Thanks, vets!

My heartfelt thanks to our former and current servicemembers.

I will think of you today.

I. Did not. Have. Postal relations. WIth that mailer.

[the formatting is a little weird. This started out as a comment but was too big for blogger.com to accept. D'oh!]

A commenter (Mark) identifying himself as Mr. Harcrow has taken issue with the content of my [original] post. Since he deleted the comment I will not repost it to comment on it.

I will try to summarize and address his concerns. I hope to do so fairly.


1. I have the facts wrong.

My response: I look forward to correction in any factual errors I have made.


2. Misrepresenting oneself as the VA is wrong.

My response: Well, I agree. I will point out that I did not claim SMI was misrepresenting themselves as the VA. Readers can make their own judgement about that. The scan of the actual mailer, with the Seal of the United States, the words "Verterans Affairs" and "Official notice", combined with a total absence of a business name does not seem purpose-built for transparency or clarity.

BTW, it is not entirely clear to me that the Seal is lawfully usable in that manner:

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 33 > § 713
§ 713. Use of likenesses of the great seal of the United States, the seals of the President and Vice President, the seal of the United States Senate, the seal of the United States House of Representatives, and the seal of the United States Congress
(a) Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or the seal of the United States Congress, or any facsimile thereof, in, or in connection with, any advertisement, poster, circular, book, pamphlet, or other publication, public meeting, play, motion picture, telecast, or other production, or on any building, monument, or stationery, for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

3. I (Mark) have not sent any email or mailer advertising a rate reduction.

My response: I didn't say you did, nor did I say you generated the mailer at all. The mailer itself has the words "rate reduction" on it. The readers may decide for themselves whether or not an advertisement with the words emblazoned with the words "rate reduction" is, _prima facie_, an advertisement for rate reduction. The rate reduction aspect seems to be the smallest of the problems of this mailer, anyhow.


4. I assume you searched for the mortgage company, found my name, and thought I sent the mailer to you.

My response: Close. Since no business name was given I searched for the address, found the company at that address (SMI), found another page related to SMI (http://www.vamortgageconnection.com/contact.php) by address and email, which had Mr. Harcrow's SMI email address on it.

To be fair, the site referenced above no longer gives the 4230 LBJ address and no longer lists the SMI email address. This, combined with some of the content of Mr. Harcrow's removed comment, suggest he has moved on to greener pastures. I accept this, even though the SMI page still lists him as a staff member:
http://www.smimortgage.net/StaffProfiles.aspx?ID=308844

I did not claim you sent the mailer. I did claim:
* the mailer claimed to come from the 4230 LBJ address
* where SMI claims to reside,
* where your company/site VA Mortgage Connection claimed to reside (now changed)
* and on the VAMC site MH's SMI-based email address was given.

That is the sum total of my claims directly or tangentially related to Mr. Harcrow.

5. Deceptive practices are wrong; slander in this type of forum is wrong.

My response: Deceptive practices are disagreeable and ultimately unproductive. Slander is illegal, which is why I didn't do it. The phrase Truth is an absolute defense come to mind. If you believe any of the facts in my post are incorrect, point out the counterfactual information and I will correct it. The approach you are taking appears to be "You claim I did this. I didn't do this, the other people in my office did it." Fine with me. I never claimed you personally did it. I claimed your email address was on a VA-related website related to SMI.

BTW, the TDSML complaint link on your contact page is STILL broken. Specfically, it's missing the http:// prefix so it looks like a relative URL to the server. Your webmaster will know what this means.

random thoughts about Veterans Day

Some thoughts about Veterans Day.

I normally don't think that much, consciously at least, about military service. I don't worship the military, I am not a flag waver and I don't have a subscription to Soldier of Fortune. My hair is buzzed off but mainly out of convenience and the effects of helmet-hair when it is longer.

For the purposes of this screed I will say army and soldier because that is my experience. Feel free to substitute other branches of service and words like "sailor, marine, airman" where appropriate.

What society "owes" veterans

1. Foremost -- not to use the military's force without declaring war and without a plan to get in and to get out.
2. Adequate post-combat decompression time for soldiers so they can re-adapt to the rest of society that is not at war.
   
3. Take care of active-duty soldier with adequate training, services, and materiel.
4. Take care of veterans by living up to the agreement made at the time of their enlistment: educational benefits, loans, medical, etc. We as a country don't have to agree to this kind of contract, but once we have agreed to it and enlisted the soldiers they are entitled.
5. If you catch me after a few beers I might start talking about mandatory national service. This gets my Libertarian friends started whispering words like "ostracism" and "excommunication".

What veterans "owe" society

1. appropriate use of benefits mentioned above. We need to steward these resources wisely.
2. humility
3. an honest-as-possible accounting of what military life is like, if asked. There are things that are not appropriate to share based on the audience, national security, discretion etc.
   

Hoo-ahh
The most striking thing about our national assessment of the military is that the most "hoo-aah", rabidly pro-military folks are folks that never served. There is a mystique about the military that can be quickly cured by actually joining the military. I hear they are still recruiting if you're interested.

Note that I am not saying everyone should enlist[0]; I'm saying that if you don't enlist just see the military for what it is and not as some glorified (or denigrated) construct.


Cold Warriors
I have an idea kicking around about the difference between Old Army types, current army coldiers, and Cold Warriors. I won't get that done tonight but I think it's a topic worthy of discussion.

Schoolkids
when I am in the classroom I sometimes find myself thinking "these kids need boot camp". Boot camp is a crash course in self-reliance, teamwork, and self-discipline. It teaches you what is possible, what you can do. Boot camp is mental. Sometimes the kids ask me if I was ever in the military. When I answer some young fellow[1] immediately asks one of two questions:

1. "did you ever kill anybody?"
2. "how many different ways do you know to kill somebody?"

These questions indicate the students fundamentally misunderstand the role of the military. There is more to that thought but I will let it sit.

Infrequently I get this additional question, generally from girls:

3. "what was your job in the Army?". I generally give an oblique answer because there are words one doesn't use in a public school, and because the kids have no living memory of the Cold War and have no way to relate to it. So far none of them have recognized the name Gorbachev although most recognize Reagan.


Supersoldiers
There are two men I knew that were soldiers through-and-through; naturally gifted at everything the military threw at them: weapons, gear, training, trucks, local girls, whatever. These two fellows were similar in their "supersoldier" abilities but quite different in presentation.

The white collar supersoldier was Mike H. Mike was a poster boy for the (then) New Army.[2] Whip-smart, his service was full-blooded but veiled in a veneer of wicked irony. It looked like he was playing but underneath it was universal competence. IIRC, last I heard from him he had gone to OCS and got a commission. I envy the men that serve under him now, assuming he has not retired.

The blue collar supersoldier was a fellow we called Jake; I think his last name was Jacobsen. A bit harder-edged, Jake was a rough-and-tumble Old Army guy. He had unbelievable skills piloting deuces and five-tons. Once we were in a cramped motorpool and our 5ton drivers couldn't get a stake-and-pallet (S&P) trailer backed into the far-too-narrow slot. We were trying to get off duty but couldn't until the trailer was parked. Forward and back, forward and back. Jake came up, said "WTF are you guys doing?" He jumped in the cab, floored it forward at a 45 deg angle, slid to a stop, floored it in reverse, yanked the trailer brake until the trailer slid into the correct angle, then slammed it into place. We were astounded.

Once he broke his hand out drinking the night before; I believe it was a wall punching exercise of some kind. He hid the pain but finally came to me in the motorpool. The problem was this: he needed medical attention but couldn't get it without a fig leaf. At that time (and maybe now) any injury while drunk result in an immediate referral to CDAAC, the Center for Drug and Alcohol Abuse Counseling[3] on base. A CDAAC referral wasn't deadly but it was a pain and might interfere with one's drinking schedule. And it stayed in your personnel file and so might or might not interfere with promotion if you were a "lifer".

Anyhow, I instructed Jake to get in the cab of a 5-ton and lean over towards my open door. I slammed the door loudly, he yelled "you broke my fscking hand!" on cue and I apologized loudly and yelled for a driver to "take this man to the medic!"[4]

And an apology
There was another supersoldier, and I don't remember her name. She was in S-2 (Intelligence) and spoke Russian. She was quite odd; at the time I attributed her oddity to an assumption that she was familiar with the poetry of Sappho. In retrospect, it seems to me that S-2 folks were effectively sequestered and it must have taken a toll on them. I might also invoke something like Asperger's. Regardless, in my youth and ignorance I made many unkind remarks to her and female soldiers like her. The time has come for me to apologize to fellow soldiers who I mistreated because of my perception of their orientation. Mea Culpa; forgive me. I have learned much in the interim, and I am a better man for it.


bloggermouse (nee armymouse)


[0] although I think it's generally good for a human to do, assuming the national leaders haven't gotten us mired in yet another undeclared war.

[1] almost always the most disruptive person in the class

[2] marked by an increasing reliance on technology and and an educated, thinking enlisted cohort.

[3] hence our running chant "I wanna be a CDAAC ranger", which we loved and the sargeants pretended not to hear.

[4] Of course, in this story "I" means "someone else in our platoon", and not me personally, because otherwise that would mean admitting to some kind of youthful indiscretion that I (I mean "he"!) would be loathe to admit in public.