The Sad Threads of Life

Yesterday, many Americans mentally relived the horrors of September 11, 2001, some more directly than others. It’s a game we humans play, called, “Where were you when … ? As, perhaps, our greatest American commented about another remembrance, “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” It would pose a sacrilege should we forget, or allow others to forget, the devastating legacy of 9-11.

Me? I took some quiet time to reflect. I looked up other events that shaped our country on this date in different years. Did you know, for example, that on September 11, 1965, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) began to arrive in South Vietnam, bringing U.S. troop strength there to more than 125,000. Before the year was out, one of its units, the U.S. Army 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment (yeah, Custer’s unit) defeated a much larger NVA force and America took over the war. The country would never again be the same.

 By the time of my paid vacation there in 1968, the number of US troops in that unfortunate country was an admitted (our military commander there had a slight problem with honesty) 549,500. The year was the most expensive in the Vietnam War with the American spending $77.4 billion ($557 billion in today’s dollars) on the war.

Yes, 1968 was a bad year. Trust me.

Of those United States troops, the war in Vietnam killed 16,592 that year alone, and wounded 87,388 more.

The war killed 27,915 South Vietnamese troops and wounded 172,512 more.

Although figures remain unreliable, the North Vietnamese records state that the war killed 44,842 and wounded, perhaps, another 66,464.

Why bring this up now? I simply believe that we must, if we are to survive as a species, understand how facts are related. Did, somehow, our nearly 20-year misadventure in that sad country, a nation that had never harmed or threatened us in any way—in fact had allied with us in defeating the Japanese— bear on the thinking of the 911 murderers?

And, sad as it must be to contemplate, how germane, on September 11, 2001, was the fact that the American CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6 orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, the 35th prime minister of Iran in 1953? Is it true what they say about Iranians respecting America, before that event, our country for its record on human rights?

How important will it be in our future that the warmonger who helped push America into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, leading to further destabilization of the Middle East, was removed from national office day before yesterday, but remains at large?

I mention all this because of the fact that all day yesterday, I heard or read about all sorts of things Americans were doing to commemorate the tragedy of that sacred day in 2001. Mostly, they were performing acts that they enjoyed doing in the first place, riding motorcycles, climbing steps in a stadium, singing, etc. I condemn them not. We must mourn, each of us, in our own way.

It’s odd though, isn’t it, that I heard not a soul say that, in honor of the victims of such a tragedy, and the lost or damaged lives of those who tried to save them, “I pledge to turn off social media, Fox ‘news,’ and my cell phone while I read a book of history and think about why such tragedies occur?”

Dream A Little Dream

I’ve had this recurring dream for nearly 50 years. No, it’s not about the class I forgot about in college or the test I didn’t study for, or the paper I didn’t write. I read once where a huge percentage of college graduates have dreams along that line, though. The writer opined that we have such dreams in times of stress and they comfort us by beckoning to when we prevailed against great obstacles.

 I don’t know if dreams mean anything or not. Carl Jung thought they did. But gee, his patients, according to his records, dreamed of things like entering a dark and magic forest and seeing a portal through which the dreamer entered a majestic oak, where he encountered wisps of the spirit world.

Hell, I wonder what he would have thought when I told him about the dream of going to the Saturday matinee at the old Community Theater in Pine Bluff with Al Capone and Sandra Dee? Hmm.

But this recurring dream is different. I dream that, at some point, I’ve promised the United State Navy that they could have be back for four more years anytime they chose under some agreement or other. I think it has to do with fast ships and harm's way. I guess you could call the dream a sort of “Military Mephistopheles Metaphor.”

I had the dream last night, and guess what? Yep. They called and told this aged, decrepit, pitiful, unable, unready, and unwilling old man he was due back for military service. Yes, I’m aware of the hyperbole, but it’s nothing compared to the whining I did the first time.

Perhaps the dream has something to do with the fact that, by all accounts, the military is scraping the bottom of the barrel with its all-volunteer effort. It does this while planning to invade two, maybe three, more sovereign nations on the whimsical orders of a leader who never served and doesn’t read. This political party-head does listen to some ultra-weirdos who formed their opinions of history and foreign policy in the 7^th grade and have never seen fit to change them. “Invade someone, for Christ’s sake,” they are telling him.

It will be the most disastrous event, in my opinion, since Operation Barbarossa commenced, but who am I to say?

A brief bit of inductive reasoning: I heard recently about a new trooper recruited into the military. It was a 32 year-old female with two kids. Think they won’t try to come after me?

Or you?

Or your kids?

Or your grand kids?

Back to the dream. I was on the bus headed back to boot camp with an odd assortment of fellow recruits. Years ago, the dream would have included ending back overseas wondering when my first watch would commence. I left that one years ago, though. I suppose there have been too many wars since then, Anyway, I woke up from the dream and rolled over before the bus reached San Diego.

When I started dreaming again, I was somewhere else and it was cold, real cold.

Oh, never mind.
I'll serve again.

In Memorium III ; the last ...

It’s a little bittersweet, coming to the end of the Memorial Day Weekend. There was so much divisiveness on social media that we left and worked on the farm all afternoon. It seems that, instead of relying upon the sadness of previous wars to steer us from another, they are drawing us inexorably into another Middle East quagmire. They say that US military spending for FY 2020 will reach $989 billion once you add components hidden in other budgets. That’s nearing a trillion dollars, people.

Perhaps when you spend that much money on something, it makes you want to use it.

We ended the weekend revisiting some stories from the 79^th Infantry Division, Brenda’s dad’s unit. The first wasn’t a story he told. Rather, it was something that she read this week that he never mentioned at all. It seems that the 79^th was one of the units that discovered a Nazi concentration camp. According to the piece she found, they made the entire division view it.

As I say, he never mentioned it. He did tell about a squad of American soldiers taking a group of men claiming to be “Polski, nicht German,” behind a building and shooting them. War can make your children do things you never imagined, sometimes to other people’s children. There’s sad scene in one of the documentaries about the fine sunny morning that the United States of America began dropping bombs on the people of Baghdad. There’s a snippet where a man runs across a plaza between explosions carrying a son of maybe 11 or 12 years of age. The child has wet himself through fear, his backside revealing it to the camera. In all likelihood, he’s not an American ally today.

The other incident we discussed yesterday was one that her dad did relate. It happened during the last few days of WWII in Europe. The 79^th was encamped at some resort area in Germany, awaiting the Armistice. German forces still occupied the nearby hills and were laconically, it seems, getting rid of their artillery. They were lobbing shells in with no apparent tactic in mind in the general direction of the spa. A squad of Americans, including B’s dad, were lined up for chow. A random shell hit nearby and took the off the head of a soldier standing in line. It was the unit’s last casualty.

Julius would always end this story with, “And he was the shortest guy in the squad.”

War is a terrible, unpredictable, inexplicable thing. Why, after once losing more than 58,000 of our country’s best in its idiocy, we would let it all happen again is beyond me. Dick Cheney, in his grotesque and twisted “logic,” hit a nerve when he tried to justify an all-volunteer army. “Why send men to war who don’t want to go to war when you can pay men to go who do want to go to war?

Only a Dick Cheney could fail to miss such a point as lay nested therein. If only Lysistrata and her comrades were here, they might could explain it.

Shall we say "lo, look what
our hands hath wrought?

In Memorium

All alone this morn thinking about Memorial Day Weekend. I don’t have a picnic or anything planned, just a quiet time to give a little thanks for the fact that I’m not one of the ones being remembered.

I’ve only known one person who was killed in our country’s wars. He was a high-school classmate. He and I were not close friends, but he served honorably and had a great future ahead. His name is now among the 57,939 carved into the black granite monument known as the Vietnam Memorial.

Another classmate died recently from duty in that war, this one from the delayed effects of Agent Orange. They say that everyone in the country, during the time the chemical was used, was exposed. I don’t imagine that the names of its victims will be carved on The Wall, not even the American ones.

Those who forgive, or even support, the warmongers may not understand the long-term effects of battle. I’ve learned recently that experts still consider the earth at such places as Belleau Wood (1918) and Normandy (1944) toxic. Well known, but unverified, anecdotes claim that as late as the 1960s trees in some areas of France retained enough mustard gas residue to injure farmers or construction workers who were clearing them. I’ve read about secluded and undisturbed valleys that still retain pockets of deadly gas.

In America, 50 years later, Vietnam veterans still bear the stereotype of sociopathic ne’er-do-wells, the one tragedy avoided by those with their names on The Wall.

They don’t mention these things when they whoop it up about invading some country or other.

Those I know who have worn the uniform don’t seem to get as agitated over such things as wearing a flag-decal on their lapel. Just in the last couple of days, I’ve also seen some posts by some who are exercised over regulations limiting the size of flags and the height of flagpoles. How silly. It reminds me of a comment of a close friend, fellow vet, and Iraqi invasion participant. He’s quite high up in the military now, and he once made a very pertinent observation.

“The American Flag is not an advertising gimmick.”

Love of country and all its people is a wonderful emotion. Patriotism represents a more slippery term. It has been called, with some justification, “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” (Samuel Johnson) and “often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles” (George Jean Nathan). Used in earnest and with propriety, it brings out the best in us. Used for immoral purposes, it creates monuments bearing the names of war’s victims.

In my day, some of those victims didn’t ask for the chance to add their names to such monuments. During the Vietnam War era, they tell us that one-third of veterans entered the military through the draft. By contrast, WWII saw a draft rate of 66 percent. These figures can be a bit misleading. They don’t take into account the number of those who enlisted simply to avoid being drafted into the infantry. Trust me on that one.

No matter. The fact remains that many of the names on The Wall are those of individuals drafted into the service. They include some who fought alongside Hal Moore in the Ia Drang Valley, a few who had only a few weeks left “in-country,” the term that held so many different meanings for those of us who served in that sad war.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll go to the annual Flag Day celebration in Little Rock on the grounds of the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. There will be music, free ice cream, and a flag for each person there. At some point, the band will play The Armed Forces Medley. When it reaches Anchors Aweigh, I’ll stand and wave my flag. Last year, there weren’t any young shipmates standing. Of those of us who did, more than a few required a little extra effort in making it erect. We did it though. If for no other reason, we had to in honor of those shipmates with their names on the wall.

Peace, Honor, Country ....

Theology Time: There’s an old saw concerning the point at which a preacher quits preaching and starts meddling. According to early Christian writers, and my opinion, the Galilean reached that point nearly 2,000 years ago. He said, standing on that rocky mount in remote Judea, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

Say what?

It doesn’t make much sense does it? According to most research, there have been less than a couple dozen years since America’s founding that it hasn’t been at war, at least for one day. A Christian nation? I report. Ya’ll decide. For a complete listing of America’s warlike excursions, click here.

What would the Galilean say about all this? I can only imagine. He might want to see some of the folks at the top. He might say something couched in modern phrasing, like, “What part of ‘peacemakers’ did you not understand?”

He might say something like, “You didn’t listen to me about divorces. Why should I expect any more from you?”

He might say something like, “That’s the silliest-looking mustache I’ve ever seen. Do you really expect people to take you seriously?”

He might say something like, “You graduated from West Point. Duty? Honor? Country? Destruction? You should know better. And please quit with the ‘rapture’ stuff. I don’t even know what you are talking about.”

He might say, “Please show me where I said anything like ‘blessed are the makers of aircraft carriers,’ if you would please.”

He might say, “Would you please show me where I ever called the makers of guns ‘the least of those among us’—the ones most in need of our love and succor?”

He might say. “Did I ever instruct my disciples to go forth and slay those whom they didn’t love?”

He might say, “Oh, and while I am at it, I never liked those Nazis. Sad to say, some of those they murdered were distant, far distant, relatives of mine. I approved that war, but I never called their descendants ‘fine people’ that I can recall.”

He might say, “Ya’ll better start paying attention to ya’ll are listening to.” (I think he was from Southern Galilee, wasn’t he?)

He might say, “You people give me a colossal headache. Don't make me come back down there.”

Well, he might say a lot of things. What he did say was, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Neither Rupert Murdoch nor his prancing imps can change that.

If it sticks in your craw, and you consider it meddling, you might better start paying attention to whom you listen.

Blessed are the Bomb Makers?
I can't find it.

Out earning today. Here's a couple of thoughts, though.

I know there are those who are horribly stressed and debilitated by having to live around others whose specific religious beliefs are not exactly the same as theirs, around people whose skin is a different color, or people to whom the vagaries of nature assigned a different sexual proclivity. I know each day is a trial of tormented anguish. But it’s nothing compare to me the day that they grabbed my ass, cut my hair off, and sent me to Vietnam. So suck it up, Buttercup, like the Senator says.

You'll get a chance, maybe soon, to feel the burn. Either directly or for your kids. They say John Bolton is getting ready to lead us into a ground war with Iran. Well, not lead us, no, send us, you know, the regular way. Not me. I'm too old and I know the way to Canada. Your kids better be picking out a branch soon. Knowledgeable people tell me that we've scraped the bottom of the barrel with our "volunteer" Wehrmacht. Here's my take on the branches.

I'm partial to the Navy, but I think they are a little more tight-assed than when I was in. And they were tres tight-assed when I was in.

I've great respect for the Marines, but hell, just jump in front of a semi-tractor rig It would be a lot faster.

The Army? It has some of the best leaders in the world and some of the worst. You have to ask yourself, "Do I feel lucky?"

Air Force. Uh, we're actually talking about joining the military, here. Just kidding. Just kidding. I kid the fly-boys.

Coast Guard. Great and brave folks, but I'd tire quickly of risking my life for rich daredevils who've gotten themselves in trouble.

Best choice? Hell, after all these years, it's still Canada.

Sailing to Oblivium: March 23, 2018

It seems I spend a good part of my time irritating my friends, a good part trying not to irritate my friends, and much time saying “What the hell?”

I guess that causes one to ask the primal question, who am I?

Well here goes.

A lifelong Democrat, I certainly don’t agree with all that the party has historically represented. For example, I believe that Orval Faubus, governor of my state during my formative years, was an evil man by the standards of his time. He nearly destroyed my state, but would be a highly respected conservative senator these days, probably considered a moderate Republican.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t grow up hating people who supported the opposition party. I still don’t. I respect any rational reasonable person, no matter what their politics. I’m wondering, though, how some may feel about a party led my Donald Trump.

In my lifetime, I think Dwight Eisenhower was a fine leader and a not harmful president. I was bemused to learn that Lyndon Johnson, as Senate Majority Leader, often helped Ike more than Ike’s own party in achieving some of his goals.

That’s how political life in America used to be.

I think, in my state, Winthrop Rockefeller was the most inspiring governor of my times, and we’ve had some good ones since. I stopped in Arkansas, when the Navy had paid my way all the way back to San Francisco because I had read about the things Rockefeller was trying to do. Am I glad I stayed? Well, I met my future wife here and have no particular penchant for computers, so yes. Arkansas isn’t as poor and ignorant as much as it thinks poor and ignorant.

I voted once for a member of the opposition party. It was a time when a crossover vote in the primaries enabled Arkansans to rid the state of a particularly icky politician. I have no regrets over that vote.

The rest of the time, though, I’ve remained a “Blue Dog.” The candidates haven’t been perfect—both parties must share blame for Vietnam—but they’ve been successful and, other than a case of an overactive libido, haven’t been a national embarrassment. We’ve even produced a statesman or two. And, although a firm believer in the First Amendment, I do use the Sermon on the Mount in making political decisions. Therefore, I think Jimmy Carter was the finest person we’ve had as president in my time, though he made many mistakes while having “a hard row to hoe.”

I think the push and pull of opposing parties creates a sound government. I would never wish for one-party rule.

Although I still weep at times over the fact that a Supreme Court that included Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia elected George W. Bush president, I’m not sure he was a bad man. I am sure that his primary handlers, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were. The stain of their bloody hands will mar America forever.

And speaking of such, look now at the man whose bloody hands will point young Americans into a land war, if past performance is any indicator of future behavior. If there is now a deranged and dangerous man in American politics, it is John Bolton. Ask the spirits of the perhaps more than a million dead from the Iraq War he helped orchestrate, creating in the process an unstable Middle East. His coming sins will only be surpassed by our shame.

As for the current state of America, the sounds of the Old Testament, in Samuel One Chapter 19, ring in my ears: "Your glory, O Israel, lies slain on your heights. How the mighty have fallen!”

It is my personal opinion that America’s greatness is being slain upon the heights of greed and avarice.

It further appears to me that insidious forces are at work in my beloved country. I fear that the cable TV show “Fox News” is destroying the cognitive ability of a vast segment of American society, for a reason that is as inexplicable as it is alarming. The fact that its major owners are an Australian and a Saudi Arabian may suggest a lust for global power, accompanied by a lack of concern, account for the reason more than any organized game plan.

As America witnessed the “Doomsday Clock” bound forward a notch yesterday, and as parents and grandparents ponder how they might keep loved ones out of a ground war such as the one that mauled those of my generation, the days ahead look dark to me.

This is my opinion. I’ll never support a government that would punish anyone for having a different one.

Unlike many though, I’ll be the happiest person in America if future events prove me wrong.