Art La Flamme

So, what do you do when you’re on R&R from Iraq? After a week at home (almost), I can tell you — the short answer is, whatever you want.

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Attention, superheroes.

I think I am found the culprit.

Try this (the regular RSS feed) or this RSS feed (is all else fails), and see if it works better.

The first one is the better one to use.

So, what happened?
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For all those years that we lived in Europe, flying to and from deployments was a very uneventful thing. The USAF picked us up, and they dropped us off at an airbase in Germany. Maybe there’d be a reception or something at our actual garrison when we got off the bus, but really, the travel itself was very straight forward and uneventful.

So, flying from Iraq to Hawaii was a bit of an adventure for me, for among other things, I was flying commercial airlines for 2/5 of the trip, and flying in uniform (which we never did on commercial airlines in Europe).

The entire way home, I felt like I was being treated like a rock star. Which, I’ll be honest, made me a bit uncomfortable. I am so very not-used to that. I am a staff guy, a solver a problems — not some hardened killer. So, the rock star treatment was a bit humbling — why would anyone treat me like this?

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You can download it here: The Arrival at the House

Priorities -- Wife, then beer

65 hours and 13 time zones later, I have completed the secret mission. I made it to Hawai’i and surprised my family by ringing the doorbell late on a Friday night.

So, if you need me, I’ll be at home. Yes, I’ll blog more about this later — sneaking out of Iraq and to your house is a pretty neat trick, I think.

And I like that.

Northern Iraq, if you’ve not been following the news, is an interesting place to live these days. 3 of the 7 provinces up here — Ninewa, Salah ad Din, and Diyala — have new provincial governments. New Governors, new Provincial Councils, etc. They also have some new capabilities, thanks to the implementation of the Provincial Powers Law that went into effect with these new governments, maybe most important of which is that the Iraqi Police units in these provinces now answer to the province and the provincial leadership, not the Iraqi Security Forces (i.e. Army, national police, etc).

Why only three? Well, the three provinces that comprise the bulk of the Kurdish Regional Government are set to hold their elections sometime this summer, July I suspect. Why later, and now when the rest of the country held the provincial elections? Ask me over a beer sometime — it’s not such a simple question.

And the seventh? Well, that’d be Al Tamim, aka Kirkuk Province. To be honest, I’m not even willing to make a guess as to when they’ll have provincial elections — Iraq needs to get past the UNAMI and Article 23 issues before Kirkuk will hold elections. If Kurdish elections need a back porch and a cold beer to explain, Kirkuk and Article 23 and all that jazz needs dinner — probably fajitas.

The last thing adding spice to all this, is the upcoming “out of the cities” date. The security agreement between Iraq and the US states that combat forces will be out of the cities and towns by the end of June. And that’s coming up here, pretty quick; that’s coming up, whether the conditions call for it or not. Should be interesting.

Quiet, but interesting.

Two days ago, I got up, went for a six mile run, skipped breakfast, and went to work. I had a light lunch, but had a horrible afternoon, not really looking up from the chaos of it all until just after 9 pm — when I realized that I had missed dinner. I made it back to the room, to find a missed call on Skype from the wife. Her WordPress, she said, was acting up.

Tired, and a bit hungry, I tapped it. She and I were on Skype, and I ended up on chat with the guys running the server. Not a WordPress issue, after all, but a change in the settings on the server itself (mod_security was somehow activated). Once again, my powers of Boolean saved the day. Exhausted, I crawled into bed.

I got up yesterday, ran just over 4 miles, and skipped breakfast (and told everyone to avoid getting between me and lunch, just to be on the safe side). I made it through the work day decent enough, and I made it to dinner and got home in time to try and blog for the 24h World project (see below). Low and behold, my WordPress and my blog were acting up — I had lost data (Earth Day post was gone), and I could not add some (but not all) new types of posts. 1st Tech Support guy via chat said it was not the same thing, but my troubleshooting indicated it really, really was the same thing. Half an hour later, #2 tech support guy found that yes, it was the same thing. Great. All seems right in the world. I posted a couple of entries, and crawled into bed.

I get up this morning, and did not run. I fired up my page, to make sure things were still ok. Um, no. The two new entries are gone, but I got back the Earth Day post that had vanished yesterday. Great – FML. I’m hammering out this post, hoping it’ll take — and am saving it to a text file, in case it doesn’t. Ah, the joys of technology. Suddenly, pen to paper has a new appeal.

[UPDATE: Well, it posts. And I lost the Earth Day post, but got back the two posts from last night. Odd.]

These battered feet of mine

5 days, 4 runs, 30 miles. My soles are like alligator skin. I managed to get a blister on the arch of my foot. My pi?ce de r?sistance is a blister on a blister, on a blister that has now popped.

But these aren’t complaints; this is my reality. I’m a runner, and these things won’t stop me.

I should try saying something funny. Or maybe adding a cool, secret link — like this.

Why am I doing all this? My server is wonky right now. Symptoms are showing up in WordPress, but the support stuff from WordPress all points to server end issues. So, I am in chat with Tech Support at the server, and trying to figure it out.

The symptom, if you’re curious, is that it won’t save new drafts or posts. The solution, it turns out, is to edit the .htaccess file and turn off mod_security feature.

I have faith, though — I went through this last night with the wife’s server. Same deal — out of the blue, WordPress got wonky, and it turned out to be settings on their end. Hers was misbehaving a little differently, but same solution. And I have no idea why both of these suddenly developed these problems. Time to go back up, though!

Oh — one more thing, if you’re still reading this. I podcast — did you know that? I am not posting the link, but email me and I’ll likely send it to you, along with more about it.

5 days, 4 runs, 30 miles. My soles are like alligator skin. I managed to get a blister on the arch of my foot. My pi?ce de r?sistance is a blister on a blister, on a blister that has now popped.

But these aren’t complaints; this is my reality. I’m a runner, and these things won’t stop me.

I haven’t really talked much about the Long War recently. Been kind of busy with it.

A few pieces have been in the press recently. I am not going to try and sum them up, but am going to recommend going and making the time to read them.

Read this, then this, and then this. Below, there’s a letter from the Director of National Intelligence — so yes, this is kind of serious stuff going on.

Don’t be the one, twenty years from now, who remembers that there was talk of interrogation and torture. Be the one who read up on it, developed and informed opinion, and who can talk about what it means to you and how you view the US.

Need more information? Here’s the Taguba Report entry on Wikipedia, and info on Abu Zubaydah and KSM.

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I suspect that what I am about to say won’t be for everyone. Go ahead, skip this one. I won’t be offended.

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I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to help with your school project. It was a lot of fun.

Flat Art on the Bus

To get here, Flat Art probably went from North Carolina to New York, where he would have left the regular mail system and entered into the military mail system. From there, he likely went on to Germany and Kuwait before landing in Iraq. He came here to me at COB Speicher, a former Iraqi airbase just outside of the city of Tikrit, in Salah ad Din Province.

Flat Art arrived at an interesting time. There’s a lot going on here, in Northern Iraq. The Iraqis just had elections, so there are a lot of people very excited about being involved in their local government. There’s also a drought going on, so times are somewhat tough (there’s a lot of farming around here) and the local governments are that much more important.

Stopping for a spot of tea

Flat Art is about the same size as the notebook I carry with me everywhere, so I tucked him in there and took him with me everywhere. These photos, the ones I sent to you earlier, were ones I was able to take when I snuck Flat Art out of the office in order to visit the area. But most of the time, Flat Art worked with me, going to meetings and trying to solve problems. And a lot of the places I go for work, well, they’re a bit camera shy, mainly for security reasons. So, for all of our great adventures, I have fewer photos to share than I’d like.

So, thank you. It was fun.

First Day of Spring

On this, the first full day of spring, it’s hard to find signs of the season, partly for being in Iraq, party for being in the middle of a drought. I looked high and low, and found these flowers out by a helo pad, flowers tall enough to gently sway in the breeze.

March 16, 1968. My Lai massacre.

March 16, 1988. Chemical weapons attack on Halabja.

I much prefer March 15 and March 17.

Sunrise in Tikrit

What was old is new again.

I am running. I doubt I’ve mentioned this to many, but it’s true. Last week was about 15 miles total, including an awesome 8 miles on Saturday. This week, I should push pass the 20 mile mark, with a 10 miler scheduled for Sunday, once this storm and the dust passes.

I am trying to get back to the point of regularly running half marathon distance runs. Yes, 13.1 miles. I want back the strength, I want back the solitude, I want back the peaceful bliss of running for a couple of hours here and there.

In 2005, I did not run. I could not run. The year ended with a Doc telling me he’d fixed me, and that I could maybe run 2 or 3 miles, but never, you know, a 10km or anything like that.

2006 was the year I took flight, and started running. I ran, really to see if I could break something — which I didn’t.

By 2007, I was a running fool. I ran all kinds of crazy distances, and did all kinds of crazy things people don’t normally do — like going to Luxembourg to run a nighttime marathon, and finding a favorite run that happened to be seven (yes, 7) miles up the K?nigstuhl to the mountaintop, and then back down again. I closed out the year leading 23 others half-way across Romania to run full and half marathons.

And then poof, I ran very little in 2008. I closed out 2007 with Achilles tendon problems, and I really had to get off of them for good. I made a couple of tries to return to running, always too soon, and always with the same painful results. I ran some when I was in Georgia (the state, not the country), but damn if that heat wasn’t a killer.

I’d written off running in 2009, figuring the workload or the heat would be the death of me. But I’ve needed something, and I finally realized that I needed to hit the road again. It probably helped that I’ve spent the winter reading the tale of Jack, a runner and blogger from SW Germany who ran through the worst of the winter months in order to hit the marathon circuit early and hard this year. Very inspiring, that Jack character.

I could have returned to running more and harder earlier, I suppose. This is, after all, just my third week of hard, disciplined running. I had started to get up and run — sometimes. I had started to arrange to run at lunchtime — sometimes. The problem always was the rhythm; I have had such a varied schedule that I could not go the same mornings, or the same time of day. And with the weather here, even if I did find the right day and time to go, there could well be horrid weather outside. In other words, it wasn’t going to be easy.

There’s too much work, too much stress. There’s too much food too easily available, that is too bad for me. There’s too many projects, too much pressure. Too many snacks and cookies and waaaay too much chocolate. And though an Army may march on its stomach, our days too often begin and end with coffee. Strong, strong coffee.

And all of these things – all of them — do not bode well for a guy who wrestles with the demons of PTSD.

So, easy stopped being an excuse. I returned to where I belong, the open roads of the early morning, waiting for the sun to creep up past the horizon and start to warm the land. And it feels great.

I have to run in my Army exercise gear, and not my preferred civilian running attire – I might not like it, but I can live with it. I have to run through some pretty marginal conditions sometimes, to include strong winds carrying silt and dirt – I might not like it, but I can live with it. And invariably every time I run, I then am rushed to get cleaned up and get on to something for work – I might not like it, but I can live with it.

I am running. And it feels good to be alive again.

Water gathering dust

I find great irony with this — water collecting dust. Partially because I’m in Iraq, and partially because there’s a drought on.

I have been in Iraq now for over 100 days. I was in Hawaii for 4 or 5 weeks before coming to Iraq, and in Georgia (the state, not the country) for the 110 or 120 days before Hawaii. Since June, I’ve seen the wife and kids for all of 4 or 5 weeks. I am 100+ days into a year-long tour in Iraq.

I don’t think anywould would fault me for being bummed, or bitter, or a sour-puss. Not just being apart from my family, not just the stress of being here, but also because of the death and destruction that continues on — at a greatly reduced rate — here in northern Iraq.

But this time here in Iraq has actually given me a great sense of optimism. I know I wrote about it some, with regards to the elections. The Awakening worked; the tide has turned on those who would wage war on the Iraqis. The elections went off very well, with certification of the results expected next week. The Security Agreement, between the sovereign nations of Iraq and the US, has been implemented, and seems to be working well. And the President has laid out a time line for US troops leaving Iraq.

Yes, there is still death and destruction. Yes, there is still violence. Yes, there are still those who would overthrow the Iraqi government, or fight American forces until the last one of us leaves.

But really, at long last — Iraq is doing pretty damn well. I smile a lot here. There’s open discussion. There’s rule of law. There are police on the streets, and food on the shelves, and children in the schools again. As someone who has read way to much about the 90+ years of this country, I really feel that Iraq is on the verge of a great new dawn. And that is an awesome feeling.

So, I’m happy. I still wish I was in Hawaii, drinking a beer and bouncing kids on a knee or something, but it’s a great time to be here, to be a part of all this and to see such an awesome change overcome a society.

In case you missed it, just over 24 hours ago IHEC announced the results of the 31 January provincial elections here in Iraq.

In our area, 3 of the 7 provinces held elections. The three provinces in the Kurdish Regional Government (the Kurdish semi-autonomous region, on which I could yammer for 14 days straight) did not, nor did At-Tam’im / Kirkuk, due to continue discussions about Article 23 and the road ahead for Article 140.

For the three that did have elections, the Sunni did well. The Sunni had boycotted the 2005 elections — the last provincial elections. In Ninewa, home of Mosul and a lot of the attacks these days, one Sunni party (the al Hadba Gathering) took the majority by themselves. They will have a lot of work to do, right away, to bring the necessary change signaled by the votes of the people. In Salah ad Din, Sunni parties across the board did well, and they’ll need to work together to come up with a coalition of some kind — ditto for Diyala.

So, they were good, peaceful elections with good, peaceful results. I am proud today, proud to be here, proud to play even a small part in all this. Very cool.

But they’re not.

The NY Times has a piece today, talking about whether the new Obama administration will change the policy on photos of the caskets of dead soldiers coming home from the war front.

After all, the caskets really do show the human cost of this long, long war. And they’re just photos. The photos are what they are.

But they’re not just photos. I am unsure if I can really capture in words just how I feel about this. Those aren’t photos, those are men and women making one last journey.

In the summer of 2003, when my First Sergeant and I were taking home two of our platoons, we were set for a night flight. We staged at the airport in Kuwait City, and when it was time, we loaded everyone onto a big bus and headed out for our airplane. The bus had curtains on the windows, which were drawn closed as it was the middle of the night. No one thought to open them, as everyone was just too excited to be going home.

The bus was full. 1SG and I were, literally, standing next to the bus driver, probably the only two who could see out to the side of the bus, through the front door we were all to use. We drove to our airplane, pulled up alongside it, and stopped. The doors open. And 1SG and I just stood there, waiting.

Our soldiers were anxious, I’m sure. They wanted to honker down into the seat that would take them home to their families, their loved ones.

But all that 1SG and I could see was the sight of the flag-draped caskets being loaded into the cargo hold. There was no way we were going to have our soldiers come bouncing out of that bus, so full of so and glee, and right into this most solemn of scenes. 1SG and I stood there, in quiet unison, and just watched, delaying the magic of getting home, he and I having a quiet moment today in solemn honor of those who would be going home with us, our most honored passengers.

So, this debate over photos hits a nerve with me. I understand that for so many, they’re just photos. But they aren’t. Maybe I’m overly sensitive, maybe I’m not. It’s just how I feel, even if it makes no sense.

I have been looking forward to day all week long. I was hoping that today would be the day that the IHEC — Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission — would announce the preliminary results of the 31 January provincial elections, held in 14 of the 18 provinces in Iraq, and 3 of the 7 provinces up here in the north.

It would be a glorious day. Glorious.

The last provincial elections were in 2005. To my surprise, and to that of the world, the Sunnis opted to boycott. Sure, they are a minority in this country, in comparison to the 65% or so that are Shi’a, but still, they have large percentages of the population in a bunch of the provinces.

They could have made a difference.

But they boycotted.

And wow, do they regret doing that. In the years since, they have realized (I think) that this was about as stupid a thing as any group could do — not being a part of the political process means having to take whatever shit the other folks decide. Yeah, that’s not so cool, especially when the Sunni ran the country before and folks were willing to dole out a little payback to the, all the more since the Sunnis were outside the political process.

But in the years since then, I loved, loved, LOVED watching the awakening. Sahwa. In staying out of the politics, the Sunnis were also hammered by Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and it got to the point where the Sunni leaders — not political leaders, but social and tribal leaders — said that enough was enough, and they approached the Americans and the Iraqi Security Forces. And the Sons of Iraq were born. The Sunni came back into the fold, and became part of the solution instead of being a part of the problem.

This just blows my mind. No representation in the government, hated for what the last regime had done, bad mouthed for having Ba’thist ties, despised for just being followers of their Sunni faith. And they did what was right, in reconciling their differences and working for a greater Iraq.

And this year, in forming political parties and looking for their future within the framework of the Iraqi society.

31 January, something like 50 to 60% of the eligible Iraqis went and voted. Seriously — 60%? America would divide by zero before it would turn out in those numbers to vote, even if the ticket was Gore/Jesus Christ. But turn out they did.

So, I’ve really, really been looking forward to this day.

I haven’t cared what the results would be, but rather how the people would respond. I want to see the excitement in their faces when the hear the news that their party got 17% of the vote in this province or that one, and that their party and their candidates would get 3 or 5 or 10 seats on the Provincial Council. I wanted to feel the rush, their sense of ownership, of involvement.

Because if you’re excited about politics, and actively taking part in the political party, you are investing in your country and your society. You again believe. You have faith, you have hope in what your people can do, and life will get better.

Today was to be an important day for me.

Right up until just after lunch, when someone — reports now indicate it was a woman — in northern Diyala apparently walked into a restaurant and detonated some sort of belt or vest of explosives.

My first thought? Mother fuckers! Can’t we just have a good day in this country, and not have is scarred by the violence?

A few hours later, the preliminary results were released, and it has been a good day. But it’s been a good day marred by this tragedy.

It pains me when there’s loss of life here. This country has made such strides in the years I’ve been watching. It’s changed so much since my first trip here, back in the mid 90′s. I am captivated by this holistic transformation it has undergone, and continues to undergo. There is such potential here, such beauty, such a future.

And there are setbacks.

I don’t pretend to fully understand what drives someone to do something like this. I am male, I am American, I am shaped by the things I have seen, the things I have done, what I have learned along the way. It’s not Arabs doing this, it’s Iraqis. It’s not Sunnis doing this, it’s Iraqis. And it’s not even just women doing this, as men have done it here, too.

I have seen examples — too many of them — of what my peers will do in times of war. When the grenade is thrown through the hatch of the HMMWV, and the gunner yells GRENADE before dropping onto it, pulling it tight. The explosion kills him, but his buddies live. The guy who stays on the heavy machine gun to literally hold off the waves of attacking enemy, long past the point where he himself could escape, because he knows that if he lets that gun go silent, they will all die because his soldiers need just a little bit more time to prepare their defenses. In the end, he dies of his wounds, but his soldiers live.

These are things I understand. Deciding on actions that have a reasonable expectation of causing your own death, usually so that others may live. Firemen running into a burning building, police charging a gunman, spectators diving into an icy river after a car goes off the road and is submerged.

But this is the exact opposite. Something that means so much to someone, that they will take action that they reasonably expect will cost them their lives, in order to take the lives of others.

I want to understand. I really, really do. And I’m trying. But it’s hurting my head, trying to reconcile things that are held in a different light by others, given different values than I would give them or that my culture would give them.

When I ask myself, what would drive me to do this, I come up empty. Would I kill Hitler this way, if I had the chance? I couldn’t do this to people just eating lunch.

But some people would. And today someone did. Damnit. Today, of all the fucking days.