Flint Driscoll
Flint Driscoll was born in Gacy, Illinois, in December 1966, the son of an Irish-German father and a purebred Comanche squaw. His father’s service in the military required many changes of hometown during his childhood, and the young Driscoll suffered badly from bullying until he chanced upon The Art of War by Sun Tzu, an experience he recalled later as akin to one of his religious conversions. Thereafter – until a late growth spurt allowed him to make common cause with his tormentors – stealth, concealment and speed were his constant weapons. The hours he spent tactically withdrawn in various high school libraries did not go to waste, earning him a place at the prestigious University of Notre Dame, where he majored in psychology and Greco-Roman studies.
At Notre Dame he was an eager part of the “Fighting Irish” football program, but only dressed once, in the final game for which he was eligible, when as an offensive linesman he helped to score the winning touchdown against West Point. Ignoring their coach’s call for that play, the Army’s defense spontaneously treble-teamed Driscoll, pounding him senseless, but leaving a hole in their scrimmage through which Irish’s quarterback could cross the line unopposed.
Having joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in his freshman year, Driscoll quickly made a name for himself on campus as the first (and so far only) national security correspondent for Scholastic, Notre Dame’s senior college publication. Upon graduation, he was accepted by the journalism program at Columbia University, but left after the administration rejected his demand to be allowed to set up a new Department of Truth in opposition to the journalism faculty.
Lieutenant Driscoll fulfilled the ambition of a lifetime when he, like his father before him, was appointed to serve as a storekeeping officer – see I am Quartermaster. I am Proud. During the first Gulf War he was mobilized and deployed to forward support operations in Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Driscoll was later to elaborate on this experience in his thinly-fictionalized memoir of a life touched by warfare, the tetrology of novels Some Men Might Come Running to Stand Up and Carry Things in Bright Shining Sunlight (usually abbreviated as Some Men Might). His own war ended after two of his men accidentally struck him in the face and ribs with the steel hand-spikes from a 120 mm mortar.
Invalided out of the forces, Driscoll embarked on further studies at Brigham Young University, taking his doctorate with a seminal thesis on the links between terrorism and childhood masturbation, later published in book form as The Pull of the Dark. Appointed a fellow at the Center for Security Policy, he served as an aide at the National Security Council in the final year of the George Herbert Bush administration, then moved to the Project for the New American Century as a senior advisor on military affairs. As the final staffer at the PNAC when it shut down in 2006, Driscoll memorably told the Wall Street Journal, “as the last to leave, it falls to me, Flint Driscoll, to turn off the lights that will never go out”.
Never one to confine himself to the corridors of power or the towers of academe, Dr Driscoll began publishing his own blog in 2002, drawing on the considerable on-the-ground experience of military and political affairs he built up during his war service, at international security conferences and on trips sponsored by friendly governments and armies. In 2006, following his departure from the PNAC, he relaunched the blog as blow-back.net, a self-facilitating media node which quickly became required reading for the security community on Capitol Hill. His reporting played a distinguished role in the run up to Operation Iraqi Freedom and in the campaign to raise public awareness of the multiculturalist menace of Canada. In 2011 it won the prestigious Hot Glistening Brown Log prize at the annual “Soggy Bloggy” awards at the South By South West fringe festival in Austin, Texas, proving that my appeal is by no means limited to the political right.
A keen paint-baller and lover of fine art, Flint Driscoll also likes to snare hogs and squirrels in the woods behind his Virginia home. He has been married twice.
Fun Flint Facts: Flint Driscoll is among the 0.02 per cent of humanity who can both curl their tongues and wiggle their ears. By a remarkable coincidence, Flint Driscoll’s porno name is also “Flint Driscoll”.
Other major works by Dr Flint Driscoll
Non-fiction:
Flint Driscoll’s guide to blow-back operated automatic weapons 1902-1945 (2002, DIY)
Why does everyone keep picking on me? (2005, Self-help and personal motivation)
Special Forces Training Ops Observer (2006, true adventure).
Operation Cast Lead: Days of Guts and Glory (2008, eyewitness history)
Through the fields, down an alley, and over the back wall to school (2009, childhood memoir)
Our friends the arachnids (political philosophy, 2011)
Why I still go to the Easy: Some thoughts on the Embargoed Zone (forthcoming: political essays)
Fiction:
The Day the Blog Stood Still (2007, thriller)
The Last Post (2009, thriller).
Poetry:
Quickenings: the collected early poems of Flint Driscoll (2008)
(All titles published by Blow-back Books, Washington D.C.)
