Another year in America and another 10,000 gun deaths, 33 of which have been highlighted this week in Virginia. Funny how when educated white people get blasted it's suddenly front page news. What’s even funnier is that President Bush offers his condolences when he has been a total opponent of gun control. He let the Assault Weapons Ban expire, and has done absolutely nothing to regulate the sale of handguns which were used in the Virginia Tech shootings. His alligator tears are an insult to those who have lost their friends, sons, daughters, and teachers. How many more incidents like this will we go through before we pass some meaningful gun control legislation, with NO sunset provision? How much more of W’s bullshit will we have to listen to? How many more laws will he break before we impeach him? Who the fuck is running this country anyway? One thing is clear: It is not “We the people.”

Speaking of guns, I’m reading Mark Bowden’s book Black Hawk Down. There are lots of guns in it. Surprisingly, the movie stays quite true to the book, but you certainly get to know the characters a bit better. It also illustrates the Somali side of the story, which basically goes like this, “The Americans came with their super-weapons and slaughtered many of our leaders. Some of us are caught in the middle. Then one of their helicopters crashed into my house. Most of us want some payback. Let’s shoot them.” On the American side, it’s a very sad story about bad intelligence, bad planning, mis-understanding our enemy, and poor coordination of forces across multiple branches of the military. It’s similar to the Iran hostage rescue attempt; when you have multiple branches of the military working together, there will always be inter-service rivalry (not to mention different operating procedures), which will short circuit the cooperation needed to pull off the operation. The Black Hawk Down incident had Army Rangers, Delta Force, Navy Seals, and Air Force CSAR medics, all involved in the same operation. And even though there was one commander, things went terribly awry. How that operation was even initially conceived is beyond me. Perhaps it had something to do with a sort-of post cold-war boredom that had everyone in the D.O.D. looking for something to do, so they all got involved in Somalia. But anyway, I'm sure it won’t be the last time that ill-conceived plans result in the deaths of our guys. Look at Iraq.

I’m not saying I know anything about that stuff. It’s pretty easy to sit here in my air-conditioned cube and type away. I would never try to second-guess those commanding the situation or those under fire. It’s a chaotic situation. This quote from the film sums it up nicely:

Hoot: See you're thinking. Don't. Cuz' Sergeant, you can't control who gets hit or who doesn't, or who falls out of a chopper, or why. It ain't up to you. It's just war.