Meaningful Distinction:
 

 
Patrick S. Lasswell Look outward for something to accomplish, not inward for something to despise.
pslblog at gmail dot com
 
 
   
 
Friday, May 30, 2003
 
Mike Totten Responds

"I agree that global warming is probably an overblown issue. And the only reason Enron supported Kyoto was because they could make money of "energy trading." (Here is an example of the profit motive leading people to support dumb ideas.)

"However, I disagree with some of the rest of your piece. Look at Brazil. It is very profitable to cut down the Amazon rain forest. Yet the Amazon soil is only six inches deep (compared to six feet in Iowa), and it's crappy soil. The only reason the rainforest continues to exist is because new growth feeds on dead growth. When the Brazilians clearcut, the area turns into a desert. A freakin' desert in the Amazon, for God's sake."

"Now: This is all verifiable, and is well-documented. And this causes obvious damage to Brazil. Haiti cut down ALL its forest, and it cannot regrow it for the same reasons that Brazil cannot regrow it. The money earned by Haiti is now long gone, and the countryside is a wretched environmental disaster zone. "

"You say that investors will take this sort of thing into account. And yet history shows that they do not. "

I said that investors can take that sort of thing into account and have. Besides which, the rainforests aren't cut down to make greater dividends for CalPERS or Citibank; rainforests are eliminated to put steaks on the plates of poor people. Investors are perfectly capable of making reasonable decisions when presented reliable and verifiable information. The key here is that the activist environmentalists are not so keen on developing and delivering that sort of information. Putting all the grief on the investor's plate when environmentalists have been actively fraudulent is garbage on a good day.

"Profit is not always the most important thing. A single-minded pursuit of profit does sometimes lead to the Tragedy of the Commons."

Single minded pursuit of profit also gets you arrested for Securities Fraud. I know this for a fact because I have friends who have put energy traders in jail. In that case, however, the kakistocracy of California actively invited fraud. That the fraud resulted in economic damage on an epic scale is due to obdurate stupidity on an epic scale, not rapacious investors.

"Notice that I did not say "Socialism is the answer." Socialists have a worse environmental record than capitalists. "

I absolutely believe that there are tremendous profit advantages in being a good corporate citizen and taking care of the environment. I do not believe that the people in control of the environmental dialogue are in any way interested in presenting their case in the framework of functional economics. Too many of them are locked into a 160 year old economic theory that all rational people have discarded and all investors ignore. It is a bitter truth that most of the Green movement would rather chase after an impossible implementation of Marxism than accomplish something meaningful that might make a profit.

I think they see the struggle as more important than the accomplishment. Because of that they are doing lasting harm to the environment by diverting the dialogue away from attainable goals. Finally, by not acknowledging that only wealthy peoples can afford clean environments, the Green movement is committed to a negative sum game regardless of what they claim as victory conditions. There is a contrast between professional investors who are in a positive sum game and the activist Greens who do not have a sustainable economic vision. The greater contrast, though, is that the professional capitalists have professional oversight and the political environmentalists do not even have to report to anyone. This would be acceptable if we were not talking about serious money, but with the Kyoto Protocols attempting to impact a substantial fraction of our GNP, the environmentalists need to be accountable.

When investors can reasonably rely on the data presented by environmentalists, they will start listening environmental proposals. When environmentalists stop blocking the replacement of inefficient systems and start championing efficient and profitable new methods and equipment that preserves the environment, they will get their proposals approved. When the Green movement stops chaining themselves to obsolete economics and viscerally offensive methods, they will stand a chance of accomplishing something meaningful. Until then, shareholders everywhere in the world will give no ear to the people who lie, cheat, and steal.

Thursday, May 29, 2003
 
Money IS the bottom line
A friend posted:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/05/29/exxon.climate.reut/index.html

"Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders this week voted down proposals concerning global warming and renewable energy, as the head of the global energy giant said profits take precedence over social causes."

My response:
1. CNN is in a grim battle with the New York Times to be the least reliable major news source on the planet. Trusting CNN spin is akin to investing your retirement funds in the Powerball, without the possibility of a jackpot.
2. Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders are primarily composed of incredibly highly paid stock analysts who have a vested interest in producing returns on investments. The above statement is much less of an indictment of the shareholders or corporate officers than it is a denial on the value of global warming and renewable energy proposals. The science of global warming is so heavily compromised by political agendas that no sane investor would put money in it, regardless of their interest in the environment. Bad science is simply not a bankable commodity. The overwhelming number of renewable energy proposals (apart from hydro-electric and breeder reactors) are simply not competitive with fossil fuels. It is incredibly telling that one of the major proponents of renewable energy sources is Enron, the perpetrators of several of the greatest securities frauds in history. With that kind of backing, what investor would put money in a proposal?

Money is the bottom line here, and the problem people concerned with the environment need to face is that dispassionate analysis reveals that global warming and renewable energy are deeply in the red. Show a meaningful return for your concerns, not Enron style speculation, and the investors will commit. Unless and until environmentalists can show facts with verifiable sources and repeatable results, investors will continue to treat greens as perpetrators of securities fraud.

Let me drive this point home for the doctrinally impaired: If your proposals have no real value sane people will not support them with their own money. Politicians are always playing with somebody else's money, so their support of a policy is no endorsement of its real value. If you cannot prove the value of your proposals using verifiable science and tangible proof, your proposals have no value. If you want to help the environment, throw out all the propaganda and transparently show economic value for improving the environment. If all you want to do is bang on drums and engage in group gropes, go ahead. Look at how well that stopped the war in Iraq.

Saturday, May 24, 2003
 
Free Speech and Free Birds

I just caught Lynyrd Skynyrd on Austin City Limits, truly a different experience than one normally expects from PBS. The juxtaposition of writing a blog entry based on the Dixie Chicks and then watching serious old school southern metal is too extreme not to comment upon. The Austin City Limits recording was made in 2000, thirty years after the formation of the band. Although the visual signs of age were present on the members of the band, musically they were as passionate in their performance as twenty-year olds. They were not pretty, but they could still make some powerful music.

Additionally, thirty years on, they were still unabashedly politically incorrect. Although they were not draping the stage with the stars and bars, they were not ashamed of them either. The apology for this is that they view the flag of the Confederacy as an emblem of Southern pride, but that is mostly irrelevant; nobody who will listen needs to be told, and the people who need to change their mind will never listen. Lynyrd Skynyrd never advocated a return to slavery or the oppression of the blacks. They just wanted Neal Young to stop whining, and who doesn’t? For the most part, their music is quite listenable after all these years, especially if you haven't heard "Free Bird" more than five times in the last decade. (For the kids, there was a time when you were lucky if you only heard that song five times in a day!)

The key thing here is that despite having a song set that was tremendously dated, despicable to academia, and dismissed by the arbiters of culture in this country, they lit up the crowd with their music. It does not matter what is said about you in this country as long as you choose to persevere with a meaningful message. Would any incarnation of Lynyrd Skynyrd have survived the Clinton administration if we actually had a mechanism of suppressing musical artists in this country? This is a band that tours with Ted Nugent; do the math.

The Dixie Chicks have nothing to worry about. All they need to do is develop an utterly unique and resonant sound and perform three hundred nights a year for the next thirty years and people will cherish them. Of course if they are just a product of record executives and A&R men, well, they could be gone tomorrow. It is a shame that nothing in life is certain, except for your own will to continue on path you have chosen.

Friday, May 23, 2003
 
First Amendment and Product Placement

I like traditional Chilean music, the type that was banned from public performance during the Pinochet administration. In the 1970s, the Chilean band Illapu wanted to put on a concert of classical music played with traditional Mapuche tribal instruments and were prohibited from doing so by the Pinochet government. The band Inti Illimani was forced into exile by the simple expedient of refusing to readmit them into the country in 1973 after a European tour. That is suppression of free expression in music. That is a clear violation of the principles of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that we hold dear. In fact, although the US supported the Pinochet administration, we welcomed exiled Chilean Folk bands into our country where they toured for many years of exile. Nobody in the US tried to lock up the Dixie Chicks, we did not refuse to readmit them into the country, and we did not prevent them from playing concerts.

For referance, this summer, the Dave Matthews Band will go on tour and will sell out arena venues, although if they go around spewing garbage about a popular president and a popular war, they may not sell out everywhere. Despite their strong differences with the current administration, they will play Home Depot Center and Coors Amphitheatre. This is not a matter of censorship, this is about product placement.

The First Amendment is a promise of freedom of speech, not a guarantee of popularity or entertainment industry sales. Say what you want, but if you are in the commercial arena you should be prepared to accept the financial consequences for doing so. I did not forfeit many of my rights while in the military to ensure that the entertainment industry would stay profitable regardless of what their idiot stars have to say. Defend the free world, yes; deliver fat bonus checks to record executives with mouthy singers, no.

This week, mouthpieces of the record industry decided it was time to start revising history. Rap and Rock Confidential published a concert report on the Dixie Chicks performance in South Carolina stating that the GOP was actively conspiring a boycott of their concerts and placing responsibility for the furor of the reaction against that group on the heads of the Republican Party. One of their quotes was courtesy of a former record industry executive. I suppose that music industry rags must accept the words of record industry executives as newsworthy; but no serious person should ever accept the class of person who brought us Milli Vanilli as source of factual information.

To the people in the record industry, South Carolina is slightly more distant and less relevant than geosynchronous orbit. It is neither LA nor NYC, so it doesn't matter. The notion that anybody in SC would deny this is a matter of transcendent unconcern to them. They think South Carolinians are all a bunch of ignorant hicks from flyover country. I'm not just saying this because I don't like arrogant Californians, New Yorkers, and entertainment industry types; although that is part of it.

On the other hand, why would somebody from the SC GOP headquarters _NOT_ want to organize a boycott of a product that was offensive to them? Why would it be bad for them to use their phone lines to do so? Why should their First Amendment rights to assemble peaceably be impeded because they espouse a conservative political view? Looked at it this way, the report is a more offensive assault on First Amendment rights than the original reaction to the Dixie Chicks product. A boycott of commercial products must be viewed as a peaceable assembly and therefore a protected activity under the auspices of the First Amendment. If the Republicans think they can gain political capital by boycotting the Dixie Chicks, that is a legitimate form of political organizing. Who knows, maybe it will result in tort reform and a real tax cut somewhere down the line.

As to accusations that the Republicans were using public funds and phone lines to organize a boycott, if dime one of tax money enters into the coffers of a political party, everybody associated with the transaction should go to jail. But the GOP and the Democratic Party are not directly supported by tax dollars. Political donations are not tax dollars. This is not quite as true in Illinois as it might be, but most other places this is mostly adhered to.

The way that tax dollars go to political flunkies is through a process called patronage where the politically faithful are employed in appointed positions. Nothing in the world is going to stop this. If people are calling from state offices and organizing a boycott, they are absolutely liable for incarceration for using public funds to support political activities. Al Gore got busted for this because he used a VP cell phone instead of Democratic Party cell phone to solicit donations in the 1996 election. As for turning the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House into Motel 6, that was another gross violation of the last administration. However, even that horrible article did not go so far as to accuse the Bush administration of organizing the boycott using government phone lines. The claim was that GOP phones were used to boycott an offensive product. This is equivalent to asserting that a political party was guilty of engaging in political activity using political funds. Next on Geraldo, businesses using advertising dollars to solicit sales!

Now if aides were accepting phone calls from constituents who had questions about a boycott, the subject starts gaining shades of grey. Without a letter actively organizing a boycott written on congressional letterhead signed by a congressman or some similar smoking gun, we do not have a vast and insidious Republican conspiracy. What we have is record industry flacks whining loudly to protect their profits. Now if the music industry was compelled to operate with even a fraction of the transparency of current politicians, it would be very interesting.

You see that is the hilarious irony of this situation. The music industry is beating its breast and tearing its hair out over the free speech of a group of people under a contract as similar to indentured servitude as to be indistinguishable. If we were serious about freedom of expression, record contracts would be transparently understandable and mutually revocable. Recording artists would be free to release material of their own choosing and ignore the dictates of their A&R men. I suppose that something could be said about the lingering freedoms of the most enslaved Americans, but that is mostly garbage.

The Dixie Chicks have consistently acted to make themselves more marketable, up to and including posing nude. The Dixie Chicks made a conscious decision to endear themselves to a particular concert audience and got caught being gauche on a matter of politics. This reduced the market value of their product because it alienated their primary customers. This is not about free speech, this is about product placement. Of course, appearing nude on the cover of a national entertainment magazine did quite a bit to recover the value of that product. Describing that behavior as a blow for liberty is a bit just not credible airbrushing of reality.

Sunday, May 11, 2003
 
test@

Friday, May 09, 2003
 
Second Order Predator

I closed the nineties as a hired gun in the computer industry; it was a good time to do that, and I made some good friends in the process. It was an exciting time and the community was filled with interesting people from a wild range of places and backgrounds. For some months in 1998, I found myself doing contract PC support at Gulfstream Aerospace in Savannah, GA. It was a great gig for a lot of reasons, and I enjoyed working with the people there and getting to walk around the best jet in the world. If you ever find yourself with the means to acquire one, I highly recommend obtaining a Gulfstream executive jet. People who dream of Ferrari's and Acura NSX's are pikers, the great thing is to have a Gulfstream and use it to travel to interesting places.

One of the other contractors also working there in the heart of Dixie was an expatriate Los Angeleno with delusions of cultural superiority. Much of his identity was centered on the notion that he was from the most advanced culture in human history and that his ideas, fashion, and attitudes were the ideal. He had worked a gig in Cleveland and was now in Savannah, and nothing he saw challenged this vision of the world. He took no small pleasure in trumpeting his superiority in general, and too special care to demean some of the local good ole' boys. This is where I came in.

I am from Oregon. I have lived other places, many other places, but home for me is Oregon. Like a lot of other people, before I lived in Oregon, I had lived in California. (I had the good taste to have been born elsewhere.) Like many people who have endured California and enjoyed Oregon, I have gotten quite good at repudiating all things Californian. Don't get me wrong, there are many areas of California that are worthy, interesting, and good. Many of those things have been paved over, though. Most of the rest are ignored by the people who live there now. My mother's side of the family is from California, but they arrived there in covered wagons, not mini-vans. One of the first houses in Vista, California is my Grandmother's, who occupied it until she died this year a couple of days after her 99th birthday. She loved that house and the land it stood on, and she taught a love of the land to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I love my cousins because they appreciate the land and growing things, and they refuse to accept plastic as a substitute for culture.

While this contractor from California thought of himself as an Alpha predator, a colossus of cultural superiority; that was only because he had never met a dyed in the Gore-Tex Oregonian. All of the pretenses of golden state that I had spent my life piercing were the bedrock of this man's identity. Leaving him alone or at least with a sufficiently intact ego to continue without opening his wrists became a personal struggle. When he would open up on the local rednecks, demeaning their culture and identity, I would stop restraining myself. Most rednecks today are not bad folks, and in many ways their lifestyle is much more sustainable than the glitterati of SoCal.

The rednecks really didn’t have much of a defense against the cool sophistication of a Californian; the Lakers fan was as ready for me as a possum is for a pickup truck. This guy was like a sheep to the slaughter. He kept setting himself up for getting slammed. One time he came in wearing the latest in fashionable footwear, started giving crap to the redneck wearing cowboy boots, whereupon I pointed out that his shoes were almost identical to military oxfords that I could get for $27 a pair. I realized then that I was a second order predator, intellectually evolved to demolish Californian pretensions.

Since then, I have generally avoided Californians and usually made it a point to use my powers for good. Sometimes, it is quite hard. Occasionally, the attitudes of assumed superiority are a red flag waved in my face that I yield to. I have been accused on some lists of hitting, and I have to admit that restraint has not always been my greatest strength. I do try, though. In part because decorum and cordial conversations occasionally change people's minds and flame wars entrench positions, especially ridiculous ones. Mostly it's because I have brushed up against enough third order predators to want to avoid their wrath, at least until I can become a fourth order one.

Patrick

Thursday, May 08, 2003
 
Robert, We Hardly Knew You…

Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia is publicly incensed about President George W. Bush landing on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, claiming it to be a waste of taxpayer's money. I take issue with the Senator's pretensions for a variety of personal and historical reasons, and feel strongly enough about it to take keyboard to cursor in an effort to set the record straight. I am a Navy veteran, on each of the years 1990-1994, I earned at least one month of hazardous duty pay serving on destroyers. Six of the eight years I served were aboard ships; the remaining two years were at school commands. I have gone in harm's way and served honorably in extremely trying duties. Others have had rougher service, and I honor them, but few veterans have ever doubted that I did my share.

My first ship was a reserve ship, a compromise between Congress and the Navy to keep more hulls in the water for a higher return to congressional districts. The USS Patterson was stationed in Philadelphia, within easy commuting distance of six Senate seats. She was provided with half the rated manning with the expectation that in time of war, the manning would be completed with reservists. The effect of this was that half the men did twice the work doing basic maintenance and little time preparing for war. We worked long hours with little relief in peacetime. It was tremendously unfair, everybody knew it, and generally we did our jobs knowing that life was just going to suck. We were not tremendously appreciative of the Congress that had given us this situation.

One of the banes of our existence was inspections. In the month of July 1989, we had five major inspections, one after another. The worst of the inspections was INSURV; the Board of Inspection and Survey. This was the inspection that determined if your ship could stay in the fleet, and the inspectors worked for the congress, not the Navy. In my six years aboard ships, I went through four INSURV inspections, and I have to say that nothing was worse for the readiness of the ship than one of those inspections. All of the extra gear that we used to make things bearable onboard, easier to do our jobs, and kept for emergencies were required to be removed. The lowest snitches got their jollies ratting out their shipmates and the officers had to indulge them regardless of the cost of loyalty.

In 1991, the second INSURV I endured almost cost me a stripe and my sanity. After throwing away $50,000 worth of spare parts that would not pass official muster one morning, I was questioned by the Executive Officer if all the goods I was throwing away had no military value. He did not want me to answer honestly; he wanted me to tell him exactly what I was supposed to tell the inspectors. I told him the correct lie and could feel my heart break while doing so. Earlier that month he had turned down my request for transfer to the Gulf War, stating that our ship had a higher mission, fighting the INSURV war. I grew despondent afterwards and lost focus. An alcoholic snitch ratted me out so that he could feel more important. INSURV is the inspection that breaks men's souls and ship's crews.

My second ship was the USS Stump, named after one of the most successful of native sons; she was the flagship of West Virginia. Since before Vietnam, Senator Byrd has been on the Armed Services Subcommittee. Recent advances in parallel computing have allowed scientists to begin to estimate the amount of pork that Senator Byrd has brought home to West Virginia, but I can only guess about him. You see, I have never met the man. In all my time onboard, after four massive inspections for his edification, he never once trod the deck of a ship I served on. He never visited a ship anywhere near me, and considering that I was based out of Norfolk for three years, that is a lot of ship time. I never saw him, and I never saw another congressional person onboard. I never got a word of thanks for my efforts or saw a personal sign of gratitude.

It does not bother me in the slightest that President George W. Bush visited the USS Abraham Lincoln. It does not bother me if it cost the taxpayers like me $100K or even if it cost $10,000,000. The sailors aboard the Lincoln deserve that much after all their efforts and sacrifices. They deserve the recognition and they deserve the chance to meet their leadership. Senator Byrd does not want to recognize that, and he has good reason to not recognize his own abandonment of his duty to the people who keep his state rolling in pork. Robert, we hardly knew you back then…and we hardly can view you as an authority now.

Patrick
 
What can you accomplish in a day?

A friend asked: "Why [are we] concentrating on Iraq, when there are still so many humanitarian tragedies around the world? "

Because there is only so much that can be accomplished and the United States is not omnipotent, omniscient, nor, as you show, supplied with endless will. We know about Iraq because we have studied it well and learned from fighting it before, our lessons from fighting in North Korea are no longer fresh or relevant. We have 17 UN Security Council Resolutions allowing us to act in Iraq, unlike Zimbabwe where we have no specific authorization. Iraq is the closest thing to a moderate Islamic nation that is available for molding into a democratic state after an invasion, unlike Iran which is a very different state. Specifically, Iraq has a brittle shell of dictatorship that can be readily broken; Iran is much more organicly empowered and has the capability of achieving its own liberation.

These are truths about the world that are not provided by our government. Iraq is a target of opportunity that is being acted upon for more than one reason. The problem with a truly "international" effort is that most other governments are so corrupt as to make the US look pure as the driven snow by comparison. Make no mistake, we have bad people in the US government, corrupt people in the US government, and stupid people in the US government. That is just the State Department. Compared to most of the rest of the world, we are as saints. If you doubt this, look at the "international" leaders, the French, and how they conducted themselves in Algeria or how they responded to Greenpeace or what they are doing in the Ivory Coast right now. While an "international" effort looks clean from a distance, I assure you that it is very sordid in detail. "International" solutions are only effective when the lowest of common denominators are appeased and have their palms greased. Would you want to have your people associated with a movement that satisfies the power lust of Syria and the politics of Chirac?

France is dependant on illegal sales of material to Iraq and makes us look like saints. Germany accuses our president of being like Hitler and then stops our meaningful action against openly fascist Iraq. That makes us look like saints. Brussels Defense Minister announces that the purpose of his military is to maintain a high standard of living for their unionized personnel, not actually do anything so gauche as to be able to project military force in compliance with their treaty obligations. That makes us look like saints. Zimbabwe is run by a bloody handed dictator who is systematically starving his political opposition by the millions, which makes us look like saints.

You should go rent the DVD of "Lawrence of Arabia" just because it is a fantastic movie and also because it really makes some effort to look at the brutal aspects of foreign policy.

I am not saying that the US forces or the US government or the US leadership ARE saints. In comparison to the effect of the actions of a jaded, crappy international community, the effect of our actions are saintly or at least have the prospect of becoming saintly.

If you wait for a perfectly pure sequence or actions, you will continuously miss the real moment where some good can be done. If you wait for a moment where everybody in the world agrees that some action must be taken and for that action to be utterly pure in motive and behavior, your grandchildren will have grown old and died of despair. We do the best we can with the situations we are in and the tools we have available. If you want to ask more than that, get on your knees and pray. In the meantime, let the flawed humans do their best and support them if you possibly can.

Patrick
 
My Speech at the "Support the Troops" Rally (remembered with advantages)
Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to thank you all for coming here to support the troops. You may have noticed that we don't have any drums like the protesters. There's a reason for that, you see, because we all agree on something, we are here to support the troops. I disagree with Lou over religion, but I want to hear him speak. I disagree with her choice of costuming (pointing at woman dressed as Betsy Ross), but I want her to speak. They have the drums because they can't stand to hear each other speak. Their drums drown out what each has to say because they are not interested in the First Amendment. We are here to assemble peaceably because we love freedom.

I want to talk today about Private Jessica Lynch. As a lot of you know, Jessica Lynch was rescued from captivity this week. It is important to know that she was the first American POW rescued by force of arms since World War II. That is worth celebrating. What some of you may not know is that by all reports, she fought to the last bullet in keeping with the best traditions of American arms. This is important because she will be the first American woman to be awarded a medal for valor in combat. This makes her the most important woman in the history of Equal Rights since Susan B. Anthony. Imagine that, she struck a blow for liberty not by becoming a Playboy Bunny like Gloria Steinem or becoming a lawyer like Hillary Rodham Clinton, but by becoming a soldier. That is worth celebrating for those of us who support the troops. For old male chauvinists, like me, this is the end of the world and I am glad about it.

The other thing that we have to keep in mind is that she was rescued because of the decency of an Iraqi man. I know that feelings are running really strongly, but there is something we need to keep in mind. We are not there to make war on the Iraqi people; we are there to make war on the regime of Saddam Hussein. We are there to free the Iraqi people just as Jessica Lynch set women free and an Iraqi man set her free.

Now, I do have a bit of a problem with this situation. I do not mind that the man who did this service was a follower of Islam. I do not have a problem with this man being an Arab; there are many decent and courageous Arab people, a culture that is gifted in poetry and many of the human skills. I do not have a problem with him because he is an Iraqi. I do have a problem because he is a lawyer. Now I've got to take back a lot of terrible things I've said about lawyers over the years, and I've got to eat a lot of crow. But we all have to make sacrifices to be free, and this is one I'm willing to make.

Thank you very much.

Patrick
 
To a wounded Marine:

Hello,

I do not know who you are, but I have been told that wounded Marines are recovering in Spain and need to know that their country supports them. I want to thank you; I want you to know that your suffering has meaning, and that I appreciate the sacrifice you have made for your country and for me. I supported this war knowing that Marines like you would get hurt and would die. I am responsible for you being hurt. Even if you were banged up in a traffic accident, even if you were the one driving; I am responsible because I wanted a safer world and am willing to accept your sacrifice as the cost of that.

I am a civilian now, but I was in the Navy. My father was a Marine who won the Silver Star in Korea. My grandfather served in World War One. Two of my uncles served in the Cold War and Vietnam and retired from the military. My father retired from the Marines shortly after earning his Silver Star…and his third Purple Heart; he was twenty years old. My family has earned the right to take responsibility for getting you hurt, and I am still thankful for your risks and your sacrifice.

There are some things you should know about my Father. When the grenade landed in his foxhole, he scooped it up and pushed his buddy down, but it was winter in Korea and the grenade stuck to his glove. He should have lost his hand at the least, but the much of the explosive had probably been used by the Chinese Communists to cook with. After walking two miles back from the line through the snow, the bloody mess that was his hand had frozen. When the first doctor to see him, a WWII veteran, looked at his hand, he was sure it had to be amputated. Fortunately, another doctor, not two weeks in country, knew the latest techniques and saved my father's hand.

Throughout his life, my father has surfed the crest of the latest medical technology. To give you an example, two years ago he caught pneumonia and should have died. According to his wishes, my family ordered the artificial life support pulled with the understanding that he could either breathe on his own or die naturally. The thing was that four months before he had started an experimental counter pulsation therapy that had been developed for athletes and his cardio vascular system had been substantially improved. Last summer my father and I went salmon fishing in Alaska because new medical technology allowed him to have a decent quality of life and also gave him life. You may be thinking that your wound has ended your life; if so, I hope you will rethink that in light of my evidence to the contrary. I believe that things will get better.

There is another lesson my father's experience can tell you. My father came back from Korea a Sergeant with a silver star and a seriously damaged hand. In those days the only real pain meds they had for serious pain was morphine. My father got hooked. His buddies, including some old China Marines who knew about this sort of thing, got him off the dope by getting him to drink a lot of beer and smoke a lot of cigarettes. One night, coming back to Camp Pendleton after drinking to the point where he was not feeling any pain, the Sergeant of the Guard decided to give my father a load of chicken manure. At that point in his career, my father did not feel in any way subordinate to some rear-echelon military functionary who had never heard a shot fired in anger and offered to settle matters behind the guard shack without the interference of stripes. My father won the fight with one hand and lost his stripes. When you get home, if you get drunk and punch out your superiors, I am not responsible. Keep it together so that you can train the next Marines. The REMFs who have never heard a shot fired in anger should not be the only ones giving the lessons.

One more thing about my father, you are almost undoubtedly better trained than he was, you were much better equipped than he was, and your war was not as screwed up as his was. (Okay, on three separate occasions my father got to meet Chesty Puller, so I just can not say that your leadership was better than his was.) However, in the absence of divine intervention, we will likely be cleaning up the Middle-East for the rest of our lives. After that, our children will be cleaning up Africa. We will be asking the Marines who follow you to be cleaning up messes for the foreseeable future. But the Marines are getting better and the world is getting better because of their efforts. I am responsible for asking you to go in harm's way because I am an American voter who demands a better world. I thank you for the sacrifices you have made and I thank you for taking the risks necessary to make the world a better place.

Patrick S Lasswell
 
Discovery and Dignity
There's a joke I use to emphasize perspective of scale: it's a small world…but I wouldn't want to paint it. I used to have to paint and repaint ships as part of my job. Complex three dimensional spaces are hard to envision for most people, but the complexity of painting a large space is within the comprehension boundaries of folks.

Today a friend of mine dropped a small case during a visit and he couldn't find it. I checked and discovered that the couch had swallowed it, as couches like to do. The biggest problem he had finding the case was that from the time he had last seen it, we had gotten into a car, driven a few miles, walked two city blocks, and eaten lunch in a crowded restaurant. He spent a lot of time looking in the wrong places.

The United States has risked its reputation on discovering Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. The former regime had quite some time to contemplate its demise. Reports today came out that one of Saddam's sons emptied the Iraqi Central Bank's cash reserves the night before the bombs started dropping. For more than a decade before that night, the regime of Saddam Hussein watched large weapons production facilities get blown up any time they were detected.

Ten years ago, I participated in the destruction of the nuclear weapons production facility in the first strike of Operation Southern Watch; we left the cafeteria and the waste storage intact. That was low hanging fruit, since then, the availability of strategic WMD targets was eliminated. This is not news and this should not be viewed with surprise. Saddam Hussein stopped providing us with strategic targets. In all the history of armed conflict, there has never been as extensive a proving ground for the practice of strategic deception as Iraq. By Darwinian effects alone, the surviving WMD production capacity has to be hard to find.

Many commentators are crowing these days that the United States forces have not found WMD; for many of them, that is the only shred of dignity they have left. Can you imagine putting years of your time into opposing any war, anywhere only to find the effect of your actions was to keep a fascist regime of murdering and mutilating thugs in power? So now these commentators have to hold onto this last argument and hope that they can hold off the justified accusations of fraud. Do they really think that not yet finding WMD is justification for their years of empowering the political imprisonment of children in Iraq? Are they seriously asking us to believe that Saddam Hussein was guilty of every other kind of atrocity and crime up to the day the troops crossed the border, but he had seen the sweet light of reason on WMD?

After WWII, the US Coast Guard obtained a sail training ship from the Nazi Kriegsmarine, for decades afterwards the crew of the USCGC Eagle was surprised to be discovering swastikas that had been painted over. In all likelihood, we are going to find WMD evidence in the next six months. After that, we will likely be finding WMD caches every few months for the next several decades. It will be more dangerous than chipping paint, and we will probably lose people doing so. Every time it happens, some commentator who cannot find their pen in a couch will make snide remarks trying to salvage their dignity. It does not matter, though. Because the important part is not that the United States can find WMD, but that the US will not be held hostage by the threat of violence. This is why we went to war in Iraq, and why we are committed to developing democracy there. We will leave when it suits our interests to do so, and not because it would gladden the hearts of compromised commentators everywhere.

Patrick

 

 
   
  This page is powered by Blogger, the easy way to update your web site.  

Home  |  Archives