Making sure vehicles are mission ready in Basra

The 2228th MP Company arrived in Basra shortly before I did after finishing their mission in Al Anbar Province. They are setting up shop, customizing Camp Charlie that had been utilized by the British. They will be setting up PTTs with the local Iraqi police-police transition training stations. Their role is to train, mentor and advise the local police force. Each morning at roll call the company meets and everyone is told what their job of the day is. I went with a PSD squad (personal security detail) to check on the company’s vehicles at the motor pool making sure they are mission ready. I learned the names of the vehicles and their capabilities. Many of them have recently been beefed up extra ½ steel plate welded on the skins-above and beyond the ¾ steel plate already there. A huge improvement from the unprotected doorless humvees many in the military traveled around in during the early stages of the war. I will get a chance to leave the wire and ride in an armored security vehicle in the New Year, loaded down with Kevlar and my camera gear.

Today's Crusades

I made more preparations for my trip today, though it was hard to concentrate, since there is a major construction project involving masonry going on where I am staying.  

I left the racket the workers were making behind, and headed out into a grey humid day. Daffodils along the bike path made up for the lack of sunshine. I got a second dose of spring on my return trip, while riding through a stretch of blossoming cherry trees, giving me a momentary hallucination that I was in Kyoto, though in reality I was next to the West Side Highway 

Yesterday I saw a film that will be released next week. "Constantine's Sword" a film by Errol Morris featuring  James Carroll as the narrator and screen writer. The film is a combination of his biography and his book about Constantine's Sword, A history of the crusades. I am a fan of James Carroll's writing and thinking, (I read his articles that are often in the Boston Globe at commomdreams.org, a site that posts alternative news from different media outlets) and though I don't think this film is very good (music too schmaltzy, too many obvious establishing shots; the film overall needed a tighter edit) it was a great film to watch all the same.  Carroll put the war on terror in context by reminding me Bush had proclaimed the war on terror to be a crusade. Terminology his PR people had to spin shortly after Bush addressed the nation the day the invasion of Afghanistan began. Bush's proclamation that we had embarked on a new crusade eerily reverberated through the screening room. 

The film is a history lesson on the persecution of the Jews over the last two thousand years and the how the church has been complicit in disotrorting  historic facts that have fueled anti-Semitism. Carroll shows how racism feeds the  fanaticism that threatens the world today- and warns of the danger that comes about when military power and religious fervor are joined together. 

When it comes to war, there is a litany of justifications for murder and other brutal acts committed. I have always questioned the idea of killing in the name of god. This film draws parallels to what is going on today and the crusades, which were full of state/church sanctioned mass murder.  I wonder, if god take sides in war and if he/she really gives people permission to kill.