While on the sweetest shore duty known to a sea going sailor, short of being a Naval Attache in the Down Under (so I’m told, never got to make it there, but had a friend who did), I had to pen a paper on a topic for a Philosphy course. I thought: Hmmm…how can I do something that looks serious, but can’t have that much to read to get my arms around it????

A quandry, but, I went on to think: What about the Turkish and Armenian thing? Ok, I’ll do genocide as a topic, so I’ll learn something, but not have to do a lot of reading…

Foolish me…..I will say, once “engaged,” I found there was much to read and many ways we have determined it can happen, and it’s not always about killing. For instance, I found out that The Muslim Turks would take children from the Christian Aremnians and give them to Turkish families to be raised as Muslims. That, my readers, fits the definition of genocide, as determined in the United Nations definition of the crime of genocide (Resolution 260 (III)A) in 1948. Many other things, brutal and not (at first) come under the umbrella of this word we so fear, and hate, all at once. It’s not a long read, and I’d suggest you take a few minutes and gather some understanding for use in the ongoing discussions, not only about Iraq, but for the future of those in the Darfur region of Sudan.

A guest, and it may have been LCol Ralph Peters on Bill Bennett’s morning show (disclaimer: I was driving and I renouce the need to be 100% accurate on the source), but maybe it was elsewhere, talked about how the time of history we have come to call the “Cold War” had the entire World, in it’s bi-polar superpower state, keeping that conflict between the “free” and “Communist” factions at the forefront of our issues. He made this point to support his other point that the current religious fratricide we are witnessing today in Iraq (and elsewhere, such as Darfur, but the MSM reports on Iraq almost exclusively), is not something new. It is a bloody legacy of the Middle East and the history of the Sunnis and Shi’ites, begun shortly after the death of Mohammed. Now, tie the two together: Our conflict with the Soviet/Communist “sphere of influence” casued both ourselves and the Communists to maneuver pretty much everybody else as a huge political and sometime geographic, buffer between us, thus surpressing the ancient blood feud of the Muslims from our sight, and, while I’m sure some of it was going on, the tensions between the two groups have been simmering in that “pressure cooker” for the 1945-1989 time frame.

Both “spheres” put strong men in power, which aided in keeping the direct confrontations beneath the surface.

Now, flash back to fall 1987: As I dug further into the history and analysis of this horrible human capability of genocide, we saw many cases of genocide on the African continent, as the European colonists departed. The analysis: The same as the source above: The colonial governments never solved existing conflict of the indigenous populations, then did as it turns out the Cold War did for our era: The “lid” was kept on and when the pressure was released, boy was it ugly.

My $.02: The core local issues need to be dealt with in these circumstances. The issue of by lineage or by selection is now about a is almost 2000 years in the making at this time, so it will sure keep great minds thinking about what to do to end the bloodshed, our troops and thier civilians, too. In this case, how do we convince two major “branches” of Islam to park at a conference center and talk out their differences? The analysis of the Iraq Study Group certainly doesn’t focus on this on this issue, but blames our presence in the region, with a dash of the real estate know as Israel being the salt in the same perceived wound for the violence that originally erupted in the later part of the 7th Century AD.

I think Mr. Baker and the others certainly could have afforded to be much more knowledgable of the conditions we are facing, and forgetting “concensus.”

Genocide: Its history taught me so much about the human condition.

Your Dominant Thinking Style: Exploring

You thrive on the unknown and unpredictable. Novelty is your middle name. You are a challenger. You tend to challenge common assumptions and beliefs. An expert inventor and problem solver, you approach everything from new angles. You show people how to question their models of the world.

H/T: FbL

So, there I was, flat on my back at 20,000 feet…no kiddin’…oops…wrong story and me without the obligatory huge watch (to compensate, ya know), but…it’s open season on trackbacks, so link ’em up!

Last week, I left me “on station” at the gunfire support range at San Celmente, Island, by way of discussion the continualy noise that surrounds you while abaord a ship.

So as it was training, within minutes of checking in on the radio net after maneuvering into the assigned gunnery “box,” of course the observer ahsore had targets for us…”Fire Mission! Troops in the Open! Grid: ….” and so the formatted message went, telling us what, where and some other important details. The plotters surrounding me went to work locating the spot he was adressing, marking our position on the chart and “ded reckoning” (simple time/speed/distance calculation) to show our predicted path of the ship. Once we had the target location plotted, we’d measure the azimuth to the target from the ship’s track and compare that to where the gunfire control system (GFCS) had figured (with its own computer) where the target was. We had to be within a degree of difference, or we’d have to replot and check, which burned valuable time ashore and specifically in the target’s area.

On top of the comparison to the GFCS plot, we also checked with the Ship’s Navigator to make sure his plot tracked with ours. It’s all about accuracy and speed within that. The Gunnery Officer would order the guns loaded and I would announce “plot set!’ if all the navigation data (three separate plots) were within the allowed tolerances. Our readiness would be reported to the spotter, who would give us final clearance to shoot. Usually he would have us fire a single round to see where it landed, then he would pass directions to “adjust the spot, by his best reckoing, to make the next round land on target. Back then the “Mk 1 Mod 0” eyeball and the operator’s calibration were the means of doing this. Today we have fancy laser stuff to tell the observer the distances, accurate to very small distances.

So…when the radio told us to shoot, it was my responsibility to send a standard order to the Gunnery Officer, who would relay it to the gun crew and the gun control console (GCC) operator, who would step on a foot pedal to fire the gun.

In this sequence, I would come to learn the timing from the moment I gave the order to shoot to the time the round was on it’s way. The thumping of the electrohydraulic ammo hoists and the operation of the loader tray and ram, followed by the slamming shut of the large steel breech block became familiar to me, so when we got to exercises requiring rounds to arrive on a target at a specific time, I was able to time my order so the computed time of flight for the rounds was essentially what was measured from the actual shot leaving the barrel. The “latency” was all

As I meantioned last week, the operation of the guns, whether they be the forward or after gun mount, was detectable where I stood in CIC, in the darkened space with dungaree clad sailors and khaki clad chief petty officers and officers, while I learned a deadly trade.

Maybe more specifics next week…but…that’s the short form and worthy of not interfering too much with essential afternoon shopping runs for those of us late present determiners….