Peter’s Blog

Man, this is a harrowing story about a company in Afghanistan. Apparently the second part will run next Sunday.

There’s a long and interesting debate on American Prospect called What’s the Air Force For?. More than any conclusion on the utility of the Air Force, I was left amazed at how fucked up military bureaucracy and procurement are. Nothing new there, but still, talk about doing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons! Unfortunately it seems to be the nature of the beast: I have yet to hear of any large organization that isn’t organizationally a dysfunctional nightmare.

I think the break-up of Yugoslavia was traumatic on a level that most of us on the outside just don’t understand. While the direct warfare and killing was horrible, I get the sense that there was also weighty psychic trauma, as the society was ripped apart in a sort of fratricidal maelstrom. With this mental anguish, some now look back on Yugoslavia as a sort utopian society. Of course, whatever its merits (and there were some, especially compared to its replacement), Yugoslavian society was not perfect.

I mention this because my friend Adriana said this last night that she was Yugoslavian. But that country hasn’t existed whole for almost two decades! “But where in Yugoslavia?” someone pushed. Well, a bit of everywhere as it turns out: born in Sarajevo, lived in Belgrade, spent summers in (what is now) Croatia. And she’s not the first: Zoran, my tow truck driver in Portland (long story!), also proudly told me that he was Yugoslavian. I didn’t push for details.

The question then is, what happens when the country you identify with doesn’t exist any more? There are no easy answers, but if war is a force that gives us meaning, it is also a force which can destroy all identity.