Leap Day

And, because I’ve read too many GWOT-centric blog posts lately, and at present feel that I would prefer never to think about Israel and Gaza, Abbas and Hamas, Lebanon and Hezbollah, Iraq, Obama-Clinton-McCain, nor anything else political or military in nature…

HAPPY LEAP DAY!!!!!

I wish that I could remember Leap Days past, but I’m drawing a complete blank. In 2004 I had undergone laser eye surgery only 25 days earlier… I was newly amazed by my bionic vision (because it took me about a week and a half to stop seeing blurrily–PRK doesn’t have quite as immediate results as Lasik does). I think, too, that I may have been attending Ground School at that time… But I’m not sure. In 2000, I was in a new(ish) job in Seattle, living in Tacoma… ‘96? College. Junior year… Sharing 2 dorm rooms with 3 other girls (here’s a picture of me at that time with a baby sister of one of my roommates). Note the amazing amount of detritus piled around me on the radiator, the window seat, and the desk…

Cornet Wales

Kudos to Prince Harry! (a.k.a. Cornet Wales)

He’s been in Afghanistan for ~10 weeks, working as a forward air controller and calling air strikes down on enemy locations (it would apparently have been a full deployment but his cover got blown).

Apparently, after the whole brouhaha about him going to Iraq went down last year, the military officials had a meeting with the customarily aggressive British media, and negotiated a blackout on his Afghanistan deployment. So kudos to the British press, too! (And shame on the Australian, German, and American tools who blew it… Though of course it was to be expected — what’s really shocking is that the secret stayed under wraps this long.)

I’m amazed by the number of references in the articles about this to “whether we can ever trust the media again,” as if it’s a terrible thing that they “conspired” to keep the prince safe and free to serve his country. I honestly don’t understand these people sometimes… (then again, that’s kind of a typical problem to have as a military member when contemplating the behavior of the media — and vice-versa!)

The other thought that this brought up is how much the nature of war, leadership, and royalty has changed. It’s weird to me that a prince can’t be deployed to the front lines (William apparently has expressed some chagrin that as heir to the throne, it’s unlikely he’ll ever be allowed into real combat), when throughout history, the kings and princes were the ones leading the charges! How odd that war has turned into a matter of faceless anonymous soldiers targeting each other, often without even seeing one another, and the generals and world leaders are posturing on TV from the safety of — often — another continent entirely…

Then again, in this environment, it really would be irresponsible of celebrities of any sort to go into combat (if they were attended by publicity). The impact of killing a famous person in combat would be huge for the enemy. Similarly, serving with the celebrity would make everyone around them in danger — by a factor of many, many times what it would have been had they been just another faceless depersonalized detachment of troops…