The things you think about

By lex, on March 29th, 2007

Our conversation below *** on the Code of Conduct and Leading Sailor Turney brought some thoughts back to mind that I hadn’t turned over in quite a number of years.

I had three deployments flying over Iraq enforcing sanctions in the southern no-fly zone between the wars. Each time we went the political situation was a little different. During my first trip up there 1994, we mostly flew two-ship defensive counter-air missions, designed to protect Kuwaiti and the southern Iraqi Shia provinces from air attack by a vengeful Saddamite air force. It was pretty peaceful for the most part, and in fact we used to recce SAM sites by doing target acquisition missions in the threat envelope, vying to see who could bring back the best FLIR video. Crazy when I think about it now, but we’d won the war, hadn’t we?

We didn’t know any better.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex