Pride and Common Sense

Marine Corps Emblem - Enlisted

Preface: I served proudly in the United States Marine Corps Reserve 50 years ago; that doesn’t seem possible. I still get chills when I hear the Marine Corps hymn, and I always will. I stood ready to serve my country, and die if necessary. I came within a hair’s breadth of going to Viet Nam on two occasions. In retrospect, I’m grateful I didn’t go, but at the time, I stood more than ready. The point here is that I respect all the men and women who serve and have served in our military. Having said that, and watching the touching tributes to our service men and women in this video, we need to avoid glorifying war.

War is hell. General William Tecumseh Sherman, a Union General during the Civil War, is credited with that statement. In a speech to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy in 1879, Sherman said:

General Sherman - Wikimedia Commons

“I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!”

There is some debate around the precise words, and variants of the quote exist, but they all end with ‘war is hell’ or ‘it is all hell’. Those who have served in battle understand Sherman’s words. Unfortunately, many in our government, and many in civilian life who have never watched their best friend die next to them cannot fathom what that hell is like.

The men and women in this video, and all those serving in our armed forces, present and past, joined the military for any number of reasons. Some may have come from military families where serving our country is a proud tradition. Others, like me, came out of high school without a clue which path to take in life and joined the military because it seems to offer a construct that provided some guidance and direction in life, giving us time to plan for the future; it’s almost like a protective cocoon. Others see no future for themselves in civilian life. Many of our minorities see little or no hope for a successful career in the corporate world and opt for the military because the opportunities appear greater there regardless race, religion, or gender, and someday, hopefully, sexual orientation.

It really doesn’t matter why they joined; they stand ready to lay down their lives for their country, and they should be revered for that. The problem lies in glorifying war, and the danger of that leading to war as a first option to solving problems. When the populace of a country appears to glorify war, the politicians feel enabled to start wars. Sometimes, as I believe was the case with the Bush/Cheney administration, the politicians use an event like 9/11 to beat the drums of war, churning the emotions of the people in support of a war like the invasion of Iraq that we now know was completely unjustified.

The death toll for the Iraq invasion – yes, I refuse to call it a war – is approaching 5,000 U.S. and coalition troops, and untold tens-of-thousands of civilian deaths and casualties. Can anyone say that Iraq is better off than when this started? I know people will argue that we deposed a dictator, but the centuries-old hostilities between the religious factions and tribes of that area still exist below the surface of a pseudo-democratic government, and when we leave, we’ll likely see more war.

Funeral Procession at Arlington National Cemetary - WikiCommons

We have fought wars throughout the world, and through all of history, but is the world any better for it? If you could gather the bodies of all who’ve died in all the wars and put them in one giant pile, they’d likely reach to the moon, but what did any of that accomplish?

Certainly, we are sometimes forced into war, as in World War II  where the Nazi’s were hellbent on wiping out an entire culture and dominating the world. When that happens, it becomes necessary to fight, but it should only be the last resort, not the first. We, the non-warriors must be ever vigilant that our leaders are not beating the drums of war unnecessarily.

Sadly, there are those who profit from war, both economically and politically, and those are the ones to be watched, and stopped from starting pointless wars. War should not be used as a tool for political change or economic gain. People die in wars; homes and businesses are destroyed; and families are decimated.

By all means, honor and respect our men and women willing to stand an fight a just war, but remember that the cost of war to a nation is personally, morally, nationally, and economically devastating, and we need to be sure before we take up arms that there is no alternative.

There’s an old German proverb that says it best: “A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.”

Fighting For Change

Change. There are few things harder for humans to deal with than change. Whether in their personal lives or professional lives, we are fearful and suspicious of change. We like the status quo because we know what that is, but change means moving into the unknown, and that is traumatic for most of us. We have a comfort zone. It’s based on many things; our religious teachings; our family culture and beliefs, and on our perceptions of society and change based on both those teachings, and the urban legends that we’ve absorbed; it’s seldom based on personal experience.

President Obama - from Wikipedia Photos

So it is with our society. We elected a president who promised change. Those of us excited by this promise are now protesting that change is coming too slow, or not at all. Others, opposed to change, are wailing that he is a socialist, and calling him any manner of names meant to distract and derail his efforts to bring much need change to a country dominated by big money and bigotry.

Change is supposed to be difficult. We humans have a built-in mechanism that resists change, and with good reason. While the slow process of change may be frustrating for those of us who are anxious to see a better future, the resistance to change protects us from utter chaos.

Imagine if you will, that every time we elected a new president, or a new majority in congress, that everyone could turn our system upside down in an instant to meet their view of the world with no one questioning either their motives, or the results. We’d be in constant turmoil, embroiled in the massive cost and time consumption of changing huge sections of our government and society, possibly every two years. We would get even less done than we do now because all of our resources would be consumed within a state of constant change. And, we could very well end up in total collapse depending on the changes that were pushed through.

Think of it as government by personality, a term we often used when I was at Boeing, substituting the word management for government. Every time we changed the person in the White House, or at the top of an organization in business, they would throw out everything that came before them and remake our government into whatever vision, or nightmare possessed them, with no one questioning the benefits of the change. When you’re in a state of constant change, there’s precious little time to accomplish anything.

Old Senate Debate - Wikipedia Photos

As difficult as it is to suffer through the speeches, the spinning of information, and the deal-making in back rooms, this process is meant to weed out the bad ideas from the good with the hope that the best ideas will make it through the filter of doubt and debate to produce a greater country. It is tantamount to test marketing new products, or a motion picture. The item is released into limited and selected markets to see if the public will buy the item or watch the movie. If it’s successful, then it’s released nation-wide. If it stumbles or fails, then it’s back to the drawing board to improve the idea, or to scrap it altogether. This godawful process we use for changing our country is very much the same. Consider it social evolution, and survival of the fittest.

KKK teaching children to hate

We’ve gone through this process since the beginning of our nation, as has the entire world since the beginning of time. Recall the difficulty of getting women the right to vote, or equal rights for African Americans. The debate raged on both sides of the issue. The opponents to these changes raised great fears; they quoted passages from religious books to try to prove their point, and predicted the end of our democracy.

While their arguments look absurd today, at the time, it held to the light of public scrutiny what were for many people their heartfelt beliefs. That airing of opinions, even wrong-headed opinions, helped shine the light of humanity and truth on a darker side of our national personality. The end result, after much agony, was our nation moving to a better place where equality for all became more than words on a document, it became the law of the land.

Today, we wrestle with two major social issues, healthcare reform with a public option, and allowing gays to serve opening in our military. Both ideas, in my opinion, are the right thing to do, just as civil rights and women’s rights were the moral thing to do.

In the healthcare debate, we have the conservatives on one side, arguing against change, partly out of fear, and partly because

The Great Debate - Wikipedia Photos

many are recipients of large sums of money from the companies reaping huge monetary rewards from the current system; this is not unusual. During the struggle against slavery in the 1800s, there was a lot of money being made through the use of slaves in the tobacco and cotton industry, and this money was used to fight the abolitionists.

A Decorated Gay Vietnam Veteran

Similarly, as our nation confronts the discrimination against gays in the military, those opposed trot out frightening scenarios of homosexuals sharing facilities with straight soldiers, and quote biblical passages in an effort to discredit reform. The arguments against equal rights for women and black people were couched in the same kind of fear-mongering terms. In the end, our nation saw the fallacy of these arguments, and today we’re much closer to a nation of equal rights for all.

Still, this glacial process of change toward freedom for those in slavery, and for women’s rights, had to have been agonizing for those championing civil rights. Common sense told them it was the right thing to do, but they could only wait for the differing factions to air their difference, and hope that right would win, and it did.

I believe that the debates we’re having today on healthcare and gays in the military are right now in the crucible of truth where ideas, good and bad, are debated and the flaws on each side are shown in their worst light, and the good ideas in their best light.

For those of us who know that both universal healthcare and equal rights for gay people are the right thing to do, we find it difficult to tolerate the opposition, and the time it takes to bring about change, but it must be done, and when it is, we’ll be a better and stronger country for having gone through the process.

Justice Under The Law

What in heaven’s name are the Republicans thinking when they question the ability of our justice system to handle the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? No, wait! They don’t think, they are a bunch of robots with neither the will or the intelligence to speak for themselves; they have been trained, or bullied to follow the dogma of the party leaders come hell or high water. They are frighteningly similar to the Third Reich, never questioning, simply stomping and saluting Der Fuhrer.

I understand the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck spotting off that we are somehow going to either let these terrorists walk, or we will be attacked and brought to our knees by terrorists if we try them in federal court; these guys are babbling idiot talk show hosts masquerading as intelligent people when all they really care about is selling Viagra and making millions to buy their vacations homes in Hawaii.

But when 16 Republican Senators, and two supposed Democratic Senators imply that our judicial system is so flawed or so weak that we can’t try KSM and his ilk in the best justice system in the history of the world, then I begin to lose faith in our entire system of government.

We are talking about people who put their personal political ambitions and quarrels above the pride and honor of everything this nation stands for. In my opinion, this borders on treasonous actions, or at a minimum dereliction of their sworn duty to uphold their elected offices and the Constitution.

The conservatives, in their rush to try to destroy our president, are hell bent on destroying everything this nation stands for. What is the rest of the world to think if we say our justice system can’t try these terrorists without failing? What are we saying to our own people who depend on our justice system to deliver on the promise of jurisprudence?

It’s time that we, the people of the United States stand up to these hate mongers, fraudsters, and political whores and support our president, and our government, and show that we have some trust in the greatest system of government this world has ever seen.