Andrew Olmsted whose blogging you, like me, may have followed at Obsidian Wings and elsewhere has died in Iraq. Deepest condolences to his friends and family. For commenters, please try to respect his wishes regarding not using this as fodder for political arguments.
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Andrew Olmsted, R.I.P.
04 Jan 2008 03:25 pm
Comments (27)
This is the first thing I knowingly read by him over at OW, and this line is really brilliant, and almost snapped me out of my grim mood while reading his piece:
"few of us are destined to make more than a tiny dent in history's Green Monster"
-Andrew Olmstead
He has even managed to lend a poignancy to Babylon 5 dialog:
"I will see you again, in the place where no shadows fall."
Ambassador Delenn, Babylon 5
I don't know if there is an afterlife; I tend to doubt it, to be perfectly honest. But if there is any way possible, Amanda, then I will live up to Delenn's words, somehow, some way. I love you.
I've never read anything by the guy until this and I still almost cried...
Me too.
Everybody should do this sort of thing: imagine (or rather, understand) that you are going to die and then write down what you want people to read from your when you are gone.
Requiescat in pacem.
I only read a few of Andrew's posts, and I always looked forward to reading more. He seemed like a really good-hearted guy in addition to being a great source of information about military stuff.
It's terrible. Don't know what to say.
I didn't know him, but just from reading...what a decent and intelligent man, a real loss.
KathyF,
I read your post and wondered about its (deliberate?) ambiguity. ("So glad he gets to exercise it from the grave.) With all due respect, are you saying that you're glad Andrew Olmstead died?
Empson-
I clicked on KathyF's link attached to her name, and her website informs me that she supports Obama. So its likely that she is not evil.
I think KathyF is expressing gratitude that Andrew Olmstead is fortunate enough to be both prescient and write his last words, and have a venue to express those words.
Thanks, Rickm. That too is how I initially interpreted her comments. Like you, I checked KathyF's site -- which seems thoughtful, decent, and interesting. So I emailed her with the same question. I'm not looking for a gotcha moment, just genuinely curious. Don't want to make too much of it.
Empson, I read that as "So glad he gets to exercise it even from the grave," not "so glad he's in the grave." Without knowing KathyF, I'm all but certain she wouldn't be that terrible.
Condolences to his family and friends. I was among those who hadn't heard of him, and I'm sorry he won't get to do more work.
Hadn't refreshed in time to see Rickm's comment, but as noted, I concur.
Major Olsted believed freedom isn't free. He paid the price for it, willingly. All credit and honor to him.
Nor is his death futile. Honor his wishes that he not be portrayed as a "victim" of "senseless violence".
A report issued near the time of his death showed Major Olmsted and his comrades had killed or captured 52 SENIOR AQ leadership and bomb techs in Dyaliah Provence. Not simply Jihadi recruits, but the enemy's emirs, field commanders, bomb makers, recruiters.
It is not political to say Olmert died believing that he was part of handing out AQ's strategic disaster in Iraq and keeping his homeland safe by killing and capturing the terrorist leaders "over there" so they never could come "here" again. War requires sacrifice of men's lives - but that sacrifice is easier if people like Major Olmert go knowing they made a big difference and his survivors can spend their lives knowing he died in a righteous fight with those that sought to kill innocent American and Iraqis and any that opposed them globally in resisting their vision of imposing a sick, twisted version of Islam on the planet.
The war in Iraq is controversial, but only the hardest Left anti-Americans would say it is "political" to reaffirm the post 9/11 consensus that AQ is a lethal enemy that Americans from every political spectrum had agreed must be defeated. They are in Iraq, and men like Major Olmert are now tearing them up. Some will fall, and let us all hope they are enternally honored for not "victimhood" but for duty and sacrifice in facing down and defeating a new, great enemy of the People of the United States.
I see that Chris Ford chooses to mark Andrew's death by ignoring his expressed last wishes and repeatedly calling him by the wrong name.
Reading through Andrew's blog brought back the memory of a high school classmate and budding blogger, Robert Zangas. He breezed through his deployment with the USMC occupation force in Al Kut, but wasn't so lucky the following year as a civilian with the CPA. Had he thought to keep a copy of his own obit ready, I think he'd have expressed many of Major Olmsted's sentiments.
Chris Ford: I knew Andy. One of the things he hated most was having words put into his mouth.
If you want to know his thoughts on the war, they are here. If you want to know why he went to Iraq, he explains it here. (He rejoined the regular army knowing that he'd probably be sent there, so for him, it was a choice.)
Do him the courtesy of listening to what he had to say, rather than leaping to conclusions, on this day at least.
Wow.
I remember coming across some posts by "G'Kar" a while back. I may have even made a Babylon 5 quip about them.
The fact that I sort of know of this guy, but never really got to know him makes the news of his death a little surreal. (I had the same feeling when someone in high school along with me died in a skiing accident, someone whom I had talked to but had never really gotten to know).
Obsidian Wings has been deleting inappropriately political posts on this subject and banning their authors. Just a thought.
Just made a small donation to Spirit of America's Iraq War Widows Project in memory of Major Olmsted. Thought I'd share the link in case someone else is interested in doing the same.
Whoops, sorry for that ambiguity. I am usually a much more careful wordsmith! (I could blame the new ultra-thin keyboard, which I was complaining about in a previous post.)
Apologies to anyone who thought I was being so crass. I was merely thinking it was a wonderful opportunity--whoops, that also could be misinterpreted. What I meant was, I'm glad Obsidian Wings posted his message and that he'd been able to write it.
The world has too few people with good senses of humor; it's a real shame to lose one more.
Obsidian Wings has been deleting inappropriately political posts on this subject and banning their authors. Just a thought.
Don't make the crass behavior of a single commenter into a call for censorship, please.
@Posted by Freddie | January 5, 2008 9:26 AM
Freddie, I don't think it's so much of a case of "censorship", as it is a matter of taste and consideration. The blogosphere is, after all, a very public place, and (as this, or virtually any blog will prove) just anyone can log on and comment.
Think of it as holding a memorial service for a departed friend in a quiet corner of a public park, say. While some passing dickwad(s) may be "within their rights" to jeer, gloat, or blare their boomboxes: no one should seriously complain if the deceaseds' friends run them off, either.
The free discourse does what it always does. Chris Ford has revealed himself to be an asshole. That's a more meaningful and powerful indictment that deleting his comment. In every way.
I read his blog even before he joined OW. Clearly on the opposite side from me, yet obviously possessed of some rare and wonderful qualities: humility, a genuine desire to know the truth, a willingness to grant the same benefit of the doubt to the other side that he granted his own, a great readiness to reflect and reconsider his own views. And then he voluntarily went off to work for a really dangerous cause that he believed in.
That was a guy who represented a lot of the best of what America has to offer. It's very, very sad that he's gone.
The free discourse does what it always does. Chris Ford has revealed himself to be an asshole. That's a more meaningful and powerful indictment that deleting his comment. In every way. Posted by Freddie
I'm a Vet Freddie. You are not. I was in a War (the Gulf War). You were not.
I believe in bipartisan support of the troops on their mission. I believe there are missions that have such bipartisan support that they are not "political". Praising Olmsted if he died doing something with near-unanimous support of all Parties - like in an accident during Tsunami relief or by a Ganjaweed fighter on a Darfur rescue would not be "political" because there would be no political "side". Or fighting Al Qaeda attackers as a Marine guarding the Paris embassy. All "political sides" in America would support a Marine guarding US lives and soil against AQ Jihadis.
Lest we forget, in Sept of 2001, the President and 534 of 535 members of Congress, in a Joint Resolution, said the Armed Forces are authorized to engage and defeat the parties behind the 9/11 attacks Anywhere On The Planet we can engage them.
That was supposedly apolitical. Much as there was no political argument back when of the NECESSITY of defeating Hitler's forces. Only a few elements on the Far Left opposed confronting and eliminating the organization and it's enemy operatives responsible for the attacks that butchered 3,000 Americans.
And all too many people are forgetting that in the rancor over Iraq.
Possibly including Olmsted, who as other milbloggers said, was fighting in a stage of the Iraq War where the main enemy is Al Qaeda, and the US forces, now with native cooperation we could have had years ago (and that is a political argument), are demolishing them. In Dialyah, in the battle with Al Qaeda that Olmstead died in, we captured or killed 52 Senior Al Qaeda members, not just grunt Jihadis.
It is bin Laden's Central Front, and to his dismay, Sunnis in Dialyah, like Tal Afar and Baquba are now telling the Arab world just what monsters Al Qaeda was to fellow Arabs. Which is perhaps the most significant accomplishment we have achieved against the radical Islamists.
This phase of the War is not about the wisdom of the Iraq War - that is political. It is about finding, engaging, and destroying Al Qaeda where we can in response to the apolitical mandate of both parties in the near-unanimous 9/11 Joint Resolution authorizing engaging Al Qaeda globally.
Olmsted (yes I read him in the past and read his in case I die post, Hilzoy) stated the legitimacy of his actions in that post. I read this and considered it when posting earlier. He did not die fighting Iraqis, he died during the shattering of Al Qaeda's Central Front, almost certainly at the hands of AQ remnants:
Soldiers cannot have the option of opting out of missions because they don't agree with them: that violates the social contract. The duly-elected American government decided to go to war in Iraq. (Even if you maintain President Bush was not properly elected, Congress voted for war as well.) As a soldier, I have a duty to obey the orders of the President of the United States as long as they are Constitutional. I can no more opt out of missions I disagree with than I can ignore laws I think are improper. I do not consider it a violation of my individual rights to have gone to Iraq on orders because I raised my right hand and volunteered to join the army. Whether or not this mission was a good one, my participation in it was an affirmation of something I consider quite necessary to society. So if nothing else, I gave my life for a pretty important principle; I can (if you'll pardon the pun) live with that.
He said he didn't want his death framed in politics of the Iraq War. I am not doing that and Lefties that now say Iraq is so political that the 9/11 Joint Resolution for defeating AQ's main force has also become too controversial and political to discuss can eat shit. THAT was not a poltical vote. It was bipartisan. Olmsted's war, the part he fought, was against Al Qaeda and the humiliating defeat Americans and Iraqis are inflicting on them, and their native countries are as intelligence of who they are and who they associated with is coming out of Iraq and fed to authorities in 16-22 countries that spawned the Jihadis captured and killed within Iraq.
Comments closed January 18, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
"(If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.)"
What an excellent sense of humor. So glad he gets to exercise it from the grave.
Posted by KathyF | January 4, 2008 3:46 PM