Five years of war and 4,000 US dead as of this month. Iraqi dead in the tens of thousands. Iraqi cities regularly rocked by bombs. Power, water, and sanitation concerns throughout Iraq. US credibility and standing on the world stage greatly diminished if not outright destroyed. Still we hear about how we are succeeding - about how at some yet-unknown date all of this sacrifice will somehow be vindicated.

The major problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any clear cut measurement as to what success is at this point. Spare me the empty platitudes about the march of democracy in the middle east; about the need to fight terror abroad; or of the need to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. What I want to hear is what our exit criteria should be. When do we know that we are done?

Unfortunately, I increasingly am forced to the conclusion that we’re going to be stuck in Iraq well into the next decade. The current President has adroitly shifted the burden of “what to do” onto the shoulders of his successor (shades of James Buchannan here).

The people that seem to be beating the war drums the loudest are those with the least amount of skin in the game. I know people who are willing to fight to the last - well, to be accurate, the last someone else’s kid - to achieve our objective! What that objective is…well, they’re not too sure of that. Question too far and your patrotism is, of course, called into question.

One of the lessons I learned from my Grandfather soon after this war was started was that one could - and needed to - separate the war from the warrior. Nothing irritates me more than to hear someone make the statement “you have to support the mission of you support your troops!” It’s just another facet of the false dichotomy that seems to be the party line of this administration, namely “you are either with us or against us”. It’s completely possible to think that the mission is bullshit and still support your forces; very few situations are in stark bland and white.

Even the phrase “support our troops” has become diluted. What, exactly, does it mean? Does it mean you tack a few magnets onto your SUV? Maybe throw a “These Colors Don’t Run” bumper sticker on the pickup? Or is it a bit more? To me, “support our troops” means, first and foremost, that you exercise the rights that we are told they are protecting and trying to export to Iraq. Chief amoungst those is the freedom to disagree with the government that sent these young men and women into harms way in the first place.

I have a cartoon tacked into my office closet, a Doonsbury from the end of the first year of the war. The name of every soldier killed in the Iraq war to date appeared on that cartoon. The number keeps going up, but it’s become background noise anymore. The headlining stories are about Britney Spears or American Idol. Four dead by a roadside bomb in Iraq? Forty dead in a marketplace bombing? That’s just a sidenote; besides, it or something like it happens every day.

I remember a popular joke going around four years ago - it was pretty stupid, taking the form of a father talking to a son. The son asks what the World Trade Center was….the father explains about terrorists from the Middle East. Then the son asks “what was the Middle East”?

I’m guessing that the next few generations are going to have plenty of knowledge about the Middle East.

I’m not too sure how the baseball practice scheduling process runs for Manchester Youth Baseball, but it seems rather odd that our team managed to draw mostly 4:30 PM practice start times. You would think that it would average out that each team had about half early and half late practices.

Makes you think, doesn’t it? Definitely will make the month of April interesting for me as I try and juggle work with picking up Alex and making it to practice.

The bit below is my test of embedding a Google Calendar into the blog here; it should work without problems, but knowing my luck I’ll encounter some bizarre incompatibility with my template or something.

Success!

Well, we managed to survive this year’s Musical Soup over at the high school without too much damage and with everyone still alive and talking to each other. Alex is really working the prima donna Musician angle - he had a preliminary meltdown on Thursday because he needed a bell stand for Saturday’s concert. Apparently he lost the stand that came as part of his percussion kit back in, oh December. So of course I don’t find out about it until 2 days before he needs it. Then on Saturday, he starts freaking out because he doesn’t have a copy of his music for one of the drum parts he is scheduled to play.

Everything got solved; we borrowed a stand until we could get a new one, and we managed to have his band director copy his music for him (which he was - according to Beth - a bit pissy about, but I can live with that). He was somewhat skittish before he went on. To be honest, I was waiting for him to pull a Wayne’s World and ask for a bowl of 50 brown M&M’s before he got on stage.

Alex played as part of the 5th Grade Band and also performed a solo piano piece, The Chrysanthemum by Scott Joplin. We were both expecting a piano, but apparently they don’t have one over at the high school so Alex played on a small Casio electric piano. He did a good job on the piano, but I could tell that he was having some issues with the pedal and the keys; but as I told him later the great players learn to roll with the problems. The sound could have been better as well - the event took place inside a gym with horrible acoustics, and the volume on the Casio didn’t quite cut it.

The 5th Grade Band….well, it’s a 5th Grade Band. You can see the potential there, but it’s going to take more work to develop fully. To be completely honest, they have come a long way from when I last saw them (in December, back when Alex’s $90 bell stand went AWOL).

Overall, the event was fun; however, I expected a bit better organization. I know it’s difficult to coordinate an event that size, but I know it’s possible to do so. There were many performers who would come up to play without being announced; to a kid having their name announced in conjunction with something like this is a big deal. I would have liked to see a better job of crown management - the constant noise of people moving in and out of the gym in the middle of performances was distracting to those watching and fairly rude to those performing.

Alex - always the little ham - had a good time and we’ve already talked about what he is planning on performing next year. No matter what it is, I’m sure it will be interesting. On the downside, I know that whatever piece he picks will be embedded in my brain by months of practice before we get to the show.