Keep Your Finger Off the Trigger, George

Posted first as a comment here:

I'm half fearing that if we attack Iran this year, it will be this week. I don't really have a rational reason for this fear. It's just that I'm flying to Philadelphia tomorrow for business, and bad things always seem to happen when I'm flying.

Last time I came through Philly, it was the end of Spring Break 2003, and my third trip to Germany. I sat in at the airport bar ordering wings as I watched video of a cavalry troop moving through the red-orange glow of a sandstorm into Southern Iraq; an omen of hubris and evil, I felt.

I'd been a cavalry soldier in the National Guard when I had flown to Germany the second time, in early September of 2001. Less than a week later, a cute German fraulein was trying her level best to convince me to seek asylum rather than go back to the military. I called the US, told the duty Sergeant that if he found me a ride to the fight (wherever and whenever that may be)I'd be there in a second.

The National Guard had thrown me the party that was my first trip to Germany. Two weeks of camping in near-freezing drizzled forests, lugging nearly a hundred pounds of waterlogged gear up and down the mud-slicked Bavarian hills, while back home Rehnquist and four others meddled in things they shouldn't. I was having my own version of fun taking on a Bradley fighting vehicle with a malfunctioning relic of the Vietnam war, the finest legal minds of the US were putting a bunch of malfunctioning Vietnam Chickenhawks into power.

It's funny; it's like that Jungian synchronicity. I can't think of a time I've flown that hasn't been troubled by disaster; at the beginning of my military experience, a Marine PFC flying to Japan as Oklahoma City smoked; from the mainland to Okinawa as the island was on virtual lockdown following the rape of an 11 year old girl.

Like the last, I am now flying nearer to the epicenter of trouble. If I'm in Philly and something goes down, I'll be in Washington in a couple of hours. I think it'll be pretty easy to get a ride. And I'd like to see all of you with me.