Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

�

Click here for the Secret Decoder Ring to this issue!

Become a
Paid Mullings Subscriber!

(To join the FREE mailing list or to unsubscribe Click Here)

Persevere

Rich Galen

Friday December 31, 2004

Click here for an Easy Print Version

I think we can agree on this: 2004 was not the best year that ever was.

There was precious little to recommend 2004 as "my favorite year." Election results - In the US, Afghanistan and the Ukraine - pretty much cover the positive news.

In January, when I was in Baghdad, a huge explosion killed dozens of people just outside one of the main gates leading into the Green Zone.

As the year ended a wave of Biblical proportions killed so many people that - that it defies comprehension.

In between it was like the 1959 Kingston Trio song, "The Merry Minuet"

They're rioting in Africa.
They're starving in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Florida;
And Texas needs rain.

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans.
The Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs.
South Africans hate the Dutch;
And I don't like anybody very much.

The secret to getting through a year like 2004, is to allow a year like 2004 to pass.

We can't throw our hands up in dismay. We can't throw in the metaphorical towel and forfeit. We can't curl up into a ball and hide behind the couch.

We have to get back into the game. We have to persevere.

We have to look, not only at what happened, but also what didn't happen.

For instance, there were no attacks in the United States by the enemy. In spite of derisive laughter over the color-coded alerts; in spite of churlish complaints over whether or not to take off our shoes at the airport; in spite of knowing assurances from the Left that we had misplaced our attentions and misspent our assets; the War on Terror - at least for 2004 - was fought somewhere other than on US soil.

When hurricanes hit Florida, the government and its citizens rushed in to help. When floods hit the Midwest the government and its citizens rushed in to help. When forest fires hit the West the government and its citizens rushed in to help.

When soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines were needed anywhere in the world, America's best young men and women rushed in to help.

In January of last year I helped put together a mission to investigate a mass grave site in Southern Iraq. One of the reasons we knew a mass grave site existed was because the people who look at satellite imagery noticed parallel lines in the desert. They were the outlines of long ditches in which thousands of Iraqis, murdered by Saddam, had been buried.

Parallel lines, I was told by the forensic paleontologists who were on the mission, do not exist in nature.

Neither does history run in straight lines. No matter how we might wish for lines to run directly from point "A" to point "B" the world will not oblige.

The secret is to accept the twists and turns of outrageous fortune and then follow the path to a better future.

Last year, at about this time, I had been in Qatar interviewing an airman who had been in Iran, in the desert at that mass grave site and, with Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, in the midst of the massacre just outside the Green Zone gate.

I was feeling a bit down, a year ago, as I wrote about all I had seen that week. But I happened upon a photo I had taken of a flower; a single flower blooming in the desert at the mass grave site in the southern Iraqi desert.

And a year ago, I wrote this right after returning to my desk having photographed the carnage outside the gate:

The danger, on mornings, like this, is that you become discouraged. Maybe this won't work. Maybe the bad guys will win.
Then you look through the photos you've taken over the past 24 hours and come across one taken at the mass grave site which helps you focus on a C-130 flight from a desert base; on people riding on helicopters to help bring closure to mass murders; on the people who work next to you every day.
In the middle of a desert.
In the middle of a mass grave site.
In the middle of absolutely nowhere.
Even in the middle of a war zone;
Life blooms.

All will be well.

Happy New Year.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: The Iraq Travelogue which included this photo, a Mullfoto of bubble gum, and a before-and-after photo of a section of Indonesia struck by the tsunami.

Current Issue | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?