| |
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Necromancy and Election 2004
A few days ago, I was thinking about great presidents and the current election, mostly by way of contrast. Arguably the best Republican president was Abraham Lincoln. He showed tremendous strength in our nation's darkest hour. The obvious choice between Lincoln and Bush is the one printed on a five-dollar bill, right? Well…except for that whole thing about Abe being dead for the last century… But the Constitution doesn't specifically prohibit Undead-Americans or people with massive cerebral trauma!
The real case against voting for zombies is not strictly constitutional. (Whoops! I just lost the Libertarian's interest.) The reason you don't vote for the restless dead is that they do not share a common sense of the present. The events that shape our current understanding and how the candidate responds to them are what we are voting on, when we decide to vote honestly. Abraham Lincoln did not experience September 11th, 2001 and did not change because of it. Although Lincoln's administration was formed in a crucible and came out strong, the strength required then is different than what is required today. Lincoln had an ineffective staff and mediocre military commanders to overcome on a daily basis. Today there is an abundance of extremely qualified staff and superb military commanders. Today the President faces different challenges, and acknowledging that difference is the crucial step to not voting for a memory.
Morbid grief is a common reaction to stressful change. Those stories of kooky aunts obsessing about dead husbands are classic examples of morbid grief. Living in a world of attractive memories is strongly tempting for people with limited prospects. Due to a combination of factors, the people of the United States have are very likely to engage in morbid grief. Victim culture is one manifestation of this pathology. Trial lawyers prey upon this cultural illness, and now it has become the dominant theme of one of our presidential candidates. Not surprisingly, this candidate represents the interests of the Trial lawyer lobby. While it might seem far-fetched to claim that we are on the cusp of becoming a nation of kooky aunts, the lack of a meaningful agenda by a campaign makes it difficult to distinguish a convention from a giant séance.
Electoral necromancy is not the answer to this year's decision, however tempting it might seem to the desperate. We need a President who is alive and in the present, however tawdry and confusing that moment is. The pace of change in the world demands a capacity to learn from the past, bury it, and move forward. Our nation is in a fight, and that fight is not the Civil War, the Second World War, or even Vietnam. Overcoming the siren call of dead ideals with integrity is a constant challenge and the key standard we must judge our President on in this time of change.
If George W. Bush has anything to recommend him, it is that his Vietnam-era service is not so distinguished that he must dwell on it. George W. Bush has shown at least some adaptability when it comes to burying dead ideals, alliances, and policies. If there were other candidates who had shown better commitment to the process of living, I would vote for them. Regrettably, the only other candidates cannot shake off the dead hand of the past.
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Kerry's Ugly Divorce
One of the things the culture of the US Navy gets right more often than not is relationships between people on the same crew. The bond between shipmates is not dissimilar to a functional family, when it works. This is not about being a band of brothers; this is about being able to endure living with the same people through months of isolation, privation, and hardship, where each person has to do their part so that everybody survives. Water will find the weak point, so everybody on a boat has to keep the faith. Some of the time this just doesn't work, but most of the time things work as well as most arranged marriages. You have to spend a lot of time with these people; you might as well make the best of it. Even when things go badly, you stick with your shipmate and try to make things right.
Finding out a shipmate has been badmouthing you behind your back is one of the most chilling things you can ever feel. Finding out that they've been badmouthing you to strangers is difficult to describe. The closest I can come up with is the kind of sick emptiness that is common in ugly divorces. (Something else time in the Navy gives you exposure to.) Imagine having your spouse accuse you of child abuse in a divorce. To have a shipmate badmouth you for personal advantage is worse. The spouse making abuse accusations just to get the house, the car, AND support is the closest I can approximate. Finding out that somebody who you shared your life with is destroying your honor for transitory personal gain casts a pall on your future relationships and your understanding of personal ambition. It rips you up where you live, and a lot more when you really worked to maintain your honor.
John Kerry testified to the Senate in 1971 that his shipmates committed atrocities on a regular basis, and he did this to get his name in the papers. He sold out his crew, his fellow commanders, and everybody else who served in Vietnam so that he could be important in politics. Now he says that he wants to report for duty again and that his service in Vietnam was the proof of his integrity. From a sailor's perspective, this is like the slandering spouse pointing to the marriage as proof of their commitment to relationships.
This is not about partisan political process. This is about the consequences of an ugly divorce. What goes around comes around. The Swiftboat Veterans for the Truth are willing to discuss this up front and in the open. This is not about partisan political advantage, this is about making things right.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
For Referance:
Patrick S Lasswell
USNR 1984-1987, EW Striker
USN 1987-1995, STG2 (SW)
Oregon National Guard, 1995-1998, 11B (Stopped drilling in 1996 for health reasons. Undiagnosed low thyroid.)
Command Decisions
This does not look good:
Stay Tuned
Amendment ICongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.story developing...
posted by CBFTW at 6:04 PM
This is one of the best milblogs, period. Earlier posts indicate that the soldier's chain of command was incredibly good and did it's job; they exercised control and loyalty to the soldier. To me it looks like somebody is trying to override the commander in the field, and regardless of how bad this situation is for bloggers, it is worse from a command perspective. Some REMFs have got their undergarments in a bunch and are passing masonry. Up to the point where the decisions of a combat commander are being overturned, that is just fun and games. Now that a combat commander's decisions regarding personnel under his command are being threatened, there is a serious problem.
Please take a few moments to make this known to your readership.
Command Decisions
This does not look good:
Stay Tuned
Amendment ICongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.story developing...
posted by CBFTW at 6:04 PM
This is one of the best milblogs, period. Earlier posts indicate that the soldier's chain of command was incredibly good and did it's job; they exercised control and loyalty to the soldier. To me it looks like somebody is trying to override the commander in the field, and regardless of how bad this situation is for bloggers, it is worse from a command perspective. Some REMFs have got their undergarments in a bunch and are passing masonry. Up to the point where the decisions of a combat commander are being overturned, that is just fun and games. Now that a combat commander's decisions regarding personnel under his command are being threatened, there is a serious problem.
Please take a few moments to make this known to your readership.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Baby Killers, Great and Small
Michael Totten discussed a Venezuelan anecdote that points out a problem with Class Warfare, and was roundly denounced for doing so.
"The robber than gave her a look of scorn as he said "The President is right when he says that you rich people have so many possessions that you do not care if you lose one. Well, I am going to take something from you that you do care about it." With that he put the gun to the three year old's head, and blew his brains out."
The key problem with his example is not that it is anecdotal and horrific; the problem is that it is irrefutable. If you accept that the story is true, you have to abandon class warfare and jihad as acceptable practices. The essential reality fracture that occurs in the socialist mind is the abandonment of responsibility that is implicit in a call for chaos. Accepting that a call for revolution gives license to infanticide is too much for the abstract intellectual.
One of the best things that my father ever did is make sure that I knew that joining the military meant that I would be responsible for killing children. Once he knew that I had accepted that moral responsibility he respected me as a serviceman. Nobody told my father that being a Marine meant that he would end up killing kids in Korea. When I ended up enforcing the UN blockade of Haiti, I accepted responsibility for the children who died as a result. I surely did not love all the consequences of my choice, and I really hate Aristede for squandering the opportunity that my infanticide provided. The consolation that I have is that I did not starve children to death for hatred or the thrill of violent vengeance or a blind belief in the probity of the United Nations.
The next year, when my enlistment was up, I left the Navy for a variety of reasons. Some of them have to be inconclusiveness and ineffectiveness of the sieges of Iraq and Haiti. Some of them have to be the despicable internal gamesmanship inspired by a declining military budget. Not a few of them have to do with wanting to get in a healthy relationship with a woman and get married; not really an option available to me with another two years of sea duty before a shore rotation. But I didn't leave because my philosophy was broken by the reality that violent coercion hurts people. I knew that going in.
I also knew that abandoning responsibility and allowing dictator's free reign invites genocide. People in uniform don't get to look at socialist protesters and call them "Baby Killers", but the historical fact is that both are. The difference is that people in the free world's militaries only kill children in small batches, and never as part of doctrine. In the immediate past, the free world, led by the United States, has made extraordinary strides to reduce inadvertent slaughter. The moral argument against war has suffered terribly with the development of precision weaponry and professional armed forces; invasion by the West has become substantially less cruel than Socialist or Islamist governance.
Benjamin Franklin could not conceive of a bad peace or a good war, but he also could not conceive of a concentration camp. The simple and irrefutable truth is that socialism and class warfare is responsible for orders of magnitude more corpses than the militaries of the free world, and that's counting Verdun, Dresden, Hiroshima, My Lai, Abu Gharib, and everything in between. The kind of despicable behavior accepted by class warriors is abhorrent to the professional national soldier, although political troops are notoriously less constrained. Socialist government and successful class war has killed more than all the weapons of mass destruction combined.
I figured this out intellectually twenty years ago when I joined and ten years ago experientially when I intercepted ships off Haiti. We are all responsible for infanticide because there is only so much that can be done to stop the slaughter of innocents. My decision to join the Navy was predicated on the belief that by doing so I could effect some change that would reduce the slaughter greater than I could elsewhere. I honestly believe to this day that I did more in the Navy than I could have by protesting or participating in any pacifist relief organization. The absolute lack of effectiveness of pacifist organizations in Africa alone points out to me the validity of this decision. Civilized behavior is the most certain safeguard of innocent lives that exists, and the US military has done more to enforce civilized behavior than anyone else in the history of the world.
Michael Totten's assertion was attacked, because it cannot be accepted without abandoning socialist principles. Murdered children are inconvenient for the academic revolutionary.
One more thing, all of the above is also true for fundamentalist religious warfare, with the possible exception of absolute body count. Hopefully we can maintain that distinction.
|
|
