Father's Day Sunday Scan

Role Model Day?

Here's an interesting take on Father's Day from Sweating Through Fog:

I'm getting pretty tired of seeing things that treat being a father as just a "male role model."

A father is not a male role model. A father is an adult male that a child knows:
a) will take a bullet for them.
b) will work hard for many, many years, doing things he may or may not like, in order to provide a loving, secure home for his wife and children.
c) loves the child enough to consider the well-being of that child the foundation of his worth as a person.

You can be a male role model if you teach a kid how to ride a bike, throw a curve ball, learn a trade or act on a date - all good and wonderful things. Fatherhood is an irrevocable, lifetime commitment to sacrifice - with grace and pride - for the benefit of a child. A child derives great benefit knowing that someone made those sacrifices for them.

God bless the Dads who dedicate themselves to doing both, and God bless the kids who have neither. For them, today's not much of a day.

Father's Day Read

David Woo, a photographer with the Dallas Daily News gave a reverse Father's Day present to son Jake that merits an entry in the Chronicles of Fathering -- Woo the elder visited Woo the younger at his post on at Forward Operating Base Iskan, south of Baghdad.

Woo the elder's piece is posted at the Dallas Morning News today; here's a poignant excerpt:

As I walked about 100 yards to my room, the only light was moon glow. As I looked up, I had to stop. Before Jake was deployed to Iraq, I told him that I would go outside every night before I went to sleep, look up in the heavens and say a prayer for his safety. This time, my prayer was a little different:

"God, I'm here with my son now. Keep him and his fellow soldiers safe."

For whatever his reasons, God did not keep several thousand of Woo's fellow soldiers safe in Iraq. What a terrible, terrible day today must be for those families and those fathers. Please keep them in your prayers today ... there are no words sufficient to the loss.

(See Woo the elder's photo gallery from the trip here.)

Predators And Reapers


Two of the coolest named weapons in the US arsenal, the Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft, are flying over the Pakistan/Afghanistan border like never before, in a renewed effort to bring in Osama bin Laden before the end of the Bush presidency. The Times of London reports:

As Mr Bush arrived in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe, defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source.

The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.

The hunt was “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, according to a UK special forces source. It involves the use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with Hellfire missiles that can be used to take out specific terrorist targets.

One US intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam war.

I'm not a big supporter of last-minute legacy-building by presidents, so I have to ask why this effort wasn't undertaken sooner? Why the big rush now?

I hope they get him -- today wouldn't be soon enough -- but having big stories in major international newspapers about the hunt isn't going to help the effort any.