Strange Rumblings From the War Zone

I saw John Hockenberry on Jon Stewart the other night. He's a writer. He writes for Wired. He is in a wheelchair.
Anyway...
He was on Jon Stewart chatting about an article he just wrote for Wired. Its about Military Blogs. Or Milblogs for short. These cats (and kittens) in the warzones, he was saying, are writing online about their day-to-day lives. These cats (and kittens) are logging on and telling their stories. They aren't giving away state secrets. They aren't giving away locations. That would be seriously dumb. No, they are writing about daily experiences. They are writing about how it feels to rise each day and go about your job and wonder if you're going to see the end of the day.
The letters home that used to take weeks and months to reach home during all the past conflicts are now published and downloaded in moments.
I guess Washington saw the internet as a way for these cats (and kittens) to keep in touch with back home, to raise morale. Washington saw that these kids would be in the desert for an uncomfortable stretch of time and thought, hey, lets give them email and photos of undressed ladies, that'll keep them occupied.
So soldiers being people, some also saw this as a chance to start-up online journals and blogs and stuff so they could post pictures of sandstorms and themselves and their fellow soldiers and let freinds and family know how they are doing. And, John Hockenberry sort of said, the Military Blog was born.
I won't get into the whole question of what the Pentagon is allowing or not allowing or censoring or blocking or channeling to the world or whatever. Go over to Wired's spot on the Internet, go to the magazine. Look for the article. John Hockenberry does a much better job of that than I ever could. A much better job.
Anyway...
I saw John Hockenberry on Jon Stewart. And I got thinking about this whole Milblog thingy. I read his article. And I continued to think about these Milblogs some more. Was Mr. Hockenberry pulling examples of the writing on these blogs from rare occurences? Or was this a regular state of affairs? Were these soldiers really writing these things about life in the Iraqi nightmare? So I decided to check it out.
I went to Google, typed in milblog, not really expecting anything to happen. Maybe a link to Wired or Jon Stewart or some crazed soldier-wanna-be Stateside. I was thinking, hey, if this is for real, the Pentagon must have made it hard to find, right? Right?
Jumping Jesus on a trampoline. These blogs and links and other stuff started filling up. Page after page. And then I started surfing and staggering and stumbling from one blog to another. Some of these cats (and kittens) can write. I mean, seriously write. I'm talking like Hemingway or Faulkner or Thompson or whatever. I found posts that made me laugh out loud. Posts that choked me up. Posts that had me scratching my balding head, searching for the answer to their existential angst.
I found one blog that...well, I haven't added it to my links. I read and I damn near wept. It was so personal and full of...I don't know, grief, at the death of the writer's humanity. He could feel himself becoming colder and harder and shutting down and was keeping a daily journal of it. And his return home to his family was coming up and seeing his children again and his wife and...shit, man. It went beyond a voyeuristic peek into his personal diary. It was a flatscreen exposure of his soul. A little too heartbreaking. Last time I checked, his only entry this week is "Taking A Break". That's all it said. I like to think that means, Hey, I'm home. I'm gonna hang with the wife and the kids and play pool at the bar with my friends and all is good in the world. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway...
I have added some links (over to the right...see War Pooh...yeah, there). The one to Blackfive is a guy State-side. The link I've got there to his page is a giant list of these blogs. He's a wee right swinging, okay, and some folks I know will have some serious issues with his adds, but if you can look past his politics and just check out some of those links, you'll be pleasantly suprised.
The others are a small taste of my faves. If you do nothing else here today, check out SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM. This guy can write. Shit, can he write. As I have said before, and will say in the future, jumping Jesus on a trampoline.

We all have differing opinions on the war in Iraq and the Afghan one and we question the motives of the folks who are in charge and some of us are living in an environment that is trying its best to beat those opinions out of us and some of us are lucky to be living in an environment that asks us to question everything we are fed by the media and the govenment and the loud-mouth at the end of the bar. If you're reading this thing, you probably know exactly where I stand on these issues. You should know that I believe that any war that is run by a bunch of suits who avoided ever putting on a uniform is not recipe for success. You should know that I believe the Bush family has sold their country for a dime and is swimming in a pool of blood and ground bone. But the one thing you should know about me is I rarely question the motive of these cats (and kittens) who do what I am truly unwilling to do. I won't wear a uniform. I won't march in line. And I will (hopefully) never have to put myself in a situation where people are shooting at me.
These Milblogs are a glimpse into the minds of people who are willing to wear a uniform, march in line, put themselves in situations where bullets fly. I may not truly understand their thoughts and dreams and circumstances that have led them to this life, but their blogs are giving me a peek.
Okay, I have rambled on enough. I'll stop now. And if you have staggered into here expecting photos of unclothed ladies flinging pooh, once again I apologize. I'm not from around here...