Tag Archives: george w bush

May 16, 2015 · 20:12

Armed Forces Day 2015: The Breach of Trust

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“What is the cost of war? what is the bill?…“This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all of its attendant miseries. Back -breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years as a soldier I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not only until I retired to civilian life did I fully realize it….” Major General Smedley Butler USMC

Today is Armed Forces Day and unfortunately most of the country will not notice unless they are attending a Baseball game where it is being observed or some special event on a base, national cemetery, monument or VFW hall. Armed Forces Day was established in 1948 by President Harry Truman after the founding of the Department of Defense.  It was established to honor and remember those currently serving, not the discharged or the retired veteran, they are remembered on Veterans Day, the former Armistice Day, nor the fallen who are commemorated on Memorial Day which we will do next weekend. 

Unlike Veterans Day or Memorial Day there is no national holiday for Armed Forces Day. I find this ironic for a nation which claims to support the troops that the men and women who we honor are honored on a day that unless they are deployed in harm’s way or have duty, is regular day off like any Saturday. Personally I think the day should be celebrated by giving the active duty force a real day off and if they are deployed given some kind of down time as operational needs allow, and maybe even given them a ration of beer. We did this for the Marine Corps birthday in Iraq, so why not on Armed Forces Day? But I digress…

Back when Armed Forces Day was established there was still a draft which meant that in theory everyone had skin in the game and that our leaders were far more hesitant to commit the nation to war. 

Back in 1952 the New York Times editors wrote:

“It is our most earnest hope that those who are in positions of peril, that those who have made exceptional sacrifices, yes, and those who are afflicted with plain drudgery and boredom, may somehow know that we hold them in exceptional esteem. Perhaps if we are a little more conscious of our debt of honored affection they may be a little more aware of how much we think of them.”

But sadly today in all honesty were think very little of them. Today of course there will be a fair number of local celebrations to honor members of the Armed Forces across the country, but for the most part they will be small and not well publicized. Most of the people I attendance will not even be there for the troops. They will be there for the event and their hearts will be warmed by the tributes paid to the troops. As a career officer and son of a Vietnam veteran Navy Chief I appreciate those events and at least some of the good hearted the people that put them together. Being a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, especially those that have taken the time to honor Iraq and Afghanistan veterans like me who have returned from war totally fucked up. But again I digress, badda bing, badda boom, badda bomb…

Bu here is what really s upsetting to me, good number of these patriot, flag waving, war porn satiating, yet somehow inspiring ceremonies to honor the troops are not even coming for the heart of the people putting them on. I steady they are coming out of the Pentegon budget and being paid for by the taxpayers. These events are nothing more than faux patriotism and little more than propaganda that exploits the troops. They are being done as a recruiting tool with the Department of Defense which is paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the tax exempt National Football League and its teams to put on shows that give all the appearances of honoring the troops but are really nothing more than propaganda and recruiting commercials. Likewise for all which for all the money we the taxpayers spend on them actually net few recruits if any as a huge number of our current troops are the sons and daughters of men and women who have also served this country. They, like I do, do this for something greater than partisan politics  greater than money, greater than anything that can easily be repaid, the love of this country and the principles found in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. However, that is fodder for another article. 

But honestly I am so offended by this faux  patriotism shown by the NFL and God knows who else that it causes me a great deal of anger. I say this because throughout our nation’s history our political leaders, business leaders and the populace as a whole have despised the military, and those who in the absence of a draft chose to serve. That despicable attitude was well recounted in Herman Wouk’s monumental novel, which became a classic film The Caine Mutiny. In the film a defense attorney for those accused of mutiny, Barney Greenwald played to perfection by Jose Ferrer told the acquitted mutineers of the Caine’s wardroom:

“You know something…when I was studying law, and Mr Keefer here was writing his stories, and you, Willie, were tearing up the playing fields of dear old Princeton,method was standing guard over this fat dumb happy country of ours, eh? Not us. Oh no, we knew you couldn’t make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Queeg did! And a lot of other guys. Tough, sharp guys who didn’t crack up like Queeg.” 

For those who are now getting pissed off at me, let us look at facts. At any given time less than 1% of Americans are serving in all components of the military. For over 13 years we have been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as other locations that we don’t like to talk about too much. However this has not been the effort of a nation at war, it is the war of a tiny percentage of the population, a segment that everyone is far too willing to exploit. 

As a nation we are disconnected from the military and the wars that the military fights. The fact is that most Americans do not have a personal or vested interest in these wars, they have been insulated by political leaders of both parties from them. There is no draft, and no taxes were raised to fund the wars and the military is now worn out.

We have been at war for nearly 14 years and truthfully there is no end in sight. In that time every single Soldier, Sailor, Marine and Airman volunteered for duty or reenlisted during this time period. Motives may have varied from individual to individual, but unlike the World Wars, Korea and Vietnam every single one volunteered to serve in time of war. I think that this makes the current generation of veterans quite unique in our modern history, but not so different than the professionals who served before and after the Civil War,and  those who served before and after the First World War. The situation after the Second Wolrd War and the Cold War required a large standing military and large reserve force. This required the draft, which though hated by many  leavened the professional force with civilians who got a taste of military and when they left did not forget they meaning of their service and the sacrifices made by the professionals. We do not have that anymore. We are no longer are no longer a military composed of citizen soldiers. We who serve,  even in our reserve components are  a Warrior caste, set apart from the society that we serve.

There is a tragic disconnection between the military and civilian society in the United States. This is the result of deliberate public policy since the end of the Vietnam War supported by both political parties. For almost 40 years we have relied on an all volunteer force. It is that relatively small and socially isolated military which is sent to fight wars while the bulk of the population is uninvolved and corporations, lobbyists and think tanks get rich.

Andrew Bacevich wrote in his new book Breach of Trust: How Americans failed their Soldiers and their Country:

“Rather than offering an antidote to problems, the military system centered on the all-volunteer force bred and exacerbated them. It underwrote recklessness in the formulation of policy and thereby resulted in needless, costly, and ill-managed wars. At home, the perpetuation of this system violated simple standards of fairness and undermined authentic democratic practice. The way a nation wages war—the role allotted to the people in defending the country and the purposes for which it fights—testifies to the actual character of its political system. Designed to serve as an instrument of global interventionism (or imperial policing), America’s professional army has proven to be astonishingly durable, if also astonishingly expensive. Yet when dispatched to Iraq and Afghanistan, it has proven incapable of winning. With victory beyond reach, the ostensible imperatives of U.S. security have consigned the nation’s warrior elite to something akin to perpetual war.”

Bacevich, a retired Army Colonel and Vietnam veteran who lost a son in Iraq is dead on, as is Rachel Maddow who wrote in her outstanding book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power:

“The reason the founders chafed at the idea of an American standing army and vested the power of war making in the cumbersome legislature was not to disadvantage us against future enemies, but to disincline us toward war as a general matter… With citizen-soldiers, with the certainty of a vigorous political debate over the use of a military subject to politicians’ control, the idea was for us to feel it- uncomfortably- every second we were at war. But after a generation or two of shedding the deliberate political encumbrances to war that they left us… war making has become almost an autonomous function of the American state. It never stops.” 

The lobbyists, pundits, politicians, preachers and war profiteers that promote war don’t care about the troops. When they say they do they are lying out their asses. This is because no matter who is in office or who controls congress these people and corporations will promote policies that keep them employed and their businesses enriched. Marine Major General and Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler was quite right when he said:

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

I think that the reason that our current wars have gone on so long is the that misguided policies have brought about a chronic disconnection in our society between those that serve in the military. But how can there not be when in the weeks after 9-11 people like President Bush and others either directly or in a manner of speaking told people to “go shopping” * as we went to war in Afghanistan? When I returned from Iraq I returned to a nation that was not at war whose leaders used the war to buttress their respective political bases.

The results are terrible. Suicide rates are continuing to rise among veterans who have returned to find that neither the VA nor the civilian mental health care sector is prepared to care for them. Even worse the members of the GOP controlled Congress are working their asses off to screw the troops. Ohio GOP Congressman, Tea Party favorite,  supposedly deeply committed Christian and even worse a Colonel in the Ohio Army National Guard has attempted and is attempting again to attach an Ammendment to the 2016 Nation Defense Authorization Act which would keep the Defense Department from enformice rules which would protect young troops from the predatory payday lenders who line the avenues leading to every major military base in the country. My opinion, this man is a traitor to the country even though he wears the uniform and has deployed and led soldiers in in Iraq and other locations during this war. He is selling out the the young troops to protect the payday lending industry with which has had a nearly incestuous relationship since he day that was elected to Congress. 

But Congressman Stivers is not alone, Congressmen and women of both parties sell out the troops to prop up banks, insurance companies and Wall Street. Those military health benefits not directly provided in military medical centers are run through an organization called Tricare. Tricare, which is managed by the insurance companies who bid on competitive contracts is a for profit industry. These insurance companies routinely deny services to the families of military members, pay so little or are so mind numbingly  incompetent that many medical providers refuse to deal with them, leaving the troops their families stuck in the middle. That my friends is fact. Now the GOP led by the Koch brothers is attempting to privatize Veterans Admisistration Heath care. Now in all honesty, the chronically underfunded and bureaucratically bound VA. That being said my friends privatization will only make things worse for veterans who will now have to deal with private for profit insurance companies and Heath care systems that see them and their wounds and infirmaries as a way to make a buck off of taxpayer and to screw the veteran. 

But let’s not stop there. Politicians and their backers from the financial sectors have been working overtime since the Adminstration of George W. Bush to roll back retirement benefits which they call  “entitlements” which are supposedly destroying the financial health and well being of the nation. Never mind the fact that these same  politicians have spent trillions of dollars bailing out the corporations which have almost single handed lay destroyed this nation’s economy time after time since the 1970s, and who support corporations who are based in this country but have sold the nation out and work against the interests of Americans. 

But never mind, I digress, for as we all know it is the troops who are the leches who are bankrupting the country. 

But this isn’t new my friends it began during the Reagan Administration which changed the retirement system from the flat 50% of one’s final active duty pay that one would retire with at 20 years of service or high multiples up to 75% at 30 years to an average of the last three, or the highest three years of pay that one earned while on active duty.  In effect the Reagan Adminstration robbed military retest of hundreds of thousand of dollars of hard earned benefits. But again the beloved Saint Ronald loved the troops, after all he said so. 

Likewise, did you know that some GOP legislators want to cut the disability payments to military members who have been wounded or injured during their service?  You probably didn’t and you won’t find that fact out on Fox News or CNN. This is not to be confused with the retirement benefits that they are looking to cut.  This my friends is the debt of honor  that this nation owes to the men and women who have given everything and now are broken in body, mind and spirit. But then those who promote such policies, even those who have worn the uniform like Congressman Stivers have no honor. Like those that sold out the Union veterans after the Civil War and the Doughboys after World War One they are much more indebted to their political benefactors than they are to te troops no matter what they say. 

Now I do believe 

Armed Forces Day should be better celebrated and I am grateful to the people that do things every day to thank and support military personnel. These wonderful people that do this come from across the political spectrum. Some are veterans and others non-veterans. But they care for and appreciate the men and women that serve in and fight the wars that no-one else can be bothered to fight.

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Of course the politicians, pundits, preachers and the defense contractors, banks and lobbyists will find a way to profit. They will do so no matter how many more troops are killed, wounded or injured and how badly it affects military personnel or their families and will push to abandon those who fought as they do after every war. After all, to quote Smedley Butler, “war is a racket.”  So fuck them all, and if there is a just God and there is a Hell, I hope that they end up there, especially the preachers who tomorrow will invite the troops to their churches to supposedly honor them even as they support the politicians whose policies damn the very troops that they honor tomorrow. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

President Bush’s actually words were “Now, the American people have got to go about their business. We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don’t — where we don’t conduct business, where people don’t shop…” http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011011-7.html

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December 15, 2014 · 21:06

Dick Cheney: Justice, Truth and the Value of a Single Human Being

Dick Cheney

Yesterday while he was in the process of throwing his boss, former President Bush and former head of the National Security Council and Secretary of State Condi Rice under the bus regarding the issue of torture and war crimes, former Vice President Cheney defended the death of an innocent man and the imprisonment of hundreds of others deemed to be innocent.

The words were damning and absolutely frightening for anyone that believes in the rule of law and human rights.

Cheney told Chuck Todd when questioned about the fact that over 25% of those held during the Bush Administration were innocent and should not have been detained or imprisoned on Meet the Press:

“I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States.”

The sad thing is, that Cheney in his office of Vice President of the United States had such a low regard for the rule of law and human rights that over a decade after his policies were proved to be wrong, illegal and immoral under any standards of human rights and international law that he not only continues to defend them, but is willing to throw his superior, the President, and other cabinet officials under the bus to justify his position.

As I read his remarks I was reminded of the testimony of Herman Goering and other Nazis at Nuremberg. Likewise I was reminded of the film classic Judgement at Nuremberg where Spencer Tracy plays judge Dan Haywood who is the head of he tribunal that ties Nazi judges in the fictionalized version of the Nuremberg Judges Trials…

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In the fictionalized version of the Nazi Judge’s trail at Nuremberg, in the film Judgement at Nuremberg Spencer Tracy, playing judge Dan Heywood noted:

“But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary – even able and extraordinary – men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through the trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen. There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” – of ‘survival’. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is ‘survival as what’? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

Dick Cheney exemplifies exactly what judge Haywood testified to in the film. Sadly, unlike the primary defendant in that film, Ernst Janning who was played by Burt Lancaster, Cheney has no redeeming features or ethical tragedy. Cheney is simply an unrepentant war criminal who is not only unapologetic for his own actions but perfectly willing to condemn those that he served under or alongside as war criminals while attempting to maintain the fiction of his innocence. The man has no honor, and for people who consider themselves to be “principled conservatives” or even worse “conservative Christians” to defend Cheney’s defense of war crimes to the death, is simply apprehensible.

There are times when one can look at a war criminal and feel a certain measure of tragedy. However, Dick Cheney is neither a dumb man, nor a victim. As vice President to a President with no foreign policy experience or skills, a man who was out of his league intellectually to serve as President, Cheney not only gave bad advice, he was willing to for practical purposes indict George Bush in the commission of the very war crimes that he was the ideological wellspring.

Sadly, Dick Cheney is nothing more than a sociopath and war criminal who should, provided that the executive branch has any balls should be remanded to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for prosecution of war crimes. But then, President Obama, like others before hi will not, much to his own dishonor will not do this.

If if the same crimes that we tried and executed Nazi and Japanese War Criminals for committing is not enough to send Dick Cheney to the gallows, I do not know what is. But then, even the International Criminal Court, unlike Texas and Florida, has renounced the death penalty.

So what do we as Americans stand for?

Do we adapt to and defend our the very methods of our enemies?

Do we simply forget the standards that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers sent Nazi and Japanese war criminals to the gallows?

Do we excuse the actions of those in supreme positions of power that should have known better?

I think not… unless we decide that expediency trumps the Constitution, unless we decide that war crimes are only such if they don’t apply to us…unless we decide as a people that we as a nation are above the very laws that we enacted to prevent the repetition of the crimes of the Nazis…

ROBERT H. JACKSON

Justice Robert Jackson noted in the Major War Crimes trails at Nuremberg:

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

Sadly, Dick Cheney,Fox News and all of the defenders of torture and other war crimes do not seem to get that, and in doing so they lower us to the level of all the Nazis that we tried and convicted of war crimes.

But human nature does not change…and it should it be, if we fail to correct it and turn over those suspected of war crimes to the appropriate authorities, than we should share in the collective and divine judgement upon them.

If that is an uncomfortable proposition, than I guess I have done my job tonight.

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

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October 4, 2014 · 22:30

I Wish I Did Not Dream That Much…

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“I wish I did not dream that much. They make me sometimes dread to go to sleep. Scenes from the war, are so constantly recalled, with bitter feelings I wish to never experience again. Lies, vanity, treachery, and carnage.” Major General Gouverneur Warren, hero of Gettysburg in 1867 in a letter to his wife

I have had a pretty good couple of weeks with my trip to the Oktoberfest and this past week. Apart from being tired from the travel and trying to catch up and reset myself my sleep has been good, well until last night. It was surprising because I have been happy, good things are happening in my life and I found out that I am being inducted into my high school’s Hall of Fame laster in the month. I have been catching up at work and preparing for the next iteration of the Gettysburg Staff Ride which I lead and I am working with a number of others on a new ethics class for our students. Likewise the baseball teams I want to win in the playoffs are winning, what could be wrong? 

That being said since coming home I have been following the events in Iraq and Syria. Of course I have been horrified, but not surprised in the least at the latest public execution of an innocent hostage by the Islamic State. However, I have been watching the continued Islamic State advance in Al Anbar province where I served with out advisors and the Iraqi Army, Border and other security forces. Islamic State appears to be on the verge of capturing a number of important bases including Al Asad, and are advancing on Baghdad and may be in control of Abu Ghraib, nearly in artillery range of Baghdad International Airport. The fact that this is where I left so much of my heart and soul is particularly upsetting.

As the situation grows more serious and U.S. and allied involvement grows deeper I have no doubt that eventually ground troops will be fighting the Islamic State, which is perhaps exactly what they want. Last night I was surprised as I had a nightmare which went on and on. My wife Judy woke me up at one point, I was awoken again when I kicked the bookcase that serves as my nightstand. The nightmare did involve Iraq, but this time it was not set in the past, but in the future and it was frightening in its vividness and reality involving me as well as a number of people that I know from the military and other agencies including the State Department involved in a humanitarian mission.

As the politicians, pundits and preachers who lust after war and are seemingly eager to commit the sons and daughters of other people to a new ground war, without of course providing them the funding and equipment that will be needed because they would rather have tax cuts for the rich and corporations chum the waters; I am concerned. Sadly, we may have to commit ground forces, perhaps a sizable number to halt the advance of the Islamic State, and possibly even defeat them in Iraq. However, the Islamic State will not be stopped with military victories; they will regroup and morph into something else. I don’t think that the war we are in won’t end, at least in my lifetime. It will be like the Thirty Years War, but maybe longer. I would like to be wrong and I pray that I am, but the war keeps growing and nightmares keep coming.

On Thursday I was sitting in the waiting room of the doctor who prescribes my psych meds I caught the first part of an interview by Fox News with former President Bush. When I heard the questions and his answers I was livid, because it was Bush and his chicken-hawk advisers who in their ill-conceived and criminal invasion of Iraq helped birth the Islamic State, and now they were claiming that they predicted this. If these people were held to the same standard that we held the major war criminals of the Nazi regime at Nuremberg, they would all gone to the gallows. These people and their propaganda machine at Fox News keep trying to blame everyone, especially President Obama for their criminal negligence.

To me that it is infuriating. I know too many people whose lives have been devastated by their policies and decisions. I was so angry when I heard Bush say that “he understood the enemy” that had to tell the receptionist that I would be outside. The man has no clue about the enemy, he helped create them and will not take any responsibility for his decisions and the actions of his administration. Those decisions and actions were the seeds of a strategic defeat in terms of geo-politics and economics for us in the Middle East, a defeat from which we may never fully recover. As the former President spoke I wanted to rise up like the First Officer of Soviet Alpha Submarine Konovalov in The Hunt For Red October and say “You arrogant ass. You’ve killed us!”

Jesus says we are not to hate others, however I wrestle with this. When I experience the dreams and feelings that I have over the past couple of days I think I have to admit that I hate George W. Bush almost as much as I hate war and the Islamic State. Frankly

Maybe that is why I cannot sleep and why that nightmare was so terrifying and would not end. I can fully understand what Gouverneur Warren felt after the Civil War, because I feel the same way. “bitter feelings I wish to never experience again. Lies, vanity, treachery, and carnage.” 

I pray for sleep tonight and I pray that I am wrong about this war, but I know that I am right. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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November 24, 2013 · 23:16

Thoughts on the Iranian “Deal”

Iran nuclear talks

Yesterday negotiators from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China finished hammering out a tentative deal with Iran regarding that nation’s nuclear program.

There are a lot of opinions about the deal, some positive, some definitely negative and quite a few like mine a wait and see attitude. Now I am hopeful that the deal is a positive first step in assuring that Iran does not build a nuclear weapon. In fact I pray that it does.

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The fact is that we have to try, even if some allies for their own reasons disagree. The Israelis are understandably concerned, especially since the last President of Iran, most of the Mullahs that actually run that country and the Revolutionary Guard have expressed their belief that Israel should not exist. Thus for the Israelis this can be seen as an existential matter. If Iran were to get operational nuclear weapons and use them against Israel that state would suffer greatly. Likewise the Saudis are distrustful of the Iranians, but for different reasons. For the Saudis this is the great conflict between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam, a conflict that appears to be gaining steam in Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Lebanon. It is  conflict that has the potential to be the Islamic equivalent of the Thirty Years war, that great bloodletting between Catholic and Protestant Europe. Iran and the Saudis are the leaders of the respective factions of Islam, they are mortal enemies.

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We have to be cognizant of both the Israeli and Saudi concerns. They are legitimate and because they are allies we must take them into account. That being said the most important security needs to be addressed by the United States are those of the United States. Sometimes those are not always the same of allies, even allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. That is something that has to be weighed in this case.

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The cold fact of the matter is that for many years we in the United States have become accustomed to resorting to military force first and neglecting the other aspects of national and international power that could be brought to bear to in achieving our national security and foreign policy goals. Those other aspects include economic power, information and diplomacy which unfortunately have been neglected. Presidents and our Congress have, even in spite of the misgivings of military leaders pursued the military option first.

After the attacks of September 11th 2001 the Bush Administration with the authorization of Congress pursued an almost single minded military solution to those attacks. That response was not only against the Al Qaeda terrorists but against their Afghan Taliban hosts and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

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Those campaigns have worn our military down. The resources spent in those countries, the lives lost, the money spent and the wear and tear on equipment have harmed our national security. But even above that in terms of strategy we eliminated the one natural enemy of Iran which helped hold them in check. We invaded Iraq and left it in a condition that it could no longer be the western bulwark against Iran. We turned down Iranian offers of help after September 11th and in doing so lost opportunities which might have led us and Iran down a different path. Instead President Bush declared Iran and Iraq both parts of an “Axis of Evil.”

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It was a declaration that the Iranians rightly understood as a declaration of war. Legally it may not have been, but the stated strategy enunciated by men like John Bolton and those we call the “Neocons” inside the Bush Administration and in associated think tanks could only be understood by the Iranians in that light. That end state envisioned by Bolton then and even now was regime change in not only Iraq, but also Iran. We have to ask ourselves this question: If another nation did this to us, how would we respond? I dare say that we, like the Iranians would dig in our heels and seek to develop military capacities that could defeat them, or if not defeat them make their “success” so costly that our enemies would not press us.

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Now because of those choices we are faced with a situation where Iran is estimated to be reasonably close to developing a nuclear weapon capacity. It is something that if it happens will result in a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The Israelis already have that capability and the Saudis are reportedly pursuing that capability. Thus it cannot be allowed to happen.

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That being said there are ways to ensure that does not happen. One advocated by those opposed to the deal is a hard line approach including pre-emptive military strikes against Iran, which not only would bring about a regional war but at best delay Iran a few years in procuring nuclear weapons.

The other is the course that has been pursued by the Obama Administration over the course of the past few years. That is the use of economic sanctions and diplomacy. As I said at the beginning this has not been our default policy over the past 12 years. But it is necessary. We are not in a good position to add yet another war, a war with world wide security and economic implications to our plate.

The fact is that due to the wars of the past 12 years as well as budget cuts including the sequestration cuts we are not in a good position to wage another war. We are stretched thin. Readiness thanks to sequestration is declining. The Chief of Staff of the Army stated that only two combat brigades are immediately deployable for combat operations. Could we launch another military campaign? Yes we could. But war, if we believe Clausewitz war is an extension of politics and policy. But we have to ask if would it achieve our overall policy goals? That I am not sure.  Clausewitz wrote: “No one starts a war–or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so–without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.”

In fact even if we delivered punishing strikes to Iran the costs could be great, and not just the economic costs.  Our campaign would have to be an air campaign to destroy hardened targets many of which we do not know the exact locations. Our record in such air campaigns is mixed. We spent over 70 days pounding Serbia with little to show for it in actual damage to their military. Likewise Iran is not Iraq, our targets will not be exposed in the open desert. Additionally Iranian A2/D2 (Anti-Access/Area Denial) capabilities pose great risks for US and Allied Warships as well as bases in the Arabian Gulf. If an Iranian Kilo Class submarine were to sink an American Aircraft Carrier it would not be a tactical setback, it would be a major loss of American strategic capability not just in the Middle East but world wide.

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Likewise as I mentioned before we took out the one natural opponent of Iran when we overthrew Saddam Hussein. In doing so we destroyed every bit of infrastructure, military power and civil government structures that any new Iraqi government would need to maintain any sense of a balance of power in the Arabian Gulf.

All that being said do I trust the Iranians? I cannot say that I do. I am a realist. I enlisted in 1981 in large part because of the Iranian takeover of the American Embassy and the hostage crisis. They remain a dictatorial regime which persecutes religious minorities including Christians. They restrict their people from open access to the internet and persecute political opponents. The Revolutionary Guards Corps, the most powerful organization in Iran has actively worked to destabilize other countries in the region. Their influence is great especially in regards to Lebanon’s Hezbollah which has launched missile campaigns against Israel and been active on the side of Syria dictator Bashir Assad in that country’s brutal civil war.

However the path of diplomacy must be given a reasonable chance to succeed. In the early 1970s President Nixon started a process of detente with the Soviet Union and Communist China. It was not embraced by hawks. President Ford, Carter and Reagan continued those policies to one degree or another with the final result being the fall of the Berlin Wall, collapse of the Warsaw Pact and overthrow of Communism.

This deal is a start. It is not perfect at all. I see issues in it. but it is based on the politics and art of the possible. It has the potential to be a game changer in a region wracked by war and revolution, a region led for the most part by despots in which terrorists often operate freely. I don’t know if it will work, but I hope it does.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 20, 2013 · 21:44

For the Future: The Assassination of John F Kennedy at 50 Years

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President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas on a sunny November afternoon 50 years ago.  The images of the event and its aftermath in photos and film still haunt us and find themselves etched in our individual and collective memory. The two shots that killed the President were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald according to the Warren Commission and subsequent inquiries although there are a host of conspiracy theories regarding the assassination. My purpose is not to prove or disprove the official version or any alternative explanation. I personally believe that Oswald was the lone gunman, but I have to wonder if there were others involved in the plot and at times if there was a second shooter.

However today my purpose is to remember Kennedy’s assassination, a horrible event in the life of our nation and to reflect on how easily something similar could happen again.

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Kennedy in Berlin

Kennedy was not the first President killed by an assassin. Four Presidents of the United States have died by the hand of assassins. The first was Abraham Lincoln killed by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday 1865.  That assassination carried out by a Southern sympathizer not even a week after Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox stunned the nation and most likely altered the course of events after the war.

The second was the assassination of James A Garfield who was shot on July 2nd 1881 by Charles Guiteau.  Guiteau was a disgruntled supporter who claimed that he had been commanded by God to kill a the President who he believed to be ungrateful for his support. I find it interesting that one of our four Presidential assassins was motivated by what he believed God to be saying. During his trial he said that some important Europeans told him to do it. Garfield died on September 19th probably due to the incompetence of his doctors.  Guiteau died of a broken neck, expertly administered by a hangman after dancing to the gallows waving to the assembled crowd.

The third U.S. President to die at the hands of an assassin was President William McKinley who was shot by Leon Czolgosz on September 5th 1901. McKinley died on September 14th once again because of not so great medical care.

In all over 20 attempts have been made on incumbent or former Presidents. Theodore Roosevelt was wounded by an attempted assassin after his Presidency and John Hinckley Junior nearly killed President Ronald Reagan on March 30th 1981.  Gerald Ford had two close brushes with female assassins within 2 weeks of each other in September 1975. More recent attempts have been made on George H.W Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.  A man was arrested for shooting at the White House last week but President Obama was away from Washington during the attack.

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However, Kennedy’s assassination tends to be the most talked about and studied. I believe that his assassination left a scar on the country that really hasn’t healed. I can remember the effect that his assassination as well as the subsequent killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F Kennedy had on my parents in the following years.  My mother recounted how she felt when she heard the news of Kennedy’s death on Armed Forces Radio while we were stationed in the Philippines.  It was an event that shattered the faith and idealism of many Americans.

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I remember the times around the anniversary of his assassination we would watch television shows about it and the movie PT-109. While I do not have direct memories of President Kennedy’s assassination I do remember those of Dr King and Senator Kennedy as well as the subsequent attempts on President Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush.

John F Kennedy is one of my favorite Presidents. I know that he was a deeply flawed man and I do not gloss over his failings either as a man or some of his decisions while President. He was certainly not perfect but I still I admire him.  I think one reason I admire him was his his ability to enunciate ideas that helped shape my more moderately liberal progressive pragmatism. One thing that he said is something that motivates me daily in our divided nation.

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

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Kennedy volunteered to serve in combat on PT Boats despite having chronic lower back problems that kept him out of the Army and necessitated a waiver to enter the Navy. His actions in saving his crew after his PT-109 was sunk were nothing short of heroic and his crew knew it. After he his crew was rescued Kennedy elected to remain in action and commanded PT-59 in combat rescuing Marines on Choisuel Island. Kennedy’s citation for the Navy and Marine Corps Medal read:

“For extremely heroic conduct as Commanding Officer of Motor Torpedo Boat 109 following the collision and sinking of that vessel in the Pacific War Theater on August 1–2, 1943. Unmindful of personal danger, Lieutenant (then Lieutenant, Junior Grade) Kennedy unhesitatingly braved the difficulties and hazards of darkness to direct rescue operations, swimming many hours to secure aid and food after he had succeeded in getting his crew ashore. His outstanding courage, endurance and leadership contributed to the saving of several lives and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

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After his rescue Kennedy returned to action commanding PT-59 which though low on fuel was part of a two boat mission to evacuate Marines commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Victor Krulak from Choiseul. He remained in action conduction patrols and engaging Japanese forces until he was ordered to relinquish command for medical reasons on November 18th 1943 and evacuated to the United States.  He was mentally and physically exhausted from his ordeal and had lost over 25 pounds between the sinking of PT-109

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Kennedy’s PT-59

Kennedy’s speeches still inspire me. As a child a had a copy of his book Profiles in Courage. I grew up with his promise to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, the creation of the Peace Corps, his backing of Special Forces, his love of the Navy, the great “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, his support of the Civil Rights movement and and his defusing of the Cuban Missile Crisis all inspire me.  His inauguration speech where he said “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” was and still is a lot of my motivation for serving my country as a Naval Officer.  When I was young John F Kennedy symbolized the hope of a country. I wonder so often what things might be like had he lived.

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I could be critical and point out all of John Kennedy’s flaws and contradictions. But then too easy to do, People make a living doing that. But in doing so they often ignore the fact that Kennedy was a hero, not a perfect man but a hero.

I wish a quarter of our current elected officials served their country in combat as Kennedy did and understood real danger and heroism. Instead with very few exceptions we have elected men as much or even more flawed and contradictory than John F Kennedy with none of his personal courage to every level of office in the country, mostly because they have the money to win.

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Kennedy being awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal

Kennedy’s wartime service always earned my respect. I tremble when I think that someone would have such a deep hatred of him or for that matter any other President that they would kill or attempt to kill them. That kind of hatred goes beyond me whether it be the hatred and smallness of John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau or Leon Czolgosz.

Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald was a small and pathetic man who needed to be a revolutionary.  Oswald needed to be important failing everything else he killed the President. Unfortunately there are people like Oswald on all sides of the political, ideological and religious spectrum who will gladly trade the life of a President or any other public figure for their moment in the spotlight and need to demonstrate their importance to the world.

I fear for our country because of the intense hatred that has become part and parcel of our political landscape. The hatred toward directed toward President Obama and the many threats made against his life and person are chilling. As I looked for images for this article I found pictures of Kennedy’s body after the assassination and they shook me. I have seen far too much in the way of violent and senseless death. Thus I do pray for the safety of President Obama as well as all of our leaders and for God to protect us from ourselves and those so possessed by hatred and their own self righteousness that they would commit such an abominable act.

But I don’t believe that we should be governed by fear and to embrace the future. Kennedy said:

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were and ask, why not?”

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Likewise I still believe in the call to action spoken by Kennedy:

“Now the trumpet summons us again. Not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.” 

I also believe in an era where the country seems to be withdrawing from engagement with an ever more globalized, interconnected yet dangerous world that his call to “bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

While I do so I remember the President whose life was cut short by the bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald and pray that such an event will never happen again and even more importantly that American political leaders would begin to dream again, visions of hope for the country and world and instead of only seeing limitations, ask that one question in terms of ideas of hope and progress: “Why not?” As Kennedy said: “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 12, 2013 · 23:59

When Disaster is Not an Option: The NSA Leaks, Security and Freedom the Perspective of those in Command

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JARESH-INYO: I never sought this job. I was content to simply represent my people on the Federation Council. When they asked me to submit my name for election, I almost said no. Today I wish I had.
LEYTON: We appreciate your feelings, Mister President, but we don’t have time for regrets. You accepted the job and now it’s yours.
ODO: Mister President, there are people all over this planet right now huddled in the dark, terrified about what might happen next. They’re waiting for a sign, something to reassure them that everything will be all right. But they won’t wait long. Fear is a powerful and dangerous thing. And if you don’t act, if you don’t show them that they’re not alone, then fear will surely take over.
SISKO: Give us the authority we need, Mister President, and we will take care of the rest.
(There’s a long pause, then Jaresh-Inyo taps his PADD – 4567 security codes.)
JARESH-INYO: Earth is in your hands, gentlemen. Do what needs to be done.
LEYTON: Thank you, sir. You’ve made the right decision.
JARESH-INYO: I hope you’re right, for all our sakes. (From Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Season 4 Episode 10 “Homefront”) 

After the attacks of 9-11-2001 things changed in the United States. The question of security became paramount in the minds of many Americans who, quite a few with great misgivings approved of the passage of the Patriot Act and other laws to strengthen law enforcement, intelligence and other defensive measures, especially electronic surveillance and data collection done at the Top Secret level.

The fact is that President George W Bush, regardless of what one thinks of his subsequent actions regarding the invasion of Iraq did what any President of any party affiliation would have done in the wake of those attacks. He initiated legislation that would allow security agencies much wider latitude in collecting data and investigating any possible threats to national security. Now 10 years later, without a comparable attack many people question those decisions. President Obama, like him or loathe him has elected to for the most part continue, extend and even expand the Bush policies. If he wasn’t a Democrat he would be lauded by most of Bush’s supporters.

The real truth of the matter is that the President of the United States holds a unique position and amount of responsibility that no one who has not held that office can truly fathom. If the President, no matter who he or she is, or what party they represent has not done everything the laws allow to prevent major terrorist attacks in the post 9-11-2001 era and just one major attack is successful, he or she will be blamed forever. No one wants that, even men like President Obama who before their election were staunch civil libertarians. I can only imagine the look on his face, or that of George W Bush when they received their first National Security Briefing after taking office and realized that from now on whatever happened, for good or for bad would be blamed on them or credited to them despite the fact that almost everything that they had to decide would be formed and shaped by intelligence and national security experts as well as political advisors with more National Security and Foreign Affairs experience.

Since both of them, and President Clinton before them had minimal exposure or experience in such matters I can only imagine that it was overwhelming. I can only compare what it was like to become an Army Company Commander in Cold War Germany in 1985 and realizing that every one of the 110 men and women assigned to that unit and everything it accomplished or failed to accomplished would fall on my shoulders. I have provided counsel and support as a Chaplain to men and women in positions of greater authority than I held and I honestly cannot comprehend what the responsibility for a nation at war is like.

Jaresh-Inyo

In the Star Trek Next Deep Space Nine episode Homefront, the Federation President President Jaresh-Inyo tells his Starfleet advisors when giving them practically unlimited powers to defend Earth: “It took centuries for Earth to evolve into the peaceful haven it is today. I would hate to be remembered as the Federation president who destroyed Paradise.”

As I mentioned in my other articles about the NSA leaks there are many gray areas in the practical measures and laws instituted after 9-11-2001 and in the manner that both the Bush and Obama administrations have conducted the War on Terror. The NSA leaks and the actions of Edward Snowden point us to policy conversations and debates that we need to have regarding how we as a society balance our security with freedom. But as we do that we have to remember that in our system of government and our current laws drafted after 9-11-2001 that we have given the President powers that previous Presidents seldom had, or desired. Whether the President was Bush or is Obama or someone else in the future the fact is that they have the job and we don’t.

In the episode Admiral Leyton the Starfleet Commander voices his doubts about the Federation President, sentiments that some have pretty much applied to President Obama.

BENTEEN: The bottom line is a changeling infiltrated the grounds of Starfleet Headquarters, imitated the Admiral, and got away scot-free. Our security measures aren’t working.
SISKO: We’re doing everything the President will let us do.
BENTEEN: Maybe that’s not enough.
ODO: We could talk to the President again.
LEYTON: I’m afraid that would be a waste of time. Jaresh-Inyo would be a fine president in peacetime, but we have a war on our hands. He doesn’t seem to understand that. All he cares about is not upsetting people. But humans are tougher than he thinks. We’ve created a paradise here and we’re willing to fight to protect it.
SISKO: And you think the President isn’t willing to fight?
LEYTON: I think the President is a long way from home. This isn’t his world. We can’t expect him to care about it the way we do.

These are perilous times and serious issues. Facebook Memes, snarky tweets and bellicose blog posts that paint everything in easy black and white terms are seldom right and the fact is that the questions we fact now is complex and multifaceted. If we are to face them we have to do so in a serious manner acknowledging that the world that we live is not the same as it was even 20 years ago.

Until tomorrow or Friday,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 9, 2013 · 23:57

Some Sunday Thoughts on Freedom, Security and Star Trek Deep Space Nine

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“We do not fear you the way you fear us. In the end, it’s your fear that will destroy you.” Changeling (As O’Brien) from the Dominion to Captain Sisko (Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Paradise Lost)

I have had a pretty uneventful weekend. I had to cancel my trip north to see Judy due to Tropical Storm Andrea and a fairly eventful day at work on Friday. I was also very tired having not slept well a number of nights during the week due to so pretty strange dreams and nightmares that appear in HD now thanks to PTSD. I am wondering why I am experiencing these dreams. Perhaps it is because of how unsettled I am regarding the various controversies going on regarding our freedom and national security as well as things going in the world and the real possibility that no matter how hard we try that we could become embroiled in yet another Middle Eastern War.

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As a result I mostly caught up on laundry and other routine stuff around the house, slept a lot, listened to a 1972 edition of American Top 40, watched some DVD movies including Nuremberg about the Nuremberg trails starring Alec Baldwin and Christopher Plummer and Conspiracy about the Wansee Conference where the Nazis engineered the details of the final solution and engaged almost every section of government and industry into the Final Solution. I also watched Quentin Tarantino’s  Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. In addition it was a weekend to appreciate my dog Molly who has been incredibly sweet and affectionate this week. She must know that I have been unsettled in my sleep.

While I was doing these things I was thinking about some of the things going on in the country and especially about the revelations and leaks of top secret materials regarding the activities of the National Security Agency. It has been interesting to me to watch people who gave President Bush and Congress a pass on the Patriot Act bash President Obama and others who bashed Bush give Obama a pass. Of course there have been some civil libertarians, mostly liberals and some libertarians who objected to the Patriot Act and its potential threats to First and Fourth Amendment freedoms who have criticized both the Bush and Obama administrations as well as Congress. It is interesting that the journalist who published the leaked information, Glen Greenwald  has been an opponent of the Patriot Act since its inception in 2001 and critical of both the Bush and Obama administrations in their use of it. At least he is consistent.

I have found this fascinating to watch because there are arguments on both sides that have merit. Unfortunately most pundits, politicians and politically minded preachers, the Unholy Trinity don’t see the complexity of the issues involved nor do they adequately understand the potential dangers represented on both sides of the issue. Benjamin Franklin’s saying that “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” is something to keep in mind.

There are a huge amount of issues to be concerned with, I think in large part because our leaders and let us admit it we ourselves have not thought through the implications of things that we legislate. Since the vast majority of our legislators never read all or even the most critical parts of any legislation that they vote for this should be expected. Likewise the vast bulk of the population is too busy either working or entertaining themselves in virtual worlds made possible by vast technological advances in phones, computers and social networks to bother with such issues until they hit the news cycle. Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that once this has blown over, unless we stop and as a society really examine the issues, hold our legislators feet to the fire and stop being content with answers that are simply designed to help our political parties and causes that some cosmetic changes will be made and nothing significant accomplished.

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I also thought of a couple of episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine that I watched a couple of weeks ago from Season 4 when shape shifters from the Dominion begin to launch terrorist attacks on Earth and some in Starfleet, and the Federation begin to implement security measures that rapidly erode freedom. The episodes Homefront and Paradise Lost are actually quite timely and since they were aired years before the September 11th 2001 attacks, the passage of the Patriot Act and the beginning of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) could almost be considered prophetic.

I think I am going to write about the current situation at least a couple of times but I will probably use those Deep Space Nine episodes as my starting point. Sometimes the stories of fiction or science fiction can shed light on issues that our politicians, pundits and preachers are too blind, inept or conceited to honestly examine.

Until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 4, 2013 · 23:46

I am the “L” Word…No, Not the One You Are Thinking

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Somewhere along the path from conservatism to moderation I got labeled.

I got labeled with the “L” Word. No, not the “Lesbian” “L” Word which is actually kind of cool, but the other less socially acceptable one, the “Liberal” label.

I remember back in 1981 when I saw my first Lesbian couple walking together at California State University Northridge. I was sitting on the lawn outside of the office that I worked and they walked by. As a typical male I was enthralled by what I saw, but that enthrallment was short lived as when I walked back into the office I heard that my hero, President Ronald Reagan had been shot and that retired Army General, former Nixon aide and now Secretary of State Al Haig was now in charge of the country.

To tell the truth I don’t know how the transformation from Conservative to Moderate (read Liberal) happened. When I was in college I cheered the demise of Jimmy Carter. After college the same was true about Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis. Al Gore and even John Kerry. I listened to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Neil Boortz as much as I could. Not even 7 years ago I was defending “W” against what I thought were unfair assaults from the left. I enjoyed liberal bashing. It was fun and as the people that knew me back then could tell you I was quite good at it.

But a funny thing happened between 2004 and now. I think it was a place called Iraq, where I began to question the unquestionable questions of conservative orthodoxy in a number of forums including both politics and religion. I became a moderate and a passionate one at that. Since “moderate” is a very misunderstood term let me explain. If you are a conservative it means that I am a Liberal. Some Liberals assume that I am a conservative but on the whole the word moderate is now associated as being Liberal.

I think being a moderate is really a tricky thing. Back when I was in seminary during the pre-Fundamentalist takeover of Southwestern Baptist Seminary I remember hearing a big name Fundamentalist preacher say that “middle of the road moderates were only good to be run over.”  One of my professors who would be a casualty of the takeover of the seminary said that for many in the Southern Baptist Convention of the time that “Liberal means anyone to the left of me.”

Now I do have to confess, unlike a lot of people when they get older and become more conservative I have become more “liberal” in that I am more accepting of people different than me. I was talking with a dear friend the other night who is proud of his Tea Party affiliation and he mentioned that when he was young that he was a Liberal but now older that he was a Conservative.

For me it is a bit of a conundrum. I have friends who are way to the Left or to the Right of me who I respect and who I care for, we agree to disagree. The fact is that in reality I am a very pragmatic person and I would rather see people work towards compromise and cooperation so that the vast majority of people can prosper in freedom. So I choose to be friends with people far different from one another and who disagree with me. But we are still friends.

However there are times that I feel that I am pissing into the wind when I watch those that we all have elected to office in Washington DC and our various State Houses behave. I am probably not alone in this feeling and do hope that the hard liners on both sides of the political spectrum can get their collective crap together before the plunge us into the abyss like the politicians of Weimar Germany did in the late 1920s and early 1930s. We all know how well that turned out.

So until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 20, 2012 · 22:38

Remembering the Hope of John F Kennedy

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” 

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were and ask, why not?”

President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas on a sunny November afternoon 49 years ago this Thursday.  The images of the event and its aftermath in photos and film still haunt us and find themselves etched in our individual and collective memory. The two shots that killed the President were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald according to the Warren Commission and subsequent inquiries although there are a host of conspiracy theories regarding the assassination. My purpose is not to prove or disprove the official version or any alternative explanation although I personally believe that Oswald was the lone gunman.  It is merely to remember a horrible event in the life of our nation and how easily it could happen again.

Kennedy was not the first President killed by an assassin. Four Presidents of the United States have died by the hand of assassins. The first was Abraham Lincoln killed by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday 1865.  The next was James A Garfield who was shot on July 2nd 1881 by Charles Guiteau a disgruntled supporter who claimed that he had been commanded by God to kill a the President who he believed to be ungrateful for his support.  Garfield died on September 19th probably due to the incompetence of his doctors.   The third was William McKinley who was shot by Leon Czolgosz on September 6th 1901. McKinley died on September 14th.  Over 20 other attempts have been made on incumbent or former Presidents of which one wounded Theodore Roosevelt after his Presidency and another which nearly killed President Ronald Reagan on March 30th 1981.  Gerald Ford had two close brushes with female assassins within 2 weeks of each other in September 1975. More recent attempts have been made on George H.W Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.  A man was arrested for shooting at the White House last week but President Obama was away from Washington during the attack.

However Kennedy’s assassination tends to be the most talked about and studied and has left a scar on the country that really hasn’t healed. I can remember the effect that it as well as the subsequent killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F Kennedy had on my parents in the following years.  My mother recounted how she felt when she heard the news of Kennedy’s death on Armed Forces Radio while we were stationed in the Philippines.  I remember the times around the anniversary of his assassination we would watch television shows about it and the movie PT-109. While I do not have direct memories of President Kennedy’s assassination I do remember those of Dr King and Senator Kennedy as well as the subsequent attempts on President Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush.

John F Kennedy is one of my favorite Presidents. I know that John F Kennedy was a deeply flawed man and I do not gloss over his failings either as a man or some of his decisions while President. He was certainly not perfect or That being said I still I admire him.  He volunteered to serve in combat on PT Boats despite having chronic lower back problems tht kept him out of the Army and necessitated a waiver to enter the Navy. His actions in saving his crew after his PT-109 was sunk were nothing short of heroic and his crew knew it. After he his crew was rescued Kennedy elected to remain in action and commanded PT-59 in combat rescuing Marines on Choisuel Island. Kennedy’s citation for the Navy and Marine Corps Medal read:

“For extremely heroic conduct as Commanding Officer of Motor Torpedo Boat 109 following the collision and sinking of that vessel in the Pacific War Theater on August 1–2, 1943. Unmindful of personal danger, Lieutenant (then Lieutenant, Junior Grade) Kennedy unhesitatingly braved the difficulties and hazards of darkness to direct rescue operations, swimming many hours to secure aid and food after he had succeeded in getting his crew ashore. His outstanding courage, endurance and leadership contributed to the saving of several lives and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

Kennedy’s speeches still inspire me. As a child a had a copy of his book Profiles in Courage. I grew up with his promise to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, the creation of the Peace Corps, his backing of Special Forces, his love of the Navy, the great “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, his support of the Civil Rights movement and and his defusing of the Cuban Missile Crisis all inspire me.  His inauguration speech where he said “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” was and still is a lot of my motivation for serving in the Navy.  John F Kennedy symbolized to me as a young person the hope of a country that had he lived might be different today

I could be critical and point out all of John Kennedy’s flaws and contradictions.  But then too easy to do. People make a living doing that. People often forget that Kennedy was a hero, not perfect but a hero. I wish a quarter of our current elected officials served their country in combat as Kennedy did and understood what real danger and heroism is. Instead with very few exceptions we have elected men as much or even more flawed and contradictory than John F Kennedy with none of his personal courage.

Kennedy’s wartime service always earned him my respect. I tremble when I think that someone would have such a deep hatred of him or for that matter any other President that they would kill or attempt to kill them. That kind of hatred goes beyond me.  Lee Harvey Oswald was a small and pathetic man who needed to be a revolutionary, who needed to be important failing everything else he killed the President. Unfortunately there are people like Oswald on all sides of the political, ideological and religious spectrum who will gladly trade the life of a President or any other public figure for their moment in the spotlight and need to demonstrate their importance to the world.

I fear for our country because of the intense hatred that has become part and parcel of our political landscape. The hatred toward directed toward President Obama and the many threats made against his life and person are chilling. As I looked for images for this article I found pictures of Kennedy’s body after the assassination and they shook me. I have seen far too much in the way of violent and senseless death. Thus I do pray for the safety of President Obama as well as all of our leaders and for God to protect us from ourselves and those so possessed by hatred and their own self righteousness that they would commit such an abominable act.

While I do so I remember the President whose life was cut short by the bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald and pray that such an event will never happen again and even more importantly that American political leaders would begin to dream again, visions of hope for the country and world and instead of only seeing limitations, ask that one question in terms of ideas of hope and progress: “Why not?”

“Now the trumpet summons us again. Not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 29, 2012 · 22:27

Where did I Go Left?

 

Somewhere along the path from conservatism to moderation I got labeled.

I got labeled with the “L” Word. no, not the Lesbian one, the other less socially acceptable one, the Liberal label…and to tell the truth though I consider myself a moderate I actually fall on the Liberal side of the political and religious spectrum.

It actually surprised me when I figured it out. To tell the truth I don’t know how it happened. I cheered the demise of Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis and even Al Gore. I listened to Rush as much as I could. Not even 8 years ago I was defending “W” against what I thought were unfair assaults from the left. I enjoyed liberal bashing. It was fun.

But a funny thing happened between 2004 and now, I think it was a place called Iraq, where I began to question the unquestionable questions of conservative orthodoxy in a number of forums. I became a moderate and a passionate one at that, although truthfully I am probably better described as one of those nasty liberals.

I think being a moderate, for those who really are moderates, is really a tricky thing. Back when I was in seminary during the pre-Fundamentalist takeover of Southwestern Baptist Seminary I remember hearing a big name Fundamentalist preacher say that “middle of the road moderates were only good to be run over.”  One of my professors who would be a casualty of the takeover of the seminary said that for many in the Southern Baptist Convention of the time that “Liberal means anyone to the left of me.”

Now I do have to confess, unlike a lot of people when they get older and become more conservative I have become more “liberal” in that I am more accepting of people different than me. I am also more willing to tolerate things that back when I knew everything I would attack without exception. When I worked up the guts to openly state that I questioned political conservative orthodoxy almost four years ago I got thrown out of the church that I was ordained. But despite that I still believed that I was somewhere in the middle of the spectrum but I was obviously wrong. My mom even thought so and she used to think I was a right win germ but I guess today I am a pretty liberal moderate.

I think that racism is still alive and well and that Jim Crow lives, thus the job of the Civil Rights movement is not done.

I think that gays and lesbians should have the same right to marriage and civil rights that heterosexuals have.

I think that the bankers and the Wall Street people who practically destroyed the economy back in late 2008 should be in jail.

I think that multinational corporations that enjoy the benefits of all this country offers and that the taxpayers provide should pay their fair share of taxes instead of being allowed to make their money here and shelter it offshore.

I think that the environment matters and that we should do all that we can to protect it.

I believe that the poor, minorities, the elderly and others with no power need the help and protection of the government from predatory businesses, banks and others that would seek to impoverish them even more.

I think that there is a place for strong organized labor to protect the rights of people who either produce the goods or provide the services that make others rich and this nation prosperous.

I think that the leaders of the Bush administration who took us to war in Iraq are war criminals and would have hung at Nuremberg if Justice Robert Jackson had had them in the dock.

I think that we need to take a hard look at our foreign policy and as Ulysses S Grant told us:

“As the United States is the freest of all nations, so, too, its people sympathize with all people struggling for liberty and self-government; but while so sympathizing it is due to our honor that we should abstain from enforcing our views upon unwilling nations and from taking an interested part, without invitation, in the quarrels between different nations or between governments and their subjects. Our course should always be in conformity with strict justice and law, international and local.”

I think that Fox News lies when it calls itself “fair and balanced” and that much of what it airs is nothing more than political propaganda designed to help its political allies and keep people riled up against that black man in the White House.

I think that the crass social Darwinism of the followers of Ayn Rand is evil, needs to be called what it is  and condemned by those who call themselves Christians.

Likewise, speaking of Christians I think that many American Christians have sold their faith to political hacks that call themselves pastors or religious leaders while pocketing the money of their followers laughing all the way to the bank.

Finally as a Christian I don’t think that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. I think that we as a society have a responsibility to care for the least, the lost and the lonely.

I think that makes me a liberal who still wants to be a moderate. I am okay with people that disagree with me because it is a free country but I won’t be bullied.

Where did I go left?

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

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