsession and my biggest regret. I just happened to be walking by Stuy on Thursday night and just happened to pick up a dirty copy of the Stuy Spectator off the steps by the turn-off to BMCC. In it is an article about the boys varsity bowling team, now called the Hookers. EXCERPT: “Last year, the school had very little money to practice, maybe two practices each season for the past couple of years,” coach Timothy Pon said. “This year, we have a bit more money for practices.” According to Pon, each player on the team gets to bowl one game at practice, making the total cost of each practice $69.70. The extra money allows the team to schedule more practices in order to improve their game. My first impulse was to get on the phone Friday and ask Mr. Pon or AP Larry Barth how to donate 100 dollars to pay for an additional practice. Reviewing the team's performance this season, though, I doubt it'll make a difference for the play-offs. The team's best bowlers are 150 average level, no Noel Vega's or Jeff Piroozshad's among them. I'll probably try to donate money for an extra team practice, anyway, because that's what nostalgic, loyal, aging alumni do.

I'm thinking about the Second Amendment. On the ground level, it seems downright dangerous to allow the "right to bear arms" when crime and anti-social behaviors are facts of life, moreso in the cities where millions of strangers co-exist uncomfortably in close proximity. In other Western liberal societies, gun control is a non-issue: private ownership of firearms is not allowed. But our American founding fathers codified the right to bear arms as a means for the American people to resist external threats and the individual citizen to protect against a potentially tyrannical government. Within those classic opposing arguments, I tend to fall on the side of gun control, i.e., there's more to fear from uncontrolled guns on the streets than from government oppression or an invading foreign army. Recently, though, I've been thinking that the Second Amendment serves an important cultural function: a placeholder for the preservation of violence as an essential component of what men need to be. We men are the natural providers, competitors, enforcers, and defenders of home, family, and community, and within the context of our social duties, we should each value and understand how and why to use violence. My model for this aspect of manhood is soldiers - one of the principal manifestations of manly social responsibility - who are taught simultaneously to master violence and control it. I fear abolishing the Second Amendment would have the destructive effect of removing violence from the culture of American men. I want to think more about this.

Closing thoughts: Gotta do my laundry; I'd like to catch some of the Yankees and Giants games.

Eric

Skelton and Lieberman on Afghanistan

The latest example of why I 'voted' for Senator Lieberman in 2006:

Washington Post: Don't Settle for Stalemate in Afghanistan
By Ike Skelton and Joe Lieberman
Sunday, October 18, 2009

EXCERPT: "Six months ago the Obama administration concluded that the only way to stop Afghanistan's slide into insecurity and prevent the reemergence of a terrorist haven was to put in place an integrated counterinsurgency strategy focused on protecting the Afghan population, building up the Afghan national security forces and improving Afghan governance. . . . We strongly supported the president's decision and continue to believe that he was right."

Read the whole thing.

Eric

Watch Frontline's Obama's War

Watch this Frontline special to better understand the debate over President Obama's decision for Afghanistan. Andrew Exum recommends it and that's good enough for me.

I gotta get into this fight.

Eric

President Obama reaffirms pledge to end DADT law

WSJ: Obama to End 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Military Policy

Mr. President, just DO IT already, so can we end a stupid policy and eliminate the current most obvious obstacle to restoring ROTC at Columbia.

On its own merits, ending DADT is the right thing to do. The secondary effects of DADT - discouragement to serve, stigmatization, and notion that sexual orientation is a determinative factor for soldiering ability - should end. Military service should be inclusive of all Americans who are able and willing to do the job and their citizen's duty, and being gay has no effect on being a good (or poor) soldier. Many gay soldiers have served with honor while bearing the burden of DADT and many soldiers - gay and straight - support ending DADT.

More, via the Gay Patriot blog: Joint Forces Quarterly essay The Efficacy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, Knights Out - an advocacy group of LGBT West Pointers I joined as an ally, and this exchange between Elaine Donnelly and Knights Out founder LT Dan Choi.

Eric

President Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize

On Friday, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This NY Times columnist says a common reaction was "shock followed by laughter", the news becoming a comic convergence of truth and caricature. I was bemused when a co-worker told me the news - the president hasn't accomplished anything to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. On its face, the award seems like a repudiation of President Bush's muscular liberalism, an award to the new American president for his rhetoric about global consensus and cooperation, and an endorsement for an America that continues to express liberal ideals but without the attendant dynamic exercises of power and leadership demands of others to actually advance them.

An interesting aspect is the reflection upon the Norwegian Nobel Committee's intent from the nominees who were passed over. I couldn't find a listing of the nominees on-line, but this article points to some of their backgrounds: "Speculation had focused on Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman's rights activist."

In terms of a political statement, choosing Tsvangirai, a Chinese dissident, or an Afghan woman's rights activist for the Nobel Peace Prize might have conveyed a call to action that the liberal West ought to better actively support the heroic liberal reformers fighting for change in illiberal non-Western parts of the world. Unfortunately, the current vogue of "peace" in the West (or at least Norway) is to be conciliatory and accomodating of illiberal regimes rather than bear the costs of challenging them, even if that means abandoning any realistic pressure to reform and, more poignantly, the local liberal reformers who rely upon Western support.

My hope is his Nobel Peace Prize will help President Obama rally the West in the War on Terror and advance the liberal strategy he inherited from President Bush, but I suspect the Nobel Committee does not mean to help us advance our version of peace, and instead, means to devalue American exceptionalism.

Eric

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

The compelling feature of the hierarchy, both for social political and personal implications, is that development must follow the order of actualization from the bottom up in order to be healthy and stable. More here.

Eric

Seneca Wallace is starting!

News: Seattle starting QB Matt Hasselback has a broken rib, so Seneca Wallace will start this week, Chicago at Seattle 4:05 PM on FOX. I hope I get to watch it.

UPDATE: I didn't get to watch the game and the Seahawks lost. Wallace only rushed once with no gain. I hope next week - if Wallace is still starting - the Seahawks' offense package better blends his scrambling skills with his passing skills.

Eric

About Afghanistan

With the War on Terror debate concentrating on OEF and Afghanistan, here is a comment I just made in response to Columbia Professor Brigitte Nacos' recent post about Afghanistan:

Professor Nacos,

This link is to a comment I made on your blog last July for a similar post: http://www.reflectivepundit.com/reflectivepundit/2008/07/bushs-final-pus.html

Regarding Afghanistan:

The problem is ... Afghanistan and Pakistan taken together, that border which blocks us but not the enemy, and an enemy who is not and never was bound to Afghanistan and is at least multi-regionally mobile.

With US and allied forces constrained by that border, President Bush initially pressured, funded, and relied upon Pakistan, under President Musharraf, to police its own country across that uncrossable border. The dubious result led us to the cross-border drone-missile and SF strategy currently employed. However, due to al Qaeda's increasing attacks against Pakistan, post-Musharraf Pakistan has seemed more willing to directly confront al Qaeda. Will the result be better? We can hope.

NATO's performance in Afghanistan has disappointed. While the US has been accused of allocating resources to Iraq that could have been used in Afghanistan (setting aside whether the cost/benefit of Iraq outweighed the cost/benefit of Afghanistan), NATO cannot be so blamed. While NATO's performance in Afghanistan has been wanting, I understand the historical notion of Afghanistan as mission impossible is more deeply rooted in our allies' collective European memory than ours.

Through lessons learned by the Brits and the Soviets, Afghanistan has long been viewed as the mission impossible for the West. President Clinton understood the difficulty of Afghanistan; therefore, Clinton limited our nation's response to al Qaeda in Afghanistan, despite its highly visible basing there, even while attacks on US and other Western targets escalated throughout the 1990s.

Upon 9/11, our nation, led by President Bush, was compelled to invade Afghanistan and dislodge al Qaeda and, when they affirmed their allegiance to al Qaeda, the Taliban government. Indeed, our invasion of Afghanistan accomplished its (immediate) main objective.

However, President Bush - while committed by events to an Afghanistan occupation - like his predecessor, understood both the strategic limits and myriad difficulties of an Afghanistan occupation. Campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, President Obama, by his reluctance thus far to deviate from his predecessor's strategy (including the drone strikes and SF missions in Pakistan) and commitment of resources for OEF, appears to share his predecessor's view of the difficulty of Afghanistan.

Said more plainly, from the beginning, we could not win the War on Terror within the borders of Afghanistan, despite its obvious relevance to al Qaeda's campaign against the West. This is why Operation Iraqi Freedom was the right choice and the counter-insurgency "Surge" in Iraq so critical: from the beginning, an Iraq intervention, unlike an Afghanistan intervention, could provide the potential cornerstone for long-term victory in the War on Terror. Moreover, the basis for our Iraq intervention was already in place, developed under President Clinton.

Where does this leave us today in Afghanistan? Two men trying to do the same hard job under the same constraints - there's a reason President Obama's decisions as Commander in Chief have tracked so closely with President Bush's. Today, however, President Obama can make a choice in Afghanistan that President Bush could not make in Afghanistan due to the gift Bush gave to his successor, developed in Iraq at the end of the Bush administration: COIN.

Can an OEF version of the "Surge" work in Afghanistan? Even assuming it can work, can our NATO allies execute COIN or will American soldiers, again, be forced to act as a hybrid soft/hard power force? With so many military leaders opposed to the use of our military as anything other than a war-fighting force, will our military agree to act again as a COIN force for Obama in Afghanistan as they reluctantly did for Bush in Iraq?

Tough decisions: while deserving of his share of criticism, a young President Bush admirably made tough decisions as Commander in Chief in the War on Terror. As Secretary of State Clinton questioned during the campaign, we'll find out whether a young President Obama will make his tough "3 am" decisions, too.

In my comment is a link to my comment responding to a similar post by Prof Nacos last July.

Add: My response to critics who say the Bush administration should have used the resources utilized in Iraq since 2003 for Afghanistan instead is that the problem has been method (or quality), less quantity. On 60 Minutes tonight, OEF commander GEN Stanley McChrystal blamed the "bad habits" or method of our mission there since we ousted the Taliban government. So, question: if our problem in Afghanistan chiefly has been method, then assuming we invested all the manpower and resources into Afghanistan since 2003 that was used on Iraq, would doing so have solved or exacerbated our problems in Afghanistan? If the problem and solution rests in method, then our current (relatively) best hope for Afghanistan - COIN - didn't exist for Afghanistan until the COIN method and proponents were validated in Iraq. As such, simply adding more manpower and resources in Afghanistan pre-COIN would not have helped and may have harmed. The fair counter is to speculate whether COIN could have been developed in Afghanistan instead of Iraq, but I would respond that the conditions for success were better in Iraq and the strategic value of Iraq was and is higher, i.e., Iraq was the better theater to first implement COIN. Not to be minimized, the enemy also valued Iraq higher and it would not have made sense to concede Iraq to the enemy for the sake of Afghanistan. Until last year, OEF amounted to a holding action, and as the enemy has retreated from Iraq and refocused on Afghanistan/Pakistan, our focus there necessarily must increase, too. It's a competition.

UPDATE - my response to Prof Nacos' response:

Professor Nacos,

Thank you. I did major in political science at Columbia; I like to believe my professors taught me something worthy of the pedigree. ;)

I respectfully disagree with your analysis of the War on Terror.

First, two related observations:

a. What's called neo-conservatism is just the progressive (interventionalist) liberalism of Wilson, FDR, and Truman, renamed. The bashing of neo-conservatism by self-described Western liberals, therefore, has led to the frustrating, self-defeating spectacle of influential people speaking liberal platitudes but quixotically opposing our definitively liberal strategy in the War on Terror. The effect of these liberals' tragic hypocrisy has been the degradation of the Western liberalizing influence on the illiberal regions of the world.

b. President Bush demanded more from the Western liberal world to confront the aggressive challengers to our liberal world order. Many did respond to America's call to action, but a disappointing number refused and chose instead to vilify the so-called 'leader of the free world'. Will the more charismatic President Obama, who speaks the same liberal language as Bush, succeed in rallying the Western world for the same liberal cause in the same places where Bush was rejected? My hope is Obama succeeds. But the citation accompanying Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is an indication that at least Western European liberals believe America under Obama will ask less of them than Bush, not more, and that's a bad sign.

Second, a poli sci question:

Would a greater influx of American funds, resources, and manpower (added to the billions spent and many thousands of peace-builders deployed by us and other Western GOs, IGOs and GOs) in Afghanistan over the last 8 years have actually made a difference in terms of nation-building that country?

Maybe. I mean, how do we prove a counter-factual, right? Putting aside the distinct possibility that Afghanistan is mission impossible as a nation-building project, I can still say that, with the intrinsic challenges of Afghanistan + that border, the answer is likely not as simple as more US money/resources + more US soldiers = nation-building success. The missing critical third leg of the equation is method. By method, I do not mean piece-meal efforts like the admirable PRTs, military Civil Affairs and Engineering units, Army Human Terrain project, USAID, UN et al orgs, deployed in Afghanistan since the war. I mean a comprehensive, integrated theater-wide post-war strategy.

In fact, in a recent 60 Minutes interview, GEN McChrystal blamed our mistakes in Afghanistan to date on a failure of "method" in order to explain the radical ROE et al changes he's implemented since taking over as OEF commander.

Consider: your premise is that the current poor state of OEF is due to US resources diverted from post-war Afghanistan to post-war Iraq. Well then, consider post-war Iraq. Despite the tremendous (really, mind-boggling) amount that was invested in post-war Iraq and despite that Iraq offered much superior conditions for nation-building than Afghanistan (which is as much a statement on how bad off Afghanistan is), our Iraq intervention still nearly came to disaster. Only when the COIN method with attendant troop "Surge" was employed in Iraq, against tremendous US domestic opposition, did our Iraq intervention turn around. In fact, OIF was turned around despite that the "Surge", even at its height, did not come close to employing the number of US troops in-country as recommended by GEN Shinseki et al. Under the right conditions, the right method can make a really big difference. Given the surprising speed with which OIF turned around with the "Surge", it's plausible that the initial overly optimistic projections for post-war Iraq would have proven more realistic had we employed the COIN method in Iraq from the immediate post-war transition.

To answer my own question, would OEF be a success today if we didn't divert resources to OIF? It's tempting to think so, but I doubt it, because we entered the War on Terror lacking the right post-war nation-building method for either Afghanistan or Iraq. (That systemic deficiency wasn't Bush's fault; it was the institutional fault of a US military traumatized by the Vietnam War defeat into believing that if it did not develop nation-building capability then it would not be called upon again by a US president to nation-build. Naturally, an intelligent observant enemy exploited the obvious gap in our military capabilities by attacking us vigorously in the SASO/post-war phase.) Therefore, because we lacked the right method for post-war Afghanistan, I am not convinced more US money/resources + more US soldiers would have ='d more nation-building success in Afghanistan.

Today, due to the tenacity of visionaries like GEN Petraeus and Bush's "3 am" presidential decision to employ the COIN "Surge" in OIF, we at least have a working method to plausibly attempt nation-building in Afghanistan. That said, even though Obama has in hand the COIN choice that neither Bush nor Clinton had, it is apparent that the challenge of post-war Afghanistan is as intimidating for Obama as it was for Clinton and Bush (and Reagan and Bush Sr for that matter). Comparing the presidential decisions faced by the two presidents, Bush's choice to double-down in Iraq was easier than Obama's choice today: Iraq has much higher immediate, long-term, and regional strategic value (the reason why the terrorists also diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq until defeated there) and Iraq is a much better candidate for nation-building than Afghanistan, whereas we can lose a lot in Afghanistan without gaining much benefit even from a nation-building success.

It must be awfully tempting to the current Commander in Chief to give in to the military leaders who opposed COIN under Bush and continue to oppose COIN today, abandon nation-building in Afghanistan, and limit OEF to a kinetic warfare battle-zone.

Third, about those "made up" justifications for OIF:

The Bush admin case for war against Saddam's Iraq was hardly original. Their case against Saddam's Iraq was essentially the Clinton admin case against Saddam's Iraq. The WMD - and more broadly, the Iraqi violations of UN resolutions - rationale was the same rationale Clinton used to bomb Iraq when it had, as President Clinton declared, "failed its last chance" ... except Clinton the lawyer understood well enough not to seek UN approval for military force, unlike Bush, who's his father's son. Possible ties and verified contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda was Clinton-era intelligence. It's a partisan myth, or possibly just lazy media shorthand, that the Bush admin cited Iraq as an actor of the 9/11 attacks. OIF was never characterized as retaliation for 9/11, hence, the characterizations of a preventive or preemptive war. In addition to the Clinton admin case, however, the Bush admin did suggest that with al Qaeda's successful example as guide, Saddam's Iraq - due to our poisonous relationship, the global WMD 'black market', and Saddam's track record - was a good candidate to be an actor in future terror attacks, possibly using WMD, via its own capability or in alliance with al Qaeda.

My personal case for supporting OIF is pessimistic in that I believe we had to change course in Iraq, with or without the 9/11 attacks, and in fact, the 9/11 attacks were a result of our 1990s mission there. 1991-2003 Iraq for us was a failed mission that had morphed quickly after the Gulf War from finite disarmament, meant to leave known-quantity Saddam Hussein in charge but de-fanged, into an indefinite, highly provocative, widely harmful, and collapsing containment that was discrediting us and the UN. When I served as a MI soldier before college, part of our job was to track world events that affected the US military. As we watched the mission in Iraq fall apart, it was consensus our return to Iraq would be 'when', not 'if'. Saddam's Iraq was not a direct actor in the 9/11 attacks, but the 9/11 attacks provided the impetus to make a change in Iraq we needed to make eventually. Without the 9/11 attacks, who knows how many US presidents would have punted on the Saddam's Iraq problem - at least until our containment mission collapsed completely.

For an optimistic case supporting OIF, I defer to Thomas Barnett:
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/esquire2004.htm

Eric

Irving Kristol

Irving Kristol, the father of neoconservativism, died on Friday September 18th. Read some selected quotes in the Wall Street Journal, for which Kristol was often a columnist.

Eric

9/11/2009

The eighth anniversary of the al Qaeda terrorist strikes on our homeland, including my hometown, reminds me that I have not done my part.

Thanks to Tigerhawk, a 2005 anniversary round-up of links about 9/11.

It was drizzling and dreary today. From my window at work this morning, I heard some bagpipes and saw a little bit of the police procession.

Eric

Random thoughts

Teenage Dakota Fanning is starting to look like Mama Mia's Amanda Seyfried. It's going to be interesting to discover what kind of person and actress Fanning turns into as an adult. She has the potential to be a heart-breaker, or not.

Free Seneca Wallace! I hope Seattle Seahawks' QB Seneca Wallace gets a chance to lead a team. In the limited times I've watched him play, he's been exciting and electric - a fast and quick runner with a lightning release and laser throws on the run. The fact that he's short for his position (but not as short as Doug Flutie) just means he has to play out of the pocket more, which makes him more fun to watch. At 29 years old, Wallace is in his prime and the clock is ticking.

David Wright did look pretty funny wearing his special concussion-proof batting helmet. The Great Gazoo and big-boy helmet came to mind. Hopefully, he ditched it for performance reasons and not because he was sensitive to the ribbing.

Sasha Grey is interesting. I'm rooting for her.

Obama's State Department substantively backs former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya while his Justice Department mounts a public campaign against CIA operatives. Meanwhile, there are growing calls to disengage from OEF in Afghanistan without a determined push-back in support of the mission from the White House. Not good.

On a related tangent, I don't get the controversy over President Obama speaking to the nation's schoolchildren. He is, after all, the president of the United States. Obama isn't the first and won't be the last president. It's not their most important job, but as the nation's leading civic leader, isn't engaging American kids part of what a president can and even should do? Since when has it been controversial when the president of the United States addresses American schoolchildren? Our internal politics is weird and destructive these days. I wonder whether it's time for a viable 3rd party to re-emerge.

Lawfare. Note to self: study this.

Eric

Newest Washington Post story about Human Terrain in Afghanistan

With thanks to the always-excellent Small Wars Journal, read Rough Terrain by Vanessa M. Gezari about the Army's Humain Terrain program.

Lede: "Under an experimental program in Afghanistan, teams of anthropologists and social scientists are working alongside soldiers to help win the war by winning over the Afghan people. It may seem like a brilliant idea. But in this battle, nothing is as it seems."

Key quote: "[Human Terrain social scientist Karl Slaikeu] eventually decided to join but still harbored misgivings. As he went through the four-month training at Fort Leavenworth, he reevaluated the project, he said. He was still doing that in Maywand, watching for anything that might jeopardize ethical standards by endangering local people.

"It just hasn't come," he said, "and I've been looking for it.""

This stuff excites me. I've asked before, and I'll ask again: how do I get into this line of work? Given my latest career choice, how do I get into this line of work as a lawyer? Should I join a CA unit as a JAG? Should I dual-degree - would that be my best 'in'?

Eric

Conflicted about Eric Holder

On one hand, I want to support AG Eric Holder as a fellow Stuyvesant and Columbia alumnus (though we diverge at our respective law schools), and I believe African-American success has historically paved the way for other-minority success (though, in this case, hispanic AG Alberto Gonzales recently held the same job). On the other hand, his very public prosecution initiative against CIA operatives and Bush admin officials over the War on Terror is troubling; more so given that these issues were already handled with discretion by the CIA and DOJ in 2004.

Read Obama-fan Tom Barnett on this issue. Bonus article, also in Esquire, about John Yoo.

Eric

Posts with "Traci"

I'm curious how many times I've mentioned her in the blog. So, I decided to count. Criterium is "Traci" in the post, which leaves out a few posts which I had her in mind while writing but didn't include her name. On the other hand, a few of these posts mention her name without featuring her. The answer is 21.

Thoughts of the day
Thoughts of the day
Thoughts of the day
Thoughts of the day
Lesson of my stars
Topol in Fiddler on the Roof and Lisey's Story
Thoughts of the day
Shortcomings and "Don't do this to me"
The Traci log
The dulling of age
Stand down
Note to self: avoid touching romance stories
Korean rom-com: My Sassy Girl (2001)
Bye Traci
Observation of the day: in-person beauty not always photogenic
Stream of consciousness musings
Blog - Almost 40-Year-Old Virgin - got me to thinking . . .
Every night I ask the stars up above, why must I be a teenager in love?
Oppa
John Gray's Mars and Venus on a Date
Thoughts of the moment
Memorable quotes from Shane Falco

Eric

Interesting rules for radicals

From a Tigerhawk post, a short NY Times article about Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Interesting.

Also, unrelated, watched Quentin Tarantino's new movie Inglorious Basterds today. Typically entertaining and confident Tarantino flick.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

Diane Schuler. Suburban mom drives the wrong way on a highway she knows and causes 8 deaths, including her daughter and three nieces, and critical injuries to her son. The police say she was drunk and high. Her husband doesn't believe it, says she was a responsible mom. Extremes.

George Sodini. Normal-seeming suburban bachelor who privately is lonely, hopeless and beaten, and bitter. Gives up as he nears his 50th birthday. Makes his decision and works up to it for a year. He committed murder-suicide for his "exit plan" 3 days ago. Scary. Hits home.

Congratulations to Cathy Grosam of the 2nd season of I Survived a Japanese Gameshow. Cathy was a dominant contestant and deserved to win. She ran the table as a contributing member of the winning team on every challenge, highlighted by changing teams twice, and won the $250,000 prize. It was satisfying to watch her finish as strongly as she competed the entire show. Contestant Dan Barbour has a blog.

Her last day in the office is today. Even 14 years younger than I am, she's above and beyond me. Another world. Even if there was a possibility, which there is not, I'd be out of my depth. I'm sure she finds effortless things I find difficult or unable. It would be easy to fall for her. Just speaking with her for a few minutes yesterday had me charged. Prize.

Eric

Talented kids

Check out Sam Tsui and Kurt Schneider's Michael Jackson medley and cover of the Glee version of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing". Intelligence, creativity, technical savvy and talent go a long way.

Eric

Memorable commercials

The dancing Mr. Six Six Flags amusement park commercial.

Freecreditreport.com's hip 3-man band suffering from bad credit - see their commercials here. The ad series is from the same company, The Martin Agency, that does the cool GEICO and UPS commercials.

Eric

Comments on Obama inaugural address

A post by Professor Nacos on her blog last month, Lebanon Election Outcome and Obama’s Public Diplomacy, reminded me of my responses to Professor Nacos' January post about President Obama's inauguration, The Promise of America's and Obama's Patchwork Heritage.

My comments sandwich a response by Professor Nacos:

The issue at stake is perception, not reality. Obama expressed the same message as Bush. If anything, Obama's expressions of Christianity, American primacy, and leadership with American ideals in his inaugural address were *more* aggressive than Bush, in effect out-Bushing Bush. There was quite a bit of 'either with us or against us' sentiment in it, just not as plainly spoken as his predecessor.

The Bush administration made a dedicated effort to make clear that the War on Terror is not a war on Islam. While the enemy has used an unambiguous radical religious construct to sell their war since before 9/11, and (continue to) commit atrocities and sabotage our peace-building efforts since 9/11, President Bush responded by promoting Islam as a peaceful religion that can co-exist with Western modernity. However, President Bush was an uncharismatic public spokesman in the face of media and self-serving politicians who undermined our war and peace-building missions.

In reality, the ideology underpinning our War on Terror has not been religious, but progressive liberalism, where Bush was the inheritor of Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman and Kennedy (although one can argue that, while secular, the roots of progressive liberalism are Christian). Unless President Obama has been extremely duplicitious, he will continue Bush's progressive liberalism, which means the reality of how we conduct the war won't change. Nor will it calm our enemies and other leaders tangibly threatened by American primacy and the newest 'Washington agenda'. This is, after all, a competition with real stakes.

Potentially, perception will change due to the transfer of power from the uncharismatic Bush to the charismatic Obama. But will the media help Obama in the same places they undermined Bush? That remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether Obama, with or without media help, can make a difference in the regions where we are competing for the war and peace.

Maybe, if we Americans are truly deterministic agents, then in the bottom-line, it matters less what they think of the war; it only matters what we think of it. In that case, President Obama's value will not be changing the war itself or how it's perceived by our competitors, but changing how we collectively think of it.

Posted by: Eric January 24, 2009 at 09:44 AM

Ah, Eric. You and I must have listened to different speeches on inauguration day.
The "war on terrorism" a la ex-president Bush is over. One cannot fight a war against non-state actors, indeed, such a declaration alone elevates terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda to a level they do not deserve.
As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly stated, military might will not defeat terrorism--what is needed is a mix of hard and soft power. Secretary of State Clinton called that recently smart power.

Posted by: Brigitte January 24, 2009 at 10:17 AM

Again, a perception problem. Those who believe the War on Terror is over with the change of administration have failed to grasp its continual evolution since 9/11. What Gates, Clinton and many others (including Bush) have said is perfectly compatible with Bush's, and now Obama's, evolving War on Terror.

We only have to read the on-going discussions about 4th or 5th generation warfare, based on events, to understand the notion of "war" as applied to the War on Terror is very different than the traditional state-vs-state (or 3rd generation) definition we grew up with. The traditional understanding of war doesn't fit the War on Terror, and therefore, has been a stumbling block for people who've persistently misunderstood this war.

The War on Terror is and has been full-spectrum, while peace-building is and has been a cornerstone of the war ... at the same time, war is and has been a cornerstone of the peace-building. I agree the war/peace should involve many more agencies than the military, but the military's dominant role has been less due to policy preference than reality. The State Department, for example, which is based upon government-2-government negotiation and nation-state dominance, has been ill-suited for the current war. (That said, the War on Terror has proven fluid in that regard, eg, State presence in Iraq, under Ambassador Crocker, has been restored to prominence concurrently with the increasing stability and reach of the Iraqi government. Using what we learned in Iraq, we can hope for similar progress by State with the Karzai government in Afghanistan.) As we've discussed before, until traditional soft power agencies are able to operate in failed state or even stateless non-permissive environments and adjust their capabilities to it, then by default, our military will be the main applied soft power *and* hard power agency. We shouldn't prefer a full-spectrum role for the military, and the military certainly does not, but that's been dictated by reality, not a dogmatic choice by the former President. Our alternative? We witnessed our alternative in Somalia and Rwanda.

The evolving War on Terror is anything but over, but perhaps, it has become unrecognizable to proponents of traditional war. If the war requires renaming for more people to understand its full-spectrum nature and the realities of the agencies involved, then maybe we should rename the War on Terror. I just don't know there is a better descriptive term for it. Until we invent a better term, I still prefer "war" just for the level of commitment implied by the term.

As far as Obama's inaugural address, the beauty of it is that it offered something for most everyone. And yes, in places, it out-Bushed Bush. Re-read Obama's speech then go back and re-read Bush's speeches. Then consider how much of the content is effectively the same. Consider these examples:

"Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred."
-- Did critics once accuse Bush of a simplistic bipolar framing and lack of nuance in the War on Terror?

"But in the words of Scripture ... This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny."
-- !!! - as a non-religious American, I understand presidents routinely cite Christianity, notwithstanding ahistorical accusations of Bush, but Obama struck an eyebrow-raising fundamentalist, even evangelical, tone that I don't recall in the presidents of my lifetime.

"In reaffirming the greatness of our nation ... the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things ... This is the journey we continue today. ... Those ideals still light the world"
-- Invocation of the vigorous, even expansionist, progressive liberalism that underpinned our westward expansion, post-Civil War Reconstruction, entry in the world wars (v Fascism), Cold War compare/contrast (v Communism), the pre-Bush accusation of the US as a meddling ideologue hyperpower, and the current War on Terror. Obama fairly well dispelled any doubt that he, even more than Bush, is a liberal idealist.

"... to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born, know that America is a friend of each nation, and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity. And we are ready to lead once more."

"We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken -- you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

I can go on, Professor, but when I verge on quoting half or more of a speech, I may as well just refer you to the speech itself. Am I saying Obama is merely the logical continuation of Bush? In important ways, it appears that way so far; in other important ways, no, and I hope for the best in those areas, too. I agree with Obama that we do need to assess, innovate and re-invent ourselves so we can evolve for the 21st century, and not just rely on 20th century conventions. Under Bush, it appeared that the only significant areas of evolution were the military, our war/peace strategy, and possibly intelligence-gathering. It's up to Obama to build upon what Bush did right in those areas and be wary of the reactionaries who've opposed those changes, while also setting in motion changes in the important areas that Bush neglected to address.

I stand by what I said. The themes of Christianity, American primacy, and world leadership with American ideals in Obama's inaugural address out-Bushed Bush. I actually found it difficult to pull out a concise 'with us or against us' quote, because it was the basic premise of the foreign policy section of Obama's address. (It's a misperception that Bush preferred unilateralism, and we have hardly 'gone it alone' in any case; he was just unwilling to abandon the mission for want of sufficient multilateral consensus; even universal consensus, as we've learned to our frustration in Afghanistan, does not equate to sufficient multilateral commitment and investment.)

Obama's inaugural address was unreservedly liberal-hawkish. What stood out the most in the speech was that Obama was hardly circumspect about an aggressive transformative interventionist international role for America, what was called neo-conservative or liberal imperialism when pursued by the last administration. It appears President Obama, even more than his predecessor, desires that we change the world in our ideal image of ourselves. That's okay I guess, as long as folks, both the changers here and the changees abroad who were unwilling to change for ex-President Bush, are now willing to make the same change for a better American spokesman, the "patchwork" President Obama.

Posted by: Eric January 24, 2009 at 02:25 PM

Eric

Awesome wedding entrance

Admirable stuff. The bride and groom, Jill and Kevin, with their wedding party, made the day their own with plenty of youthful spirit, style and soul. Fun. Their timing is exquisite. Message: these guys are free of insecurity and sure of themselves. The sheer confidence of their wedding makes me confident in them. The fact that this was a Minnesotan wedding explains a lot. The Minnesotans I served with in the Army were quirky and sarcastic, proudly independent, grounded, solid folk.

The hand-held camera operator deserves much credit. Given that the wedding party only had the concept and a 1.5 hour rehearsal as preparation, with the rest improvised, tells me the camera operator captured the wedding procession so well less with planning and skill than with instant decisions based on artistic intuition. Great placement of the camera and touch by the camera operator, and smart decisions following and framing the action and when to leave the on-going action to cut back to the entrance.

Eric

Mr. Potter vindicated

Finance is not my area. Not even close.

However, the financial crisis has forced a hard second look by many people at the Christmas staple, 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life.

As it turns out, Mr. Potter was right. In the standard reading of the film, generous George Bailey is the good guy and fiscally conservative Mr. Potter is the bad guy. Bailey accepts the risk to lend money to his neighbors regardless of their ability to repay their loans, which indeed fuels growth in Bedford Falls and a higher standard of living for the townspeople. But when Uncle Billy loses the Bailey Savings & Loans reserve, a run is made on the S&L and it is discovered by the townspeople that too much of the S has been invested into the L and the S&L is insolvent.

In principle, how different were George Bailey's business practices from a Ponzi scheme? After all, like Bernie Madoff, Bailey moved the money entrusted to him by his clients rather than secure it.

Some commentators making the comparison uphold the local and personal nature of the Bailey S&L and blame today's crisis on the unethical practices of large faceless corporate lending organizations. Except for scale, I fail to see the difference. Yes, the corporations took on greater risk by packaging risky loans as assets, rather than simply holding onto the undisguised risk like George Bailey, and the real-life crisis was caused by a downturn in the real estate market rather than the carelessness of Uncle Billy, but it seems to me the root cause shared in the fictional and real-life financial meltdowns is risky lending practices that exceeded the reserve amount needed to back the risk. After all, for all his sense of personal responsibility to his neighbors and his face-to-face accountability with them, George Bailey's only salvation was a bailout, too.

In real life, the bailout has been from the government and financed by astronomical debt. In the movie, George Bailey is bailed out by a fantastic karmic intervention in which his lifetime of selfless generosity is repaid by wealthy friends. Does that mean the Bailey S&L resumed its risky lending or did Bailey reevaluate his business model and bring it more in line with Mr. Potter's bank? If the movie's conclusion is to be accepted at face value, George Bailey's faith in his neighbors is an effective substitute for Mr. Potter's unsympathetic but sound business model.

I know: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, ours is the land of opportunity, Christian charity, and growth necessitates an acceptance of risk. But faith, whether in karma or the perpetually higher value of real estate, is less reliable in real life than in the movies. Without rejecting the better nature of George Bailey entirely, I think we need to revise our view of "warped, frustrated, old" Mr. Potter and open ourselves to what he has to teach us about good financial sense.

Eric

Gates v Crowley: race, class, and justifiable anger

On one side is a leading Harvard professor who justifies his anger on the basis of being challenged in his own home and historical racial injustice. On the other side is an impeccable police officer who justifies his anger on the basis of a Harvard professor's arrogant sense of privilege and an elite personage wielding his powerful connections to act above the law. The best take I've seen so far on the controversial incident with Harvard professor Henry Gates and Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley is at libertarian blog QandO. EXCERPT (referring to both men):

My tantrum was quite effective and confirmed to me that “justifiable anger” is a powerful, and intoxicating, thing. It is the “castle doctrine” of emotional responses which places blame for any incident squarely on the shoulders of the instigator, leaving you with unquestioned moral authority. However, like any intoxicant, it also tempts overuse and abuse.

In my job, I deal exclusively with victims and witnesses of crimes. Yet it's not uncommon for the people I speak with to complain about police conduct, even when they weren't arrested and no charges were pressed against them. Police have a tremendously difficult job, harder than the DA's office in that some sorting by the police takes place before a case reaches its 1st ADA. The police's job is to restore order, make judgements, and form the narrative of the incident they pass on to us. Officers normally arrive upon untamed scenes that potentially can be anything. Some police procedures, therefore, seem harsh and unfair even when they're necessary and reasonable.

The compelling characters of Crowley and Gates give the story much meat for the media, but it's hard to find indisputable fault for either man in this incident. On the other hand, I do think the initial reactions by President Obama, Massachusetts Governor Patrick, and Cambridge Mayor Simmons siding with Prof Gates and condemning SGT Crowley were irresponsible, unbecoming of their executive offices, and unfairly damaging to SGT Crowley and the Cambridge police department, and may cause wider negative repercussions to race relations in our country. Governing executives need not reflexively side with police officers during a police-related controversy, but the three chief executives should have publicly responded up front with cautious measure, rather than hasty judgement, and the benefit of the doubt for a law enforcement officer who works within their area of responsibility. As President Obama now tries to clean up his mistake by playing peacemaker, how is SGT Crowley supposed to trust his president (or his mayor and governor for that matter) to be impartial, when Obama has already made his prejudice clear?

Eric

Hard to take

NY Times: Captive G.I. on Video by Taliban

Lede: The American soldier who disappeared June 30 in eastern Afghanistan, and was later confirmed to have been captured, appears on a video posted Saturday to a Web site by the Taliban, two United States defense officials said.

The Code of Conduct:

I

I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

II

I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.

III

If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and to aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

IV

If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.

V

When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

VI

I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

Stay strong, soldier.

UPDATE: The captured soldier is PFC Bowe Bergdahl. More details here. The available details of his capure are hazy. Was he on a patrol? That would be odd, because accountability normally would be tight on a patrol and a soldier shouldn't just go missing - but of course, easier said than done in the fog of war and shit happens. If he left the base by his own decision, did he leave the base by himself or with Afghanis? Why did he leave the base? What did he take with him? Op order, radio codes, maps, weapons?

Eric

Thoughts of the day

I watched The Hurt Locker. I thought it was a good character-centered drama based on EOD in OIF. I had no complaints about the portrayal of soldiers and that's uncommon praise. One can't get more front-line than EOD in Iraq; if soldiers go to the enemy in general and combat troops go to the "sound of the guns", then EOD in Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter) go to the head of the pack as the troops who put hands on IEDs. A few places in the movie felt authentic enough that I hoped the scenes of EOD at work are different enough from actual SOP so the enemy can't use the movie to train. The movie highlighted how frightening, pressure-filled, complicated, and morally and emotionally wrenching service is on the front-lines in Iraq. There were two scenes that didn't make sense: the absence of air support in the sniper scene and the 3-man EOD team running into a neighborhood and splitting up.

TV favorite: Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Remember Me. Shout-outs to more favorite TV: NG's Seconds From Disaster (a show about the fascinating topic of event cascade) and Air Emergency, and AP's Monsters Inside Me.

AAARI is showing the 2009 edition of its Sunset Cinema series. This year, the first movie was 2003 film Better Luck Tomorrow. I've looked forward to watching it for a while as a famous slickly made film about the Gen-X Asian-American experience - the West coast version of our experience, anyway. The movie certainly featured an impressive cast of Gen-X Asian-American actors and a middle-class Asian-American setting, but it didn't strike me as a profound expression of our point of view. Rather, I thought the Gen-X Asian-American part served interchangeably as a setting for a cynical, amoral story in the category of 1998 film, Very Bad Things. In other words, the identity group of the characters wasn't integral; another identity easily could have been subsituted for the characters and setting without a substantive loss to the story. Still, it's good to see my generation of Asian-Americans represented on screen and prominent in pop culture.

On activism. Yesterday's AAARI showing, Ikiru by Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, told the story of a bureaucrat with terminal cancer who redeems his busily unproductive life by fighting against the status quo to engineer an act of real creation before he dies. The movie touched my activist side and what I hope to gain from law school. The heart of activism is a worthy cause and the will to fight against an entrenched status quo and the people, including those on one's own side, who perpetuate the status quo. But in the movie, the town's women who were given the run-around by the city government supplied the cause and came with the will; the cause and the will weren't enough by themselves to make a difference. The park was built because Watanable adopted the cause, gained the will, and supplied the necessary position and know-how to break through the status quo and impose his will. In short, I can have a cause and the will, but I must gain the necessary skill-set and position in order to impose my will and make a difference.

An educational TV show about effective hard-core activists is AP's Whale Wars, which follows the Sea Sheperds in the Antarctic Ocean as they confront the Japanese whaling fleet. I don't appreciate the show because I have any strong opinion about whaling or environmentalists. Instead, the show offers insight into organizing principles, sustainable operations, the different types of people needed at different levels of the organization, the skills needed, the leadership needed, the learning nature, the organization, tools, core competencies, and the publicity apparatus needed, etc., to elevate an activist cause to a difference-making level against a dedicated opposition while not crossing important lines.

Aside from activism, Iriku's depiction of Watanabe with his ex-subordinate Toyo Odagiri captured the wish for vibrant, unaffected, young, healthy female companionship. Who brings light to the darkness. It restirred the years-old recurring thoughts: Emily ... Judy ... Kulski ... Hernandez ... Traci ... Barrera. Sure, I wasted almost all the time of that precious period of my life, but it's not as though I didn't try at all within my window of opportunity. The thing is, all I got back was negative feedback when I did try, and the harder I tried, the worse the feedback. Given (superficially) who she married, though, would it have been different if I hadn't given her a copy of the log - which is to say, how far off target was I, really?

The 1st episode of Fox's new show Glee was really, really good. Since I can't watch the show this fall, I'll need to record the episodes or, hopefully, they'll be on-line. Lea Michele (playing Rachel Berry) is a terrific musical theater talent. Her voice and expression rival Lea Salonga, and her acting ability surpasses Lea Salonga. Cory Monteith (playing Finn Hudson) actually seems to be the least talented singer of the glee club, even though he's portrayed as a prodigious natural talent. Also interesting is the glee club improving dramatically in the short time the students ran the club while their coach Will Shuester (played by Matthew Morrison) nearly resigned his teaching post; the club was mediocre while he was coaching it. I like the theme that state of being is fluid and dynamic; loss of leadership and mismanagement caused McKinley High School's glee club to fall from national champ to being disbanded and, now, the high school's new glee club is being built from less than nothing into a force.

Mariah Carey at her best, singing Hero in 1993. Beautiful.

RIP Michael Jackson. In my opinion, I'll Be There and Ben are Michael Jackson at his singing best, though his brilliant dancing and showmanship came later in his solo career.

RIP Walter Cronkite. He retired in 1981, before I paid attention to the TV news. I grew up watching his successor on the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather. I'm sure Cronkite in most respects was as great an anchorman as he's portrayed. But, I doubt he will ever be held accountable for his terrible misreading of the Tet Offensive and subsequent critical contribution to American and South Vietnamese defeat in the Vietnam War, which has served as the model for our enemies since then.

I've been obsessing a bit over the question: Is Cole, a side character in Bravo's NYC Prep, a Stuyvesant student? I'm surprised that I haven't been able to find the answer on-line. He's always described as "public school" without mention of which high school he attends.

Eric

Aren't we supposed to be killing Al Qaeda?

Ditto on this reaction at Small Wars Journal to the current political ploys in DC targeting the CIA and former VP Dick Cheney. The gist is that at the center of the controversy is a 9/11-generated program, which may or may not have moved beyond the conceptual stage, that was focused on sending hit teams into Afghanistan and Pakistan to hunt al Qaeda.

My reaction is, wait, this program is the dirty secret supposedly hidden by the CIA and VP Cheney? To me, this program should have been operational, and if it required an extra veil of secrecy (and deniability for our nation's leaders), then so be it. The far more worrisome revelation is that this program - hidden or not - apparently was not made operational after 9/11 and we have not had hit teams scouring the region for bad guys. Coincidentally, in a recent 60 Minutes piece, SpecOps commander "Dalton Fury", whose team was tasked with tracking down Bin Laden immediately after 9/11, described how two of his mission plans that may have worked to block bin Laden's escape into Pakistan were rejected from higher up for unknown reasons. Instead, more cumbersome and time-consuming battleplans were employed.

Are we serious about exterminating al Qaeda or are we not?

19JUNE09 UPDATE: A little more information about the CIA plan is discussed here. Above, I parenthetically side-mentioned "deniability for our nation's leaders" as a reason for the program's secrecy. The article mentions that "A second former official with extensive knowledge of the CIA effort said it was seen as crucial that the units reside fully within the CIA so the U.S. government would be able to deny involvement if a team were exposed." Again, the rationale for not reporting the plan to Congress, if that is what happened, fits the popular understanding of the black ops that the CIA is supposed to be doing in the War on Terror. Just what the hell are the Congressmen who are calling for an investigation up to?

19JUNE09 UPDATE2: More confusion. Apparently, President Bush's finding for the CIA to kill or capture terrorists was openly discussed by the NY Times in 2002. EXCERPT:

The administration must notify Congressional leaders of any covert action finding signed by the president. In the case of the presidential finding authorizing the use of lethal force against members of Al Qaeda, Congressional leaders have been notified as required, the officials said. [Later] ... the covert operations are known only to a small circle of executive branch and Congressional officials.

So, if the presidential finding is not the point of dispute, I'm guessing the calls for investigation are based on what Congress was told or not told about programs meant to carry out the presidential finding. Assuming designated Congressional officials are required to be briefed on all clandestine ops (really, all?), they did not receive regular detailed updates about this program, and the program was not operational while perhaps programs with similar objectives (eg, UAV missile strikes) were operational and briefed to Congress, did this particular program reach the level of maturity where the CIA was required to brief the designated Congressional officials on the planning and research for a non-operation? This issue is different from the programs that were operational, eg, waterboarding of high-level terrorists, and briefed to the designated Congressional leaders. There likely is gray area and room for interpretation involved. I just wish these matters would be resolved without displaying the dispute and our secrets to the world.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

Happy Independence Day! Our nation is 233 years old today.

The New York City fireworks display will be on the Hudson River this year and should be viewable from my home. The show will begin at 9:20 pm.

Hard to believe how fast the time goes . . . 10 years ago today, I watched my most meaningful Independence Day fireworks display surrounded by fellow new cadets during Beast Barracks at West Point.

Gotta check this movie out: The Hurt Locker. I wonder what Luke thinks of it?

NYC Prep is Bravo's newest reality-based soap opera. It's the diegesis of 1999 movie Cruel Intentions come to life with over-indulged, narcissistic, hedonistic, jaded NYC youth. The show caught my attention because one of its leads, Taylor, is a Stuyvesant High School student. The high school-aged stars are obnoxious as portrayed, but I don't find that to be abnormal. Teenagers - even ones who grow up to be admirable and respectable adults - are often obnoxious and normally self-absorbed. They are that way because teenagers are in a metamorphising phase, physiologically and socially. As a 30-something, I would encourage teens not to be any more inhibited in their teen years than reasonably necessary. Be daring - explore, try, and learn. As adults, it's our role to enforce standards and rules when teens challenge them, but we should do so with the understanding that their behavior is part of a critical learning curve for them. The world portrayed in the show, although set in my hometown, is alien to me. When I was at Stuy, we didn't refer to ourselves as "public school" and I at least wasn't aware of New York City prep schools. There was us - Stuy kids - and then there was everyone else. We didn't view any high school in the city as above us; we were elitist and thought of Stuyvesant as a school of valedictorians (e.g., see the movie Frontrunners). I'm willing to make the allowance that Stuy kids who interact more with prep school kids may think in terms of public versus prep school, but I still find the "public school" versus "prep school" references odd coming from Taylor.

My big news. I'm starting law school in the fall. I was accepted to Rutgers Newark, Seton Hall, and New York Law School and waitlisted at CUNY Law. I'll (most likely) begin my studies part-time while continuing to work full-time, but the priority is school and the clock is ticking on how much longer I'll stay in my current job. By the time I start my classes, I will have given two years to this job, a reasonable amount. It's been interesting work, I've been proud to do it, and I think I've done my job well. But it was never meant to be a career. Why law school? I need to specialize and focus on a trade wherein I can develop subject matter expertise, and the law is a suitable profession. I still believe in the importance of creation, with the doing, innovation, and activism, and I understand the law profession is often viewed as antithetical to that - the elevation of rhetoric over real production. But I also believe that creation requires policy and legal coding to make it secure and sustainable over the long term, and falling short of that mark turns creation into wasted effort. Therefore, I hope to become a practical combination of lawyer and activist. To develop my marketability as an SME, I may also try to add another degree along the way. At present, JAG and criminal prosecution interest me the most as career fields, but I'll keep an open mind entering law school as to my eventual specialty. First things first: the 1st year of law school is absolutely critical and I'm not a good student, so I'll need to focus fully on what's in front of me, be smart, and work hard. I'm getting another chance to discipline my mind and make something worthwhile of myself. I'm excited and very nervous.

I recently rewatched Simpsons season 2 episode The Way We Was, the story of how Marge and Homer met. Add it to the formative cultural influences from my youth that shaped my romantic idealism. Homer's statement to Marge, after he watched Marge and Artie Ziff dancing as Prom Queen and King, reminds me of my reaction to Traci's rejection:

[Homer sobbing.]
Marge: Homer?
Homer: What?
Marge: Why are you doing this? Why can’t you accept that I’m here with someone else?
Homer: Because I’m sure we were meant to be together. Usually when I have a thought there’s a lotta other thoughts in there—something says yes, something says no—but this time there’s only yes! How can the only thing I’ve ever been sure about in my life be wrong?
Marge: I don’t know . . . but it is!

In fiction, Homer's faith in his future with Marge was vindicated. In real life, my belief in our future together wasn't.

The Steel Helmet is a 1951-made Korean war movie. Having served in the ROK and inherited the mission from the GIs who fought the Korean War, I have a soft spot for movies about the Korean War (except MASH, which wasn't really about the Korean War). The movie makes the important point that while the injustices suffered by American minorities - as represented by a WW2-veteran black medic and a nissei 442nd RCT veteran - are real, it's more important to approach American history as a progressive evolution and confront our nation's competitors in the wider world by standing together and sacrificing in common cause as members of the same tribe. The movie also reminds of the sacrifices demanded of WW2 combat veterans, still traumatized by the last war, who were brought back to fight in a possibly more brutal campaign a few short years later.

Eric

Center for a New American Security

Know it. Forward and serious thinking, contemporary experience, fresh and agile, influential.

Eric

Passion of activism

I describe the passion of activism as "rocket fuel", i.e., explosive. I don't believe everyone has that kind of passion within them. I know I do. When focused, passion can drive one to overcome and achieve the extraordinary. But it's playing with fire and the fire consumes. I recognize when I free my passion to advance a worthy cause, I risk consuming myself.

I am wary, even fearful, of it, but if I repress it, I will be less than what I can be. I believe that achieving something greater with my life will require I be passionate. How do I give myself over to it without hurting myself? Maybe there isn't a way to generate creation without destruction - I hope that's not true.

Related: Reading on-line about law schools, specifically about the one that's accepted me and the one likeliest to accept me, has been an anxiety-inducing experience.

Eric

A pretty good day

I caught the late E train and it moved slow, but I was able to clock in on time. I was hit with no jails, first time ever for that. I learned how to use the new fax program and wrote a user's guide for it. I was informed by my unit director of a raise and upgrade in job status. I received a thank-you card from one of my c/w's. Comfortable interaction with my co-workers. My cases responded well. I received my first response from a law school - an acceptance letter. A good meal when I returned home.

All in all, a pretty good day today.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

My occasional Thoughts of the day posts remind me of Twitter, except they answer "what am I thinking?" right now rather than "what am I doing?".

Focus. Wherever you are, be there. Whoever you're with, be with them. Whatever you're doing, do it. Good advice for someone who tends toward introspection. Introspection is healthy, to a degree. Past that degree, there's little more to be gained from introspection and it becomes merely recycling within a comfort zone. At that point, it's better to have extroverted inputs and development. (Caught this quote from John Robb, discussing military theory: To wit: any organism that operates without reference to external stimuli (the real world), falls into a destructive cycle of false internal dialogues. These corrupt internal dialogues eventually cause dissolution and defeat.)

I'm anxious waiting for the law schools to respond me. I made a very late decision to apply to law school. Up until the moment I actually applied, and while filling out my first few applications, I wasn't seriously committed to the decision. Now that I've applied, I want it and I'm nervous. When I joined the Army, I didn't invest much thought into it, either; I just walked into the Times Square recruiting station and what happened from there happened. NEG: I applied late; my cumulative GPA is a huge negative; my LSAT isn't a deal-breaker, but not high enough to compensate for my GPA. POZ: my letters of recommendation are good; I believe my professional and extracurricular activities hold up. UNKNOWN: I think my essays are okay, but I also recall that my application essay for Columbia had to be torn apart and reformulated.

Once upon a time, I thought Traci appearing in my life in a storybook manner was fate in the "meant to be" sense. Well, it didn't work out that way. Recently, a girl from my childhood - a classmate acquaintance, not a love interest - has appeared. She lives in my neighborhood and we occasionally take the same train to work. She called me out in the subway stop, which reminds of Traci stopping me in Yongsan Lanes. I wouldn't have recognized her. I could (should) ask her out for coffee, or drinks, or dinner, or even lunch, and I know it's premature for me to predict anything leading anywhere, but still, I hesitate to make even the innocuous friendly gesture due to historical precedent.

I am disturbed by the calls to prosecute Bush administration legal officials for their official advice about harsh interrogations reacting to the 9/11 attacks. Our legal system, as I understand it, is not inelastic and is adaptable as a lawful approach to resolving real-world difficulties. As such, I believe the exigent challenge of anti-American terrorism, which still exists, and our government's real-world responsibilities justified the response by Bush administration legal officials. In order to fulfill their responsibilities in response to 9/11, the government's lawyers acted in good faith in their attempt to formulate a very tough balance of a lawfully constrained and practically sufficient response to an extraordinarily difficult situation. The current calls to prosecute Bush administration officials for doing their jobs are post hoc and based upon a demonizing narrative that switches the government's highest priority from facing real-world challenges to enforcing narrow ideological limits. I believe it is fair and proper for a current administration to reevaluate and change course as circumstances change, and philosophical differences can differently color decisions from different actors in the same roles. However, it is frightening when a current presidential administration invites the notion of criminalizing their previous administration counterparts, who acted responsibly and in good faith, due to ideological differences. Personally, as I contemplate becoming a lawyer, I hope to be an activist lawyer who participates in and enables exigent responses to real-world challenges by making the actions stable and sustainable through legal formulation. But, if I am to be prosecuted by vicious ideologues for doing my duty under extraordinary circumstances, then that would discourage my career ambitions.

In my lessons of my stars post, I stated an important lesson learned is that I need to be able to evaluate things analytically while also retaining my strength, intuition. That's easier said than done because the two are fundamentally different ways of thinking. When I try to parse through intuitive impulses, they tend to disappear on me because they exist as a whole - more fuzzy feeling than a manipulatable collection of component parts. Is the trick to hold onto an intuitive impulse as it is, copy it, and then separately apply analysis to the copy?

My dealing with the CU Mil Comm (MilVets, Hamilton Society, ROTC movement, the notional military alumni group), of which I am a founder (arguably the founder) is complicated. I am traumatized by the personal cost I paid from 2001-2003. Bottom-line, I cannot afford to repeat the consuming personal investment from that time that derailed my academic career. I've become very thin-skinned and impatient about CU Mil Comm activities. Since 2003, I've had a very low tolerance for BS and developed a circuit-breaker that triggers when my tolerance is exceeded, so that I shut down on the CU Mil Comm. The condition I gave to Oscar in order to be his MilVets VP in 2005-2006 holds true: do not waste my time. On the other hand, the CU Mil Comm remains the right thing to do, I support it, and want to participate in it. I just hope other people will do the leadership actions for the CU Mil Comm that I've done and make decisions that accord with my preferred direction (i.e., expansive and progressive, activist, and fraternal).

My dealing with the alumni group, which I have sought to start, is up in the air because the meeting at the University Club tripped my circuit breaker. As I said to Erich, the group is now off my plan. My Plan-A course of action balanced progressive action and collective dispersed responsibility. As I said from the outset, I'm interested in investing in the alumni group only insofar as collective CU mil grads will invest in it. As such, Richie and Justin made a fair point at the meeting about alumni-veterans of other demographics not being present at the meeting and the need to second-call the invite. I'm willing to help enable and nurture the alumni group, but I do not want to pull the movement as I've done with the CU Mil Comm in the past, especially when doing so involves fighting against the drag of fellow military Columbians. The University Club meeting challenged me to take on a much greater leadership commitment than I want right now. I refrained from making certain responses despite the egotistic incentive to respond forcefully, because those responses would have committed me to a 2001-2003 type of involvement. Now with my law school apps out of the way, I should revisit the alumni group. My hope is that other people will have picked it up. If they haven't, I need to decide whether I am willing to take on a more dynamic and forceful leadership role that will demand more of me than I want to give at this point.

When I was an undergrad at Columbia, one of my favorite activities was walking down to the northern border of Central Park and then walking through the park, often late at night, usually exiting the park at Tavern on the Green. Many of my best ideas as an activist came to me as my mind sorted itself on those solo walks.

The "just in time" way we do supply at every step and area of our economy, where we rely nearly exclusively on a fantastically complex and stretched out transportation system to distribute goods at the time and to the places they're needed, worries me. I read about the vulnerability a while ago on John Robb's Global Guerillas. If no shocks to the system occur, the "just in time" way does save the expense of maintaining reserves; however, it seems to be inflexible and lacks resilience, so that if the system is sufficiently shocked at any key point, the effect will not be contained and will be felt at every other point.

Eric

Good celebrity picture website

http://www.fanpix.net/

Eric

Anti-war movement gearing up on Afghanistan

Via the Christian Science Monitor: Antiwar activists split over Obama's Afghanistan policy.

Related, Professor Nacos opposes the Obama administration's outreach to "moderate" Taliban.

On an off-topic note, because I want to jot the note somewhere, I think we can connect SecDef Gates' plans for the defense department budget to Columbia ROTC advocacy, to wit, if weapons systems and set-piece warfare are being de-emphasized while human-centric irregular warfare is being elevated, then the individual intellect, education, creativity and flexibility of junior leaders are paramount. In that light, we ought to be able to connect present-future military needs and foci with Columbia ROTC.

Eric

Lesson of my stars

Me, graduating as a CC platoon sergeant with my USMAPS Dean's List and Commandant's List stars (pinned over the MI crest).

Last thing first: the moral of the story is "trust but verify".

Long story short: those two stars represent arguably (with my double A-grade performance in Beast Barracks) the zenith of my Army career. In Starship Troopers OCS pips fashion, I gave my stars to a private whom I believed was on her way to USMAPS. I wanted her to wear them and then return them to me when she was finished with them and, presumably, enroute to West Point. Since USMAPS is in Fort Monmouth, NJ and I was going home to New York City, and I thought she would be entering the following year's USMAPS class (or the next one after that at the latest), I believed I was going to see her and my stars again soon. Instead, I haven't seen my stars again, and as far as I know, she never attended USMAPS nor West Point. I don't know whether she ever applied.

The long story: when I was stationed at the K and close to my ETS, a new soldier - Barrera (she of the Annette Funicello eyes) - arrived in the unit. Supply. She was young, having joined the Army out of high school. Serious. Confident. Squared away. Studious. Goal-oriented. Reserved. She seemed the sort of soldier who meant to take advantage of the rich educational and developmental opportunities of the Army. Not all soldiers do, especially at a lax duty station like the K, which was not an environment that encouraged focus and sharpened ambition. Quite the opposite. I dubbed the K the 'devil's little playpen' due to the shenanigans that regularly took place there. While it was a good unit to ETS from for a specialist already looking past the Army to his next step as a civilian, I felt sorry for the privates for whom the K was their first duty station. I believed, and still do, that the hardships and high standards of my 1st unit were cornerstones for my subsequent success as a soldier. Unlike Camp Casey, the K worked to distract and corrupt privates and, if they weren't careful, set them up for failure down the line. The K was especially risky for an attractive young female soldier like Barrera who was away from home and family for the first time in her life.

In short, I believed Barrera had potential, but also there was a danger she would be set back by her surroundings. Moreover, I strongly believed in the Army ethos that the professional development of junior soldiers was a leadership responsibility. I had watched other soldiers succumb to the K. Earlier in my tour, I had even experienced one of my own soldiers falling into the trap; like Barrera, my troop was young, female, fresh out of AIT, and eager to achieve. But she became pregnant by a married sergeant in the unit and was sent home early. Barrera seemed more cautious than my soldier, but I had my doubts about how long her reserve would shield her in that place.

Therefore, in one of my last meaningful acts as a soldier, I took it upon myself to help Barrera set her sights on something better than the K: I recruited her to my alma mater of sorts, USMAPS. Just before I left Korea, I gave her my Dean's List and Commandant's List stars as a symbol of my belief she had the right stuff and would succeed as a cadet candidate.

In hindsight, I can't recall the evidence that Barrera was committed to applying to USMAPS. And, no matter that she seemed to have the right stuff, it's not as though I checked Barrera's background to discover for truth whether she did, in fact, have sufficient credentials for West Point; just because I was accepted to USMAPS unexpectedly doesn't mean I should have underestimated West Point's admission standards. The key point is I left the K believing she would make it to USMAPS, if not USMA, and I would hear from her again. I planned to provide her local support, if she wanted it, while she was at USMAPS. Whether she succeeded or failed there, was admitted directly to West Point, or even if she decided not to go through with it, I expected her to return my stars to me.

Barrera didn't arrive at USMAPS the next year nor the year after. I mailed her a letter, care of Supply, mentioning my stars. I didn't hear back from her. I even called West Point, which handles both USMA and USMAPS admissions, to check. Nothing.

Over the years, since it has become apparent that Barrera did not go to USMAPS and I will not be getting my stars back, I've reflected upon the episode. What's the moral of the story?

A. Is the lesson that I lost my stars over a quixotic delusion? Did I merely impose a role on Barrera in a paternalistic fantasy that had little-to-no basis in reality? Did I convince myself I was the hero in a tale of personal failure set right through a promising protege who, with my guidance, would succeed where I failed? Perhaps I was acting out a self-spun myth of my own influence and impact on things. Looking back, why did I believe Barrera was headed to USMAPS? Did she tell me she was going to do it? Did she fill out an application? Did she speak to the CO (who was himself a USMAPS and USMA grad) about it? I think she may have spoken to him, but I don't remember for sure. In the fantasy scenario, I'm guilty of projecting my fantasy onto Barrera, whereupon she would have been confused about why I was giving her the two pin-on stars (which were no part of the enlisted uniform) and perhaps unknowing of the expectations I attached to them. She wouldn't have valued the stars as I did and wouldn't have known to return them to me. The self-recriminations of the fantasy scenario dovetail neatly with the self-recriminations from my Traci experience of the same period. I learned painfully that Traci and I weren't on the same page; from there, it's easy to believe I missed the mark as badly with another young woman, Barrera.

Or B., is the lesson that I hurt myself by being foolish and careless with valuable personal property? After all, why trust her with my stars at all? I barely knew Barrera. Why give anyone possession of something important to me and with no obvious value to anyone else? Someone who soon would be out of touch, literally on the other side of the world. They were my stars. I earned them. They should have stayed with me, period; right?

For a long time, I thought the answer was A., B., or A. & B.. Today, I decided the answer is C., or the correct lesson from my lost stars is "trust but verify".

I believe any tangible evidence that Barrera would apply to USMAPS was, in fact, weak. But at that time, there couldn't have been stronger evidence: I wasn't at the K long enough after her arrival for there to be more and it was far too soon for Barrera to do much in the way of applying for the next USMAPS class. We did talk about USMAPS and I believe Barrera expressed affirmative interest, at least as much as there could have been from a young soldier newly arrived at her 1st duty station in Korea and just introduced to the radical notion of becoming a USMAPS cadet candidate over a year later. I think our company commander was warm to the idea as well, but I disremember what if anything he did about it while I was still there. Did he counsel Barrera on it? I don't recall.

Realistically, even if every indicator was positive at the time, it would have been premature to conclude Barrera would stay committed to West Point. Too much could happen, or fail to happen, between the then-present and now-past. So, why did I give her my stars? Because I wasn't going to be there to shepherd her and I feared the K's degradatory influence on otherwise promising young soldiers. Giving her my stars, I reasoned at the time, would provide her a tangible reminder of USMAPS-as-goal in my absence. It wasn't much, perhaps, but I thought it was the best I could do to continue encouraging Barrera to go to West Point - short of going to PLDC, making my 5, and re-enlisting to stay in Korea (even if I had made Sergeant, though, I most likely would have been transferred away from the K). I took the chance hoping - trusting - that if Barrera ended up not going, she would give my stars back to me.

So, I'll disagree with my inner cynic and self-doubter that, A., I lost my stars over a quixotic delusion. I'll say, rather, I acted with good intentions and a real, if preliminary, basis for believing Barrera was interested in applying to West Point. I may be guilty, however, of projecting my level of appreciation for the West Point opportunity onto Barrera. Its value seemed self-evident to me but I'd been a cadet candidate and cadet; she wasn't yet, and I was unjustified in assuming she valued the opportunity the same way I did.

B. is a better answer, because I do want my stars back and I should have been more reluctant about giving them away. But it's incorrect because it fails to account for the principles that led me to lend Barrera my stars. Leading soldiers means giving of oneself to them for the good of the collective whole, and I would have been immensely proud and honored had Barrera eventually worn them as a cadet candidate. I want my stars back, but I'm not selfishly consumed with keeping them to myself like Gollum chasing the One Ring. After all, whereas the stars represent a high point of my success in the Army, the Army in turn represents higher values. By handing my stars to Barrera, I honored the Army values.

C., "trust but verify", is the right answer because it suggests a balance of thoughtful common sense, personal care, and principle. In other words, could I have stayed true to principle, trusted her commitment to applying to West Point, and encouraged Barrera without risking the loss of my stars? And, if I was set on doing the Starship Troopers OCS pips thing, was there a better safer way to give Barrera my stars?

Yes and yes. I'm afraid I am guilty of conflating the goals of encouraging Barrera to apply to USMAPS and encouraging her to succeed as a CC. If I had recognized them as distinct and sequential stages, I may also have recognized that giving her my stars where and when I did was too early and out of context, which rendered the gesture ineffective and, therefore, a poor risk. I could have periodically written her letters or e-mails, instead, which probably would have been more effective encouraging Barrera to stay focused on West Point than a one-time transfer of easily misplaced pin-on stars that meant more to their ex-CC/cadet owner than they possibly could have meant to someone who had only just heard of USMAPS. If she responded to my letters, I might have known at what point she decided that West Point wasn't for her. Second, if I wanted Barrera to wear my stars as a CC, I could have given them to her after I had verified she was definitely coming to Fort Monmouth. I could have even handed them to her in person after she arrived at USMAPS, when my stars would have motivated her in the proper context as a CC. She would have appreciated them under the right circumstances, and I could have trusted they were in the right place and serving the right function, and reasonably accessible.

It's good and right to act according to principle and to have faith in people and encourage them to be better. Selflessness is a noble trait, no less than a core Army value. But I have to accept that it's also (equally as? hmm) important to take care of myself and protect the things I value, especially when other people may not value those things the same way. The key is balance. I trust my intuition, but I need to be more careful with the impulses that usually are the first actionable forms associated with my intuition. Those impulses have not all been unproductive, but they have proven to be less reliable on the whole than my intuition. I have to learn to follow my intuition by screening the accompanying impulses and apply thoughtful consideration in order to determine the most sensible course of action, such as writing letters of encouragement rather than handing over my precious stars too soon.

Eric

good things list *

Lemonade made from honey. Market Diner. Mei Mei he yie fan. Tony Dinapoli's bread and oversized pasta dishes. Yongsan bus station Yoo Hoo (vending machine). Plain Doritos. Xing Hua Yuan niu ro mian, chai bao. Basic and Advanced D&D. Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends series. Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. All of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Alan Moore's Watchmen. Stephen King books in general. Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis. Mom's chicken breast with scallions and ginger. Mom's dumplings. Mom's beef stew. Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (book, though the movie was entertaining). Rocky. My world myths and fables book (that my mom gave away!). My class ring. My college degree. My neck gaiter. CWS - it's intuitive and user-friendly. My Beast Barracks squad, especially my roommate. 4th quarter platoon peer evaluations at USMAPS. My USMAPS Commandant's and Dean's lists stars. South Park. Simpsons, especially the 1st 3 seasons. Coen Brothers movies. Ender's Game. Nature's End. Warday. Original Kentucky Fried Chicken. Whoppers and onion rings. Sunday brunch in the K-16 D-Fac. Bread rolls from the 121 (Yongsan General Hospital) D-Fac. 1st year of X-Files. Alt.romance newsgroup, circa 1996. NGC's Seconds from Disaster and Air Emergency. Wonder Years. Jerry Pournelle's War World. Harry Harrison's Deathworld. Richard Austin's The Guardians. Stuy bowling. The Replacements. Orson Welles. Baking soda shampoo. Smartlink card. 2ID conex-rescued map bag with handle. USMAPs flight bag with name tape and patches. Bachman's pretzel rods. K-16. Dave Norris' English classes on Yongsan.

* added as it comes, not in any particular order - value or otherwise, not limited to type or standard, includes no-longer things and good then as well as still-existing things and good now, not the same as my favorite things post. Think Fran Goldsmith's diary in Stephen King book The Stand.

Recommendation: Shoprite brand

In the spirit of the pleasant unexpected, I recommend trying Shoprite brand food products. They're reasonably priced (for now). From jams and peanut better, to breadsticks, to potato chips, to hazelnut spread, my experience is that Shoprite brand foods are high quality to gourmet quality.

Who knew? I had always thought of Shoprite as a generic supermarket chain, but in quality, their brand of food stuffs is at least competitive with the Whole Foods brand.

Eric

What qualifies as a 10 beauty?

At the new Jollibee in Woodside today, I stood next to a beautiful filipina (pinay?) while waiting for our order. For rough context, she looked around 20, give or take 2 years, maybe 5'7, soft dark eyes, smooth mocha skin, lustrous shoulder-length hair, gently oval-shaped face. She was with a young girl and an older white woman, who looked to be in her late 30s or early 40s. I don't know what the relationship was - hired nanny, girl's mom (the girl looked to be mixed), cousin or aunt, family friend.

Moreso because it was unexpected in the mundane setting, the filipina struck me with her beauty and got me to thinking, what qualifies a girl to be a 10?

A 10 beauty is beyond the common standard of pretty, cute, or sexy. It is beyond human power to produce artificially, such as with lighting or make-up or even with art. A 10 beauty stands out more for subtleties than striking features. No description of words, such as what I use above, can adequately express it. Her beauty is beyond the limits of imagination to create or recreate in the mind; she must be seen. In short, her beauty is non-transferable; it can only be defined and appreciated by itself. Her look evokes a higher power. Finally, there is a temptation to worship her beauty, such as seeking a romantic relationship regardless of compatibility, to drink her beauty . . . for as long as it lasts.

Eric

AT&T Wireless "sweet pea" commercial

This commercial, featuring Sweet Pea by Amos Lee, makes me want to be a father:



The daughter is played by Savannah Argenti and a good review of the commercial.

Off-topic, but while on the subject of commercials, I want to jot down the note: Kim Shively is the attractive vaguely hispanic looking spokeswoman in the Toyota "moving you forward" commercials. There is surprisingly little on-line about her or the commercial series.

Eric

Topol in Fiddler on the Roof and Lisey's Story

Last Sunday, March 15, I was lucky enough to watch 73-year-old Topol as Tevye in his American farewell tour of Fiddler on the Roof, even if it was from the 4th tier of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, NJ. The opportunity came as an unexpected surprise. Topol could have stayed seated in street clothes and flubbed his lines and I still would have considered myself fortunate to be in his audience. That said, I couldn't help but compare his classic portrayal in the 1971 movie to the stage performance. The movie Tevye is more expressive and exuberant, while the Topol I watched live was older, more wooden and skinnier. But Topol can still move with energy and his voice is the same. He is still Tevye. In addition, the travel time from my home was only an hour by PATH and I discovered that Seton Hall Law School is close to the train station. Things that make you go hmm.

Right now, I'm reading the Stephen King novel Lisey's Story. In it, he shows off his usual mix of dramatic stereotypes and perceptive insight. What Scott got from Lisey . . . that's what I want, what I need, what I've looked for, tried for and have not found. How do I find it . . . and her? Where do I need to look? What do I need to do? The story supports the notion that I made the right choice with Traci by laying bare my heart and trying for a full relationship, even though she chose against it.

Eric

Gripe: "expedience sake"

For a while, I've been peeved about something President Obama said in his inaugural address:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers -- (applause) -- our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man -- a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake. (Applause.)

The intelligence and security measures undertaken under President Clinton in the years leading up to 9/11 and then under President Bush in reaction to 9/11 were not due to "expedience sake". While it's proper to critically and continually review those measures, 'necessity's sake' would be the more appropriate characterization. As well, the choices can fairly be called a 'difficult balance', but they have not been "false". The new president's dismissive characterization of his predecessors' execution of their critical duties seems arrogant, naive about the threat, and dangerously disrespectful of the enemy. It's worrisome.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

Daylight Savings time starts today. Remember to move your clocks ahead one hour.

Interesting reading on organization-building: Global Guerillas post Tribes! and GIGAOM post Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation.

I finally read Ed Lin's Waylaid. As it turns out, Waylaid's Peter is not at all like The Motel's Ernest, other than both are Chinese-American tweenage boys (I don't know if Ernest is, like Peter, Taiwanese-American). Where Ernest is pathetic and hopeless, Peter is dangerous but trapped. There is an authentic layer of Chinese-American male perspective, but that's not the core of the story. Peter reminds most of Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield. Peter is a self-centered sociopath who's smart, capable, responsible (but not ethical), nihilistic, violent, aggressive, and in turns, savage and cunning. The world, as experienced by a jaded, bitter Peter, doesn't deserve better than he treats it. Though only 12, Peter is singularly driven by his desire to "fuck" and triumphs with the object of his lust, a classmate.

The soft "But then we wouldn't have met" . . . asking to return with me to K-16 on the bus . . . her nervous hesitant confession that she smokes when she feels stressed and my relief because I was afraid she was going to tell me she had a boyfriend (later, after we went bad, she'd smoke when she was with me) . . . particular moments that made me believe she felt about me the same way I felt about her. Instead, I was wrong and what I feared from her rejection has borne out. How different would my life be had I been right and she had chosen us? Would Traci have saved me, or did her rejection avoid a more traumatic failure?

When my life seems to be going well, I don't dream or at least I don't dream anything that leaves an impression. When I'm feeling anxiety and depression, however, I have vivid dreams. I don't remember the details, but they leave an impression. Lately, I've been dreaming a lot about receiving opportunities and my failure with them due to irrecoverably flawed programming. The reality is, I've received more than my share of opportunities and done nothing with them. At what point do they simply run out? At what point do I admit and accept what my dreams are telling me?

When I was hired, I planned to stay on one year, two years maximum, in my first job out of college. What I'm doing now, while interesting in its own right, not unlike my military experience, doesn't transition into any long-term plan. I've moved past the 1.5 year mark on the job, but as yet, I've made no move to leave, either to another job or grad school. The current economic and jobs climate has made me ambivalent about leaving; I tell myself, at least I have a secure job, and after some interpersonal bumpiness, I've hit my stride. I can coast. The real problem is that I'm no less "listless" - or shiftless - now than when I met with the Brigade TAC at West Point. I'm blowing past life checkpoints at an alarming speed and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.

Right now, I'm a disillusioned pessimistic idealist. People, both individually and as a social mass, have disappointed me. I doubt they're worth a selfless sacrifice. So, another problem is, when I think of the areas that are more interesting, I also think, what difference will it make? And even if trying might make a difference, I'm not convinced I have what it takes to make the difference.

"Lethality" literally means deadliness, but that's not how I mean it when I say it as a state of being. As a metaphor, I think of lethality as effective efficient goal-achievement. In that sense, I don't strive to be a killer, but I do metaphorically wish my actions to be lethal.

Eric

A&E's Intervention

My latest TV addiction is the A&E reality show Intervention.

Intervention tells the real stories of various kinds of addicts who've reached the critical point where their lives are at risk, and their friends and family have contacted the show to stage a formal intervention in order to convince them to undergo rehabilitation. Typically, the addicts have been high achievers and the show's main dramatic device, besides showing the struggles of addiction, is to tell the often complex story of their downward spiral and contrast their previous success with the lows to which their addiction has brought them.

According to the show, there are always underlying reasons for addiction and, looking back, the makings of the coming self-destruction can be identified in their childhood, even when outwardly, the addicts were successful as children. Depending on the episode, people suffering from anxiety, depression, trauma, or another psychological handicap, with or without an obvious addiction, will often find something about the addicts they can identify with. I recently reacted that way to Emily. It's striking how often isolation, need for control, and the expectations and the judgement of others are factors in the addiction.

Eric

Shortcomings and "Don't do this to me"

I stopped by the Barnes and Noble near Lincoln Center yesterday (by the way, the newly rebuilt Alice Tully Hall looks quite imposing, at least from the outside) on my way home from the Society of Illustrators' gallery. I like to browse B&N's graphic novels section for unexpected catches. It's hit or miss and today was a hit.

I found Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine. The graphic novel falls in the same genre of another recent Barnes and Noble find, American Born Chinese by Gene Yang: Gen-X Asian-American male identity crisis and angst. Both cover much of the same ground, except Tomine's protagonist is Japanese-American rather than Yang's Chinese-American and Tomine's work is relatively nuanced (though still direct) and Yang's style is more fantastic. Tomine explores the problem without a solution, while Yang proposes a solution of sorts. I was a little surprised to find out that Japanese-American men are dealing with the same social issues; I had assumed they were better assimilated.

Both works spoke to me in the emerging collective voice of my Asian-American male generation, to which can be added 2006 movie The Motel. We're beginning to bring to light the relentless social pressure placed on us from all sides. Tomine uses Ben to show how isolating and subversively debilitating that social pressure is. We're granted no allowance for our personality shortcomings (reference intended). We're constantly in the wrong and pressured to adapt to others, at the same time that the equal or greater imperfections of our non-Asian American male peers are seemingly indulged. It's a trap, especially when we internalize the pressure to defer in a culture that grants us no privilege. In the surprise but oh-so-familiar plot twist, Ben's cheating girlfriend Miko proves to be worse than he, but it has been Ben, not Miko, who has been bombarded with reproach throughout the story.

Shortcomings hit home in the climactic confrontation between Ben and Miko in her white boyfriend's apartment. At the end of their mean break-up argument, Ben abruptly begs Miko to stay with him and finally whimpers, "Don't do this to me". I said nearly the same thing - "Don't do this" - to Traci after our falling out, during the break of one our classes in Yongsan's high school. I was desperately in love with a girl who rejected me and I was afraid of the long-term consequences of her rejection. I knew it was hopeless, but I confronted Traci anyway during the break time of one of the classes we shared.

Like Ben, I was hurt, yet debased myself and begged her; like Miko, Traci was unmoved. Reading the scene in Shortcomings, the coincidence made me wonder whether Traci perceived me as poorly in our brief time with each other as Miko perceived Ben. Then I wondered why accountability for imperfection and responsibility to reform should fall exclusively on me . . . on us . . . and not more on them.

Eric

Little Shop of Horrors is really good

I didn't watch Little Shop of Horrors when it was in theaters because as a child, I avoided scary movies, and "horrors" in the title was a pretty good indicator the movie would be scary.

I missed out, not that I would have appreciated the movie as a 10-year-old anyway. I wish LSoH would return to theaters with the original ending. If they had stayed with the original ending, instead of the test audience inspired ending used for the popular release, the movie would have been a cult classic. The story is meant to be a tragedy and perhaps cautionary tale, not a comedy.

Just as entertainment, LSoH is an excellent musical film, with terrific songs and performances and the use of camerawork to orchestrate scenes in a way that couldn't be duplicated on stage. The movie also works as incisive social commentary and a sensitive critique of human nature. The main message is basically summed up with "the path to hell is paved with good intentions". Ordinary people, even decent likeable people who deserve better, can bring about disaster by compromising with temptation. In the movie, Audrey II begins helpless and dependent, and grows by progressively manipulating Seymour into increasingly awful acts to feed it. Audrey II makes him uneasy, starting with its strange appearance in front of Chang's shop, but Seymour doesn't question his good fortune. Its demands are first victimless, if unhealthy for Seymour, then escalate to a bad guy (the abusive Orin Scrivello DDS, well played by Steve Martin), then Mr. Mushnick, then innocent Audrey and finally Seymour himself (in the original story) when he belatedly tries to stop a now-powerful Audrey II. In exchange, Audrey II fulfills Seymour's desires until he, literally, is consumed by the monster, his greed, that proceeds to wreck the world. In the moral tale, Seymour was not tricked and could have stopped Audrey II at any point before it was too late, but chose to delude himself because the benefits were too great and the alternative was to accept a lonely, hopeless existence. As Seymour declared fatefully in the opening act, "Down on skid row . . . I would do anything to get out of here".

If faced with choosing between a pathetic life whose only expectation is an anonymous death and a glorious life whose cost may be mass destruction, which would you choose to sacrifice, your life or the world? The noble answer is obvious, but the honest answer is not. The moral of the fable rings true today with the incredible stories of corruption and greed behind the financial meltdown.

Teen actresses Tisha Campbell (Chiffon), Tichina Arnold (Crystal), and Michelle Weeks (Ronette) impressed as the ever-present greek chorus with their intricate song and dance numbers which they performed with terrific energy. As part of the background, they shaped LSoH as much as John Williams' score shaped Star Wars.

Eric

MilVets shout-out to Oscar Escano

That's him in the middle, receiving the NYC Comptroller's Distinguished Service Award in 2006.

Oscar was the MilVets president in my 2nd stint as MilVets VP in 2005-2006. Returning as a MilVets executive wasn't a goal or ambition of mine; I started the group and had been MilVets' 1st VP in 2002-2003, albeit my 1st stint as VP was less than successful.

When Oscar recruited me to be his VP in Spring 2005, in the middle of the 2005 sprint to the University Senate vote on ROTC, I really just wanted to be only a student again. But, Oscar intended to get the group right and believed I could help him get it right. He appealed to my sense of unfinished business and the parental feeling I had for the group. So, I agreed, but with the 2 conditions that he wouldn't waste my time and we wouldn't get caught up in bureaucratic bullshit. By that point in my career as a campus organizer, I had a very thin tolerance for either.

It may sound prosaic, but my praise for Oscar as MilVets president is high: Oscar didn't waste my time.

Our executive summary. Our term was bumpy in places, but we achieved what we set out to do.

I suppose I'm giving him a shout-out now for a similar reason I gave a shout-out to Shane Hachey in 2005. At the time, my stint as Oscar's VP was just starting, which caused me to reflect on my 1st stint as group VP. Now, I'm starting the veterans alumni club, which again has made me reflective about my last experience, as Oscar's VP. Credit where credit is due.

Eric

Barack Obama Prez Rickard

Prez Rickard is a DC comic character who fixed the town clocks so they ran on time as a youth, eventually became President of the United States at age 18 in gloomy times, and became the greatest and most beloved president ever. I know Prez Rickard from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, not the original series.

The adulation and expectations of President Obama remind me of the Prez Rickard story. Turns out I'm not the first comic fan to make the connection.

President Obama's inaugural address offered something to everyone, out-Bushing Bush in areas, while also saying we would have to make difficult choices. The only meaningful takeaway from the speech for me is that his administration will examine everything, end non-working programs and policies, and pursue new ways to prepare our nation to be competitive into the 21st century. I don't know what that means in detail and it is an indefinite pledge, but necessarily so at this early point. Under Bush, evolutionary change for the military was already put in motion. Hopefully, that process will continue while everything else is re-examined.

Eric

Dr Bill Krissoff, father of Nathan

President Bush referred to Dr Krissoff in his farewell address. Navy Lieutenant Commander Krissoff and his story are worth knowing.

Eric