SNAFU

"Plan to reduce military prompts resistance from Democrats, GOP".  "Members of both parties say cuts will hurt the country".  This from The Virginian Pilot this am and it doesn't say much for the difference between the two major parties on the issue of defense spending.  

Obama's plan to "dramatically overhaul the nations military" will be resisted by both parties.  Sec't of Defense Chuck Hagel wants to reduce the Army to the size it was in 1941; 440,000 to 450,000 active duty personnel, down from 520,000.  Congress has agreed to keep military budget under $ 500 billion (BO wants $ 495 bill) for next week (ops) year.  Tea Party wants more cuts in defense.  In Dec. Congress approved a 1 % cut in Veterans benefits; this month they voted to cancel that cut-the vote was 99 to 0. Dems Kaine, Levin, and Blumenthal are all opposed to military cuts.  (Note: Hagel "announced the Army would be downsized". Can he do that w/o Congressional support?)

Obama wants a "security pact" with Afghanistan by the end of the year or he will withdraw all US troops (he told us in 2008 he would end the middle east wars, now he will only if Karzai refuses to sign an agreement to keep troops there.  I remember in 1968 Nixon said he would end the Vietnam War and after I got out of the service in 1970 the war continued two more years.  Obama told me he would end our present wars and here we are many, many years later the the wars go on.  When will I learn not to trust anyone running for high office?)

Its clear now that Obama wants to keep 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014 while Karzai wants them out.  Karzai, our ally and the one we put in office, has been making anti American speeches and taking anti American actions recently; We put him in office costing us thousands of US lives and God-knows how much money.  Something is rotten here.

Some Items from Last Year.

I just came across some articles from the magazine The Week that I put in a book and forgot they were there.  Maybe I should have left them there.  The first, from 2/1/13 from Slate.com reports on a You Tube video stating that the Sandy Hook elementary school killings in Connecticut never really happened.  Instead the video says that a "elaborate conspiracy staged by the government" faked the event-having actors playing the parts of the parents and children, and with the children still alive-to set the stage for a plan to take all guns away from Americans.  This is called "gun massacre trutherism" and it also happened after the Aurora and Virginia Tech killings.  This group is supported by the NRA who are telling people that there is a "massive Obama conspiracy" to take guns away.  (Its been a year now, I'll have to google this to see what is being said.

Second, is the news from the same edition about Sec't of State Chuck Hagel-a decorated and wounded Vietnam War vet-who had always believed the war was just but had "gone wrong".  In 1997 the government release tapes from LBJ in 1964 "confessing that the US couldn't win in Vietnam" but LBJ decided "his legacy" demanded that he keep us in the war.  Hagel is today deeply set against war and the possible loss of more American lives.  He became more anti-war when letters from his father-who served in the Pacific during WWII-stated that "if I thought I would ever have a son who would have to go through this, I would never get married".  This is personal in a way because when I was drafted in 1967 my father said nothing to me about what might lay ahead; and he had a government deferment during WWII.

Pete Seeger

The activist song writer and singer-aged 94-died this past week in his home in New York close by the Hudson river he helped to save (at least to some extent).  His songs and his life showed a deep concern for the injustice in our country and for the oppressed and marginalized.  He was involved in labor, peace and civil rights movements.  Some of his more well known songs were; "We Shall Overcome", "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", "The Hammer song" and "Waist Deep in Big Muddy" (an anti Vietnam war song that CBS censored in 1967).
During the 1930' and until 1949 he was a member of the Communist Party in the US.  In 1993 he said "he would like to see a world without millionaires".  He served in the Army Special Services during WWII entertaining US troops in the South Pacific.   In 1950 he was compelled to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee where he refused to answer their questions and was held in "contempt" of Congress, serving only a "few hours" in jail, but being blacklisted from TV for the next 17 years.  He was also an environmentalist and worked for the clean up of the Hudson river.  He continued his singing and protesting by coming out against the Iraq War and by his support for the Occupy Wall Street movement.
His musical instrument of choice was the banjo-which he called a "machine"-and "the Hammer song" summed up his life and music.
If I had a hammer
Id hammer in the morning
Id hammer in the evening
All over the land/ Id hammer out danger
Id hammer out a warning
Id hammer out a love between my brothers and sisters
All over the land.
Seeger's belief that in the face of injustice one "must do what one can do" to oppose it, and his own epitaph  he wrote:
And so keep on while we live
Until we have no more to give
And when these fingers can strum no longer
Hand the old banjo to young ones stronger.
(Source:  "He did have a Hammer" by Jim Berkerman of The Record 1/29/14)

Society and "place"

I recall a past episode of the TV program called "Downton Abbey" in which the lord of the manor tells a young friend, who is reluctant to use the valet his new position offers, that it is "important for everyone to have a place" and to use the valet's services.  I also recall an article recently about a police shooting in Iceland-the first of its kind in modern Icelandic history-and the comment that while guns are available in Iceland the economic gap between the rich and poor is very narrow, leaving everyone in that society with a "place" or a committment to the whole society. 

My thought in regard to this is that our society has not found a way to ensure everyone a meaningful "place" or connection to the whole or interest in the operation of a orderly and just society.  Fascism imposed on European societies in the 1930's and 40's gave everyone a place by making all classes work for the interest of the state.  I am certainly not advocating that form of government, but our system must find a way to give all people a sense of belonging to a greater whole and having an interest in the betterment of society.  There are just too many people in our society without jobs, or a decent quality of life that would give them a sense of "place".  There is just too much of a gap between those few at the top of the economic ladder and those at the bottom, especially when we hear (via TV, movies, and ads) all the time about the things that money will buy.  Without that sense of "place" all kinds of anti-social actions will be taken by those with nothing to lose.

Snowden and the NSA

A few items of interest from The Record on Dec 26, 2013 regarding the issue of Edward Snowden's release of thousands of documents about the NSA surveillance program.  A District Judge-Richard J. Leon-said he believed the program was "probsbly unconstitutional" but it seems he had no way of making that case legally. But Snowden's disclosures have given Leon the "chance to weigh in on the matter".  "Earlier challenges (to surveillance programs) were thrown out of court because civil libertarian plaintiffs couldn't prove that the NSA was collecting data about them".  Now the NSA has had to acknowledge the existence of the spy program so court cases can go forward, and one is expected to reach the US. Supreme Court.  There was a Supreme Court case in 1979 that the NSA claims gives them the authority to gather information.  It seems that the 1979 case "held that telephone records aren't private because citizens share them with the telephone company".  This, of course, is an ongoing issue with much more to follow.  Till then.

Why War?

I have often wondered why countries like ours seem always to be in a state of warfare.  Is it a result of a capitalist society or does it have to do with the position of our country in the world scene; the leader of the free world as they say.  We always had a Department of War until the name was moderated a bit by making it the Department of Defense, but the concern for warfare is still present.  We have the Joint of Chiefs involving the heads of the four major military branches and their access to the President and their advise on the need or ability of the armed forces to respond to a given problem.

But recently I have thought of other reasons we seem to be willing to enter into a state of armed conflict.  We have the pictures of many (men and women) who have served in the armed forces and use their picture from that time in their obituaries.  They show a younger state of the person in uniform and they almost always have a smile on their faces and a service hat jauntily tilted to one side.  This observation may only apply to the veterans of WWII and it may not be seen in obit pieces of the Korean War and Vietnam veterans.

I remember my mother telling us kids about her brother-my Uncle Al-who flew with the "flying tigers" in the "great war".  She said it seemed to be the best years of his life; that everything else since was kind of down hill.

I even remember my feelings on being drafted in 1967, being anti-war but somehow excited about going off to a different experience, meeting people and even getting married in my "dress blues".  Even now being proud to say I am a veteran.  I also remember form my reading of history, Gen William T. Sherman (Civil War) saying that "it was good that war is so terrible, or we would grow to like it too much".

I recently read a novel entitled "Snow Island" that was set in the days prior to and after the US entered the war in 1942.  One passage I will quote here as follows.

"...he heard the clink of silverware and the murmur of voices.  The entire world had taken leave of its senses.  The war was like a drug people craved.  You could see it in the glassy-eyed stares of people on the trains, in the streets, in the hallways of the hotel.  They were drunk with the war.  One glimpse at the dinning room as he went quickly past confirmed his sense of it all.  The tables were full. Laughter shot back and forth across the crowded room, and he saw, as he glanced in, champagne glasses raised over one table in a toast".

I always thought that we could teach peace, but maybe war is what people want and not for any high moral purpose or even for a country's glory but for a sense of personal pride, excitement and and involvement>