As U.S. combat operations in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula enter their second month, casualties are expected to pass the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Today we join President McCain and Vice President Palin in honoring all those brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice so that Tunisians, and Egyptians, and maybe Algerians, and maybe Yemenis, could live free from tyranny.

Among the killed-in-action this month:

Army Spc. Melissa Reyes
23, of Norco, California. Died Feb. 8 in Cairo, of wounds suffered when her unit came under attack from Egyptian insurgents in Tahrir Square. Her husband, Hector Reyes, told the Los Angeles Times that Spc. Reyes took great pride in her mission to bring democracy to Egypt.

Marine Cpl. Wesley Sadler
19, of Harris Township, Pennsylvania. Died Feb. 5 in Bouziane, Tunisia, after being fatally shot in the chest by a rooftop sniper. Corporal Sadler had been expecting his first child with his wife, Bethany.

Air Force Senior Airman Kellin McNamara
32, of Worcester, Massachusetts. Shot down Feb 5. over the Gulf of Aden, on a reconnaissance mission for Operation Maybe Yemeni Freedom.

Our prayers are with the families of all those who gave their lives to keep Americans safe from Tunisians, and Egyptians, and maybe Algerians, and maybe Yemenis, and to make Tunisians, and Egyptians, and maybe Algerians, and maybe Yemenis, way freer than they otherwise could make themselves.

I “met” Jesse Friedman in 1997, on the prehistoric bulletin board alt.books.kurt-vonnegut, in the course of an argument about Nirvana and the Pixies. Some years later, we were simultaneously editors at our respective college papers, UC Irvine’s New University and UPenn’s Punch Bowl. And some time after that, we actually and serendipitously met in person at Harvard, where we were both students en route to becoming dropouts.

He was funny as fuck, and smart as fuck. If you knew him, chances are you’d describe as the smartest, funniest motherfucker you knew. I lack the humor and eloquence to provide the remembrance he deserves. In its absence are these assorted anecdotes. He will be missed. Fuck.
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Circa 2000, Jesse organizing an International Conference of Jesse Friedmans. His outreach to the Jesse Friedman community brought him into contact with, among others, the Jesse Friedman featured in Capturing the Friedmans, some time before that documentary’s release. The two had a brief acquaintanceship, although Jesse was always quick to qualify himself as not-the-guy-imprisoned-for-child-molestation.

Jesse commissioning me to write a letter of recommendation to his first college crush. Reviewing a draft of the letter, he removed the gratuitous Jew jokes and added a line about the girl’s then-boyfriend, Brad Moore, being “an anagram for DRAB ROMEO.”

Jesse writing a treatment of his memoirs, entitled “Stop Laughing, What Have You Ever Written? (Oh, Leaves of Grass? Carry On, Mr. Whitman),” and concocting a scheme to get it into the hands of Dave Eggers by attending an Eggers reading while wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Jesse himself wiping his ass with “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” The scheme fell through, with Jesse subsequently threatening me with violence should I mention to anyone the existence of “Stop Laughing, What Have You Ever Written.”

Jesse announcing with great fanfare that he’d devised a “fool-proof” plan to turn the tables on Chris Hansen of “To Catch a Predator,” and his fool-proof plan consisting of telling Hansen that he knew it was a sting all along and just wanted an autograph.

The unresolved, intractable debate Jesse and I had about who he resembled more: Richard Alpert from “Lost,” or Charlie Day from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

Jesse’s idea of a Twitter joke: “Tupperware should make sheep costumes. Tupperware brand tupper wear.”

Jesse brutalizing me in Scrabble even when I cheated outrageously.