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The new catch-phrase here is OpSec. It means Operational Security. It’s defined as a person or a group of persons not giving out any information that may help the enemies of our country, more or less.
OpSec here is now being meant as ‘everything’ being classified. What do I mean? Take my friend for instance. His day off, and he wants to go take pictures of a few things, more or less still lifes of objects, such as a bench. He gets stopped by no less than 5 people in about an hours time saying that he’s not allowed to take pictures. Why? he asks. OpSec. Hmm, apply opsec to this picture of a dilapidated wooden bench.
Here’s the jist of what Operation OpSec is now it seems. No one is any longer allowed to take pictures. Of anything. Ever. If you take a picture of the Sun, the enemy may find out our secrets and devise a terrible weapon once the secrets are unleashed from an innocent picture. No pictures of the ground, for it may infuriate our enemy because we cover our sand with assorted sizes of gravel. None of benches either, because insurgents may realize that we’re only using wood for common objects and not high-tech carbon fibers that disperse radar signatures of the people waiting for the shuttle. No taking pictures of lights, for one may find out that we use them. No taking pictures of birds, because they may extrapolate the food they eat out of the garbage, then use that to find out what we eat, so as to possibly destroy the worlds supply of chickens. Do not take pictures of your friends, because they are classified, along with their surroundings, and their uniforms. Don’t buy camera’s at the PX, for that is a direct violation of OpSec. If you somehow get past Comrade OpSec monitor of camera’s at the PX, you still are not authorized to ever use that piece of equipment, until you, the individual, have become declassified.
Don’t talk to anybody, about anything, ever. You, the individual, are classified. All knowledge contained within your head is classified, no matter the source. Your entire being is classified, to include every sound emitted.
Do not stand anywhere for longer than 12 seconds. If you do, it will be assumed that you are taking notes on your surroundings and trying to sell them on EBay to bad guys around the world.
Do not use Wireless internet in any way, because insurgents may figure out how to fix 802.11x finding wardriving interceptor guidance packages on their home made rockets or mortars to take out your computer.
Do not refer to OpSec by it’s real word. It is a higher being within itself. Documetation refering to it’s actual being are to be held somewhere that is currently undisclosed.
This message is probably classified.
Perceptions
This is about as akin to masterbation than anything else I can do. Especially in public. It’s mostly for me to vent something, to give a wholly one sided perspective. Not unlike watching porn. I don’t come with the “Bum Chika Bown Nown” music though, so maybe I don’t add that amount of excitement. I’m not christening a girl just trying to be a Star by leaving a mushroom bruise on her forehead either, right after glueing her eyes closed.
I am entirely too bored. I study a certain amount of geek stuff everyday, though sometimes I’m so bored that it’s hard to get motivated for that. It makes me more bored because my Super has mellowed out about 1000x’s more in just the past week. I’m not sure really what’s going on there. I heard that he flipped out on someone that he really shouldn’t have, so that may be the reason. Hell, what I heard about what he did, I’d never venture to be so bold, and I get accused of pushing the envelope. That is just a reminder to think before you act. Engage grey material, over.
The past week, I have wanted to get up in a bird and jump again. My last jump last August had me shaken up quite a bit. Had me shaken enough to down a 6 pack in about half an hour at the drop zone. It took me a couple weeks to get that out of my system. Ahh, it’s pure excitement though, and the reason I want to get back up there.
My last jump. It was my 4th that day. I had a bad feeling about it the whole time. My buddy went that day, and that was his first jump. I did 3 real quick hop and pops while he was in ground school. There was a ton of other students there, so getting afternoon bird time is hard those days. Best to get in early, jump, and enjoy the rest of the day. I was telling my instructor that I wanted a smaller chute, because the one he had me using I thought was a bit too big. It opened very slowly, and was as manueverable as a 747. I’m babbling….
I started with the packing. I’m still relatively new to packing my own rig, and I was filling out my pack card to get certified as a packer. The first thing I noticed was my right risers twisted in some sort of fashion that I couldn’t figure out. I ran the risers about 4 times, and they still had a twist that just didn’t make sense. The wing was straight, the left risers were good…just the right. I called over one of the jump-masters to take a look at it. He said it was a bit odd, but it wasn’t anything to really be worried about. It’ll straighten out when it deploys. Ok, good enough for me. (This may make a lot of people nervous I realize, but in the Army, we are taught that you have to trust your equipment, and those who know. After a while, you realize it’s right most of the time, so it becomes natural to do so.) I start the folding of the wing, rolling it up for the rig, so forth. Since it was a big wing, it’s a tight fit, so when I was packing it up, I probably pushed it a bit too hard on the right side to make it fit. It seemed to me that it shouldn’t affect the opening really. All good, I get it inspected, close up the rig, final inspection by me and then a jump master. Good to go. Wait for a bird.
That was the first time I hadn’t been the first one out the door, that jump. That made me uncomfortable for some reason. We jump out of Cessna’s, so that makes me a bit nervous anyways hehe. We were riding up, I was going over the sequence of steps over and over, peeking out the window to judge altitude, then looking at my altimeter to see how close I was, and a hundred other things. We get to altitude, and Mike gets ready for his first jump. He gets his feet out, hands on the wing strut, and slides out. The jumpmaster gives him the thumbs up, he lets go, drops, the plane shudders slightly, it’s a good jump. We circle around again, I crawl up to the door. Now, this whole time, I’ve had a bit of a pit in my gut, something just bugging me. I have no idea what it is, I can’t figure out why I’d be nervous, more than usual anyways. This time though, man, I just didn’t have a warm and fuzzy at all. The jump master gives me the go-ahead, I get my feet out, hands on the strut. I crawl out, flying Superman style on the wing. This is by far the coolest thing ever. Anyways….he gives me the thumbs up, I nod. And hang there. He gives me the thumbs up, I nod. Hang there. Then I say Lets Go, Fuck It, drop. Arch. Look right side handle, left hand to back of my head, right hand grab handle, pull, arch, count 1-2, clear burble, wing deploys. It opens hard, a lot harder than usual. I wondered if I packed this thing too loose, look up. Left side open, right side closed, slider at the top, wedged. Fuck Fuck Fuck. I grab toggles, pull left half down to try and stop my hard left turn. Grab right toggle, and pull the living hell out of it a thousand times. Look at my altimeter, dropped 500 feet already, look at my reserve handle, not yet. Look up, right side closed, slider at the top, pull right toggle a hundred times. Fucking Drop Goddamnit! Look at altimeter, toggling the hell out of the right side. 1000 feet down, still have 3000 feet. Check reserve handle, still there, not yet. Look up, spinning harder right, give full left toggle, getting a little line twist, fuck, no good. Shit Shit Shit! Pull right toggle a thousand more times, look at altimeter, 1500 feet, spinning 30 degrees out left side, lets go. Reserve time. Release toggles, and Pow! wing opens. Look up, slider half way up. Grab risers, kick out the line twist, toggle, slider drops. 2000 feet drop, 2000 to go. I take a very lazy ride down, and have the hardest landing ever. I flare about 10 feet too high, realize this about 5 feet from the ground, release flare, and land a bit rough. Still on my feet though.
I was pissed at myself for riding it down with a stuck slider, line twist that bad, and a half deployed chute. I’m too damn stubborn to give up easily though.
I debriefed, just being a bit numb. I did recommend pulling the rig off the line though, have it looked at. Then I went to my truck, grabbed a luke warm 6 pack of Sam, and drank it down. I’ve never had cotton mouth that bad.
I realized that besides not cutting away and going on reserve, I did everything else right. I didn’t panic, I was aware of my altitude and was prepared to pull my reserve.
Anyways, I’m ready to jump again.
The Tao of Soldiering
Learn to Suffer
II.
You are not Special.
Know your Place.
III.
Release your Attachments
…
Soldiering is difficult. But for soldiers with the proper attitude, there can be great fulfillment from this work. To find peace and contentedness from a job that may seem intuitively chaotic, you simply have to find the tao of soldiering and embrace it.
For soldiers who are nauseated by terms like ‘embrace’, ‘peace’, and ‘contentedness’, and don’t know how to pronounce ‘tao’ (it’s like ‘dow’, as in Dow Jones, and can be translated loosely to mean ‘the way’) let me put this in terms a grunt can understand. Being a soldier is to live in a world of shit. You’re constantly surrounded by assholes, you have to endure an unending amount of bullshit from your leadership, military regulations and paperwork, stupid training missions, and in the end of it all you’ll most likely get shit on by your own government sooner or later when they fuck up your pay and benefits. And to top it all off, you might actually have to go into combat at some point which also means you’ll spend a lot of time in another world of shit (i.e. Iraq) and possibly get your balls blown off by some insurgent asshole who is too afraid to fight you face to face so he explodes jury-rigged artillery rounds next to your Humvee while he’s outside the maximum effective range of most your weapons systems. Soldiering just plain sucks. From the pogues who cook my food and do my laundry to the Apache pilots and the Green Berets who do all the Hollywood stuff, our lives are in a constant state of suck. But there are soldiers who have found a way to not only endure it all, but to enjoy it. Contentment, happiness, fulfillment, rewardingness, peace, meaning, purpose, zen, the way, the middle path, nirvana, the big nothing, whatever you want to call it, it’s there if you are unafraid to see it.
Learn to Suffer
Most everything a soldier does entails discomfort. As a soldier, you will discovery an encyclopedic number of ways to suffer. The suffering is physical, psychological, and emotional. It can also be financial, legal, marital, and any other word you can give the ‘-al’ suffix to. There is nowhere you can go to avoid suffering. There is no reprieve, no solace. It is unavoidable and inevitable. You can either cry about it, or you can just learn how to suck it up.
One of the first things an effective soldier learns during Basic Training is that physical endurance has nothing to do with physical ability. Your body gives you the illusion that you are only able to do what is within your physical limitations. Say for example your muscles are only strong enough to do fifty pushups. This limitation is very convincing. You believe that you can’t do more than what your muscles and bones are physically capable of doing. In reality the only limitation is the will of the soldier. You probably think that if you lift weights and get stronger muscles, you will be able to do seventy pushups. This is true, but you aren’t able to do more pushups because your muscles are stronger, you are able to do more pushups because your stronger muscles are a convincing illusion to allow yourself the will to do more. The truth is, with will alone you can do seventy pushups, or ten thousand for that matter. Accomplishing more than you physically should be able to is referred to as “using the force.” If the Jedi metaphor for describing “will” doesn’t work for you, then use the Christian one. In the New Testament (Matthew 17:20), Jesus said that with the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains. So whether you’re raising an X-Wing fighter out of a swamp or parting the Red Sea, the concept is the same: you simply need the will.
It is not necessary for the novitiate to buy into any of this. But when he’s into the twelfth mile of a forced road march carrying nearly his own body weight in gear, he learns that there is a landscape of pain he never knew existed. Once you’ve learned that there is no real limit to what you can endure, you’re on your way to understanding that you can do just about anything so long as you allow yourself to have the will to do it. And the easiest way to learn this concept is to suffer and realize you can endure it, then as you reach a new level of painful experiences, you are able to begin working on the next level. Eventually you learn that there is virtually no end to the kinds of pain mortality can make available to you, and you continue to learn that there is no discomfort you can not overcome. The process of learning to suffer is always ongoing. No matter how much you’ve suffered, there is always more to suffer.
You are not Special
As Americans and westerners, we value individuality more than just about anything. Individuality is at the core of our concepts about freedom. The protection of the individual is vital to a free society. But while the civilian is the “individual”, the soldier is the “protection”.
As a society, we’ve gotten really good at fostering individual development. As a soldier, trying to incorporate the idea that individuality must be discarded is usually a very hard thing to accept at first. Because of basic psychological self-preservation instincts and a million beliefs that have been socialized into us from the moment of our birth, we protect our “ego” more than anything. You are who you think you are. You spend your life developing an image in your head of who you are. You have a name, you live in a certain place, you have a certain profession, you have tastes, opinions, preferences, druthers. In terms of a capitalistic society, we are nothing more than consumers. So we define our individuality by what we consume. (Sometimes the consumer becomes disillusioned by this, so he simply adjusts his tastes to something that more easily will identify him as an individual. “I’m not into Metallica anymore, they’re too mainstream. I’m into The Mars Volta now.”) There are eight million individuals in New York City. I was one of them. Like in college where the second question asked after “what’s your name” is “so what’s your major”, in New York City the only two things anyone wants to know when they first meet you are “so what do you do” and “where do you live”. I was a paratrooper and a programmer who lived in Nolita. I doubt there has ever been anyone who could say that. So I’m an individual, right?
In ten thousand years, no one is going to know who you were. Right now, while you are living, you don’t even really matter. You live in Ohio, you work at a hardware store, you drive a Saturn, you have two kids, you send your mom a Mother’s Day card every year, you have a beautiful lawn. You’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you have a loft in Chelsea and a summer home on Fire Island, you come from old money, you visit your mom every Christmas who lives in the home where you grew up an only child in New England, you were on the cover of Forbes and Out in the same month. Does any of this really matter? Someday you’re going to die and they’ll throw dirt on your grave just like everyone else’s. Someday the sun will expand and consume every living thing on earth. Someday the universe will collapse in on itself then explode into a brand new universe. Even these events don’t really matter, they’re just things that happen. So whether you prefer creamy or chunky is of such absurdly little consequence, the near meaninglessness of it is mind-boggling. Accept that you are of no consequence, that you are essentially nothing. In a universe of infinite universes that will ultimately return to the singularity from whence they all came, you are as inconsequential as my peanut butter preference.
Know your Place
As a corollary to knowing that you are not special, you must also know your place. Unlike the private kindergarten you attended in Woodstock where everyone was special and an equal, even Timmy in his wheelchair and Tyrone the black kid, in the military there is a hierarchy because it is the easiest way to get things done. I spent an enormous amount of my military career as a private. I took out the trash and mopped the floor. Now that I’m a sergeant, I want you to shut the fuck up and continue sweeping, is that clear? Everyone has a job and a role, and by staying in your lane, work can be accomplished more efficiently. Imagine if your car’s fuel injection system decided it wanted to start managing the anti-lock braking functions? The compartmentalization of tasks exists so you can be free to concentrate on your own set of tasks. When I raid a building, I know how I’m going to breech the door, I know how to clear the rooms, I know how to handle detainees. While I’m doing this there are Apaches circling overhead. I don’t know how to do their job, and that’s okay. I need air support and they provide it. The intelligence guys interrogate the detainees and come up with more targets for my platoon to raid. Remember, you are Soldier Nobody, not General Patton. Concentrate on your job and you will be able to perform it well. As an Infantryman, your job is to shoot people. Don’t worry about Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, or Michael Moore. If your target is moving, remember to lead your point of aim a bit.
Release your Attachments
Suffering is caused by attachments. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you will learn how to overcome suffering. As Americans and westerners, we love our stuff. How much did you love Christmas as a kid? I remember thinking that the entire purpose of life was Christmas. That’s when I got a whole new batch of toys, because as a kid, all the mattered to me was toys. To this day, I am still in awe at the fact that the feeling Christmas gave me is one without parallel. There have only been a handful of experiences in my life that are on par with how I felt about Christmas as a child. But toys break, they get lost, and eventually you lose interest in them. As an adult, what is more of a pain in the ass then your car? Or upkeep of your house? You can get a lot of satisfaction from stuff, I won’t deny how much I love going to Barnes & Noble or to the music store. But you don’t get real happiness from material possessions. And attachments go well beyond the things you can own. Relationships you have with people can be attachments. In fact, I dare say that there are more relationships in the world based on insecurity and attachment than love. And the ultimate attachment is your own ego. Your sense of ‘self’ is something you cling to, because as we already discussed, it’s who you think you are. The linchpin to the the tao of soldiering is freeing yourself from your attachments. The less you own, the better. The more stuff you own is more stuff to worry about while you’re deployed. The girl you were dating isn’t going to wait for you for eighteen months, so just get over her and move on. Even if you are in a healthy and strong relationship with your wife, your marriage will not be the same when you get back. Like the relationship you have with any of your loved ones, it won’t necessarily go bad, but it will certainly be different when you get back. There are several guys in my platoon who missed births of their children. This affects them and I’m sure it affects their wives. And in turn it will affect their marriage. Crappy marriages don’t handle this sort of this well and they will end. Good marriages will weather it, but will evolve into something different. Either way, guys who are attached to the way things were, will be miserable. And whatever you thought about yourself, ideas you cling to that you consider part of your identity, may very well change after you’ve been around some good ‘ole fashion death and destruction. Attachments are bad. The less you have the better. Real freedom is having no attachments. Only then are you able to have happiness. When you feel happiness for it’s own sake, and not because of some external mechanism, you have found the tao.
