2/8 Marines taking care of business in Afghanistan

My old unit, the Second Battalion of the Eighth Marine Regiment, was mentioned today in the Washington Post. Update: There is also a short piece here on NPR's All Things Considered. It's about how families back home deal with their unit in the news.

(See my post here about a NY Times Article on 2/8 from May.)

It's more commonly written as 2/8, which is pronounced "two eight."

Be safe, guys, and come back soon.

More Afghanistan reporting

As the administration has started shifting priorities from Iraq to Afghanistan, journalists are shifting as well. There are some good stories on Afghanistan recently, with NY Times reporter (and former Marine) C.J. Chivers again leading the pack. Check out this story and video that Chivers recently did. My friend Jake brought this to my attention.

Also, NPR has an interesting series on the Second Battalion of the Eighth Marine Regiment, also known as Two-Eight or 2/8 (pronounced "Two-Eight"). I have particular interest in this because I was a member of 2/8 for three years. I had forgotten that 2/8 is called "America's Battalion," but NPR plays it up.

The media doesn't always identify the units serving overseas, so it's neat to recognize 2/8. It's been tough to track how many times the unit has been to Iraq and Afghanistan since these wars started. 2/8 was in the initial Iraq invasion in 2003, then went back a second time, and also has been to Afghanistan once before. There was possibly a third Iraq trip. That's a lot of deploying, although of course personnel rotate in and out.

Hopefully the press doesn't forget about the 100,000-plus servicemembers in Iraq, but it's good that the operations in Afghanistan are finally getting some attention.

Send ROTC back to the Ivy Leagues

Check out this op-ed on getting the ROTC back to Harvard and Yale.

I have written previously about the military-civilian divide, and how it has drastically increased in the past few decades. It is dangerous for a democratic society to be detached from its military.

On a slightly related note, the Times has a related piece on Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell by a former Marine.

Marine Forces Unitas (MarFor Unitas)

Photo: The author (left) and Lt. Mark Reid stand near Pisco, Peru, after a pre-dawn amphibious training exercise in 1999 involving U.S. and Peruvian Marines.

This post is not about currents events or the news at all. Instead, it's bait in attempt to get in touch with Marines or sailors who were on a certain deployment with me in 1999.

It was called Unitas 40-99, and was the 40th annual deployment of a regularly-scheduled U.S. Navy and Marine training mission to South America (and Africa - but not all Unitas missions go there).

Basically it is a training mission, wherein U.S. troops train with partner-state troops. And displays are put on for local civilians. The training helps troops from both countries, but I think the real reason for the deployment is political: socialization and alliance-bolstering. ("Alliance" here is used informally.)

So why write about it on my blog?

Visitor-tracking program Sitemeter tells me that many people get to this blog because they search for "GRE scores" and "political science" on the web, as I'm apparently one of the few people to write somewhat extensively about both subjects together. I'm glad.

And I was searching for information on this deployment, as I mentioned, and didn't find a lot. So perhaps other former shipmates will do the same, and find this post.

Email me! Maybe we can swap pictures or lies or whatever.

Also: Does Unitas still exist? The most recent evidence of its existence that I've found is from 2004, Unitas 45-04. And apparently it was reservists on the cruise - not active-duty Marines, like when I was on it.

I would not be surprised if the War on Terror required the Unitas resources, and our South American and African allies were downgraded.

Anyway, it was a great experience. I was really lucky to have been on it.

2009 UPDATE: Unitas apparently still does exist, although it seems to be substantially smaller since the beginning of the Iraq war. Here's an article about Unitas 2008 (Unitas 49-08). See also here. However, this appears to be only one exercise, near Brazil. Weak.

This description here offers a more comprehensive explanation of recent Unitas activity. Like the above, it seems to be more fragmented, and generally smaller than the Unitas I was on (1999).

'America is not at war'

More commentary on the military/civilian divide. This is from a forwarded e-mail, so there's no telling if it's Photoshopped or what. But anyway: