This will probably be all over the place but what the heck.
You guys know I used to be a reporter at Stars & Stripes, right? It was only for a year, but it was an important year.
It was my “I need a purpose every day because I’m going through a divorce and everything is out of kilter” job.
I guess it was ... roughly February 2010 to April 2012. Despite my sort of cynical how-I-got-there story, I took it very seriously. If I had to point to a few things I did well, I guess there are five.
First, I created the idea of a veterans beat and led our 10th anniversary of 9/11 coverage. Until I arrived, Stripes had never had anyone whose job was primarily to cover veterans.
Second, I broke the story of “blue-on-green” killings in Afghanistan—Afghan police who were blackmailed or paid to kill American soldiers.
Third, I wrote about how U.S. military was prosecuting soldiers suffering from PTSD, so that they’d take less-than-honorable discharges as a plea deal, and give up their veterans’ benefits.
Fourth, I stumbled into the story of an Afghanistan veteran who took his own life, and pieced together everything that happened from Day 1. Honestly, if I never wrote anything else, having written this story would mean something.
And, I spent like a month on an amazing
boondoglereporting trip in Germany, which resulted in a magnum opus feature about Maj. D.J. Skelton, the most-wounded U.S. soldier in history to recover and return to command in combat (also a close friend, which was why I put it all together to begin with).
Anyway, Stripes, which traces its history to the U.S. Civil War, has (had?) an important role. It’s a strange but vital institution, and I’m glad to have been associated with it.
Interjection.
My daughter and I went to shoot baskets at a court near our house. She’s pretty good at basketball. I am comically and legendarily bad, so it works out.
Between her sinking shots and me throwing up airballs, we had this exchange:
Daughter: “Dad, you know I owe mom a dollar?”
Me: “No, I did not know that. Why?”
Daughter: “Well, because I saw a homeless man last week in New York, and I wanted to give him a dollar. So I asked her for one.”
Me: “That was nice of you.”
Daughter: “I saw a lot of homeless people. But this man had a sign that said he was in the military. And you were in the military too.”
Me: “Hmmm.”
Daughter: “I mean, technically.”
Me: (ignoring “technically,” but I do say this about my time in the military myself). “Did he say thank you?”
Daughter: “Yes he did. But I think he was really in a war. And you were only writing about a war, right?”
Oh, the mouths of babes. But yes, I only wrote about a war, and in retrospect: Thank God.
Frankly, war consumed me in a lot of ways from about 6 a.m. PT on September 11, 2001 until (multiple choice):
December 15, 2011, when the U.S. involvement in Iraq officially ended?
April 15, 2012, when I left Stripes intending to go to Spain to finish ghostwriting a book, but instead got together with my future wife and moved to New Jersey instead?
August 30, 2021, when the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan?
Maybe all of the above?
But perhaps we could also add: August 21, 2026, when of all things, the Department of Defense (Defense!) fired the publisher and editor-in-chief of Stripes, along with a reporter.
I doubt this story—the firings—will “have legs” as we used to say; few people will remember it a week, a month, a year from now. There’s just so much else going on now, all the time. (I mean, are we really going to spend time trying to rename Lake Ontario?)
But I also doubt most of the stories I dug up and wrote about would have seen the light of day under the new regime.
And I’m proud of that work — and the work my colleagues did as well—some of them for much longer than I did.
So no my darling daughter. none of us were actually fighting the wars.
But we were writing about them.
I’d like to think that matters.
Even if I can’t hit a free throw.
Other things worth knowing …
WaPo: Two Pennsylvania residents have died from measles — the first such deaths in the state in 35 years and the first reported in the United States this year — as the country registers the most measles cases in any year since 1991. Both people were unvaccinated.
AP: Liberia has agreed to accept up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the United States — one of the largest such arrangements under the Trump administration's broader immigration crackdown. The deportees will include Africans as well as nationals from North America, South America, and the Caribbean, with the first batch of 20 expected Thursday.
ABC News: UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham arrived in Kyiv on Monday for his first overseas trip since taking office, joining European leaders marking Ukraine's 35th Independence Day.
NPR: Indonesians braved choking smoke to pray for rain as huge blazes in central and western regions of the country scorched wide areas of forests and peatland, blanketing some cities in haze. The fires are spreading through Sumatra and Kalimantan Island during a severe dry season.
WaPo: President Trump is threatening to sue the Center for American Progress unless it retracts a report that says National Guard deployments to various cities did not reduce crime as he claimed.
SCMP: A court in Shenzhen sentenced China Evergrande founder Hui Ka-yan to life imprisonment for "multiple combined crimes," confiscating all of his personal property and stripping him of political rights for life. The 67-year-old, once China's richest man, had pleaded guilty in April to charges including embezzlement and corporate bribery.
Thanks for reading. See you in the comments!
I’m happy you were able to write the stories that needed to be told. And are still using that gift to write about big things that might appear to be small things. Keep up the good work.
Good example of why impartial media is so important. As more media outlets get swallowed up, the stories start to get a slant that readers don’t always see. And w need to start honouring veterans better, not shunning them. At least some outlets have a clear bias. In today’s political environment, this is more important than ever.