April 30, 1975

Thirty years ago today the first war in my lifetime that was an unmitigated disaster ended. And I don’t mean only a military disaster; it was a diplomatic and moral disaster as well. Fifty-eight thousand US soldiers – and millions of Vietnamese - died in a war that certainly did not reflect what this country claims to stand for. The photograph of the helicopter on the roof that day, with our troops having to beat off Vietnamese who had supported our cause still resides in my mind as it does in the minds of most of us alive at that time.

Much has changed in the world since 1975. Yet, our current war reminds many of us of that war of our youth. Then, our leaders created a bogey man (in this case the domino theory of nations falling to Communism) and offered up our young people to defend us against this bogey man, who, thankfully in our leaders’ eyes, was in a foreign country, just as the” War on Terror is being waged on foreign soil”. In Iraq we had two bogey men – Saddam and WMD, one of whom was real, one wasn’t. The Pentagon Papers revealed many of the lies we were told during that war; we know some of the lies told in this one, but not all of them yet. We were not prepared for the guerilla war fought in the jungles of Vietnam; we were not prepared for what came after the day “Mission Accomplished” was announced in the Iraq war. We had My Lai; this war has Abu Gharaib.

And some things have changed. We all knew a couple of kids who were over there or had left for Canada. Now, with the demise of the draft, few of us know any of the professionals in Iraq. I can’t recall soldiers in Vietnam complaining of being ill-equipped the way our men in Iraq are. And who can forget the impact of television thirty years ago. The networks brought the war into our living rooms every night; we saw row after row of caskets pictured in the press and on TV. Now, the ‘news’ programs treat the war as just another ‘real’ show with no attempt to really bring it home to us. And, ironically, Vietnam is now one of our trading partners (most of the shrimp we eat come from there).

It took years for the anti-war movement to gather steam and start having an effect. Let’s hope for two things. It takes less time and fewer casualties for the people to seize back their government. Thirty years from now we are not in another war in a foreign country such as Vietnam or Iraq.

Lose it for Jesus

Fortunately, most fads pass on. Thus, a year or two from now few will remember the numerous promoters and their diets that now use the name of Jesus to sell their particular brand of salvation by losing weight. Unfortunately, right now there are a lot of them. One diet group claims to be offering weight reduction classes in 12,000 churches. One clown is quoted as saying, “We don’t do this so we can look in the mirror and be more attractive. We do it so people can look at us and see Jesus.” Did anyone mention hubris? I thought the Christian God was more interested in one’s soul than one’s body.

Maybes

Perhaps if I were born to a wealthy, powerful and influential family, the word ‘sacrifice’ would pass my lips as seldom as it passes the lips of President Bush. Consider the following which come readily to mind on a lovely Spring morning:

After 9/11 he urged us to go to the mall as our contribution to fighting terrorism.

He has signed every spending bill that has reached him.

He pushed for and got a tax cut in the face of a war in which our troops don’t have enough equipment to properly defend themselves.

He wants to eliminate the estate tax even though the number of people affected is miniscule.

Perhaps If I were born to a wealthy, powerful and influential family, I would feel that things would always work out well for me. Consider the following:

At a time when more and more reputable petro-geologists are becoming convinced that the world’s oil supply will be just about gone in this century, perhaps in as few as 25 years, the president calls for more oil production.

Despite our requiring 1,700,000 gallons of fuel in Iraq daily, Bush tolerates a Defense Department that considers fuel efficiency something “for sissies”. (Note we ‘only’ use 1,000,000 gallons of gas in the US every day.)

After a winter when many did not have enough heat, we have a budget which proposes to spend $200,000,000 on a sexual abstinence program. Since this proposal is greeted with silence, maybe Bush’s belief in things working out is justified.

For the first time in quite a while we are faced with another super power, if not two, on the world scene. And what is Bush doing? Sending experts to tell China and India how to use energy more efficiently. This from a nation of SUV drivers, a government that denies the existence of global warming.

I should stop now. To go on will only raise my blood pressure.

21 Years Late

Am I the only one who is reminded of Orwell's 1984 when I hear the constant word spinning of the Administration and its allies? Nuclear option is now constitutional option, estate tax has become death tax, etc., etc.,

Supporting our troops in the modern age

I don’t know how our leaders, especially our military leaders, can look in the mirror every morning. That is, if two recent stories are true; and I have little reason to doubt that they are not true.

Yesterday’s NY Times spoke of a company of Marines that was inadequately armed and inadequately staffed. The very word ‘inadequately’ is itself inadequate to describe the failure of our government to properly supply our husbands and wives, sons and daughters with the tools they need to protect themselves as much as is possible in war time. Lord, can you imagine being in Company E which in six months last year had one-third of their number killed or wounded not because they were poor soldiers but because we did not have sufficient armor for their Humvees?

And it’s not much better today. Two years into this war the Army still relies on one small contractor to armor-clad the Humvees for all the armed services. Things have gotten so bad that the Marines have decided to take care of their own 2800+ Humvees in Iraq and have started a crash program to do so.

Not only did these Marines not have armor to protect themselves, their maps were woefully out of date and they had very few electronic devices to detect and block the homemade bombs that have killed so many. Or, how about using cardboard cutouts and camouflage shirts to create the illusion that you had more troops than you did? This for the troops of America, the world’s superpower!

Today’s Boston Globe also talks of the lack of troops, but it also describes the lack of training for the troops who have served and are serving us in Iraq. Because of the limited number of Army troops, people from the Air Force and Navy have been dragooned into such tasks as guarding convoys (perhaps the most dangerous task in Iraq today) and oil depots, defusing bombs under fire, driving trucks, and other tasks you would not normally expect them to do. And they’re doing these tasks with very little training, sometimes as little as one week, whereas a regular army soldier receives months of training.

Perhaps, these things would not have happened under the generals that were moved out of leadership positions a couple of years ago because they disagreed with Rumsfeld and other wise people.

What will we learn tomorrow?

Not the Front Page

Sometimes the most interesting news is not found on the front page. Witness today’s New York Times.

Business Section
I often scan “The Boss” column, which is supposedly written by bosses of relatively large companies and often turns out just as you’d suppose – a paean to the boss. Today’s column is not quite a paean. It features Erroll B. Davis, Jr., the chairman and CEO of Alliant Energy in Madison, WI; older readers will know it as the former Wisconsin Power and Light.

The first thing that struck my eye was Davis’ response to the question of his favorite business book. His response: never reads them. Although he does not elaborate as to his reason, I can surely understand why: most business books say the obvious, forecast either Nirvana or Armageddon, or tell the reader how wonderful the author is. His response reminded me of an old Studio One (that was a live drama show on network television, you youngsters) production in which Jackie Gleason played the role of an idiot savant appearing on a quiz show. Fifty years later, the character’s response to the usual question of “What do you do for a living” stays with me. The response of “Nothing” is, to my, at times, strange mind, a perfect comment on how we tend to define a person by their job or what books they read.

Some quotes from the article: “These are powerful positions we executives hold. I have $8 billion at my disposal. We don’t have that many checks and balances on us. You can lose perspective and start to think you’re royalty.”

Now, his ending quote: “If you lose track of where you came from, you lose track of your moral compass, what work means to the average employee.”

His company, based on its web site, seems to be as forthright and capable as he is. I may even buy some of its stock.

Styles Section
If you want froth for the arrivistes, read this section. Except for today.

The lead article is about a New York City plastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Sachs, who is very adept at PR. He was so adept at PR that he was able to convince an Irish woman, Kathleen Cregan, to fly from Ireland to his office in New York for a face-lift. Ms Cregan was 42, but thought she looked to be in her mid to late fifties. Based on the picture accompanying the article, I would have thought her to be in her late 30s or early 40s.

Whatever the reason why Ms Cregan wanted to change her appearance, she told no one in her family. Her husband’s first knowledge of her trip came when the Irish Consulate in New York called to tell him that his wife was in critical condition at St Luke’s Hospital.

If Dr. Sachs’ PR were not as good or if Ms Cregan did some searching about him, she would have found out that he was one of the most sued doctors in New York (he had settled 33 malpractice cases in the past ten years), the state Department of Health had banned him from performing complex nose jobs without supervision, he was not affiliated with any hospital, his office operating room was not accredited. In short, he was an accident waiting to happen.

I guess that if the subject weren’t plastic surgery it never would have made this section and, maybe, never made any other section of the newspaper.

The Rules of the Game

Sometimes you benefit from the rules of the game, sometimes you don’t. But, unless the rules are blatantly unfair, you don’t try to change the rules when it appears you won’t benefit, especially if the rules have been in effect for almost ninety years. Yet it seems as though this is what the Republicans in the Senate wish to do with regard to the practice of filibuster. They want to invoke cloture with a simple majority vote.

It’s not as though the Senate is exactly fast when it comes to doing anything. So, a couple of weeks tied up in a filibuster will not be the end of the world. It was not the end of the world in 1964 when Southern Senators filibustered against the Civil Rights Act. And the current Senate has an easier job in invoking closure as they need only 60 votes, whereas in 1964 67 votes were needed to stop the debate.

The Sun Behind The Clouds?

Here are some dispiriting facts.

In Botswana there is one doctor for every 3,477 people. In Zambia that single doctor has to serve 14,484 people. It gets worse; in Uganda the number is 21,280, Mozambique 41,060. And Rwanda is off the charts at 53,474. Here on my little island there is probably one doctor for every 500 people.

Combine the above with the rate of AIDS infection. In Botswana out of every 100 people you meet, almost 40 (37.3%) will be infected. In Zambia there is an improvement to 16.5%, Uganda 4.1%, Mozambique 12.2%, Rwanda 5.1%. In the US, the rate is less than 1%, it’s about 1/10%.

Looking at these numbers is not a cheery way to start the day. But there was a faint ray of hope the other day not only for these countries having so few doctors but also for a return to the generosity for which this country was known. The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, announced what’s being called a medical “Peace Corps”.

The Institute wants to start a “U.S. Global Health Service”. This organization would send specialist doctors, particularly AIDS specialists, initially to those countries receiving financial aid from us for AIDS relief. The doctors – both experienced and new - would serve for at least two years and would be paid, but not nearly as much as they could earn here. More information about the program can be found here .

Primavera arrive

The photo below shows that Spring is really here. The temperature is close to 80. The grass is starting to grow. Flowers are blooming. I drove around with both front windows open. The grandkids have been at the beach for several hours.

Entrance to Upper Makonikey April 20, 2005 

The Department of Education Is Not Alone

You’ve heard of Armstrong Williams and others who were paid by the Department of Education to promote their programs without telling any of the stations who hired Williams or the people who heard him on CNN and other media. So, it should come as no surprise that business is now using the same technique: hiring pitchmen or women to tout their products while supposedly providing impartial consumer advice. Some of the companies that have used such pitchmen as James Oppenheim, Corey Greenberg and Kathleen deMonchy include Kodak, Walmart, Sony and Energizer.

Most of these people ‘appear’ on local news programs, which in recent years have tried to become experts in consumer affairs. As with most television productions, even the local news has to be taken with a very large grain of salt.

The Truth Will Set You Free

One of the reasons why the Administration is able to get away with feeding us bullshit about Iraq is due to the fact that most, if not all, foreign reporters are scared our of their wits – justifiably so - to leave their hotel room. So, there is very little news about Iraq that is not the result of statements from the military.

Of course, the State Department’s decision to stop producing its annual report on terrorism after 19 years does not indicate a forthright, open approach to truth.

The Old Ennui

We have been at war in Iraq for two years. Has ennui set in? Read what Jim McGovern, Democrat representative from Massachusetts, has to say in the May 5^th edition of The Nation.

“What worries me almost as much as our misguided policy in Iraq is that so many of my colleagues and so many citizens have become resigned to the fact that the war will go on. Congress is not being inundated with letters and phone calls and faxes and e-mails and street protests demanding an end to our presence in Iraq. President Bush's re-election seems to have taken much of the energy out of the antiwar movement. My recent visit to Iraq only strengthened my belief that this war is wrong. And only renewed, passionate dissent by the American people can end it.” (The emphasis is mine.) These comments were made after a recent visit to Iraq.

Basically, what McGovern is saying is that we’re getting a lot of bullshit from our leaders. For example:

More electricity was available in Iraq before the invasion than afterward

the World Food Program says that hunger among the Iraqi people is getting worse.

General Petraeus conceded that less than one-fourth of the 147,000 Iraqi security forces were actually "combat capable."

He questions whether, because no one seems to know how many insurgents have actually been killed, the Iraqi security forces exaggerate their own actions.

He “was told--emphatically--that there are no plans to construct military bases. Yet Congress recently passed a huge supplemental wartime appropriations bill that includes, at the request of the Bush Administration, $500 million for military base construction.”

“I couldn't get a single US official to acknowledge any mistakes. The standard line remains, "We're moving in the right direction."

“Our young men and women in uniform are performing their difficult duties extraordinarily well. Indeed, the only honest and direct responses I got from any American in Iraq were from the soldiers. They told me they had been instructed by their superiors not to share any complaints with visitors.”

Another One Bites The Dust

The Atlantic Monthly is moving out of Boston after almost 200 years. It started in a townhouse near Boston Common in 1857. The move is part of a 'downsizing' of one of the great cities in this country. Two other Boston paragons - Gillette and Fleet Bank - were bought earlier this year and are now part of companies based in other parts of the country.

The consolidation of companies - which leads to fewer and fewer individual companies - seems to be leading to what might be considered a consolidation of cities, in that power seems to be concentrating more and more..

Not Your Father's Wall Street Journal

The front page of Wednesday's Journal had three lead articles above the fold. The datelines were Nanchang, China, Stuttgart, Germany and Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Just think of it. America's leading business paper feels that the important business stories for that day were not in the US of A nor were they about US companies.

Justice?? Sunday

Can you believe that the majority leader of the US Senate and wanna be presidential candidate, Bill Frist, will speak at what its sponsors call "Justice Sunday"? It's an April 24 gathering of so-called Christians to protest the use of a filibuster against "people of faith", that is people who support Bush's judicial nominees.

A few weeks ago he weighed in on Terri Schiavo's medical condition although he had never seen her. Now, he's apparently convinced that 'people of faith', by definition, support Bush's nominees.

How low will he sink to gather support?

More Starving of the Beast

The House has once more passed a bill to permanently eliminate the estate tax when the sunset provisions - which 'temporarily' eliminate the tax - expire in 2010. Of course, what this means is that the income tax will eat up more of the slightly above average ($1.4 mil) Joe's estate, while the truly rich will see taxes go down. Hopefully, the Senate will kill this as they have in the past.

What these guys fail to realize is that the beast they are starving is us.

Follow the link

If this blog does only one thing – convince you to read this speech by Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, no less - I will feel that I’ve really done something good for our world. I may not agree with many of the ideas he advocates on his web site, but I certainly agree with those expressed in this speech, “Who’s Better Off?

He asks some key questions:

Do the ends justify the means?

How much better off are the Iraqi people?

Why is it that what is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander?

Are Christian Iraqis better off today?

Are the American people better off because of the Iraq war?

And tells some home truths:

In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself.

Yet the election was held under martial law implemented by a foreign power, mirroring conditions we rightfully condemned as a farce when carried out in the old Soviet system.

Today it’s easier to get funding to rebuild infrastructure in Iraq than to build a bridge in the United States.

Because of the war, fewer dollars are available for real national security and defense of this country.

The real irony is that we are told we go hither and yon to fight for freedom and our Constitution, while carelessly sacrificing the very freedoms here at home we’re supposed to be fighting for.

We have lost our way by rejecting the beliefs that made our country great (my emphasis).

Ho Hum – Another Record Month

Unfortunately, the record is a reverse one – February was the third month in a row that our trade deficit set a new record; it reached $61,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros.

When did it start going wrong?

I’ve long held that the decline in the quality of our government began with the rise of a career called “politician”. I think we had better government when the Congress and Senate were made up of the teacher, the banker, the hardware store owner, the pharmacist and, yes, the lawyer who spent a couple of terms in office and then left to go back to the real world. These men were not focused primarily on winning reelection or getting a job as a lobbyist. Yes, I know there were losers back then, but, in general, those in government were focused more on doing what they saw as the right thing than is the current crop of legislators.
I was reminded of this listening to a brain surgeon on NPR this morning who pointed out the number of doctors and other health care people who were members of our first governments.
I doubt that I will ever see the demise of the politician, although one can always dream.

The Lowest Common Denominator?

Voting is not perfect in this country or elsewhere but you’ve got to worry as to whether we should be thankful that some people don’t vote or that some people lose elections. What do you make of this statement from John Kerry’s speech to the League of Women Voters in Boston yesterday?

"Leaflets are handed out saying Democrats vote on Wednesday, Republicans vote on Tuesday. People are told in telephone calls that if you've ever had a parking ticket, you're not allowed to vote."

Would you want someone who believed this crap to vote? Does Kerry actually believe this?

Devil? Saint? Human Being?

This week will see another media fest when John Bolton appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify relative to his nomination as Ambassador to the UN. There has been a raft of activity pro and con his appointment, with detractors positioning him as a devil and supporters promoting him for sainthood. Frankly, all this extreme posturing – even by those who were formerly relatively rational people - really ticks me off. Bolton is just a human being like the rest of us. He’s smart and experienced.

Whether he’s the right person for the job at this moment in time is a question. But the world has a way of surprising us every so often. Who would have thought the Red-baiter Nixon would have made the opening overture to China? Or, that mild-mannered Earl Warren would have led the Supreme Court into the 20th century? It seems to me that far fewer people demonized Nixon or Warren although they abhorred their policies and actions.

Most of the talk about Bolton has assumed that the UN is in very good shape and does not need a flame thrower, as Bolton has been said to be. But that is a false assumption. While the UN has done much good, it has had its screw-ups and scandals. As with any sixty-year-old organization, it could stand a rejuvenation, particularly as we are living in such a different world than that of post World War II.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Bolton should be nominated. I find it unlikely that someone who has professed hatred for the UN, disparages the value of treaties, and seems to be convinced of our perpetual righteousness would make a good UN Ambassador. But let’s go through the nomination process as rational human beings, not demonizing or sanctifying anybody.

PBU15

Some days you have to be thankful you live in the West

Rob Adams over in Sparrow Chat has a disturbing tale to tell about man’s inhumanity to man. In “Evolution or Creation” he writes of the cannibalism that is taking place today in the so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Today’s BBC News has a frightening tale of nature’s ‘inhumanity’ - for lack of a better word - to man. And, it also occurs in a country in Africa, Angola. Today’s news is that the death toll from the Marburg virus is now 173. That’s out of only 200 cases of it, a fatality rate of 86%. The 200 cases have occurred in only three weeks. There is no known vaccine or medical treatment for the virus, whose primary targets are kids under 5. One good thing, I suppose, is it moves quickly; you’re dead within a week or less.

The worst part of this is that this astronomical death rate is due in large part to a very poor health system. One nurse bemoans the lack of protective clothing. There is one doctor for every 13,000 people. A fourth of the children do not make it to age 5.

We do complain a lot about this country. Many of the complaints are justified. But in many, many ways we are very lucky to be living here.

How do you define a bond?

In many ways a bond is an IOU. But, whose IOU is worth more: mine or that of the US government? President Bush may prefer mine as yesterday in his visit to the Bureau of the Public Debt he dismissed the bonds of the US by declaring, “There is no trust fund (i.e. Social Security trust fund), just IOUs that I saw firsthand.”

Let’s hope that the holders of the US bonds financing our deficit ways don’t think the same way as our President.

Is anybody listening at DOD?

Maybe it was because I had just spent $2.70 for each gallon of regular gas I bought, but I found the article, “Gas Pains” in this month’s Atlantic Monthly quite serendipitous. The author, Robert Bryce, reports on the use of fuel by our military in Iraq. Here are some numbers I found amazing:

1. 27,000 vehicles in Iraq today almost two years after the end of the war,

2. 20,000 soldiers and contractors involved in the re-fueling of these vehicle,

3. 2,000 fuel trucks leave Kuwait every day,

4. 1,700,000 millions gallons of fuel used everyday, which works out to nine gallons a day per soldier on the ground.

According to Bryce, fuel efficiency is not a concern of DOD. Yet, because of the constant need to re-fuel, the opportunities for the insurgents to attack the fuel convoys are increased.

The really sad part about this is that the Defense Science Board, a division of DOD, in 2001 issued a report on Improving Fuel Efficiency of Weapons Platforms which stressed the importance in warfare of fuel-efficient vehicles. Here are their major findings:

a) Although significant warfighting, logistics and cost benefits occur when weapons systems are made more fuel-efficient, these benefits are not valued or emphasize in the DoD requirements and acquisition process.

b) The DoD currently prices fuel based on the wholesale refinery price and does not include the cost of delivery to its customers. This prevents an end-to-end view of fuel utilization in decision-making, doe not reflect the DoD’s true fuel costs, masks energy efficient benefits, and distorts platform design choices.

c) The DoD resource and accounting processes (PPBS, DoD Comptroller) do not reward fuel efficiency or penalize inefficiency.

d) Operational and logistics wargaming of fuel requirements is not cross-linked to the Service requirements development or acquisition program processes.

e) High payoff, fuel-efficient technologies are available now to improve warfighting effectiveness in current weapon systems through retrofit and in new systems acquisition.

The article quotes the chairman of the study: “the prevailing wisdom at the Pentagon is that ‘fuel efficiency is for sissies’”.

From the little I’ve learned over the past few months, the Defense Science Board, a division of the Department of Defense, does good work. If they were actually listened to, this might be a slightly better world.

21st century Minutemen?

There’s been a lot of press about the Minuteman Project, a protest against our failure to effectively patrol our borders. It’s even been picked up by the international media. Not bad coverage for what seems to be turning out as a rather small demonstration.

Their web site tries to promote a peaceful demonstration. Yet, some of their public comments and actions lead one to question whether they have simply toned down the rhetoric on the site. For example, the co-founder, Jim Gilchrist, says of his carrying a gun, “Would you go into battle without one? That’s what the border is now.” And, this: “I can’t think of a better reason to die than the First Amendment.”

We will eventually see whether the combination of guns, fear and media attention result in people being injured or killed.

PBU14

Still true more than 3 years later

My wife was going through some old files and found a copy of an article from an issue of the New York Review of Books. It was written on September 20,2001, nine days after the attack on the Towers, by Philip Wilcox, who had served as Ambassador at Large for Counterterrorism from 1994 to 1997. Had we followed his advice, I suspect the world would be a better place today. Some quotes:

“The most important deficiency in US counterterrorism policy has been the failure to address the root causes of terrorism.”

“But the US should, for its own self-protection, expand efforts to reduce the pathology of hatred before it mutates into even greater danger.”

“The US must also realize that, notwithstanding our great power, indeed because of it, we cannot dictate respect and cooperation.”

“We should also search for ways to strengthen the common bonds between Western value and Islam to combat the notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’ and to weaken the Islamist extremist fringe that hates the West and supports terrorist actions.”

Again, until we realize that force alone will not defeat terrorism, we’ll never learn how to live according to our ideals in the 21^st century.

Where has civic responsibility gone?

Every year a week or so before town election, the League of Women Voters holds a "Candidates Night" where the voters can get some insight into the people running for office. I just read in the local paper that there will be no Candidates Night this year. No reason was given, but I suspect it's because there is only one contested office out of the fifteen or so that will be on the ballot. And that contest is for Tree Warden!

It's sad that in a town of 2000 voters we have only one person willing to challenge the incumbents, of whom I'm one. Yet, many of these same 2000 are not shy about expressing their opinions about Town matters. Why won't they run for a Town office and get a shot at making their opinions reality? Isn't that the American way? Especially in small town America, where West Tisbury us located?