Long time, no blog

OK, so it's been two weeks since I blogged. I can only tell my half-dozen readers that the move from New York to Southern California took up most of the first week, and the rest of the time I was mostly without Internet access.

I've never felt so cut off.

David called a few times, but I missed a call of his a few days ago because my phone was downstairs at my mother's house while I was upstairs, snoring away. Now I carry it everywhere, so I have no excuse to miss it. I even prop it up in the bathroom while I shower so I don't miss a call.

So David, try again!

Meanwhile, he has had more access to the Internet and has been blogging away.

I'll try to catch up on his comments.

How is it that this highly liberal son of mine -- and I take the credit/blame for indoctrinating him at an early age -- is surviving in the Army? I think I've already shed my Vietnam War-era expectations of a right-wing, "Dr. Strangelove" Army, but still I worry for his career (if not his political soul) when he criticizes administration policy in his blog.

Is he correct? Of course he is! But what I still fear is that the upper echelons of the military leadership -- and certainly the political leadership -- aren't listening and are actively hostile to his point of view. Maybe I'm just less courageous than he is, or more cynical.

The entry "On Living With the Enemy" told me how fragile the relationships with the Iraqis are and will be with the Americans, something we haven't really discussed on the phone. After re-reading it, I could very well understand the paranoia, but I also wondered if the same fantasy played out on the other side in the man lighting the cigarette or another man apparently listening idly across the room. The trust is fragile, as it should be, and David's brigade is leaving after a long 15-month assignment, but that's a short amount of time to build a relationship, and now they will start over again.

Tip O'Neill was right: All politics is local, and this war is all about politics.

That leads me to the photo of David and other soldiers leading a blindfolded Iraqi in Baqubah that I posted on this site earlier.

I have to say that photo disturbed me. It reminded me of the way Iranians blindfolded Americans during the 1980 hostage crisis and Somalians captured American soldiers in the 1990s.

I asked him about it during a phone conversation. He didn't know what happened to this man. He was turned over to Iraqi Police for questioning, and after that, it's hard to find out.

He did recall, he said, another prisoner, a 16-year-old who was captured. Under questioning, David said the boy broke down crying and confessed working with insurgents.

In my mind, I saw this young boy, very afraid, and perhaps with reason. He is a child led on by propaganda, religion and/or fear of letting down his family (or perhaps the only way he could get food and supplies for his family was to ally himself with a specific group of insurgents). Now he is caught, he has been taught that the Americans will do evil things to him, and he will not be able to go home. What happens to kids like that in this war?

And I wondered about the man in the blindfold: Was he Shia turned over to Sunni, or vice versa? Was he released a few hours later, or still sitting in prison?

I know it's not David's job to find out, and he had plenty of responsiblities for his own men, so I don't hold him responsible for one moment caught on film. But in this grayest of wars, where there are constantly shifting alliances, I wonder where he ended up.

A sad footnote to this photo: AP photographer Talal Mohammed, who took the photo, was kidnapped from a Baghdad bus stop in mid-August and has not been found.

As for the young soldiers discussing the "Muslim Anti-Christ," it is both laughable and scary. Laughable for their ignorance and scary to think that properly (if evilly) organized, such men could be another SS Army or Rwanda troops against innocent Muslims. The tribal instincts of human beings (us vs. the others) keep us alive on one hand and yet lead us to slaughter each other.

In his Aug. 24 entry, he rhapsodizes about Camp Taji looking vaguely like the Central Valley in California and Route 66 in Arizona -- except for the insurgents hitting the PX with mortars. (Maybe not so different from gang-banger drive-bys in the Central Valley.) I detected a bit of homesickness there; a good sign perhaps that he can let down his guard enough to feel it.

And no, David, I'm not worried or upset that you rode above Baghdad in a helicopter, though I suppose my mother instincts should have flared in fear. I guess my journalist instincts overrode this one. If I had the opportunity, I would have jumped at the chance, with or without orders.

And playing Tetris with a forklift does sound like fun.