Cindy Sheehan spent part of her Memorial Day posting a farewell of sorts at the Daily Kos. That’s right - the grieving mother who morphed into an anti-war icon is exiting the stage.

“I have spent every available cent I got from the money a ‘grateful’ country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then,” Sheehan writes. “I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings.”

She also writes, “The most devastating conclusion that I reached [on Memorial Day morning], however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which [sic] cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.”

In general, any parent who has lost a child in Iraq or Afghanistan deserves the nation’s respect and sympathy. The scars from that sort of loss to a family are deep and permanent, to put it simply. But, unfortunately for Cindy Sheehan, being a Gold Star mom doesn’t grant her immunity from criticism when she comes off as a self-aggrandizing opportunist or dishonors her son’s service.

Full disclosure here: Sheehan’s efforts have served me personally. She made me realize - for all my frustration and displeasure over the activities of the Bush administration and for all the cutting edge music I’ve downloaded in recent years - I’m still no liberal. You see, to truly be a liberal in America today you have to cast yourself as an all-caring, all-feeling being while at the same time demonstrating utter disdain for those who dare to hold strong convictions that differ from yours.

And that’s why she’s leaving the arena: For all of her stunts, for all of her happenings, for all of her soundbites, the majority of this nation doesn’t agree with her - on anything she says. So she’s doing what every good and modern liberal does when things get tough: She’s taking her floppy sun hat and going home . . . wherever that is. You see, she lost her husband and her money and nearly her remaining kids . . . but you know that because she told you. And she told you because this joke of a movement she concocted a few years ago is all about her. As her name recognition and star power increased in anti-war circles, she grew into the typical American celebrity: cocky, pompous and self-absorbed. She was the show - a big draw, a headliner. What she said mattered because she said it. Just ask her; she’d tell you.

But as with most who attempt to trade on public sentiments, the arc of fame is swift and impartial. Cindy quickly went the way of Andrew Dice Clay. The crowds stopped showing up. The planners stopped asking her to be a headliner. (And she can’t appear if she’s not the headliner, can she?) She became a parody of herself faster than she could cheer, “What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!”

It wasn’t her fault. It couldn’t have been. After all, she was Cindy Sheehan, rally headliner. Well, read on, Daily Kos readers. It was those damn conservatives and their hate squads and those weak Democrats who were supposed to pull the plug on the war. (Yes, as Sheehan swings at the pinata that is her exit from the public eye, she actually takes aim at the party that made her.)

Then in a (hopefully) final act of perceived defiance, she goes from embarrasing to inexcusable. She stains her son’s honor once and for all by claiming he died for nothing - a shameless and desperate attempt to one-up her critics. She would sell her son out in death to try and win an argument and in so doing she fades into the sunset as nothing more than a pathetic joke - a wholly unsympathetic character.

But there’s more. At the end of the requiem of sorts she takes another three pedantic steps back and chucks a Hail Mary of a liberal cliché, writing, “You are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it. It’s up to you now.”

Thanks, Cindy; we’ve got it. If you would have taken the time to stop listening to yourself and push away from the podium at some point in the last three years you would have realized we had it all along. You see, we who differ from your point of view didn’t come into our beliefs arbitrarily. We earned them - a concept foreign to most liberals who have more ego than life experiences. And while we’re at it, we’ll go ahead and preserve Casey’s honor in spite of you, honor that is timeless and exists outside of the political spectacle you’ve attempted to make it. Regardless of how callous you demonstrate yourself to be, those who understand the notion of service over self will never accept the idea that he died for nothing.

(Cross-posted at Military.com)

I first saw “Woodstock” when I was only 11.  We had just moved to Holland and were living in a hostel.  My brothers and I were driving my parents crazy so one day they sent us out on the town with the families of embassy co-workers.  My group - the cool group that included Joe Grace, the drummer for my first band - took the tram to downtown Den Haag and caught the matinee.

To this point my record collection was 95 percent Beatles albums with some Dave Clark Five and Lovin’ Spoonful thrown in for good measure.  It’s safe to say “Woodstock” expanded my horizons quite a bit.  As a fledgling guitarist I realized I had much to learn after watching this performance by Alvin Lee of Ten Years After:

I think I went to see ”Woodstock” half a dozen times that summer.  Like many others, the film introduced me to not just Ten Years After but The Who, Jimi Hendrix, CSN&Y, Jefferson Airplane.  My album collection exploded in the years that followed.

Almost 20 years later I caught Ten Years After at the Boathouse in Norfolk.  Carrie was pregnant with our first child at the time and not feeling well that evening, so we didn’t stay at the show long enough to see them play “I’m Going Home.”  We did see enough to convince me that Alvin still had it after all those years.

Market Watch is reporting the following: “The Justice Department and the U.S. Navy have reached a settlement agreement with approximately 3,400 property owners in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, Va., regarding litigation relating to jet noise at a naval air base. Under the terms of the agreement, the participating plaintiffs agree to dismiss their claims and acknowledge that the settlement does not constitute an admission of liability by the United States.

“‘We are pleased that the federal government and residents near the Naval Air Station Oceana and Naval Auxiliary Landing Field, Fentress have been able to reach an amicable resolution in this matter and avoid further litigation,’ said Matthew J. McKeown, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. ‘This resolution signals an end to six years of litigation and provides positive results for the citizens as well as the government.’

“The class-action lawsuit stems from the relocation of 156 Navy F/A-18 C/D Hornet fighter jets from Cecil Field, Fla., to Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., between December 1998 and July 1999. Plaintiffs own approximately 2,100 properties and alleged in a group of nine lawsuits filed between April 2001 and June 2005 that the introduction of the Hornets resulted in a substantial increase in overflights and jet noise. Under the settlement, the federal government will pay the plaintiffs an amount not to exceed $34.4 million.”

As one who flew out of NAS Oceana for more than 15 years (and who also owned property under the landing pattern) all I can say is “are you kidding me?” The base has been in place since 1943. This is nothing an elaborate drug deal, the result of home builders in collusion with the Virginia Beach city council wantonly ignoring the existence of a “master jet base” in their midst. This is the same sort of activity that landed NAS Oceana back on the BRAC list for the next go ’round — a wreckless disregard for existing jet traffic (and known future requirements) in the face of money-making opportunities.

In the meantime pilot training has been affected by “noise abatement” rules that grow more restrictive with each rewrite until fighter pilots might as well be driving Boeing 777s. And now the tax payer takes it on the chin on the order of $34 million because of underhanded civic dealings and stupid homebuyers?

Ridiculous . . .

(Cross-posted at Defense Tech.)

The breakup of the Fort Dix plot and the Hamas “Mickey Mouse” video both serve as reminders of what free-thinking people worldwide are up against.  The radical Islamic agenda — Jihadism — transends traditional conceptions of an enemy defined by borders.  But even more so than a fascist state with a warring bent, it is a serious threat to modernity and its ideals.

Ironically, for all the military force we’ve mustered against Jihadism, our greatest successes during this war show it to be one most effectively combated with law enforcement efforts, not military might.  Most recently a terror cell within our borders was broken up by the FBI, not the U.S. Army.   That six Muslim men reared in south Jersey could be wooed by Jihadist propaganda to the point they are willing to attempt mass murder and mayhem identifies the threat.  It’s also an indicator of where our efforts should be focused.  (Even the attacks of 9-11 could have been prevented with good police work over anything else.)

Jihadists are best viewed as members of a gang not a military force.  al Qaida isn’t a foreign power, it’s an international gang united by its members’ hatred for America and Israel.  And just like M-13’s appeal resonates with a growing number of dispossessed male Central American immigrants, so too is al Qaida a draw for young male Muslims.  Look at the photos of the 9-11 hijackers and the mug shots of the Fort Dix plotters.  Watch the videos of the protests in the streets of any given Middle Eastern city.  These dudes aren’t coming back into the fold any more than a hardcore gang-banger who’s learned to hate everything “normal” society has to offer.  There’s a big difference, though:  The gang-banger might want to kill you if you disrespect him on his turf or steal his weed, but he doesn’t want to kill you simply because you’re American or Jewish.

Of course, sometimes Jihadists can be isolated and effectively targeted by military force.  Operation Enduring Freedom is a good example of this.  Iraq, however, is not.  In the course of fighting Operation Iraqi Freedom we’ve confused an insurgency with a Jihadist movement and in so doing have taken our eyes off the prize allowing Jihadists to proliferate while creating another threat we didn’t need.

So should we bail on Iraq as the Democrats in Congress want us to?  I think not.  We can’t just leave Iraq at this point.  The carnage would be too great and the resultant power shift would ultimately pose an even greater threat to us.  But let’s not confuse a regional civil war with the war against global Jihadism.  Those are two separate and distinct efforts.  One requires appropriately-positioned military force to keep in check the other doesn’t in most cases.

Imagine the same amount of defense dollars going into law enforcement and intelligence gathering.  Every report published since 9-11 indicates we still haven’t done what we need to best ensure we’re safe against additional Jihadist attacks.  The solution isn’t a military one here.

So in the meantime, just like the attentive store clerk who flagged the video of the wannabe terrorists shooting weapons and screaming, “God is great,” keep your eyes on the angry young Muslims around you.  They might be willing to deliver your pizza, but in the end they want you dead.  It’s not their nationality that matters; it’s their ideology.  And watching them is not racial profiling.  It’s good police work.

Seapower is the official magazine of the Navy League but under the direction of Richard Barnard, Peter Atkinson, and Rick Burgess in recent years it has also emerged as a great source of future tech news and information.

The May issue of Seapower is no exception. Among features on micro air vehicles and new uses for fighter targeting pods is a cover story about the merging of man and robot to fight the wars of the not-so-distant future.

In the story, titled “New Era,” Seapower correspondent Roxana Tiron writes about how “scientists foresee the merger of man and machine capabilities, enabling creation of robots to fight side-by-side with humans.” She goes on to suggest that “advances in biomimetrics will help scientists imitate organic life, fostering machine intelligence approaching human speed by 2040.”

“Robots will be used routinely in the most dangerous missions,” said Stephen DeAntonio, business development director at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center. “They will be fully autonomous with sophisticated behaviors and will be part of full-fledged networks where the is credible information sharing among ground robots, air vehicles and humans.”

The article also mentions the notion that fast-acting robots could take over when odds favor enemy forces.

Can’t you just see the headlines circa 2040? “General charged with waiting too long to commit robots,” or “Soldiers complain that robots stole taste of victory.”

Check out the entire May issue of Seapower here.

(Photo: “Robolobster,” developed by Northwestern’s Marine Science Center for naval reconnaissance and surveillance, mine detection, and search and rescue.)

(Cross-posted at Defense Tech.)

Yesterday I “live blogged” for the first time, posting from the 2007 Milblogging Conference in Arlington, Virginia (more or less Washington, DC).  I posted during the fourth panel, the one that asked what it meant to really support the troops.  The moderator for that one was Chuck Z., who told a very moving story at lunch (thanks for the great chow, Soldier’s Angels!) about his journey back to his family after he was hit by an IED in Iraq.  I’m sure Chuck has related the tale hundreds of times, but I wish every American could hear him tell it, in person, from beginning to end.

Chuck’s lunchtime presentation was just one of the many elements that made the Milblog conference worth attending.  As you saw from my post on Thursday (May 3), I had my concerns about the event beforehand.  My experience last year wasn’t entirely pleasant (and I was only there for half the day on Saturday).  Although I’ve blogged for a few years now here at wardcarroll.com, I don’t really consider myself a milblogger.  (And a quick run through my archives should validate that idea.)

But about halfway through the opening reception on Friday night, I realized that my concerns — whatever they were — were unwarranted.  The energy among the bloggers was wholly positive and without pretense.  Everybody seemed to know everybody else.  And what was even more impressive was everybody seemed familiar with everybody else’s body of milblogging work.

I ran into Neptunus Lex, who I’ve read for some time without realizing that he was an Annapolis classmate of mine.  (Lex blogs semi-anonymously, obviously.) And I caught up with Pinch, fellow former Tomcat RIO who occasionally contributes to Defense Tech.

Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman (former editor of Defense Tech) was there, which was great on many levels.  The greatest for me, personally, was that seeing him in person for the first time in many months (last time was in San Francisco during one of my monthly trips to Military.com’s corporate offices) allowed us to clear the funk that had developed between us during his departure from DT.  I’m a huge fan of Noah and his work, and we’re kindred spirits, so it never felt right that a couple of minor misunderstandings and bad rumors would force us to opposite corners, as it were.  Anyway, that’s old news now, fortunately.  Noah remains the man and one of the coolest guys I know.

Speaking of Noah, he was on the second panel on Saturday and during his remarks he allowed that he was a member of the MSM and, as such, attempted to explain the average reporter’s motivation.  A quick pass through the blogosphere (including comments sections) this morning showed that milbloggers and their comments writers didn’t quite get the nuance of what he was trying to say.

In spite of the fact that Noah sort of set himself up, it’s beyond ironic that he should be painted with the MSM brush by the milblogging community.  Noah is a blogging pioneer and one of the most tech-savvy folks I know.  He’s also the kind of guy who knows things - bands, pop trends, military R&D developments - before anyone else.  And as I said during my opening remarks at the conference, the sort of reporting he does (like during the most recent Army opsec flail) is a discriminator between blogs and MSM.  As he proved last week, he’s capable of working seams like no one else, blogger or whatever.

I was also able to spend some time with John Noonan of Op-for.  John’s got a heart of gold and a great sense of humor.  He wow’d us at an after-hours gathering on Friday night with stories of his life as an Air Force missile officer - a world completely foreign to me.

Other notable folks I ran into over the course of two days were embed blogger supreme Bill Roggio, who’s the kind of guy I could listen to for hours (and there aren’t too many of those on the planet), Matt Burden of Blackfive, who’s as close to a rockstar (for good reason) as the milbloggisphere has created so far, Military.com contributor David Axe, and the one-and-only Rachelle Jones of SpouseBUZZ.  (SpouseBUZZ LIVE! 2 takes place in San Diego next weekend, by the way.  If you’re a military spouse anywhere close to the area you’re going to want to check it out.)  And of course, my man Christian Lowe, managing editor of Military.com’s news section and editor of Defense Tech, was on the case for the duration.

As I allowed in my live blog post, the Milblog Conference was a special event, one that was both fun and mattered.  And if the community grows as much in the next 12 months as it has in the last, a lot more than just the MSM needs to watch out.

I’m up in DC at the second annual military bloggers conference.  The event kicked off with a videotaped greeting from President Bush followed by a video conference call with the MNF-Iraq Communications director, Radm. Mark Fox.  I’m acting as emcee because Jamie McIntyre couldn’t make it.

The panels have dealt with the full range of milblog categories, which is to say blogging from the front, spouse blogging, and veteran blogging.  The panelists have been informative and the questions from the audience have generally been on topic.

As I mentioned in my last post, the attitudes here are generally anti-mainstream media.  Some of the criticism is valid, some is a function of basic ignorance of how the MSM works.

There have also been some amazing stories from the front, stories of courage and “hearts and minds” sort of stuff.

Regardless of your politics, one thing’s for sure:  The milblogging community has come a long way in the last year.

The second annual Milblogging conference starts tomorrow night, so I’m racheting up my disdain for the mainstream media in order that I might fit in better.  Of course, the real milbloggers have a keen ability to ferret out poseurs like me, so my efforts are probably a waste.

The proliferation of military blogs is due to a lot of factors, and among them milbloggers often cite dissatisfaction with the MSM’s coverage of the issues, be those the ones involving politics, the war, whatever.  But beyond mere dissatisfaction some milbloggers have proclaimed outright hatred for organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN.  The general inference is these media organizations have ignored the good news from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the face of more sensational events involving death and destruction.  Some milbloggers have even accused the MSM of willingly accepting the role of propagandist on behalf of the enemy — for instance, when CNN chose to broadcast the insurgents’ video that showed American Soldiers getting hit by sniper fire.

Further, there is an ongoing inference among many milbloggers that the MSM is not just ignoring good news, they are actually rooting for the other side.

Gimme a break.  To believe that is to demonstrate ZERO understanding for how the average news organization gets the job done.  It also gives the MSM far too much credit in terms of having an actual strategic editorial plan.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence over the course of my three careers.  I’ve seen how decisions are made on the government side in terms of revealing the news; and I’ve seen how decision are made on the MSM side in terms of presenting the news.  Neither side is without fault.  Neither side has an ongoing agenda to dupe the other.

The government (including the military) desires to be “open and honest,” but that desire is always mitigated by the potential damage being open and honest might yield.  Will money be in jeopardy when the truth emerges?  What might happen to public perceptions towards the military (a big deal in an ever-tighter recruiting market).  Resultantly, at any given snapshot in time, they’re not always “open and honest.”  And this is why the MSM doesn’t buy everything they hear from government sources.  The MSM has been burned with their trust many times before.  (I know firsthand.)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation — here’s the bottom line thought process behind how stories are picked by a MSM editorial staff:  Editors wonder this:  “Of our possible coverage options at any given time, what choices will have the most impact?”  NOT, “what choices will our audience like?”

In some cases, “impact” assumes affinity.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  In any case, at no time does an MSM editorial staff, beholden to stock holders and advertisers, have the time to craft a protracted plan in lock step with America’s enemies.  Boy, if they were only that organized.

I know a lot of military correspondents, both broadcast and print.  Some don’t know as much about the military as I’d like, but none seem spring-loaded to report against the military.

Another irony in play here is that an audience will start to ignore an outlet it feels is pandering to them.  That’s why Fox News’ market share has decreased in recent years.

So if you don’t like what you’re seeing or reading, change the channel or buy another paper.  The marketplace will set you free.  And isn’t freedom what we’re fighting for?

I’m currently reading Simon Reynolds’ Rip it Up and Start Again, which  is about the post-punk period (’78-’84).  In it Reynolds mentions the band The Art of Noise, a band I haven’t thought about for over twenty years.

When I was in VF-32 in the analog days before DVD players, we used to watch videotapes that our wives would make for us.  These tapes had all sorts of content - TV shows, sporting events, family home movies, etc.  One tape in particular that became a squadron cult classic had this on it, The Art of Noise video for a song called “Close to the Edit.”  The video is at once funny and disturbing and brilliant.  And watching brings back memories, most of them great.  Enjoy.