2 Feb

The weather finally broke and we are back to clear skies again. We had a five day stretch when it went from fog, clouds, and rain to strong winds and dust storms. During that whole time I think we flew one mission. It made for some easy maintenance days but didn’t provide much of note for journal writing. Lately I have been pretty much limited to maintenance flights since Brian went to nights and the other test pilot (J.R) is also an IP. We have several pilots in the process of getting signed off as PICs so every time the test pilot slot comes up on the flight schedule J.R. takes it to give them check rides. The standard here is three flights with an IP to get signed off so you are evaluated in multiple aspects of our mission. It’s great that we are getting all these guys progressed – it will make our unit that much stronger but the downside is fewer missions for me. I could move myself in more but I have a hard time justifying taking flight time from these guys who have about 1/6 the hours I do. All the missions are going pretty smoothly but we did have a little excitement on one last week. One of our acft was hauling a couple of 500 gallon fuel blivets (rubberized containers used to haul fuel or water) out to a FOB when the crew member directing the load from inside reached up to reposition himself and hit the release button. The blivets were still about 25’ off the ground and right over the landing pad. One of them bounced and rolled to a stop but the other one collapsed when it hit and dumped 500 gallons of fuel all over their pad. All in all it could have been a whole lot worse but it was still embarrassing – that is the first load we have damaged since being here. The crew member felt really bad about it so of course we won’t let him forget about it. I have been reading a book about the Algerian war for independence from France called “A savage war of peace”. It was first published in ’77 but the current edition is hyped as a book that can be used to understand the war in Iraq. There are some problems with that – the biggest being that they were fighting for independence and almost no one believes the U.S. is here to rule Iraq. However, there are some strong parallels and it clearly shows that unless you are willing to completely annihilate a population the only solution is political. The best you can do militarily is fight to a draw in order to allow the political process to work. You can never defeat people willing to die for a cause unless you give them some other cause to live for. The biggest fear of the insurgent leadership was that France would come up with a viable peace plan. As a result they turned to killing fellow Algerians who were willing to talk to the French. Thereby prolonging the war until the French were forced to deal with them as the only representative organization left. This book has also strongly reinforced my opinion that the military should in no way be involved in politics – it almost tore France apart.

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