Vox Veterana

Dean Barnett, a great man and personal friend, passed away today after a lifelong battle with Cystic Fibrosis. I am deeply saddened to hear about his death and will be praying for his family.

I had the pleasure of hanging out with Dean last year at the Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas. I remember sitting at lunch with him one day making fun of Markos from Daily Kos who was sitting right next to us. You couldn`t mistake Dean`s Boston accent for anyone else`s and he didn`t have the ability to lower his voice enough for Markos not to hear us.

I had plans to play golf with Dean next month and am pained to think that we won`t be able to go through with them. The world is worse off without Dean, he will be sorely missed.

Posted by TF Boggs at 7:48 PM 9 Comments

Where I`ve Been
Posted by TF Boggs at 5:51 PM, 9/2/08

So I see that the last time I wrote I was all in a tizzy about my second Vets For Freedom trip to meet with our politicians in D.C. Well that was some time ago and I haven`t made an appearance on my own blog since then. The only questions then remains: Where the heck have I been?

Well despite dealing with the real world i.e. work, bills, relationships etc. I became an extreme cynic during that trip to D.C. I have never put much stock in the world, or its inhabitants, but that trip put me over the edge. As we did in the past we spent our day speaking with our state`s representatives about our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and why we think we should press forward until we have achieved victory on both fronts. Of course some politicians are more receptive to our message than others but they are all usually cordial to us.

What I found out that day still depresses me today. *First a note-please allow me this gross stereotype and don`t think that I really mean it across the board.* All of our politicians are self-centered publicity hounds who would rather have a good sound bite than a history of doing the right thing outside of the public eye. If you have a half an hour meeting with them they will tell jokes for five minutes, talk about themselves for fifteen, ask if you want coffee for five, and then leave you with one of their staffers for the remaining time in order to "hear" your gripes. I couldn`t go to D.C. today and point out a politician that I would feel comfortable calling a real man or woman. They would rather bore you with the details about how great they are instead of listening to the soldiers who fight for them day in and day out.

What makes it all worse is the day we spoke to our senators and congressmen General Petraeus was delivering his quarterly report, a few hundred yards from where we were, about the state of affairs in Iraq. His message was for the most part positive. He talked about the success of the surge along with many other victories we were finally seeing after several years of getting things wrong. His message, along with ours, was ignored by a large part of the senators and congressmen that heard us that day. All for purely political reasons because they couldn`t argue with the facts on the ground as we presented them.

Enough of the complaining. I came back to tell you where I`ve been. So instead of telling you myself I`ll let G.K. Chesterton do it for me.

From Orthodoxy-Chapter 4

"When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: `Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.` Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old child-like faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother`s knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals."

Chesterton speaks for me here. I still care about politics insofar as they relate to the betterment of life for Americans and the world in general, but I no longer have the stomach to follow politics as it is practiced today. Obama or McCain-who cares? The world is still going to turn and I am going to have to do what I can to survive. What remains for me is to live a life that is pleasing to God. That is all. I struggle to write about anything to do with politics as I cannot stomach for one minute to listen to what a politician has to say. With that being the case I am finding it hard to keep up with my blog. If for some reason I feel the need to write again I will but until then thank you for visiting my site. Sig-thank you for contributing and for being a good American, I hope we can stay in touch.

Posted by TF Boggs at 5:51 PM 20 Comments

Radio check, over.
Posted by SigSpace at 5:34 PM, 8/25/08

I`m not sure what Tim is up to, but I have a six-month-old. That`s my excuse, and I`m sticking with it. Also, I`ve been TDY four times in that six months, with another in a few weeks. And we moved. Life has been hectic.

But good. Really good. I`m very blessed to be living in this nation, and able to serve her full time--no pesky civilian career to get in the way any longer. I`ve been a "part time" soldier (on temporary full time status) for longer than I was ever a "full time" computer nerd, so I guess my career transformation is complete.

I`ll try to muster up some enthusiasm and ire to write something clever here, but for now I will direct you to my most recent missive of any substance, Staff Sergeant Sig. Contrary to expectations, it`s not all self-congratulatory nonsense.

To bribe you, there are also cute pictures of my son over there.

Sig

Posted by SigSpace at 5:34 PM 20 Comments

Hard To Ignore
Posted by TF Boggs at 12:47 PM, 4/7/08

Vets For Freedom is back in D.C. again with 400 soldiers and marines and I am here to partake in the fun. We`ll see if we can`t bring a modicum of truth to our elected representatives about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If history is any guage I think we`ll have a bit of infulence as an organization with 22,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets is hard to ignore.

Posted by TF Boggs at 12:47 PM 18 Comments

My (*cough*) Generation
Posted by TF Boggs at 7:36 PM, 3/31/08

The other day I found a box of mine that contained some souvenirs from my first deployment to Iraq. Among them was a canvas painting of Saddam that I took from the Abu Ghraib prison during the summer of 2003 (pre-prisoner “abuse” for those of you paying attention.) I showed a few friends of mine and told them I planned on having it framed. Then I told them where I got it expecting some sort of reaction i.e. gasp, laughing, or maybe disbelief. What I got in return instead was blank stares.

I thought that maybe they were just figuring out how they were going to respond, that maybe they weren’t sure if I was being serious or not. What I found out was something entirely different. It wasn’t that they didn’t know how to respond-they didn’t know that a response would have even been warranted in that situation.

(What follows is the nuts and bolts of the conversation we had after I mentioned Abu Gharib.)

Me: I got the painting at Abu Gharib.

Them: Ok, cool.

Me: Have you heard of Abu Gharib before?

Them: Nope. What is that?

Me: You know, like Abu Gharib prison…the one where the “abuse” happened.

Them: I’m not exactly following.

Me: Come on, you know. Like naked Iraqi pyramids and the like.

Them: I’m not exactly following.

Me: You mean to tell me you’ve never heard of Abu Gharib?

Them: Yep. Never heard of it. Why?

Me: Uhhh…nevermind.

Remember that dry erase board in some Marine barracks in Iraq a while back? The one that said “America isn’t at war the Marines are. America is at the mall.” Well it is true. While some of us spent years overseas fighting in a war many of our peers were listening to podcasts of “The Real World MTV.” The level of complete ignorance about the reasons for fighting and remaining in Iraq is astounding. Maybe I shouldn’t be astounded but for some reason I am. Iraq was such a big part of my life that I think people should at least know why we went there in the first place. I don’t expect complete knowledge of the situation as it is I just want there to be some type of intent on their part to be apprised of the basic info coming out of the war zones.

Perhaps I am asking too much, but I just think back to WWII when the whole country was intimately involved in the war effort. No one in the forties would have looked at another person with a blank expression on their face when asked whether or not they had ever heard of Normandy or Guadalcanal. What is going through these kid’s minds when their country is at war but all they can do is think about what color top will best bring out their fake tan they have been working on to impress the opposite sex?

Posted by TF Boggs at 7:36 PM 38 Comments

Contributors::.

TF Boggs

As a two-time Iraq war veteran and recent college grad I am a compassionate realist that wishes for world peace but sees said path to peace laden with bullet...

SigSpace

Sig is a mystery wrapped in an enigma coated in a candy shell. When he's not being those things, he is a soldier in the WA Army National Guard, and when he's...