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The 3d anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks at Balad and the foxhole atheist.

They* arranged a memorial service in the Town Hall to commemorate the fallen from Black Tuesday 2001. It was to consist of the presentation of the 100 greatest military photos of all time, comments from a chaplain, observation of a "minute of silence" [sic], the flag-folding ceremony performed by the Balad AB Honor Guard, and closing comments by our wing commander.

* Whoever it is who does these things.

As one of my enlisted specialties is photography and because I'm a sucker for incredibly selfless patriotic stuff, I wanted to see the 100 greatest military photos of all time. However, I skipped the ceremony due to the fact that the rest of it was basically a church service (and it would be rude to get up and walk out after the slide show). I'm not interested in hearing a speech from a chaplain, and I found the fact that the program put quotes around "minute of silence" curious, to say the least. Then there's the flag-folding ceremony.

[rant]

In the event you've never sat through one, the flag-folding ceremony is a stately, ceremonial folding of the flag while someone soberly reads the script found here.

As far as I can determine, the flag-folding ceremony is in violation of military guidelines only if the assembly is compulsory, as the religious symbolism that was arbitrarily assigned to each fold excludes all non-Abrahamic religions, as well as those with no religion at all. Of course, military retirements, memorials, or patriotic ceremonies are rarely compulsory, but when you attend one of these to honor your fallen comrades or say goodbye, you don't expect to be blindsided with "Christian nation" propaganda.

It's also quite dismaying that so many people have gotten the impression that this ceremony is officially sanctioned by the US Military and worse, that the ideas it presents are true, from the fallacious conflation of religion and patriotism to the "meaning" of the triangular shape of the folded flag.

I think we fold the flag like that because we didn't want people treating it like a common bedsheet. The triangular fold seemed distinguished (and tidy). No one admits to having written the text for the flag-folding ceremony, but it was written some time after 1954 when Congress divided "one nation" and "indivisible" with God.*

* Irony abounds.

I attended retirement ceremonies and memorial services between 1986 and 1990, and I never heard of such a thing until a couple of years ago when I was hit with it at a retirement ceremony. My guess is that all this "symbolism" was spontaneously generated some time in the 1990s.*

*I'm curious how far back we can trace this ceremony. What year did you first witness this flag-folding ceremony? I'd like a better pinpoint on when it came into being.

It used to be on the USAF Academy official website. When their history office was asked about it, they researched it for months and concluded that the ceremony's origin was unknown, the ceremony was unofficial, and they removed it from their website. But it was too late. It's everywhere on the web now, and the urban myth that each fold had special meaning has too many sheep in its grip to die now.

[/rant]

Anyhow. Now that I know what to expect at these ceremonies, I skip them.

Everyone was to be in place by 1625 yesterday in order to begin the ceremony on time and to observe the moment of silence at precisely the time the first plane had hit the World Trade Center. My boss and I were in our office around 1600, discussing the merits of toughing it out just for the slide show, when the first BOOM hit.

I said, "That didn't sound good." We froze and listened. Then there was another. Closer. We scrambled into our gear and hit the deck.

We didn't read. We didn't do anything but lie staring at the ceiling, muttering something appropriate when an explosion was close enough to vibrate our floor and clap our walls. I heard a small PING outside. Schrapnel, I guess, hitting our gazebo. Then we heard an ambulance siren pass. This was new.

About a month before I left the States, I'd had a brief conversation with an older fellow Auburn student who'd said to me (as though his pronouncement was gospel): "When the bullets start flying, you'll believe in God."

The fallacious ideas supporting this common "no atheists in foxholes" myth are too numerous to count here, but sufficeth to say the fact that people think facing death will transform an atheist into a Christian just stupifies me. I'm floored by this particular bit of hogwash on so many levels at once* that I respond by pretty much sputtering indignantly when I hear it--which, I admit to my shame, is what I did at the time.

* Come to think of it, I wonder if this is the purpose of arguments like that: to make the brain of a rational person shoot off in ten directions at once and thus just snap, so in the end, he just looks at you stupidly and drools on himself.

Anyhow...I lay there listening to the rockets dropping around us and feeling the reverberations, reflecting on this conversation. When an explosion hit particularly close, I could feel my heart beating. My breathing was shallow. I wondered if the next one would be close enough to have my name on it. Then I wondered how close the bombs must fall before I'd be scared enough to abandon reason and start praying feverishly to a god I still didn't believe in.

There was an All Clear, immediately followed by another Alarm Red. We read now, laughed, and waited for the All Clear again, then called in accountability. There was an emergency NOTAM* out asking for all B- and O- blood donors to report to the CSH* immediately.

* Notice To Airmen; Combat Support Hospital

The bastards had another Golden BB. One of their wild shots caught an unlucky individual. They say he was alive for a while but unrecognizable. I hear he passed away. For his sake, I hope he did.

By nightfall, everybody in camp knew. My commander held an emergency staff meeting to caution us to look out for our people, get them support if they need it, and basically, do what leaders are supposed to do. If we need to talk to someone, he's there. There's also Life Skills and of course the chaplains for those who are so inclined.

I went to the gym, me. I was just getting warmed up on the treadmill when Jeff walked past me. I had my headphones on, so he made a spiraling upward motion with his finger then pointed at the wall. Another Alarm Red. I went to the wall, lay on the mat and looked at the ceiling again, waiting for it to end.

Then I ran a brisk two miles and showered. On my way out of the tent, I encountered one of my tentmates. I stopped to ask how she was. She was fine, but the lieutenant next to her was the OIC* of the day's rocket victim, and she was taking it very hard. I'd have gone to offer her any condolences I could, if only someone to talk to (which is what I need in such times), but she was still at the CSH.

* Officer In Charge.

I went to the office to catch up on my correspondence. Not much later, I heard another BOOM. There were at least five in quick succession. I was in my gear and on my back behind my desk, counting them, before they stopped. About thirty seconds later, I heard the Alarm Red siren start. I lay there alone. It was quiet now, but Alarm Red was still in effect. I picked up Your Promise of Protection: the Power of the 91st Psalm, a well-intentioned gift from my new division chief. I opened it and began to read.

It begins with a couple of different versions of Psalm 91. I didn't make it far past that. This was on one of the most common Psalmist themes, expressing the Psalmist's faith and hope that his god will protect him from pestilence and destroy his enemies.

The Psalms read like the words of someone trying to convince himself that there's someone up there who--if his praises are sung enough--will snatch his worshipper from the clutches of death. There's something about the way the thoughts are expressed that remind me of those scary movies where the trapped, frightened girl walks through the haunted house with huge eyes and, in a trembling voice, recites the Lord's Prayer as she starts violently at every noise and movement. The words of the Psalms strike me less as words of faith than words to express the hope driven by desperation while in the clutches of genuine fear.

So I quit after the first five pages and just laid there bored. I thought about how our being bombarded by the insurgents about the time of the WTC attacks was an interesting coincidence. Because I've yet to find any evidence that Iraq, let alone the scattered groups of indigent insurgents (most of which are fighting us for their own unrelated reasons) had anything to do with Al Qaida or the WTC attacks, I have a hard time jumping to the conclusion that this is a special day for them. If anything, they knew it was a memorial day for us, and planned some fireworks for harrassment purposes.

I'll pass the book to someone who might find inspiration and hope in its pages. We have no shortage of people here who could use a hope infusion, and I'm in favor of whatever they do to get it.

But for me, my atheism has been tried and tested and has emerged unscathed. Danger is to your convictions what alcohol is to your mood: whatever your mood when you drink, alcohol just amplifies it. If you believe there's a god who will protect you, your belief will become more powerful in times of need (even if you get maimed, making it obvious you weren't being protected after all, oddly enough). If you already wonder how anyone can honestly believe in a loving god in the world we live in, the fact that a bunch of nutjobs are lobbing rockets at you and a 25-year-old kid just got blown to bits less than a block away isn't likely to make the pendulum swing in the other direction.

d