Category Archives: Commentary

Blog Posting for Blood Stripes

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I began a review of this book with the comment “This is the best book I’ve read for some time.” It provides insight into the raw and uncensored emotions of men killing and being killed in the Iraq war. I believe this book should be required reading for Presidents who might need to request war powers from Congress and those in Congress who would have to vote on such an act. People making war policy should also be reminded how the U.S. encouraged Shiites to mutiny against Saddam Hussein in 1991, and that we did not give their mutiny any support. Thousands were tortured and killed. More than a decade later we invaded and the Shiites in some areas actually did celebrate the arrival of the Marines despite the earlier abandonment by U.S. politicians.

The need for the war in Iraq has been debated endlessly, and much of that debate was going on while our soldiers were killing and being killed. The Commander-In-Chief, the Marine commanders, and all the rest of us asked that combat soldiers go to war with “rules of engagement.” Combat soldiers are trained kill the enemy and not to be “peace keepers” or “nation builders.”  The General commanding the Marines told them, First do no harm. The second order was “No better friend, which referred to building a common cause with the people of Iraq. The third order was “No worse enemy.” The first two orders had nothing to do with Marine training. The last order finally arrived at what Marines are trained to do, “…if some bastard wants to fight, hunt him down and kill him (or her) before they do the same to you.” I think we somehow cobbled together things expected of the State Department and combat soldiers and expected young soldiers to figure it out. From what I read they somehow did an amazingly fine job.

kThe enemies of the Marines were fighting came from diverse backgrounds. They included religious fanatics, young single men, men with large families, mercenaries, and poor farmers who believed they were fighting to defend their village. One of them mentioned the movie Braveheart, and that portrayal of the fight for freedom.

For those who insist Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Lebanese journalist Zaki Chehab was embedded with the insurgents. His chronicle, Inside the Resistance: The Iraqi Insurgency and the Future of the Middle East, describes men claiming to be part of Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq which began opening terrorist training camps in Iraq “…shortly after the post-9/11 American attack into Afghanistan.” Zarqawi had originally fled to Iran and then to the Iraqi Kurdish mountains. He established a route through Iran to smuggle personnel and equipment from Afghanistan. “By the fall of 2002, the Al Qaeda Underground Railroad was running full steam—from Afghanistan, through Iran, and into a northern Iraqi hideout.”

We also sent soldiers to fight in a war that we only noticed on occasion when watching news clips of politicians arguing with each other about the war. The lives of average Americans who did not have someone close to them fighting in the heat, filth, and fear of the battlegrounds in Iraq were unaffected. The Marines acknowledged that they joined because they were promised the chance to kill legally, but were envious of the free and fun lives of the young people who hadn’t joined. One of them asked, “Don’t these people give a shit that we’re at war?”

I admit I worried about soldiers in the book who were described as “addicted to battle,” or those who felt satisfaction when they saw the “pink mist” created as their bullet passed through an enemy. However, we were the ones who put them there, and we must be thankful there are men such as these. George Orwell, the famous writer who did fight in combat in the Spanish Civil War, once wrote something to the effect that “People sleep soundly because there are rough men willing to do violence to protect them.” I would substitute “brave” for “rough.”

Marine grunts looked down on anyone who was not a Marine grunt. They called everyone outside that category Persons Other than Actual Grunts, or POAG. The acronym evolved into the word “pogue.” Everyone in the Marines not in combat units, everyone in the Navy, Army, and Air Force were pogues. Anyone who never wore a uniform was the worst kind of pogue. If I would have the honor of meeting one of the Marines portrayed in the book I would ask for my Army comrades who served in combat roles in Vietnam to be excluded from that description.

There was a Marine Chaplin who told the survivors that they would have to deal with the guilt for surviving while others did not. I understand that. A quote at the beginning of Chapter 15 is “Freedom isn’t free, but the U.S. military will pay your part of it.” The Marines who survived would deal not only with the guilt of surviving but also the loss of “…the purity of being surrounded by a group of men who, whether they loved or hated them, were devoted to giving their blood, seat, and lives for the same of their mission or their Corps.”

The book observes that victory will not come from the service and sacrifice of the soldiers who fought in Iraq. That will happen, if it happens, within the culture of Islam. The soldiers have only functioned as the soil for the seed of freedom. The ultimate victory, if it is achieved must happen within Islam.

One of the corporals was scheduled for a DUI trial, and the female judge opened the hearing by reading the award citation for his service in Iraq. The judge didn’t finish reading the entire citation, and later said she couldn’t finish because she realized she was being overcome with emotion. She simply ended the reading and announced, “Case Dismissed.” Reading that brought tears to my eyes.

“H-Money,” one of the interpreters for the battalion continued to carry a sniper rifle and “fought like a lion.” Fatima, another interpreter, made it to the U.S. and was working on becoming a citizen.”Muhammad remains alive and continues to fight Americans. Most expect this kind of war to go on for many, many years.”

Smart College Choices

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I posted a review of the book “Academically Adrift” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa that paints a very bleak assessment of the quality of education in both our high schools and colleges. High schools are doing a poor job of preparing students for  life or further education and colleges are accepting more of them regardless of their high school grades. The colleges then, on the average, allow students to run up huge amounts of debt while they focus on enjoying their social lives and doing as little studying and attending class as little as possible to maximize the fun they are having. It seems many colleges enable this behavior by providing classes that require little studying, reading, or writing to attain high grades. The students want to live the good life and the colleges want them to continue paying tuition.

My first college class was English Literature taught by an eccentric female professor who would become one of my favorite professors. She opened the first class by telling us she had no intention of noting who was or was not in class. She also had no intention of calling on students with questions to determine who had or had not completed the assignments. She explained that we had paid to take the class, she appreciated that she had a good job as the result of those payments, and it was our choice whether to attend class or do the assignments. I had saved all of the money earned doing odd jobs that had been spent on tuition and books, and thought it would be a good idea to attend class, listen to the lectures, and do the assignments. I was suspicious that students who chose differently had parents paying the bills.

I’ve posted comments previously that it is time to rethink who should attend college. President Obama disagrees with me. He has said that “…we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college.” Consistent with that approach, 30 percent of high school graduates with a C grade average and 15 percent with a C- or less are admitted into four-year colleges. Many first year college students are required to take remedial classes to prepare them for college level classes. Many college professors agree with the statement “Most of the students I teach lack the basic skills for college level work.”

I question the “college for all” policy if it is automatically assumes the college is of the four-year variety. Community colleges offer two year degrees with tuition cost in the vicinity of $2000/year. I’ve seen data that the average cost at public four-year colleges is at or above $7000/year and more than $20,000 for tuition and fees at private four-year colleges. My suggestion is that those students who had low grades in high school but want to continue their education in a quest “to find themselves” research local community colleges or junior colleges. I know that some four-year colleges limit the classes that can transfer and be credited toward graduation requirements, but I would say that disadvantage is offset by the significantly lower cost.

Some students want to attend college with the primary purpose of socializing and having fun, and I understand  that those are high priorities for most if not all young people. However, it shouldn’t be difficult to find like-minded people who would be willing to share an apartment with someone near those community colleges or junior colleges. The savings in tuition would pay for significant amounts of fun activities. Perhaps the two years of exposure to education will even lead some students finding that, as is written in “Academically Adrift” that the real mission of schooling is “…developing a love of learning for learning sake.” I have personal knowledge of a student who was “academically adrift” until taking a class from a demanding professor. The professor was also an excellent teacher, the student became engaged, and was proud of the B from the class. The student learned to love learning and found it easy to earn high grades.

Iraq after the War

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I’ve been reading and reviewing books about the Iraqi war, and believe the primary question is, “Was it worth it?” There is an excellent article in Spiegel Online International by Bernhard Zand that is summarized in the title, “Obama’s Over-Hasty Withdrawal, Iraq is Neither Sovereign, Stable, nor Self-Reliant. The article begins with a description of a meeting between some students with Ahmed Chalabi, the man the U.S. brought in from exile after the Iraqi government had been dismantled by the invasion to be prime minister and oil minister. He had a goal to rebuild Iraq. The businessman was asked whether Iraq was what he would imagined it would become. He replied,”We have all failed. Totally”

The article was written in late March 2012 as the Arab League was preparing to meet in Baghdad. It was to be the first meeting of the League in Iraq since 1990, the first since the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” and the first since the last U.S. combat soldier left on December 18, 2011. President Obama had given a speech saying the U.S. was “…leaving a sovereign, stable and self-reliant country with a representative government elected by the people.” The article says, “…the circumstances of the US withdrawal and the language Obama used to whitewash it borders on negligence.”

Devoted Shiite Nouri Al-Maliki was imposed as Prime Minister of Iraq because he was perceived to have the best chance to form a government in the short term. He issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni Vice President the day after he came to power, drove other Sunnis out, and strengthened relations with Iran.  He also has appointed figureheads and relatives to important government positions who have access to lucrative government contracts.  Many areas of the country continue to lack basic services, and over 4,000 Iraqis had died in violence after the exit of the Americans to the date of the article. There continues to be a risk that the country will splinter. Western Sunni regions could secede if Syria falls to Sunni rule, Kurdish areas are effectively autonomous, and other areas have either threatened or announced plans to separate.

A New York Times article by Michael S. Schmidt published about a month after the U.S. troop withdrawal expressed concern that violence had increased. One speculation is that Al Qaeda in Iraq has regained strength and has “…shifted its attention toward those with close ties to Iran, particularly Iraq’s Shiites, in an effort to push back Iran’s influence in Iraq in the wake of the American withdrawal.”

A multipage Bloomberg Business week article by Elliot Woods has the ominous title “Iraq:  Under Worse Management,” and describes a country in shambles. There is inadequate infrastructure to deliver water and electricity or to remove sewage and garbage. Corruption is routine. Iraq is far from stable, and the future is uncertain, but there is some good news. “By some statistical measures, Iraq today is safer and more stable than it has been in nearly a decade.” There are “…shouts of young men watching soccer in the cafes, the laughter of children tromping off to school.” I’m hoping the blood shed by American soldiers has the ultimate outcome that Iraqis decide to stand against terrorists.

One encouraging sign is that a Google search for “Iraq in June 2012” brought up sites for job openings in Iraq, a cycling event that includes Iraq, a soccer game with Jordan, and an upcoming trade show. That must mean the world media has lost interest in violence in Iraq, and the media is notoriously disinterested when there aren’t disasters to report. I remain hopeful for the Iraqi people. However, there continue to be politicians who have not put aside the tradition of corruption, hatred for those with different religions, and desire for absolute power.

I’m typing this on Memorial Day, and am thinking of the American soldiers who gave lives and limbs in Iraq. Their mission was to make Iraq a safe place for its citizens. To Iraqis, you have been given a precious opportunity bought with the service and blood of soldiers. I don’t expect you to think kindly of people many or most of you resented being in your country. All I ask is that you don’t waste what they gave for you.

I’ll close this by revealing I was apparently one of the few Americans who thought the war was a bad idea from the start. However, I will never criticize soldiers who fought or are fighting to fulfill a mission given them by their commander.

Cabela’s and Trickle Down Economics

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The curious title originated with my first visit to the Cabela’s store in Sydney Nebraska while “trickle-down economics” was being used to criticize President Reagan. I was impressed with the massive sporting goods store with huge aquariums full of trophy-sized fish, mounted game animals from around the world, and the extensive amount of sporting merchandise. However, the most impressive part of the visit was the employees. Everyone I spoke with presented themselves as genuinely happy to be at work; they could have taught classes in customer relations. It occurred to me that this business that was founded and expanded to an impressive size could be used to demonstrate the power of “trickle down economics.”

President Reagan actually never used the term, but that didn’t stop the opposing politicians from using  to infer wealthy people selfishly only allow a few scraps of money to make their way into the pockets of average people. (The “Occupy” movement uses the one percent versus the ninety-nine percent to make the same argument.)

The term “trickle-down economics” had its origin in the “Cross of Gold” speech given by Democratic Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in 1896. He said, “There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below.” Wikipedia says they first known use of “trickle-down theory” was in 1954. Lyndon Johnson said after leaving the Presidency “Republicans… (are) so busy operating the trickle-down theory, giving the biggest corporations the biggest break that the whole thing goes to hell in a hand basket.”

It strikes me that trickle-down economics isn’t such a bad thing if the Cabela’s story is an example. The stores across the country (with one in Canada) were possible because two businessmen continued to invest as their successful stores brought in profits. I’m grateful that the government didn’t take the money used for those investments in taxes and I’m guessing Cabela’s employees feel the same.

The history of Cabela’s is interesting and impressive. The business began with one sale of a dozen hand-tied flies for a dollar by Dick Cabela in 1961. One could say sales picked up quite a bit after that first sale. The kitchen table operation moved to the basement of the father’s furniture store in 1964. The business now has thirty-five retail stores, extensive catalog sales, and over 3000 well paid employees. The stock of the company is publically traded, so anyone can participate in the company’s quest for solid business performance and profits.

The company web site says employees have health, dental, and prescription drug insurance, life insurance, accidental death and disability insurance, a 401k retirement plan, an employee stock purchase plan, and a college savings plan. Sydney’s unemployment rate is reported to be about a third of the national rate.

I was fascinated to think that that the term “trickle-down economics” might be applied to a business built by two entrepreneurial brothers. I came to realize that the Cabela’s story is really a story of the power of free enterprise and capitalism. It would probably be political suicide for a politician to claim that capitalism is unfair because it only allows prosperity to “leak through to those below.”  It is safer politically to use the demeaning term “trickle-down economics” or to continually tell the country the people who have succeeded at building wealth aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.

Vladimir Putin and the Snow Revolution

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The “Snow Revolution” part of the title comes from the Epilogue of the book “The Man Without a Face:  The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” by Masha Gessen. A dissident put up a Facebook post asking people to wear white ribbons on their arms to show they protested the announced election of Putin to be president of the Russian Federation in December 2011. The author estimated as many as 150,000 people arrived at the protest wearing white armbands or some other white article. The Russian people deserve better if only a few of the allegations and speculations put forward by the author about Putin are true.

Gessen was interviewed by John Williams of The New York Times, and he said she had cataloged disastrous events “…and lay much of it at Putin’s feet. How much of this is concretely provable?” Gessen’s response was that conclusive evidence would have to be obtained by law enforcement, and “None of the murders or acts of terror that have occurred in the last 12 years have been properly investigated.”

How many people arrived to join the Snow Revolution protest? The estimates vary widely, but are significantly lower that what the author predicts. An article on Newyorker.com by Julia Ioffe says the protestors claimed 85,000, the police estimated 25,000, and the media said 50,000. There no dispute that there were thousands of people all over Russia who protested the “…rudely falsified elections.” There is an article with photos of thousands of people in the the streets, and many are holding white ballons. What is important now is what happens with the protest movement. An article titled, “Russia’s Revolutionaries Ponder Next Move” includes a photo of many people carrying white balloons. The protestors are said to face the challenge of creating a unified front.

Russian protest leaders have never pretended that things would be easy. “One peaceful march will not change our country,” protest organizer Boris Nemtsov said on the eve of one rally. “We are in for a long, hard struggle.”

I’ll give a brief review Gessen’s book, which gives background for why there is a Snow Revolution. The book details how Putin made it from being a self-described thug in his youth to becoming the brutal leader of the Russian Federation. He was a bureaucrat in the KGB, and claimed he resigned from that secret police organization when the Soviet Union was collapsing. A man named Sobchak worked himself into being chairman of the Leningrad City Council. He hired Putin as an assistant, because he was said to know “…that it is wiser to pick your KGB handler yourself than to have one picked for you.” There were several steps from there to leadership, and apparently one high level person after another picked Putin as the person to be beside them believing he could be trusted and controlled amongst all the political intrigue. The last in this chain was Boris Yeltsin, who had launched democracy in the Russian Federation with great hope but was forced to resign.

Putin immediately began to transform Russia back into the USSR. He is said to have used state control of the media, murder, corruption, and perhaps even terrorism to retain power. The book discusses how he took control of the government while making himself an incredibly wealthy man. Critics were beaten, imprisoned, or murdered. Some critics died of mysterious poisons which could not be obtained by anyone other than a central government.

The accounts reminded me of a book I reviewed titled “Spy Catcher” by former senior British intelligence officer Peter Wright. There is a description of a container of antidotes for all the known Soviet poisons that was kept with Soviet agents who had escaped the USSR to turn themselves in to British authorities. I believe Wright would also have said that Putin was following the advice of Lenin in keeping control of the country. “Lenin understood better than anyone how to gain control of a country, and, just as important, how to keep it. Lenin believed the political class had to control the men with the guns, and the intelligence service, and by these means could ensure that neither the Army nor another political class could challenge power.

I fear for the author. She is obviously at risk of violence if only a fraction of what she writes about Vladimir Putin is true. She writes in the Prologue that she worked as a journalist in war zones “…but this was the most frightening story I ever had to write:  never before had I been forced to describe a reality so emotionless and cruel, so clear and so merciless, so corrupt and so utterly devoid of remorse.” She lives in Moscow, and told The New York Times interviewer that she had thought of leaving, but “I love my home, my friends, my life. And if Putin doesn’t like me he can leave.”

Recent statistics on this web site indicate there are large numbers of readers in the Russian Republic and Ukrainia. I thought of those readers as I was reading Gessen’s book and prepared the review and this post and wondered how many Russian readers would be Putin supporters and how many would be protestors.

To readers in the United States, I think we should all renew our appreciation of the freedoms we have. I read a joke said to have been told quietly within the Soviet Union. The joke isn’t all that funny, but I think it is pertinent. An American and Russian were arguing about which country was best. The American said, “We are so free that I could stand on a street corner in New York and shout ‘Reagan is an idiot’, and nothing bad would happen to me, although some might stop to argue with me.” The Russian replied, “That’s nothing. I could stand on a street corner of Moscow and shout ‘Reagan is an idiot’, and nothing bad would happen to me, and no one would even argue with me.”

It’s My Fault

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Art Buchwald (bless him) wrote an unforgettable article apologizing that the Vietnam War was his fault. The gist of the article was that several people warned him that there would be a full scale shooting war in Vietnam if he voted for Barry Goldwater for President. I haven’t found documentation of the article, although I remember it quite well. What I have found is the introduction to a 1965 Time Magazine article that asks the question, “How would the U.S. have fared if Barry Goldwater had been elected President? The mind boggles to think of it, mused Columnist Art Buchwald last week in the New York Herald Tribune. Nonetheless, Buchwald did his deadpan best to guess how things really would have turned out under Goldwater. To begin with, he wrote, the Viet Cong would have blown up an American barracks. Goldwater would have immediately called for a strike on military bases in North Viet Nam and announce a ‘new tit-for-tat policy.’ Democrats would make speeches that Goldwater was ‘trigger-happy’ and was trying to get us into…”

Unfortunately, the link ends at that point and indicates, “To read the entire article, you must be a TIME Subscriber.” However, I will ask you to depend on my less-than-reliable memory. I recall what followed was humorous and thought-provoking. I remember that Mr. Buchwald apologized (in this or some other article), saying something to the effect, “They told me there would be a war in Vietnam if I voted for Goldwater. I voted for Goldwater, and they were right. It’s my fault.”

That brings us to the current political situation. I was told that several bad things would happen if I didn’t vote for Barrack Obama. I was told the economic condition of the country would not improve. I was told that the unemployment rate would continue to exceed eight percent (not counting people who are underemployed or have given up on finding a job). I was told Guantanamo would remain the imprisonment site for suspected terrorists. I was told Guantanamo and military tribunals that would be held there would be the source of recruitment of others who wanted to commit terrorist acts against the U.S. In summary, I was told there would be many, many bad things that would happen if I didn’t vote for Barrack Obama. I ignored the warnings and didn’t vote for Obama. How can I possibly atone for my mistake?

I’ll end the sarcasm with the observation that I understand politicians will say many things to be elected. Newly elected Presidents then sit at the desk in the Oval Office and begin to receive classified intelligence briefings which explain why some of their promised policies might not be wise. They also apparently learn (perhaps to their dismay) that they do not control the legislative branch of government or the private economy. They are the leader of the most powerful country in the world, but there are limits for even them. I suggest we all keep that in mind as the Presidential campaign, which is predicted to be the most vicious in at least recent memory, proceeds.