THIS MODERN WORLD

Earlier this year, as Sgt. Alexander Garcia’s plane took off for home after his tense year of duty in Iraq, he remembered watching the receding desert sand and thinking, I will never see this place again.

Never lasted about 10 months for Sergeant Garcia, a cavalry scout with the First Armored Division who finished his first stint in Iraq in March and is now preparing to return.

— snip —

The change is leaving its emotional mark on thousands of military families. Some family members say the repeated separations have been like some awful waking dream, holding their breath for their soldiers to make it home safely, only to watch them leave once more. Some families who have lost loved ones on repeat tours of duty said they felt a particular ache – a sense that the second trip pushed fate too hard.

Among some of the soldiers themselves, the thought of returning to Iraq carries one puzzling quality: Unlike so many parts of life, in which the second try at anything feels easier than the first, these soldiers say that heading to Iraq is actually more overwhelming the second time around.

“The first time, I didn’t know anything,” Sergeant Garcia said. “But this time I know what I’m getting into, so it’s harder. You know what you’re going to do. You know how bad you’re going to be feeling.”

Story. And Bob Herbert writes on the same topic:

Greg Rund was a freshman at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999 when two students shot and killed a teacher, a dozen of their fellow students and themselves. Mr. Rund survived that horror, but he wasn’t able to survive the war in Iraq. The 21-year-old Marine lance corporal was killed on Dec. 11 in Falluja.

The people who were so anxious to launch the war in Iraq are a lot less enthusiastic about properly supporting the troops who are actually fighting, suffering and dying in it. Corporal Rund was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. Because of severe military personnel shortages, large numbers of troops are serving multiple tours in the war zone, and many are having their military enlistments involuntarily extended.

Troops approaching the end of their tours in Iraq are frequently dealt the emotional body blow of unexpected orders blocking their departure for home. “I’ve never seen so many grown men cry,” said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader who founded Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans.

“Soldiers will do whatever you ask them to do,” said Mr. Rieckhoff. “But when you tell them the finish line is here, and then you keep moving it back every time they get five meters away from it, it starts to really wear on them. It affects morale.”

It’s worth repeating: if there’s no problem with the humvee armor situation, if the question was a plant and the soldier who asked it was just some zombified tool of the liberal media — why did the room break into spontaneous applause when he asked it?

Update from a reader:

Even more glaring than the applause from the soldiers is the ramping up of the Humvee armoring program after the “you go to war with the army you have,” comment. The administration knew that there was a problem, but didn’t act until being publicly called out. Now the post that I work on has their contractors working 6 days a week 12 hour days to get the 3rd ACR armored before they go back to Iraq. As long as they weren’t taking heat, there was no reason to protect the troops, now that they have a red face, they finally “have” to act quickly.

A cartoon from a few years back, relevant once again.

In case you don’t watch much cable news, and this week’s cartoon just leaves you scratching your head:

For most people, Christmas may be a time of peace and joy, but for Bill O’Reilly it’s another chance to wage an us-vs.-them cultural war. O’Reilly and Fox News, along with a cadre of hard-charging right-wing talkers, have declared war on the anti-Christmas crowd, that dangerous mix of radical secularists and school board do-gooders determined to “bring about their own Godless version of this nation,” as Rev. Jerry Falwell wrote in a column published Monday on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com.

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“All over the country, Christmas is taking flak,” O’Reilly recently announced, as he complained about “the anti-Christmas jihad” that’s gripping the nation. “If they could, secularists would cancel Christmas as a holiday. That’s how much they fear the exposition of the philosophy of Jesus.” During his syndicated radio show O’Reilly intoned darkly, “The small minority that is trying to impose its will on the majority is so vicious, so dishonest — and has to be dealt with.”

More.

After Christmas is over, of course, it’ll be back to the college professors.

Dick Morris was on Hannity’s radio show yesterday afternoon, claiming that he is working as a paid political consultant to Ukraine opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. Which illustrates once again why any politician hires Morris at their own peril — he may or may not be a good strategist, but his ego just won’t let him keep quiet about his own role in things. Among other things, Morris claims to have orchestrated the revelation that Yushchenko was poisoned.

One very odd note: Morris also claims — and I’d really emphasize the word “claims” here — that he was approached by “a Republican congressman who shall remain nameless,” who passed along an offer from Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych — if Morris was willing to switch sides, he’d get a million dollars cash, “and that was only a down payment.” (Morris says he declined.) Now the whole story may be bollocks, I have no idea — but if there’s any truth to it, one question immediately occurred to me (but apparently not to Hannity): what Republican congressman is passing along messages from Yanukovych? What American congressman is working behind the scenes for the anti-democratic, dirty tricks, poison-the-opposition candidate preferred by former KGB officers everywhere? What’s up with that?