Another week down. The days are really going by fast. Being on the night shift is a big reason why – we usually go in around midnight or a little before then head home after breakfast, so you start on one day then finish on the next. To make this schedule work I should be going to bed around 1PM and getting up at 9PM but I hate getting up when it is already dark so I am usually in bed by 9 and up by 4. The problem is that means I am up for 8 hours before I go to work. So far it hasn’t been too big of a detriment because I haven’t had much for missions. It has become a bit of a running joke about my lack of missions. Whenever I have been on the schedule it has been bad weather, no mission or just a short mission. Today I was scheduled for my longest mission yet but it was cancelled and we were retasked to be on standby as a result of that soldier killing the civilians last night. There are still as many rumors as facts but it certainly doesn’t make our job any easier. If the story is true it is a complete disregard for fellow soldiers. It was bad enough with the Koran burning but that can be chalked up to incompetence or lack of training - this is different. It’s hard to know how much influence we really have but every incident like this makes the Taliban’s job that much easier. We are at a huge disadvantage anyway – trying to change centuries of traditions in a few years. The sad thing is so far there is less reaction to this incident than the Koran burning. Revenge killing is something they understand – including women and children. It really is a cultural aspect that we have a hard time accepting much less understanding. People will complain that there is a double standard here but there has to be if we are to stand for anything better. It’s Christ’s actions that truly demonstrate the value of human life and that is where our values need to come from.
None of this has really changed our daily existence here except that now we carry our weapons loaded. Close to a third of the people on this base are foreign workers and it does make you watch them a little more closely after some of our supposed allies turned their weapons on us over the past week. We haven’t had any incidents down here but there are a lot of people with a lot of weapons running around. I don’t much see how we are going to get out of this mess cleanly or otherwise. On a different topic, we did have an impressive thunder storm move through this evening – lots of lightning.
Clouds/dust H 51 L42
interesting how closely your comments came to New York Times article...Koran burning a big deal...but one more killing, even of people we would describe as off limits...not that much of a big deal unless you were a family member. I noticed an aspect of this in Alaska...an acceptance of really brutal conditions, of violent death, of what I would call life-altering tragedy as not only normal, but inevitable.
ReplyDeleteThe Alaska attitude is a good analogy - the brutal life makes death much more accepted. I could be taking this too far but their customs and traditions seem to hold more power because that is what binds them together and continues after death. Individuals come and go so quickley but their society is enduring. It makes it very hard to change the individual.
DeleteGood thinking. I agree. (: We saw, as did you, how readily young Alaskan natives killed themselves and a large part of that was the huge cultural impact of the memorial potlatch which made a person more significant and honored dead than alive. Living seemed a dead-end street...death significant and important to the group.
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