Proof that Santa is a Marine

1. He manages to fit presents for all the world's children neatly into a single sack.
2. He humps that sack all over the world.
3. He conducts airborne operations and lands silently in people's fireplaces.
4. He demands pogey bait (milk and cookies)
5. Blackboots. And they're shiny.
6. Whitesleeves.
7. He still relies on animals to get around.
8. Every time he's on Christmas leave, he grows a crazy beard, gains weight and pretends he's in the Coast Guard.
9. Barfights with the Easter Bunny.
10. He's not welcome in Middle Eastern states.

Ductus Exemplo

I am often asked what it is I do as an officer in the Marine Corps. I'll usually laugh and tell them that I work 16 or 17 hours a day doing paperwork, because that's what I'm doing right now during in-processing at The Basic School, a 6-month long post-commissioning officer training school unique to the Marine Corps.

But that isn't what officers do. This is a snapshot in the timeline of an officer's life. A Marine Second Lieutenant, once he goes through TBS (The Basic School) and his MOS (military occupational specialty) school, will enter the fleet as a platoon commander. He will be charged with between 10 and 80 Marines, depending on his MOS.

When I say he is charged with those Marines, I mean it in much the same way Christians consider God to be charged with humans. He will have absolute authority over those Marines. When they wake up, when they are allowed to leave for the day, or even WHETHER they are allowed to leave for the day. He can tell them what to carry in their pockets, or what not to carry. Or not to carry anything. He makes sure they eat, and he eats last. He makes sure they are up in time for morning formation, and he's the first one up and the first one on deck. He makes sure they get their sleep, and he is last in the rack. To put it simply, the Marine Officer is responsible for every single thing his Marines do and everything they fail to do. He is responsible for their welfare and their discipline, their financial turmoil and their love life. If a Marine gets a speeding ticket, the platoon commander counsels him or disciplines him. Anything that can affect mission success must be dealt with, and a good platoon commander is the shining example of what those Marines should be. It is enshrined in the motto of OCS, Officer Candidates School - Ductus Exemplo. Leadership by Example.

Few understand the scope of it going in, and even I can't put my head around it until I am charged with those Marines. That is why we get put through the hardest introductory military training in the US, and why, unlike the other services, we undergo 6 months of further training in the art and science of being a rifle platoon commander in combat. Every Marine is a rifleman, even if he ends up a cook; every Marine Officer is a rifle platoon commander, even if he ends up a Judge Advocate or a pilot. There was a medal of honor recipient in World War II, a Marine fighter pilot named Captain Elrod who got shot down in the Pacific. He landed on the ground, picked up a platoon, and led them into battle as a provisional platoon commander. This is what we do. This is why we train the way we do.

And not every Marine Officer lives up to the standard. There are plenty of lieutenants who show up to work late, stay in their office, never PT (physically train) with their Marines or interact with them or give them classes on how to manage their finances or how to run a vehicle checkpoint, never take them to the range to shoot, and go home early, leaving their enlisted staff to run the platoon unsupervised. There are few of us, so there is little oversight of how an officer runs his platoon. It requires personal discipline. We get saluted out of respect for the job we do, and we return that salute out of respect for the job our subordinates do. But that salute must be earned every day. 16, 17 hour workdays? Normal. Get used to it. Better hope you have an understanding wife (most don't - the divorce rate for the Marines is around 80%). Our student company commander at TBS got no more than an hour of sleep a night, for the last 2 weeks. We are the Marines because we accept no less than the best, especially out of our officers. We have to be better, because we lose men when we aren't. Simple as that.

Why I Fight

I am currently in week 9 of 10 in Officer Candidates School for the US Marine Corps (take two).

Today, I nearly lost my fingers to frostbite. We ran the endurance course, a 3 and a half mile utilities, boots, wargear and rifle run through the Quantico forest trails. It includes many obstacles, including low-crawls and high-crawls through mud-water and running through two fords. It was 26 degrees out (with windchill) when we ran it at 0700, and the water was 48 degrees. There was ice forming on the tops of the rivers. The rifle transfers cold easily, and we ran it without gloves or beanies, so our fingers quickly grew numb. Then past numb. I literally lost the use of my hands. I had to sling my rifle across my back for most of it, and at the cargo-net wall, an obstacle we climb that reaches 25-30 feet in the sky, I had to use the crooks of my elbows to climb, because my fingers couldn't bend to grip the rope.

It was miserable, to put it mildly. At the end, it actually hurt to warm my hand up, they were so cold. Luckily, I suffered no injuries.

My friends asked me what it is about the Marine Corps that drives a person like me to endure such misery. The classic answer is patriotism and country and God if you were so foolish as to believe in such a thing. Those are on the checklist, sure. But they are not the reason I serve.

I serve because nowhere else do you meet the caliber of men (and women) that serve in the Marines. That very endurance course I ran this morning - one of my squadmates came in as one of the fastest in the platoon. He could have rushed inside and warmed up in the shower. Instead, he stayed outside in the below-freezing temperatures in his skivvie shirt and shorts (still wet and muddy) and flip-flops and helped the platoon organize laundry and clean their gear so it could dry. He was the first in, and only got in the shower after about half the platoon showed up and someone relieved him after showering.

He gave up a lucrative career as a medical physicist (he has a Master's degree) in order to serve in the Marines as an officer. You just don't meet people like that in the civilian world. He isn't alone in distinction. My rackmate is a lawyer, passed the bar in Pennsylvania, and is now trying to go infantry (the roughest of the toughest), despite the fact that the Marines have a lawyer program. Nearly everyone in my platoon has a story or a reason to not be a Marine. All chose the Corps. This service demands this caliber of people. Already we have lost half our training company to injuries, failure to adapt, or failure in leadership, academics or PT. The reason for this uncompromising standard is clear. In the words of General Lejeune, a Commandant of the Marine Corps, "the resources we expend in war is human lives." None but the finest would do.

It takes a great deal of personal commitment. For Infantry Marines like me, it requires giving up time with friends, family, and essentially having no love life. If we're not in deployment, we're in pre-deployment training or post-deployment training. The hours are long and the days are many. The field ops last for weeks and months. You give up a part of yourself - the comfortable part - to become Superman for a few years.

You don't make friends in the Corps. You make brothers. You serve for Country and Corps, but that is not why you fight. You fight for the men on your left and your right. Not in any self-sacrificing way. In the manner of Howard Roark when he declared, "I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you."

Ooh-rah.

Standing up to Pakistan

Obama said something tonight that I'm not even sure *he* understands in terms of importance. He said that if we knew the location of key terrorists in Pakistan (such as bin Laden), and Pakistan was reluctant to act, he would order a strike in Pakistan.

McCain quickly attacked him for political naivete, saying that you just don't "say" that kind of stuff. Instead, he implied, you send your black ops forces to take care of it quietly.

This is exactly the kind of thinking we do not need in the White House. Defeating Islamic terrorism doesn't just mean having the will to send forces wherever they lurk. Both parties, I'm sure, are willing to send the invisible special forces to do the work of the nation where it's interests are threatened.

Defeating Islamic terrorism also means *standing up* to them. That means that we do not kill them quietly in the still of the night, denying any action on our part. These are the acts of political cowards who are not morally strong enough to stand up and say firmly, "We don't care if you ARE our ally, if you don't deal with terrorism, WE WILL." Standing up for freedom means proudly declaring that our free existence is a worthy goal that we are willing to fight for, even if that means fighting our so-called allies who take our money with one hand and fund terrorism with the other.

In this debate, Obama wins.

My new favorite quote, from Casino Royale

African Thug: Do you believe in God, Mr. Le Chiffre?

Mr. Le Chiffre: No...I believe in a reasonable rate of return.

The Marine

(4:57:35 PM) Nader: so i just saw the movie "The Marine"
(4:57:46 PM) Gary Hagins: how was it
(4:58:24 PM) Nader: holy god, why does hollywood keep using the military to make movies that are completely and utterly unrelated to the military?
(4:58:57 PM) Nader: just like "Annapolis", which was supposed to be about the Naval Academy and somehow ended up as a mediocre boxing film
(4:59:03 PM) Gary Hagins: lol
(4:59:05 PM) Nader: this had nothing to do with the marines
(4:59:46 PM) Gary Hagins: not surprising I guess
(4:59:49 PM) Gary Hagins: I have never heard of the movie
(5:00:26 PM) Nader: it was about one guy who was kicked out of the marine corps because i guess he was on god-mode for his entire tour of iraq, with never-ending ammo and the ability to survive a thousand bullets flying at him from all angles
(5:00:34 PM) Nader: that was like the first 5 minutes of it
(5:00:48 PM) Nader: the rest of it is entirely unrelated to anything in the marines
(5:01:34 PM) Gary Hagins: lol
(5:01:59 PM) Nader: he ends up in some shit security job, and somehow his wife gets kidnapped by crazed and ludicrously well-armed jewel thieves (i shit you negative, they blew up a cop car with an RPG after pummeling it with about 500 rounds of a machine gun with never-ending ammo
(5:02:47 PM) Gary Hagins: lol
(5:02:54 PM) Gary Hagins: ahhh never ending ammo
(5:03:26 PM) Nader: after they explode a gas station, the underground gas tanks obviously needing no oxygen to spontaneously explode like a 1000-lb bomb, he chases them in a police camaro
(5:03:32 PM) Nader: lots of those around, i guess
(5:04:02 PM) Gary Hagins: lol
(5:04:03 PM) Gary Hagins: hahahah
(5:04:46 PM) Nader: they riddle his camaro with at least 2000 rounds, and not only does he never once get hit, but his car, despite the fact that it is at this point swiss cheese, continues to work, as all camaros would in such a situation
(5:05:12 PM) Gary Hagins: of course!
(5:06:02 PM) Nader: finally, the camaro flips over the hood of the suburban the bad guys had stolen and over a cliff, except they riddle the underside with bullets and it explodes, safely delivering our Marine to a ledge where he hangs precariously
(5:07:13 PM) Nader: then they go to a house by the river, where they fight for awhile, and it explodes too for some reason. except the explosion is for some reason much larger than the gas station explosion.
(5:07:58 PM) Nader: the bad guy at one point is asked what the hell happened to foil his insidious plan? "A Marine came" he bitches.
(5:08:07 PM) Gary Hagins: lol
(5:08:09 PM) Gary Hagins: ahahahahahah
(5:08:20 PM) Nader: as a Marine, I can tell you that we go through this shit on a day-to-day. gets fucking annoying
(5:08:31 PM) Gary Hagins: lol
(5:09:55 PM) Nader: seriously, the sheer amount of C-4 that gets exploded near us in a life-threatening but just-far-enough-away-to-throw-us-safely-into-a-wall way is staggering. we're not even sure where it all comes from
(5:10:39 PM) Nader: i think i'm going to use this rant as a blog post

O Brothier, were ard thow?...

My brother fancies himself a writer, at least insofar that he occasionally posts notes on facebook that are totally deep, man. The problem is, his writing is the most atrocious abomination ever published by the Internet (and that Internet, she's a dirty whore - she'll publish anybody). Here's an example of his latest masterpiece:

there's a lot expected of us and a lot we expect of others... is it really necessary? why can't we jus be who we are and what we wanna be and do what we wanna do with no worries, no fears, no living up to expectations?

The first thing we notice is that he never capitalizes anything. Or, if you're a fast reader, the first thing you'll notice is that what he's writing about is fucking stupid. If everyone decided to "jus be who we are" (sp) without expectations of what you want to be in the future, nobody would become anything. No expectations would mean I would never expect to become America's one-man terrorist wrecking crew. We would just sit and stare. Watching TV, even, involves expectations of entertainment. And having expectations of others is the only way to make friends. I expect value from a friend, otherwise I wouldn't have reason to associate with him.

But we were criticizing his grammar, right? Don't use the term "wanna" in anything. Makes you sound like a preteen complaining about her period.

that question is a lot harder to answer than one can expect... it's a number of different factors, whether it's family values or traditions, religion, heritage, race, culture, roots, where you're born, brought up, raised, friends, family, co-workers, jobs, school, career, social norms, society, government, laws, life, the way the world is and works is expected and expects you to follow and everything is gonna happen this way and that way and you're gonna do this and that and then realize that you're doing it wrong or you're not part of everything else and you must live up to expectations to fit in and so everything can be cool, rite?...

Good god, the listing. MAKE IT STOP! MAKE. IT. STOP!! I think that's the longest most rambling "sentence" ever devised on Earth. And he decides to finish off what's left of the English language by ending with an ambivalent question mark followed by an ellipse. Cuz he cool like dat, yo. When most people say something along the lines of "it's a number of different factors," they usually don't try to fit all possible factors in a single sentence. Here's an example of good listing: "TheCounterTerrorist killed a nun, a priest, and a terrorist, among others on Tuesday." The "among others" encompasses all the hundreds of other people I presumably killed on your average Tuesday. I do not take the time to name each and every one, because I realize that even with something as panty-wetting as me killing terrorists, the women stop swooning and start yawning after the fifth terrorist named. The worst part of his listing is that it's anti-climactic. You expect such a monstrous list to have an orgasmic finish, but it just kind of peters out at the end with a feeble quellipse.

This is how he ends this crap.

why not do what feels right and feels good and makes u happy and forget about all those expectations...

...expect the unexpected...

WHAT?? What does "...expect the unexpected..." have to do with ANYTHING he has just said? Using cliches to end an essay is nice (when you were in grade school), but at least let it agree with the subject matter. You just spent an entire essay deposing the myth that expectations are a valuable commodity, and now you end your bullshit by telling us to EXPECT something? And doing what "feels right and feels good and makes u (sp) happy" is tantamount to hedonism, outside the context of an appropriate moral system (objectivism).

I'm not sure how it is that I came out of the same womb as this guy, but let me tell you - I've been denying it like the holocaust since day one.

Letters

Your sweet letters keep safe in my pack,

Nestled between my e-tool and that damn flak,

Tender whispers of your deepest satin passions,

Crushed beneath a mountain of military rations.

A rough place for such gentle prose,

Wrapped in a waterproof with my extra clothes,

Quiet reminders of your soft caress,

Weigh down my shoulders on this military crest.

It is a soldier's lot to love and leave,

Off to war 'til Christmas Eve,

We made passionate love on that bittersweet night,

I kissed you soft and boarded my flight.

Now I sit in this foxhole, for a precious night's sleep,

Knowing back home you see the bad news and weep,

The bullets keep coming, my body still bleeds,

But this hell seems to fade with each letter I read.

Copyright 2008 Nader W Badri

Warrior's Woman

He boards his plane alone, whispering no bitter uncertain goodbyes, kissing no tearful girlfriend. It is better this way, he tells himself. No attachments to lose his focus on, no wives to cheat on him, no one to hurt if he returns in a flag-draped coffin. But his boots fall heavy on the catwalk, and his heart echoes hollow in his chest. He is fearless – not because he is brave or strong, but because he has nothing so valuable to live for that he would fear for his life. And what good is a girl to a warrior? Here one day, gone the next. The only girlfriend is the long-distance girlfriend who doesn't remember his face, but sounds nice and innocent in the letters she sometimes sends. But still we hump on, and get dumped on, and take it all in stride, always hold our bearing and never lose our pride. We stuff pictures of long-lost loves and those who never knew we loved them and yearned for them in our packs, and we hump our dreams of what life could be, someday, if a warrior's woman exists.

Copyright 2008 Nader W Badri