thedrifter
02-06-05, 09:12 AM
01-28-2005
A Guest Column Heard ‘Round the World
By Ed Offley
You’d think that with concerns over the insurgency in Iraq, Islamic terrorism worldwide and the North Korean nuclear weapons running at fever pitch, something as small as a handful of rude guests would not register much on the news cycle.
And, boy, would you be wrong!
It was just a week ago that I received an email from a Navy officer serving on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the ongoing tsunami aid mission off Indonesia. While proud of the accomplishments that he and his shipmates had made in three weeks of relief work, the officer described himself and other *Lincoln crewmen as angry over a “frustrating and needlessly dangerous exercise made even more difficult by the Indonesian government and a traveling circus of so-called aid workers who have invaded our spaces.”
I exchanged emails with the officer and invited him to write a Guest Column for DefenseWatch to expand on his concerns, and assigned him a pen name, “Ed Stanton,” to safeguard him against official displeasure and scullery duty (Edwin Stanton, by the way, was President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war). His column, (“No Relief in Sight for USS Abraham Lincoln,” DefenseWatch, Jan. 20, 2005, succinctly took aim at the boorish behavior of a number of relief officials temporarily camping out aboard the carrier, and slammed the Indonesian government for refusing to allow the ship’s air wing to conduct normal proficiency flights and training missions.
Article posted, my colleagues and I here at SFTT moved on to other topics. Or so we thought.
It was Monday when I got an anguished email from Bob Merriman, who as our Feedback editor is one of SFTT’s unsung heroes. He wrote to let me know that over 500 people had responded to Stanton’s Guest Column, swamping our email server. Bob was wrong: By the time I logged on the email site two hours later, the number exceeded 1,200, and by the end of this week had topped 2,200. And they’re still coming in at a rate of several hundred a day.
Credit the rising influence of the blogosphere for Stanton’s sudden worldwide fame (or notoriety, if you’re one of the 2 percent of readers who criticized the officer). A Google search revealed that a large number of readers not only forwarded Stanton’s column to their friends, but also posted them on weblogs ranging from FreeRepublic.com, RightNation.US and BlogPulse.
Be that as it may, Ed Stanton clearly hit a nerve with his comments, and we are proud to have been able to distribute his remarks to our readers – and with the help of bloggers, far beyond our normal shores.
Appearing in this Special Report is the original Stanton Guest Column, a spirited retort from a fellow officer aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, and a cross section of the many responses that it inspired. Enjoy your read!
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com. © 2005 Ed Offley.
Ellie
A Guest Column Heard ‘Round the World
By Ed Offley
You’d think that with concerns over the insurgency in Iraq, Islamic terrorism worldwide and the North Korean nuclear weapons running at fever pitch, something as small as a handful of rude guests would not register much on the news cycle.
And, boy, would you be wrong!
It was just a week ago that I received an email from a Navy officer serving on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the ongoing tsunami aid mission off Indonesia. While proud of the accomplishments that he and his shipmates had made in three weeks of relief work, the officer described himself and other *Lincoln crewmen as angry over a “frustrating and needlessly dangerous exercise made even more difficult by the Indonesian government and a traveling circus of so-called aid workers who have invaded our spaces.”
I exchanged emails with the officer and invited him to write a Guest Column for DefenseWatch to expand on his concerns, and assigned him a pen name, “Ed Stanton,” to safeguard him against official displeasure and scullery duty (Edwin Stanton, by the way, was President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war). His column, (“No Relief in Sight for USS Abraham Lincoln,” DefenseWatch, Jan. 20, 2005, succinctly took aim at the boorish behavior of a number of relief officials temporarily camping out aboard the carrier, and slammed the Indonesian government for refusing to allow the ship’s air wing to conduct normal proficiency flights and training missions.
Article posted, my colleagues and I here at SFTT moved on to other topics. Or so we thought.
It was Monday when I got an anguished email from Bob Merriman, who as our Feedback editor is one of SFTT’s unsung heroes. He wrote to let me know that over 500 people had responded to Stanton’s Guest Column, swamping our email server. Bob was wrong: By the time I logged on the email site two hours later, the number exceeded 1,200, and by the end of this week had topped 2,200. And they’re still coming in at a rate of several hundred a day.
Credit the rising influence of the blogosphere for Stanton’s sudden worldwide fame (or notoriety, if you’re one of the 2 percent of readers who criticized the officer). A Google search revealed that a large number of readers not only forwarded Stanton’s column to their friends, but also posted them on weblogs ranging from FreeRepublic.com, RightNation.US and BlogPulse.
Be that as it may, Ed Stanton clearly hit a nerve with his comments, and we are proud to have been able to distribute his remarks to our readers – and with the help of bloggers, far beyond our normal shores.
Appearing in this Special Report is the original Stanton Guest Column, a spirited retort from a fellow officer aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, and a cross section of the many responses that it inspired. Enjoy your read!
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com. © 2005 Ed Offley.
Ellie