All Alone in the Night

A bit ponderous for a new blog that has nothing under its belt but a cute name, but all things begin somewhere, and for us here at All Alone in the Night, it begins here.

It would be convenient that we stand at the dawn of a new age, an age revealed to us by the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001. But such a claim would not stand serious analysis. Humanity has been killing each other since Cain decided to discuss parental favoritism with Abel using a club. September 11th may have been a particularly spectacular event, but it was not the dawn of some new age.

Perhaps, then, it is twilight? Earth's 20th century was the American century. Is it time for the torch to be passed? Certainly the United States has lost some of what made it special in the 20th century, although in truth it has been in decline since the guns fell silent at the end of World War II, for its position at that time was so far in advance of the rest of the world that it could never be maintained. Conversely, the United States is still considered by many to be a hyperpuissance, the sole superpower, although it's difficult to argue that reputation can hold for long as America's war in Iraq grinds to a bloody conclusion, Iran prepares to join the family of nuclear powers, and American soft power is at something of a nadir.

But the world is too dynamic to use a twilight metaphor. If it is twilight for America, surely it is dawn elsewhere on the globe. China and India are taking a greater place on the world stage, as befits their position as residences of some 37% of the world's population. Europe is not prepared to give up its place as one of the centers of world power. The world is changing into a new configuration. Will it maintain its Westfalian character with nation-states predominating, or will transnational actors like al Qaeda and major corporations take greater prominence? Will the rise of many nations with nuclear powers return us to a Cold War, or Europe circa 1914, where all that was needed was a spark? Will ecological problems like global warming force nations to band more closely together? Or, more likely, will the world of the 21st century be so different we are unlikely to predict where it will all end up?

We make no such predictions as yet. Our goals, as noted on our sidebar, are more prosaic. First, like many people, we enjoy discussing such topics as current events and politics, and blogging has clearly become a popular method for doing so. Second, we hope to attract like-minded commenters who are interested in discussing these issues, preferably without any virtual bloodshed. Monologues have their place, but learning rarely takes place without discussion. And as we note above, understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, my side, and the truth...

Hello!

…thump-thump-thump…

Is this thing on?

My name is…well not important frankly, but you can call me ‘Baldi.

I’m a longtime blogosphere (TM – Bill Quick) denizen, infrequent commenter, and first time blogger. In fact, this is my very first post.

I’m not entirely sure what I’ll blog about. You can generally expect me to have a less serious tone than G’Kar. It’s likely I’ll be more of a linker and less of a thinker (and I mean that literally). I’ll try to keep my posts short so as not to push the meatier posts off the front page. I am interested in both kinds of debate: politics and sports. I lean right in my politics and left in my sports. I have degrees in Hermaneutic Physics, Geopolitical Dialectics, Post-Randian Dianetics, Astro-Zenecal Diuretics, and Russian Chemistry from the University of Guam at Curacao. I will expect you to bow to my authority in all of the above areas (I should warn you that I have a black belt in logical fallacy, with a specialization in Tu Quoque). Just so you know where I’m coming from.

More background:
Top 5 Movies
5. Star Wars
4. Saving Private Ryan
3. Top Gun
2. Red Dawn
1. Steel Magnolias

Top 5 Books
5. To Kill a Mockingbird
4. War and Peace
3. The Great Gatsby
2. The Cat in the Hat
1. I actually have only read 4 books. (War and Peace is realllllly long, btw.)

Top 5 Bloggers
5. Instapundit
4. Trent
3. Stephen Den Beste (love him or hate him you have to admit…he’s no longer blogging)
2. Wesley Crusher
1. G’Kar (oh, I know which side of the bread I’m buttered on baby)

That oughta do it for background, although I feel like I should mention that I know very little about Babylon 5. But I do know that I have a pot belly and a receding hairline. I like that.

I reserve the right to occasionally publish peices that are serious and discuss the issues of the day. I make no promises about such posts quality or intellectual rigor.

I would like to thank G’Kar for the invitation (it is going to take me a little while to get used to these pseudonyms). I look forward to making a contribution and causing G’Kar to regret his decision to invite me.

OK, after a few weeks of vacation time, I have returned, so once I get oriented to the news again, we'll start seeing regular posting again. Then I just need to goose Mr. Garibaldi and we should be back on track. Thanks for your patience.

I will be off the station for the foreseeable future, as events on Narn require my presence. Thanks to the Centauri, internet access on Narn is intermittent at best, so I may not be particularly active or responsive to comments on my posts. I am confident that the rest of the staff will pick up the pace in my absence, however.

I'd blog more if I could remember the password, address and my username better.

The spammers have found this site, so to avoid inundation with spam, we are requiring all commenters to log in through TypePad. It's a bit of a nuisance, but it is the only way to prevent the comments from becoming uselessly clogged by spam. Our apologies for the trouble, and please bear with us. If you have trouble posting a comment, send it to gkar at allaloneinthenight dot com. Thank you.

This seems like an opportune moment to introduce myself, since it gives me an easy starting point for my first post. It's not something I really like to think about, but it is much on my mind right now.

I am an officer in the U.S. Army. I am preparing to go to Iraq for a year or longer as part of a Military Transition Team or MiTT. Our purpose will be to support a battalion of the Iraqi Army, helping them to become more effective soldiers so that they can secure their own country. I will be leaving sometime in late June or early July after I complete training at Fort Riley, Kansas. I have been in the Army in some capacity for almost 19 years, although I still have almost six years until my retirement. I have served as a tank platoon leader, tank company executive officer, company commander and in more staff positions than I would care to count ending most recently with a tour as a battalion executive officer. Now I will serve as a team leader for an eleven-man team.

I'm sure everyone can imagine the reaction to the news about extending combat tours to 15 months. That's a tough blow, as it means that we'll all be away from our families for about 18 months when you add in our training time here at Fort Riley. We'll see divorce numbers going up, although I don't know what this will mean for retention. The assumption would be that people will be more likely to get out, but people don't always react the way we would expect. Since I'll be down to about four years until retirement, I certainly won't get out over this, although I do hope it won't cost me my marriage. But it's going to be a real hardship on soldiers and their families.

Conversely, this may help the war effort, as one of the keys to counterinsurgency is knowledge of the enemy, and the twelve month rotation policy meant that people were generally only getting truly comfortable with their area of operations about the time it came for them to leave. I don't think it's a coincidence that we haven't really won a real war since we started sending soldiers into combat for a tour rather than for the duration. People have a very different outlook when they know they don't go home until they win, although that's a challenging thing to ask of soldiers in environments like Iraq and Afghanistan. But it's something to think about.

In any case, I'll be talking about my experiences here, both in training and once I get into theater. I can't promise to tell the whole truth here; certain details will be omitted for security reasons. But I do promise that what I do say will be the truth as I see it. I hope people will take advantage of the opportunity to hear about what we're doing in Iraq, as I don't think this is the kind of story the media is good at reporting, primarily because it is a slow process and therefore doesn't fit the normal story templates. Feel free to ask questions and I will answer what I can.

Yes, we've been dead silent of late. No, we're not quite out of business. I'll have something new up later today, and we'll go from there. Hopefully I can jar a few of the others into posting more of their own stuff and we'll get rolling forward again.