The Colonel is about to do something he hasn't done in many years, and swore a solemn oath he wouldn't do ever again. He's about to volunteer.
The balance of the meager readership of this egregious waste of rod and cone time is painfully aware, based on the repeated references thereto, that the Colonel didn't go to college. He went to Ole Miss. And now, the Colonel's Alma mater needs him. The Colonel realizes that even with his prodigious skill set and talent tonnage, the challenge at hand is too much for one man. The issue at hand requires a national response. Therefore, early this frosty morn, the Colonel gavelled into emergency session the Congress of the Tallahatchie Free State for the express purpose of debating and deciding the extent to which the TFS will entangle itself in the affairs of Rebel Nation. The Colonel was authorized to draft the following Tallahatchie Free State Peoples' Proclamation, which was approved by unanimous and wildly cheering acclaim of the representative of the people of the land at the northern end of southern nowhere--namely, the Colonel.
Whereas: The University of Mississippi, hereinafter referred to by its politically incorrect and racially charged epithet--Ole Miss, lost it's 70 year-old mascot at the hands of the cruelly ruthless and ravenously relentless lady assassin--Polly Tickle Creckniss; and
Whereas: Ole Miss will, for the foreseeable future, maintain the nickname Rebels, pending, of course, another attack by Ms Creckniss and her mindless minions; and
Whereas: Rebel Nation has suffered the indignity and dishonor of no mascot representation on the fields, courts, and diamonds of athletic combat, lo these many seasons; and
Whereas: The spineless administration of Ole Miss, under the spell of Athletic Director and suspected Sith Lord, Darth Boone, has gone so far as to hire a yankee public relations firm from, of all hated places, New York City, to find a replacement mascot immune to the slings and arrows of Ms Creckniss and her mindless minions; and
Whereas: Any Ole Miss Rebel mascot proposal so developed in enemy territory will be detestable and utterly unacceptable to southern sensibilities; and
Whereas: The current underground student movement at Ole Miss to draft the honorable Rebel Alliance leader Admiral Ackbar will, in the cruel light of day, be found wanting, in that, a) the cost of the Admiral's commute from his home in a galaxy far, far away will be less sustainable than the cost of Obamacare, and b) the royalties exacted by George Lucas would necessitate ticket price inflation to unacceptable levels given the fact that it's hard enough to get fans to attend a Rebel athletic event as it is; and
Whereas: The requisite qualities, skills, and abilities, of an acceptable Ole Miss Rebel mascot include, but are not limited to, a) Mississippi roots and representation, b) patriotic service, and c) connection with the "rebel" concept; and
Whereas: The above requisites are satisfied in the person of the Colonel (Ole Miss alum, career military officer in the service of the re-United States, and operational call sign: Rebel);
Now, Therefore, The Colonel, Sole Representative of the People of Eegeebeegee, by virtue of the authority vested in him by the laws of the Tallahatchie Free State, situated on the kudzu-clad hills at the northern end of southern nowhere, does hereby proclaim solidarity with the counter-revolutionary elements of Rebel Nation and not-so-humbly offers himself as the new Colonel Rebel, without requirement of any present or future emolument (save, of course, upgrade of his present season-ticket seating in the nose-bleed section on the 10 yard line of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium).
In Witness Whereof, The Colonel, acting in complete consonance with the expressed will of the people of the Tallahatchie Free State, has hereunto set his hand this 25th day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the establishment of the Tallahatchie Free State the second.
I'll keep the phone lines open...
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Turning Points
June 14, 1775 is officially recognized as the birthday of the Army of the United States. However, this date, February 23, in 1778, should be celebrated as the date that the Continental Army became a modern, professional fighting force. It was on this date, 232 years ago, that Friedrich Wilhelm Augustin Ludolf Gerhard von Steuben (aka: Baron von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge and offered his services to General George Washington.
The Continental Congress authorized the raising and organization of the "Continental Army" on the 14th of June in 1775, and in so doing, took responsibility for the other bodies of colonial troops in the field opposite British regular, mercenary, and loyalist forces. The next day, George Washington (at the insistence of John Adams that at Southerner be so chosen to broaden the appeal of the theretofore largely New England rebellion), was appointed "General and Commander in Chief" of all the forces of the colonial rebel alliance. With minor, but much heralded, exceptions, George Washington and his ragtag army (an army in name only) stumbled, staggered and ran from defeat to defeat at the hands of the highly disciplined British. Were it not for the incompetence and sloth of their most senior leadership, the British should have easily crushed Washington's force and the rebel movement in the first two years of the "troubles." In the early winter of 1777, as the British army occupied the rebel capital, Philadelphia, Washington and less than 12,000 revolutionaries encamped on high ground within a day's march of the city at a place called Valley Forge. By February of 1778, Washington's force had been so depleted by disease, starvation, and quite-understandable-desertion that he could barely muster half that number of effective fighting men, and could have been easily routed by a British commander not so abhorrent of the "uncivilized" idea of fighting in winter.
Enter Baron von Steuben. A soldier of fortune with a somewhat checkered past and a falsified pedigree, von Steuben was possessed of a rare talent much needed by Washington--he was a master trainer. His service in several different armies in Europe had exposed him to the best and worst of professional armies and von Steuben had developed his own vision of a battlefield-mastering military force that was more modern than any in Europe at the time. In Washington's beleaguered force at Valley Forge, von Steuben found a lump of clay, unbound by tradition, with which he could could fashion a vessel for the receipt of his discipline and visionary fighting style.
When he arrived at Valley Forge, von Steuben first cleaned up the camp. As the army had theretofore wallowed and sickened in its own filth, he insisted that common latrines be dug, and that they be situated on the opposite side of the camp from the troop kitchens. Having taken these and other like measures to care for the health and welfare of the men, he next embarked on a program to "train the trainers." As he could speak little or no English, the "Baron" drafted a field manual in German, that Washington aides Hamilton and Greene translated. He then handpicked a company of 120 of the "best and brightest" and drilled them relentlessly until they could not only perform von Steuben's battlefield tactics flawlessly, but could now, in turn, train others. This development of subordinate leadership in the ranks, responsible for the care and training of other soldiers, can be seen as the forerunner of the professional non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps in today's U.S. Army in particular, and the U.S. military, in general. The efficacy of his fighting style was evident in the predominant colonial victories thereafter, and von Steuben's "train the trainers" approach is still the model for professional military forces the world over.
Another February 23rd is arguably the most important date, after November 10th, 1775, in Marine Corps history, and is also arguably one of the most important dates in U. S. history. On February 19th, 1945, two divisions of U.S. Marines landed on the beaches of a strategically located Japanese-held volcanic island called Iwo Jima. In the brutal fighting that ensued, nearly seven thousand Americans gave their lives to wrest the island and its vital airfield from the Japanese defenders. Four days into the battle, and a month before final victory would be declared, a patrol of Marines scaled the summit of the island's creator volcano, Mt. Suribachi, and raised the Stars and Stripes. The flag was a small one, and the powers that be demanded that a larger one be raised to replace it. This second flag raising was captured on film by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. That image, of which it was said by the editors of US Camera Magazine, "recorded the soul of a nation" was sent home to a war-weary America and seized upon by a desperate Roosevelt administration.
By 1945, the American people felt pretty much tapped out by the war against Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. Sales of war bonds, the proceeds of which were needed to finance the gigantic war material effort, had been disappointing. The last three of six war bond drives had fallen significantly short of their goals. While the flag-raising on Iwo Jima had not been a turning point in the battle (it had provided a momentary lift to the spirits of the men who would fight on for 31 more days), Rosenthal's iconic photograph of the second flag raising on Iwo's Mt. Suribachi proved a turning point in public sentiment on the home front. The Iwo Jima flag-raising image re-captured the American sense of patriotic duty, and the ensuing seventh war bond drive exceeded its target substantially.
In remembrance of these two momentous dates in the history of our nation, the Colonel--sole arbiter of such decisions aboard Eegeebeegee, capital of the Tallahatchie Free State, a virtual republic situated at the northern end of southern nowhere and founded as much hand-on-wallet as tongue-in-cheek--does hereby declare the 23rd of February, "Turning Point Day." This day, each year, for so long as the Colonel remains in possession of sufficient cognitive cells in the amorphous goo lying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group with which to remember it, shall be observed in solemnity and thanksgiving for the vision of von Steuben and the view-finder of Joe Rosenthal's camera.
The Continental Congress authorized the raising and organization of the "Continental Army" on the 14th of June in 1775, and in so doing, took responsibility for the other bodies of colonial troops in the field opposite British regular, mercenary, and loyalist forces. The next day, George Washington (at the insistence of John Adams that at Southerner be so chosen to broaden the appeal of the theretofore largely New England rebellion), was appointed "General and Commander in Chief" of all the forces of the colonial rebel alliance. With minor, but much heralded, exceptions, George Washington and his ragtag army (an army in name only) stumbled, staggered and ran from defeat to defeat at the hands of the highly disciplined British. Were it not for the incompetence and sloth of their most senior leadership, the British should have easily crushed Washington's force and the rebel movement in the first two years of the "troubles." In the early winter of 1777, as the British army occupied the rebel capital, Philadelphia, Washington and less than 12,000 revolutionaries encamped on high ground within a day's march of the city at a place called Valley Forge. By February of 1778, Washington's force had been so depleted by disease, starvation, and quite-understandable-desertion that he could barely muster half that number of effective fighting men, and could have been easily routed by a British commander not so abhorrent of the "uncivilized" idea of fighting in winter.
Enter Baron von Steuben. A soldier of fortune with a somewhat checkered past and a falsified pedigree, von Steuben was possessed of a rare talent much needed by Washington--he was a master trainer. His service in several different armies in Europe had exposed him to the best and worst of professional armies and von Steuben had developed his own vision of a battlefield-mastering military force that was more modern than any in Europe at the time. In Washington's beleaguered force at Valley Forge, von Steuben found a lump of clay, unbound by tradition, with which he could could fashion a vessel for the receipt of his discipline and visionary fighting style.
When he arrived at Valley Forge, von Steuben first cleaned up the camp. As the army had theretofore wallowed and sickened in its own filth, he insisted that common latrines be dug, and that they be situated on the opposite side of the camp from the troop kitchens. Having taken these and other like measures to care for the health and welfare of the men, he next embarked on a program to "train the trainers." As he could speak little or no English, the "Baron" drafted a field manual in German, that Washington aides Hamilton and Greene translated. He then handpicked a company of 120 of the "best and brightest" and drilled them relentlessly until they could not only perform von Steuben's battlefield tactics flawlessly, but could now, in turn, train others. This development of subordinate leadership in the ranks, responsible for the care and training of other soldiers, can be seen as the forerunner of the professional non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps in today's U.S. Army in particular, and the U.S. military, in general. The efficacy of his fighting style was evident in the predominant colonial victories thereafter, and von Steuben's "train the trainers" approach is still the model for professional military forces the world over.
Another February 23rd is arguably the most important date, after November 10th, 1775, in Marine Corps history, and is also arguably one of the most important dates in U. S. history. On February 19th, 1945, two divisions of U.S. Marines landed on the beaches of a strategically located Japanese-held volcanic island called Iwo Jima. In the brutal fighting that ensued, nearly seven thousand Americans gave their lives to wrest the island and its vital airfield from the Japanese defenders. Four days into the battle, and a month before final victory would be declared, a patrol of Marines scaled the summit of the island's creator volcano, Mt. Suribachi, and raised the Stars and Stripes. The flag was a small one, and the powers that be demanded that a larger one be raised to replace it. This second flag raising was captured on film by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. That image, of which it was said by the editors of US Camera Magazine, "recorded the soul of a nation" was sent home to a war-weary America and seized upon by a desperate Roosevelt administration.
By 1945, the American people felt pretty much tapped out by the war against Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. Sales of war bonds, the proceeds of which were needed to finance the gigantic war material effort, had been disappointing. The last three of six war bond drives had fallen significantly short of their goals. While the flag-raising on Iwo Jima had not been a turning point in the battle (it had provided a momentary lift to the spirits of the men who would fight on for 31 more days), Rosenthal's iconic photograph of the second flag raising on Iwo's Mt. Suribachi proved a turning point in public sentiment on the home front. The Iwo Jima flag-raising image re-captured the American sense of patriotic duty, and the ensuing seventh war bond drive exceeded its target substantially.
In remembrance of these two momentous dates in the history of our nation, the Colonel--sole arbiter of such decisions aboard Eegeebeegee, capital of the Tallahatchie Free State, a virtual republic situated at the northern end of southern nowhere and founded as much hand-on-wallet as tongue-in-cheek--does hereby declare the 23rd of February, "Turning Point Day." This day, each year, for so long as the Colonel remains in possession of sufficient cognitive cells in the amorphous goo lying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group with which to remember it, shall be observed in solemnity and thanksgiving for the vision of von Steuben and the view-finder of Joe Rosenthal's camera.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Let it Start With Me
When you folks in Washington, D.C. find your spines and finally start making the hard decisions about the cuts to "entitlements" required to prevent the financial collapse of our nation, the Colonel wants you to start with his first.
For the honor that was his service to the United States, the Colonel receives a more than generous "retirement" from a grateful nation. In 1947, during an era when Congress conducted sweeping reformation and reorganization of the post-war military, the present military retirement system was codified. Allowing 50% of base pay, for life, to any one whose service reached 20 years, and 2.5 % more per year for every year over 20, the system was designed primarily to reward the small percentage of WWII veterans who decided to remain in the military after peace broke out. In 1947, the life expectancy of someone in his twenties or thirties making the decision to follow the calling that is military service was less than 60 years. So, had the Colonel entered service in 1940 and served until 1965 (reflecting actual service of '78 to '03), he would have been 47 years old and would have drawn his military pension for 13 years. Assuming the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda doesn't pull the Colonel's plug anytime soon (she wonders daily about the Colonel's "brain-dead" condition) he should draw a military pension for at least three times that long and maybe even twice as long as the actual time he served on active duty in his beloved Corps.
Whenever the Colonel has opined that he feels a bit guilty about taking such a pension at such an early age, his family has vehemently refuted that notion and reminded him of the entire family's sacrifice during the time of his service, and the seven figure income he would have undoubtedly commanded had he been in equivalent positions of responsibility in the private sector. Be that as it may, the Colonel decided to serve his nation, not for present or future emolument, but in large part out of gratitude for the freedoms, rights, and privileges that were the happy accident of his birth as an American in the 20th Century. The Colonel knew exactly what he was getting into when he raised his right hand and swore to give his life to "defend the constitution of the United States, against all enemies..." The Colonel knew full well that, to paraphrase General Nathan Bedford Forrest, "defending means fighting, and fighting means killing."
The Colonel's larger point is this: The elected leaders of these re-United States are presently careening wildly out of control down the financial ski-slope, having crashed through all of the gates of restraint. At the bottom of the slope awaits not an applauding throng and a medal, but a clanging gong and financial ruin. In order to arrest our descent, VERY HARD leadership decisions must be made. ALL of us will be required to sacrifice. And by sacrifice, the Colonel does not mean giving up Starbucks for McDonald's.
FDR's Social Security was intended as a safety net, not a retirement entitlement. The safety net ensured that in the highly unlikely event (at the time) that someone lived beyond the age of 60 and could no longer physically contribute to the nation's labor force, he would not be destitute. Medicare was instituted in a similar vein. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to bring those two safety nets up to date with reality, or there will, soon, be no nation to lead.
Entitlements are but one portion of the federal financial equation; defense spending is another. Eisenhower warned against the rise and growth of the "military-industrial complex," and he had no clue to what gargantuan extremes his prophecy would be fulfilled. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to rein in the outrageous cost of exotic weapon systems, or there will, soon, be no nation in whose defense to employ them.
Yet another part of the federal financial equation is the federal tax code--an abomination of special interest service and state behavioral control. Leaving aside the argument whether a national income tax is unconstitutional (the 16th Amendment was passed to circumvent the Supreme Court's previous decision that an income tax was unconstitutional), the federal government must have revenue if it is to fulfill its constitutional requirements. The Colonel believes that since ALL share in the benefits of a federal government, ALL should share in its funding. Progressives (read, class warfare socialists) would have us believe that it is "unfair" for the poor to pay the same percentage of their income as the rich. As a means of controlling the masses, fascism re-defines. "Fairness" is one of the first casualties of such redefinition. Politicians, of every stripe, use the tax code to influence behavior. Such shenanigans are anathema to the efficient function of a free-market capitalistic democratic republic. Rant aside, either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to reform and simplify our federal tax system, or there will be no economy left, soon, from which to source revenue.
Finally, the free market of our capitalistic democratic republic, such as was envisioned by our founders, cannot, despite the wishes of the banking elite, function fairly if unregulated. It is one of the highest duties of our federal government to ensure that corporations and banks (the engines and financiers of prosperity) operate on a level and non-monopolistic playing field. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, without Wall Street lobbyists in the room, to strengthen the oversight required to enforce the rules already on the books, or there will be another, and another, greed-fueled and scoff-law-driven bubble whose burst will plunge our nation over yet another financial system precipice. Oh, and when a bank fails--let it fail. If it is "too big to fail," break it up. This ain't rocket science.
The Colonel is willing to sacrifice his ease, if our leaders are ready to make their own political sacrifices.
I won't hold my breath.
For the honor that was his service to the United States, the Colonel receives a more than generous "retirement" from a grateful nation. In 1947, during an era when Congress conducted sweeping reformation and reorganization of the post-war military, the present military retirement system was codified. Allowing 50% of base pay, for life, to any one whose service reached 20 years, and 2.5 % more per year for every year over 20, the system was designed primarily to reward the small percentage of WWII veterans who decided to remain in the military after peace broke out. In 1947, the life expectancy of someone in his twenties or thirties making the decision to follow the calling that is military service was less than 60 years. So, had the Colonel entered service in 1940 and served until 1965 (reflecting actual service of '78 to '03), he would have been 47 years old and would have drawn his military pension for 13 years. Assuming the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda doesn't pull the Colonel's plug anytime soon (she wonders daily about the Colonel's "brain-dead" condition) he should draw a military pension for at least three times that long and maybe even twice as long as the actual time he served on active duty in his beloved Corps.
Whenever the Colonel has opined that he feels a bit guilty about taking such a pension at such an early age, his family has vehemently refuted that notion and reminded him of the entire family's sacrifice during the time of his service, and the seven figure income he would have undoubtedly commanded had he been in equivalent positions of responsibility in the private sector. Be that as it may, the Colonel decided to serve his nation, not for present or future emolument, but in large part out of gratitude for the freedoms, rights, and privileges that were the happy accident of his birth as an American in the 20th Century. The Colonel knew exactly what he was getting into when he raised his right hand and swore to give his life to "defend the constitution of the United States, against all enemies..." The Colonel knew full well that, to paraphrase General Nathan Bedford Forrest, "defending means fighting, and fighting means killing."
The Colonel's larger point is this: The elected leaders of these re-United States are presently careening wildly out of control down the financial ski-slope, having crashed through all of the gates of restraint. At the bottom of the slope awaits not an applauding throng and a medal, but a clanging gong and financial ruin. In order to arrest our descent, VERY HARD leadership decisions must be made. ALL of us will be required to sacrifice. And by sacrifice, the Colonel does not mean giving up Starbucks for McDonald's.
FDR's Social Security was intended as a safety net, not a retirement entitlement. The safety net ensured that in the highly unlikely event (at the time) that someone lived beyond the age of 60 and could no longer physically contribute to the nation's labor force, he would not be destitute. Medicare was instituted in a similar vein. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to bring those two safety nets up to date with reality, or there will, soon, be no nation to lead.
Entitlements are but one portion of the federal financial equation; defense spending is another. Eisenhower warned against the rise and growth of the "military-industrial complex," and he had no clue to what gargantuan extremes his prophecy would be fulfilled. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to rein in the outrageous cost of exotic weapon systems, or there will, soon, be no nation in whose defense to employ them.
Yet another part of the federal financial equation is the federal tax code--an abomination of special interest service and state behavioral control. Leaving aside the argument whether a national income tax is unconstitutional (the 16th Amendment was passed to circumvent the Supreme Court's previous decision that an income tax was unconstitutional), the federal government must have revenue if it is to fulfill its constitutional requirements. The Colonel believes that since ALL share in the benefits of a federal government, ALL should share in its funding. Progressives (read, class warfare socialists) would have us believe that it is "unfair" for the poor to pay the same percentage of their income as the rich. As a means of controlling the masses, fascism re-defines. "Fairness" is one of the first casualties of such redefinition. Politicians, of every stripe, use the tax code to influence behavior. Such shenanigans are anathema to the efficient function of a free-market capitalistic democratic republic. Rant aside, either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, to reform and simplify our federal tax system, or there will be no economy left, soon, from which to source revenue.
Finally, the free market of our capitalistic democratic republic, such as was envisioned by our founders, cannot, despite the wishes of the banking elite, function fairly if unregulated. It is one of the highest duties of our federal government to ensure that corporations and banks (the engines and financiers of prosperity) operate on a level and non-monopolistic playing field. Either our leaders make the hard decisions, now, without Wall Street lobbyists in the room, to strengthen the oversight required to enforce the rules already on the books, or there will be another, and another, greed-fueled and scoff-law-driven bubble whose burst will plunge our nation over yet another financial system precipice. Oh, and when a bank fails--let it fail. If it is "too big to fail," break it up. This ain't rocket science.
The Colonel is willing to sacrifice his ease, if our leaders are ready to make their own political sacrifices.
I won't hold my breath.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Congressional Nihilism
In recognition of the 209th anniversary of the election of Thomas Jefferson as the 3rd President of these re-United States, the Colonel this morning convened a special joint session of the Second Congress and Executive Cabinet of the Tallahatchie Free State, a virtual republic established as much hand-on-wallet as tongue-in-cheek, for the purpose of considering weighty matters of state. As is tradition aboard Eegeebeegee--capital of the TFS; situated prominently at the northern end of southern nowhere--the Colonel, the people's representative (single and sovereign), presided over the proceedings ensconced in the Chesty Puller rocker on the front porch of the Big House.
The first order of business was a report from the Minister of the Environment, the Right Honorable Idon Feelmafeet, whose observation that it was colder than an Ole Miss sorority girl's heart outside resulted in his nomination for a Mastery of the Obvious award. Said nomination will be considered at the next regularly irregular editorial meeting for the purpose of planning the next regularly irregular installment of the Colonel's Monday Morning MOTO Awards. Minister Feelmafeet also reported that the Climate Change Bill has been sent back to conference in order to further obfuscate the wording so as to make it as unintelligible and omni-applicable as possible. The Colonel approved the minister's report and ordered that at the yet unscheduled joint session of the TFS Third Congress and Executive Cabinet a report on the effect of climate change on next Fall's duck, deer and football seasons be provided.
The Minister of the Interior, the Right Honorable Sawyer N. Builder, reported on the status of Eegeebeegee infrastructure and Big House interior capital improvement projects. The Colonel congratulated the minister on completion of Phase I of the Big House Closet Remodeling Project and reminded that Phases II through IV are behind schedule and in danger of extending into the crappie and turkey seasons. A report on the progress of the bridge at Caleb's Crossing elicited similar reminders of the sure work-stoppage to occur during the March/April time frame as Eegeebeegee's permanent workforce (the Colonel) will, without doubt, break for the aforementioned holidays.
The Minister of Finance, the Right Honorable Cash N. Carry, reported that the TFS Debt to GDP ratio was at an unacceptable 35%, but on the decline. The Colonel noted with pleasure Minister Carry's report that the TFS continues to operate with a budget surplus, debt payments notwithstanding.
The Minister of Health, the Right Honorable U. R. Lukingood, reported that the prevalence of obesity aboard Eegeebeegee remains at 0%. Immediately prior to his sacking, the Health Minister opined that the Colonel, while not technically obese, was edging ever so slightly toward the upper limit of the Marine Corps height and weight standards and might consider placing himself on voluntary weight control. Upon installment of Lukingood's successor, Kip N. Matrapshut, the Colonel directed that all scales aboard Eegeebeegee be taken in for recalibration and that the larders be emptied of cookies forthwith.
Despite the presence of numerous other items of TFS business on the agenda, the Colonel summarily adjourned the 2d Congress and Cabinet joint session due to the fact that the Ole Miss sorority girl's heart had not warmed perceptively and the Colonel's coffee cup, around which his fingers were stiffly and coldly wrapped, was empty and, as a means of caffeine delivery, devoid of meaning--kinda like this post.
The first order of business was a report from the Minister of the Environment, the Right Honorable Idon Feelmafeet, whose observation that it was colder than an Ole Miss sorority girl's heart outside resulted in his nomination for a Mastery of the Obvious award. Said nomination will be considered at the next regularly irregular editorial meeting for the purpose of planning the next regularly irregular installment of the Colonel's Monday Morning MOTO Awards. Minister Feelmafeet also reported that the Climate Change Bill has been sent back to conference in order to further obfuscate the wording so as to make it as unintelligible and omni-applicable as possible. The Colonel approved the minister's report and ordered that at the yet unscheduled joint session of the TFS Third Congress and Executive Cabinet a report on the effect of climate change on next Fall's duck, deer and football seasons be provided.
The Minister of the Interior, the Right Honorable Sawyer N. Builder, reported on the status of Eegeebeegee infrastructure and Big House interior capital improvement projects. The Colonel congratulated the minister on completion of Phase I of the Big House Closet Remodeling Project and reminded that Phases II through IV are behind schedule and in danger of extending into the crappie and turkey seasons. A report on the progress of the bridge at Caleb's Crossing elicited similar reminders of the sure work-stoppage to occur during the March/April time frame as Eegeebeegee's permanent workforce (the Colonel) will, without doubt, break for the aforementioned holidays.
The Minister of Finance, the Right Honorable Cash N. Carry, reported that the TFS Debt to GDP ratio was at an unacceptable 35%, but on the decline. The Colonel noted with pleasure Minister Carry's report that the TFS continues to operate with a budget surplus, debt payments notwithstanding.
The Minister of Health, the Right Honorable U. R. Lukingood, reported that the prevalence of obesity aboard Eegeebeegee remains at 0%. Immediately prior to his sacking, the Health Minister opined that the Colonel, while not technically obese, was edging ever so slightly toward the upper limit of the Marine Corps height and weight standards and might consider placing himself on voluntary weight control. Upon installment of Lukingood's successor, Kip N. Matrapshut, the Colonel directed that all scales aboard Eegeebeegee be taken in for recalibration and that the larders be emptied of cookies forthwith.
Despite the presence of numerous other items of TFS business on the agenda, the Colonel summarily adjourned the 2d Congress and Cabinet joint session due to the fact that the Ole Miss sorority girl's heart had not warmed perceptively and the Colonel's coffee cup, around which his fingers were stiffly and coldly wrapped, was empty and, as a means of caffeine delivery, devoid of meaning--kinda like this post.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Brotherly Birthday Bromides
Fifty-one years ago, today, my parents, and a vengeful God, gave me a little brother. I don't know why this was considered a particularly good idea. You would think that little brothers would be given to those whose grasp of the basic concepts of younger sibling care was significantly more than the tenuous hold I had on the subject. Still, there he was. All mine.
Mine, of whom to be jealous. Mother reminds me regularly that I grew tired of her attentions to the pink, smelly interloper some time in the first 48 to 72 hours of his arrival and demanded that she "Put that baby down!" Honestly, if she had just done as I required, and ignored the thing for a few weeks...
Mine, to use as a musical instrument. Did you you know that a hammer fist to the back of a twelve-year-old produces a sound akin to that of a bass drum? And, did you know that the resulting squall from said twelve-year-old comes to a father's ear like a bugle call to action? Did you also know that fifteen-year-old percussionists make a sound akin to that of a cartoon cat with its tail on fire when punted by a father answering said bugle call?
Mine, to blame. There are things for which I should have surely roasted in parental Gehenna, but for which little brother's substitution provided propitiation instead. I won't provide specifics as there is no statute of limitations on infractions of parental laws. Suffice to say that the "Great Cookie Jar Heist" would have been adjudicated far differently had Mother been apprised of the latest forensic evidence gathering techniques.
Mine, to subject to endless tricks and treachery. "Okay, Bruce, go long. I promise to throw it to you this time."
Mine, to use a tackling dummy, punching bag, and joke butt.
Mine, to envy. Brother's wife and daughters treat him like a king. All I know is that when we were growing up, he was royal pain in the...
Mine, at whom to marvel. My brother has excelled in a technical field of work and has accomplishments and accolades too numerous to mention. All of this despite an appalling lack of education (he went to Mississippi State).
Mine, for whom to feel sorrow. He could have been blessed with an older brother possessed of empathy, patience, kindness, and a giving nature. He could have had an older brother who would have cared enough to write something uplifting or flattering about him on his birthday. He should have gotten a big brother.
Instead, he got me.
Mine, of whom to be jealous. Mother reminds me regularly that I grew tired of her attentions to the pink, smelly interloper some time in the first 48 to 72 hours of his arrival and demanded that she "Put that baby down!" Honestly, if she had just done as I required, and ignored the thing for a few weeks...
Mine, to use as a musical instrument. Did you you know that a hammer fist to the back of a twelve-year-old produces a sound akin to that of a bass drum? And, did you know that the resulting squall from said twelve-year-old comes to a father's ear like a bugle call to action? Did you also know that fifteen-year-old percussionists make a sound akin to that of a cartoon cat with its tail on fire when punted by a father answering said bugle call?
Mine, to blame. There are things for which I should have surely roasted in parental Gehenna, but for which little brother's substitution provided propitiation instead. I won't provide specifics as there is no statute of limitations on infractions of parental laws. Suffice to say that the "Great Cookie Jar Heist" would have been adjudicated far differently had Mother been apprised of the latest forensic evidence gathering techniques.
Mine, to subject to endless tricks and treachery. "Okay, Bruce, go long. I promise to throw it to you this time."
Mine, to use a tackling dummy, punching bag, and joke butt.
Mine, to envy. Brother's wife and daughters treat him like a king. All I know is that when we were growing up, he was royal pain in the...
Mine, at whom to marvel. My brother has excelled in a technical field of work and has accomplishments and accolades too numerous to mention. All of this despite an appalling lack of education (he went to Mississippi State).
Mine, for whom to feel sorrow. He could have been blessed with an older brother possessed of empathy, patience, kindness, and a giving nature. He could have had an older brother who would have cared enough to write something uplifting or flattering about him on his birthday. He should have gotten a big brother.
Instead, he got me.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Winter Dove
One of the few bright spots in the otherwise dark and colorless purgatory that is the month of February is the presence of birds at the feeders out on the back porch of the Big House here at the northern end of southern nowhere. Were it not for the pleasure of watching the juncos, redbirds, goldfinches, and other feathered fauna, the dreary, wet, cold, windy weather that clamps a clammy hand over the clay-covering kudzu around about would be just about enough to send the Colonel howling 'round insanity's curve. I have mentioned my loathe for the despicable month before, have I not?
To paraphrase John's account of Nathaniel's retort to Philip, "Can anything good come out of February?"
The Colonel thinks not.
Rather, there is much to the thankfully short month to recommend it for placement at the bottom of any ordering of calendar counts. Go ahead, name a more vile month. The Colonel will wait...
...and wait...
...still waiting...
It's settled then. February is hereby declared the scourge of humanity.
Yeah, the Colonel heard some of you say, "What about Valentine's Day?" To which the Colonel will gently remind the three fair and gentle readers of this post, if you wait until one day a year to tell that significant other how significant the other is, the other ain't. Nor are you.
Back to ornithology (the study of birds for you Mississippi State and LSU grads).
For the past three scourges of humanity the gangs of juncos, redbirds, and goldfinches that frequented the Colonel's feeders have been joined by a solitary mourning dove. While the Colonel is not skilled nor keen-eyed enough to determine the gender of this lone Zenaida carolinensis, it has been dubbed a she and given the name: Zena. It would stretch the Colonel's already uber-elastic credibility were he to maintain for your benefit that this particular bird is the same dove that has appeared each winter. So the Colonel will only entertain that belief for his own benefit, as there yet remains just barely enough grey matter lying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group to maintain delusions.
Told you that there wasn't much to recommend February.
To paraphrase John's account of Nathaniel's retort to Philip, "Can anything good come out of February?"
The Colonel thinks not.
Rather, there is much to the thankfully short month to recommend it for placement at the bottom of any ordering of calendar counts. Go ahead, name a more vile month. The Colonel will wait...
...and wait...
...still waiting...
It's settled then. February is hereby declared the scourge of humanity.
Yeah, the Colonel heard some of you say, "What about Valentine's Day?" To which the Colonel will gently remind the three fair and gentle readers of this post, if you wait until one day a year to tell that significant other how significant the other is, the other ain't. Nor are you.
Back to ornithology (the study of birds for you Mississippi State and LSU grads).
For the past three scourges of humanity the gangs of juncos, redbirds, and goldfinches that frequented the Colonel's feeders have been joined by a solitary mourning dove. While the Colonel is not skilled nor keen-eyed enough to determine the gender of this lone Zenaida carolinensis, it has been dubbed a she and given the name: Zena. It would stretch the Colonel's already uber-elastic credibility were he to maintain for your benefit that this particular bird is the same dove that has appeared each winter. So the Colonel will only entertain that belief for his own benefit, as there yet remains just barely enough grey matter lying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group to maintain delusions.
Told you that there wasn't much to recommend February.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Lunar Leadership Example
On this date in 1966, the third day of February, the Soviet Union's spacecraft, Lunik 9 made the first controlled landing on the moon. Shortly after landing, Lunik 9 began transmitting photographs and television images back to Earth. Lunik 9 was preceded by Lunik 2, the first manmade object to reach (and crash upon) the moon, and by Lunik 3, the first spacecraft to circle the moon and send back pictures of the theretofore unseen "dark side" of our Earth's synchronously rotating celestial dance partner. Luniks 2 and 3 reached the moon in 1959--well ahead of any of the United States' space efforts.
In the late 1950's and early 1960's the United States lagged far behind the Soviet Union in space. While the Soviet's were committing significant amounts of national treasure to fund their captured German scientists' space rocket endeavors, the United States was spending but a pittance on our captured German scientists' rocket dreams. The Soviets' Yuri Gagarin was not only the first man in space but his spacecraft actually achieved and maintained Earth orbit. By comparison, Alan Shepard's flight three weeks later was merely a suborbital one--Shepard (on the Colonel's short list of personal heroes) essentially rode a surface to surface missile. We were way behind the Soviet's and losing ground.
All of that dramatically changed by the end of the 1960's. In 1961, a young and inexperienced President, embarrassed by domestic and foreign policy failures (the Bay of Pigs debacle chief among them), needed something around which to rally our nation. Five decades ago, this brash young American president, exuding cool matched only by the members of Sinatra's Rat Pack, threw down the gauntlet to the Soviet Union's captured German scientists, and challenged America's captured German scientists to, by the end of the 1960's, land a man on the moon and bring him safely home again. It was a staggering challenge, and it galvanized America's scientific community and captured the imagination of our people in a way rarely seen in our history.
In a speech at Rice University a few months after issuing that challenge, President Kennedy explained his rationale for embarking the United States on the mission of lunar exploration. His speech is excerpted below:
"We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency...
...To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead...
...And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this state, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your city of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this center in this city.
To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold...
...Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."
Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."
It has been nearly four decades since the last men of Earth walked upon the surface of our planet's moon. Would that these re-United States had possessed presidential and congressional vision in the years since 1971 and taken the actions needed to keep the moon in the care of free nations--led, of course, by us.
In the late 1950's and early 1960's the United States lagged far behind the Soviet Union in space. While the Soviet's were committing significant amounts of national treasure to fund their captured German scientists' space rocket endeavors, the United States was spending but a pittance on our captured German scientists' rocket dreams. The Soviets' Yuri Gagarin was not only the first man in space but his spacecraft actually achieved and maintained Earth orbit. By comparison, Alan Shepard's flight three weeks later was merely a suborbital one--Shepard (on the Colonel's short list of personal heroes) essentially rode a surface to surface missile. We were way behind the Soviet's and losing ground.
All of that dramatically changed by the end of the 1960's. In 1961, a young and inexperienced President, embarrassed by domestic and foreign policy failures (the Bay of Pigs debacle chief among them), needed something around which to rally our nation. Five decades ago, this brash young American president, exuding cool matched only by the members of Sinatra's Rat Pack, threw down the gauntlet to the Soviet Union's captured German scientists, and challenged America's captured German scientists to, by the end of the 1960's, land a man on the moon and bring him safely home again. It was a staggering challenge, and it galvanized America's scientific community and captured the imagination of our people in a way rarely seen in our history.
In a speech at Rice University a few months after issuing that challenge, President Kennedy explained his rationale for embarking the United States on the mission of lunar exploration. His speech is excerpted below:
"We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency...
...To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead...
...And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this state, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your city of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this center in this city.
To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold...
...Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."
Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."
It has been nearly four decades since the last men of Earth walked upon the surface of our planet's moon. Would that these re-United States had possessed presidential and congressional vision in the years since 1971 and taken the actions needed to keep the moon in the care of free nations--led, of course, by us.
Monday, February 01, 2010
A Bridge Too Far
The ford ("shallow creek crossing" for you Bama grads) connecting the Colonel's westernmost field to the rest of the vast holdings that comprise Eegeebeegee has been impassable for the better part of the last year. Heavier than normal rains washed most of the rocks downstream, and just about the time the Colonel finished prying the boulders from the sucking sand and waddle-carrying them back upstream to the ford, another heavy rain swept them tumbling back downstream. Hydraulics is a fascinating power...unless it's working against you.
So, the Colonel has decided to build a bridge.
For the better part of his adult life, most of the professional study and preparation to which this Marine subjected the loose collection of grey matter laying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group dealt with the destruction of bad people and their things. The largest construction projects attempted rarely exceeded the complexity of assembling a bookcase out of 1 x 6s and milk crates. Engineering and erecting a bridge, substantial and sturdy enough to safely accommodate the Colonel and his trusty tractor Semper Field, certainly must seem to anyone even remotely acquainted with him to be folly in its fullest meaning. No matter--there ain't enough brain matter left to cobble together a convincing argument against the attempt.
Said bridge building project began in earnest a week ago. The near-shore bridge pier construction phase began with three behemoth (meaning: very large--for all of you LSU grads) railroad ties hauled down to Caleb's Crossing--so named in honor of the Colonel's second favorite person on the planet. Holes were excavated large enough to accommodate the ties stood on end and encased in several yards of concrete. Mind you, ALL of the digging and maneuvering of said behemoth railroad ties was done by hand. Yep, the Colonel ain't smart and you can't make him.
As the Colonel and # 2 son stood over on the far shore admiring completion of Phase I--three (did I mention they were behemoth?) railroad ties towering straight and tall and spaced five feet apart across the point where the road ended in the creek--an errant thought took shape in the few remaining brain cells in the amorphous goo at the base of the Colonel's skull. But, before he could translate thought to speech, #2 gave verbal shape to the Colonel's thoughts.
"Well, Dad, you've either made substantial progress toward bridging this creek or you've made it so that no one will ever cross at this point again."
Seems the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda gave birth to a mind-reader.
So, the Colonel has decided to build a bridge.
For the better part of his adult life, most of the professional study and preparation to which this Marine subjected the loose collection of grey matter laying fallow in the recesses of his brain-housing group dealt with the destruction of bad people and their things. The largest construction projects attempted rarely exceeded the complexity of assembling a bookcase out of 1 x 6s and milk crates. Engineering and erecting a bridge, substantial and sturdy enough to safely accommodate the Colonel and his trusty tractor Semper Field, certainly must seem to anyone even remotely acquainted with him to be folly in its fullest meaning. No matter--there ain't enough brain matter left to cobble together a convincing argument against the attempt.
Said bridge building project began in earnest a week ago. The near-shore bridge pier construction phase began with three behemoth (meaning: very large--for all of you LSU grads) railroad ties hauled down to Caleb's Crossing--so named in honor of the Colonel's second favorite person on the planet. Holes were excavated large enough to accommodate the ties stood on end and encased in several yards of concrete. Mind you, ALL of the digging and maneuvering of said behemoth railroad ties was done by hand. Yep, the Colonel ain't smart and you can't make him.
As the Colonel and # 2 son stood over on the far shore admiring completion of Phase I--three (did I mention they were behemoth?) railroad ties towering straight and tall and spaced five feet apart across the point where the road ended in the creek--an errant thought took shape in the few remaining brain cells in the amorphous goo at the base of the Colonel's skull. But, before he could translate thought to speech, #2 gave verbal shape to the Colonel's thoughts.
"Well, Dad, you've either made substantial progress toward bridging this creek or you've made it so that no one will ever cross at this point again."
Seems the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda gave birth to a mind-reader.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
I Don't See You
The pimply-faced mouth-breather at the concession stand handed over our 3D glasses and gushed unbidden, "It's the best movie I've ever seen! I've watched it ten times now! You guys are gonna love it!"
Had it not been that the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was on my arm, the Colonel might very well have succumbed to the overwhelming desire to set the vocal chords on "stun" and subject the errant youth to a brief, but effective, lesson on a select number of points. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's ever-so-slightly tightened grip on the Colonel's arm indicated that she had detected the tremor in the Force that often foretells a curmudgeonly blast from yours truly.
I cooled my jets.
However, after watching "Avatar" and then closing my eyes for an extended strategic planning session, the Colonel awoke this morning with jets at full military power, and the beneficiary of the resultant pedantic post will be you, gentle reader, instead of the public school product pushing concessions at the multi-plex. While the electrons comprising this missive are ordered for his consumption, I doubt the young man's ability to apply the fifth grade level reading and comprehension skills required to plow through it. But, the Colonel has always harbored a fondness for lost causes...
First, the Colonel cares not one wit about the "experience" of some adolescent whose digestive tract is still processing what his mother fed him for breakfast before pushing him out the door and pointing him toward the bus stop to join the other neighborhood punks-in-training beginning their matriculation at Che Guevara Elementary School. Just give me my bucket of stale and outrageously overpriced popcorn and my watered-down and outrageously overpriced fountain drink, and point mutely toward the Men's room so that I can prepare to sit still through a long and outrageously overpriced movie. If you must speak, restrict your vocalizations to short, intelligible utterances laden with information and respect--not necessarily in that order.
Second, the Colonel wonders to what better use the several hundred dollars you spent on repeated viewings of this movie could have been put. Oh, I don't know, maybe some suspenders to help keep the waistband of you trousers from sliding down around your thighs. Or, maybe a hat with the bill on the front. Or, maybe a haircut.
Third, the Colonel would like to know against what films you applied your cinematic comparisons to arrive at the erroneous conclusion that this is the best movie of all time. "Caddy Shack" was more original and had a better plot than this tree-hugging homage to anti-capitalism. "Avatar" has some really neat special effects, but contains little novelty--most of the movie was lifted from other films. Even with the few remaining synapses firing in the amorphous goo laying fallow in the recesses of my brain-housing group, the Colonel was able to detect and identify scenes and devices plagiarized from "Aliens," "Star Wars," "Dances with Wolves," and "Starship Troopers," to name only a few.
On a positive note, the Colonel appreciates Cameron's allusions to the evils of mercenary armies in the service of corporations. These re-United States sully the good name of our people with the allowance and employ of such mercenary outfits as Xe (aka, Blackwater).
It has always been the Colonel's position that the United States military should be used to do corporations' bidding--they pay for it.
Had it not been that the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was on my arm, the Colonel might very well have succumbed to the overwhelming desire to set the vocal chords on "stun" and subject the errant youth to a brief, but effective, lesson on a select number of points. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's ever-so-slightly tightened grip on the Colonel's arm indicated that she had detected the tremor in the Force that often foretells a curmudgeonly blast from yours truly.
I cooled my jets.
However, after watching "Avatar" and then closing my eyes for an extended strategic planning session, the Colonel awoke this morning with jets at full military power, and the beneficiary of the resultant pedantic post will be you, gentle reader, instead of the public school product pushing concessions at the multi-plex. While the electrons comprising this missive are ordered for his consumption, I doubt the young man's ability to apply the fifth grade level reading and comprehension skills required to plow through it. But, the Colonel has always harbored a fondness for lost causes...
First, the Colonel cares not one wit about the "experience" of some adolescent whose digestive tract is still processing what his mother fed him for breakfast before pushing him out the door and pointing him toward the bus stop to join the other neighborhood punks-in-training beginning their matriculation at Che Guevara Elementary School. Just give me my bucket of stale and outrageously overpriced popcorn and my watered-down and outrageously overpriced fountain drink, and point mutely toward the Men's room so that I can prepare to sit still through a long and outrageously overpriced movie. If you must speak, restrict your vocalizations to short, intelligible utterances laden with information and respect--not necessarily in that order.
Second, the Colonel wonders to what better use the several hundred dollars you spent on repeated viewings of this movie could have been put. Oh, I don't know, maybe some suspenders to help keep the waistband of you trousers from sliding down around your thighs. Or, maybe a hat with the bill on the front. Or, maybe a haircut.
Third, the Colonel would like to know against what films you applied your cinematic comparisons to arrive at the erroneous conclusion that this is the best movie of all time. "Caddy Shack" was more original and had a better plot than this tree-hugging homage to anti-capitalism. "Avatar" has some really neat special effects, but contains little novelty--most of the movie was lifted from other films. Even with the few remaining synapses firing in the amorphous goo laying fallow in the recesses of my brain-housing group, the Colonel was able to detect and identify scenes and devices plagiarized from "Aliens," "Star Wars," "Dances with Wolves," and "Starship Troopers," to name only a few.
On a positive note, the Colonel appreciates Cameron's allusions to the evils of mercenary armies in the service of corporations. These re-United States sully the good name of our people with the allowance and employ of such mercenary outfits as Xe (aka, Blackwater).
It has always been the Colonel's position that the United States military should be used to do corporations' bidding--they pay for it.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Give ME a Teleprompter, Please!
The Colonel really wishes everyone would lay off of our president regarding his use of a teleprompter. Frankly, the Colonel longs for the day when technology catches up with the dream of a memory chip behind the ear and a personal HUD ("head-up display" for all of you Mississippi State and LSU grads) to guide my every spoken word. Programmed to prompt the statistically most effective and least inflammatory responses to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's every query, the Colonel's quality of life would dramatically surge into the upper 90's as measured by daily tracking polls.
The Colonel can only imagine the soaring heights to which his familial popularity would rise once his off-hand remarks and scattered-brained utterances are disciplined and scripted for the most effective delivery. And with the behind-the-ear memory chip implant providing pronunciation and diction cues (appropriate to the audience), there would be no more of the verbal stumbles and monosyllabic guttural utterances that otherwise characterise and dominate this Marine's speech.
One fervently hopes that second and third generations of these devices would even provide faithful speech replication--nothing like the flat-toned computer speak by which Steven Hawking currently communicates. These devices will, if the Colonel's happiest dreams come true, have the ability to pick up even the slightest of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's whispers in other rooms, accurately interpret their hidden meanings, and provide an automatic reply calculated to satisfactorily answer in a soothing-toned voice replication, thus negating the need for personal constant monitoring and attention to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's communication network. The Colonel can only imagine the marital bliss thereby provided.
One fervently hopes that second and third generations of these devices would even provide faithful speech replication--nothing like the flat-toned computer speak by which Steven Hawking currently communicates. These devices will, if the Colonel's happiest dreams come true, have the ability to pick up even the slightest of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's whispers in other rooms, accurately interpret their hidden meanings, and provide an automatic reply calculated to satisfactorily answer in a soothing-toned voice replication, thus negating the need for personal constant monitoring and attention to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's communication network. The Colonel can only imagine the marital bliss thereby provided.
The Colonel's communication with non-familial contacts would also benefit from the envisioned technology. The heretofore unintelligible utterances of bored store help would be instantaneously translated and winnowed for what tiny bits of useful information might exist in their verbalized breath expulsions. An answer of thanks would be generated and produced for the Colonel, obviating the need to actually personally reply. This might actually save the Colonel from the legal action sure to be incurred if he acts on the overwhelming impulse to grab the offending mouth-breathing public school product by the stacking swivel and... Anyway, you get the idea.
Teleprompters for all, I say.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Ode to Anas Platyrhynchos
It has been a season to remember. For the uninitiated, the sport--nay, Calling--that is duck hunting, seems a foolish pursuit at best. When one who has never been hears of the 0-dark-thirty reveilles, the wind-chilled boat rides, the frozen-fingered handling of dozens of decoys, the back-killing hours standing in thigh deep water, the expense of guns and ammunition, and the often empty-handed result of all of these rigors, they need no other confirmation that their friend is three or four shells shy of a full box. And in more years than not, with birds in short supply, and those warier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, the hunter himself comes to the same self-evaluation. But, then, just about the time a duck hunter is ready to enter a seven-step program to wean himself from the addiction, there are seasons like this one that provide the rush that hooks him deep in his soul and leaves him longing for the next season's fix.
For the Colonel, there may not be many sights in this world whose thrill compares to that of a brace of greenheads turning and dropping altitude toward the decoys, wings cupped into the wind. Well, there is the sight of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda after a couple of hours absence. And, there is the sight of a sleepy-eyed grandson toddling towards you for his morning hug. And, okay, there's the thrill of seeing the Rebels run on to the field for the first time in September. But, other than that... a duck on the downwind approach, gear down and wings cupped, in the soft light of a early winter morning...it just doesn't get much better than that.
The past several seasons here at the northern end of southern nowhere have been marked by low water and even lower numbers of ducks. We persisted though, trekking to isolated pockets of flooded timber in all but forgotten patches of cypress swamp. Sometimes we saw a few ducks. Most often not. Our trips became as much social outings as hunts; our cold, wet, birdless misery bonding us; our watch phrase ever the refrain, "maybe next year we'll have enough rain to flood the lake and the hunting will be better..."
And then, heavy rains came early this fall, washing away the bitter disappointment of a once buoyant Rebel football season aground on the rocks of reality, filling the lake to overflowing and our hearts with the hope of flocks of mallards escaping the ice up north and finding wet room to raft and loaf. A month ago, we were living the dream. There were birds in abundance, some of which even turned their heads to our plaintive reeds and circled our spread. And some of those thrilled our hearts, and the hearts of ammunition manufacturers, with the wind dance that brought them into range of our guns.
Yesterday, the first day in a nearly a week that we could get back on the lake--thunderstorms and waders don't mix--we motored to a spot that provided the perfect protection of calm water in a strong west wind and expectantly went through the well-rehearsed drill of donning waders, throwing decoys, hiding the boat and then hiding ourselves. We waited. No birds. Our ducks were gone--probably further south.
Stupid ducks, who needs 'em?
For the Colonel, there may not be many sights in this world whose thrill compares to that of a brace of greenheads turning and dropping altitude toward the decoys, wings cupped into the wind. Well, there is the sight of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda after a couple of hours absence. And, there is the sight of a sleepy-eyed grandson toddling towards you for his morning hug. And, okay, there's the thrill of seeing the Rebels run on to the field for the first time in September. But, other than that... a duck on the downwind approach, gear down and wings cupped, in the soft light of a early winter morning...it just doesn't get much better than that.
The past several seasons here at the northern end of southern nowhere have been marked by low water and even lower numbers of ducks. We persisted though, trekking to isolated pockets of flooded timber in all but forgotten patches of cypress swamp. Sometimes we saw a few ducks. Most often not. Our trips became as much social outings as hunts; our cold, wet, birdless misery bonding us; our watch phrase ever the refrain, "maybe next year we'll have enough rain to flood the lake and the hunting will be better..."
And then, heavy rains came early this fall, washing away the bitter disappointment of a once buoyant Rebel football season aground on the rocks of reality, filling the lake to overflowing and our hearts with the hope of flocks of mallards escaping the ice up north and finding wet room to raft and loaf. A month ago, we were living the dream. There were birds in abundance, some of which even turned their heads to our plaintive reeds and circled our spread. And some of those thrilled our hearts, and the hearts of ammunition manufacturers, with the wind dance that brought them into range of our guns.
Yesterday, the first day in a nearly a week that we could get back on the lake--thunderstorms and waders don't mix--we motored to a spot that provided the perfect protection of calm water in a strong west wind and expectantly went through the well-rehearsed drill of donning waders, throwing decoys, hiding the boat and then hiding ourselves. We waited. No birds. Our ducks were gone--probably further south.
Stupid ducks, who needs 'em?
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Surf's Up
"Bait and switch" is an effective short-term tactic, but it is a hopeless long-term strategy. We've all been its victim in a store--responding to a ridiculously low price advertised on the Bettermade 1000 only to find that the store is fresh out when we get there, "But, we have plenty of the Bestmade 2000 and it is really a much better value than the Bettermade 1000."
When applied to the prurient playground of politics, "bait and switch" takes the form of either comely specific campaign promises made with no intention or ability to keep, or nebulous rabble-rousing rhetoric that stirs the heart but has no soul. This deceit is not a recently discovered political art form, but has been in existence for as long as man has interacted with man. Moses recorded in Genesis, perhaps the first known broken campaign promise--the apple, as delightful as the fruit of its consumption seemed in the abstract, did not produce the constituent contentment its consumption promised.
This barely-reconstructed rebel doesn't often offer praise for yankees. However, the Colonel is heartened that the good people of Massachusetts demonstrated this week that even the most closed-eye constituency can be roused from its for granted-taken slumber. But, the Colonel is also aware that the results of Massachusetts' US Senate special election to fill the seat formerly held by Miss Kopechne's last boyfriend are not as insignificant, nor as earth-shattering, as the two political parties would have us believe. True, the results are newsworthy--much more so than most of the tripe that passes the lips of newsies--but, our assessment of them must be tempered by the adage attributed to Tip O'Neil that "all politics is local." In reality, the Democratic candidate, once she secured her party's nomination, believed she had the election sewed up in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 and whose electorate went for H in a landslide barely 14 months ago. When Coakley's campaign awoke to slipping poll numbers, a rash of ham-handed missteps and electorate-insulting gaffes left her wide open to the Republican's deft counterattack.
While the Colonel does believe that an element of anger and disgust at the bait and switch tactics of the Obama administration provided some momentum away from the Democratic column in the Massachusetts senate race, as well as the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, the politicians positioning themselves to catch the wave should not mistake the message. As much as the brokers of power and purveyors of political pablum would have us believe, American political sentiment, on the whole, is not particularly policy-driven. We might say that we want our government to take care of this personal need or to do this or that for us, but, when our government intrudes into our lives in order to provide the service, we react as we nearly always have since 1775--with anger.
What we Americans really want, and for which our Constitution so adeptly provides, is government responsive to our desires for the freedom and opportunity to achieve our personal goals. We want government that provides physical security. We want government that ensures a level playing field. We want government that does our business in the open, so that we can supervise those we have chosen to serve us. We want government that does not take us for granted. Promise us "a chicken in every pot" if that is what gets you elected, but don't tell us how to cook it.
Sadly, the Colonel is afraid that the message coming out of Massachusetts, and Virginia and New Jersey, will be misinterpreted as policy-driven by politicians whose hubris prevents them from accepting that they are there because we put them there. Politicians with personal agendas will attempt to ride the current wave of popular sentiment to the left or to the right, showing off to the crowd on the beach, padding their personal power bases--and their pockets.
The Colonel hopes that real American leaders will emerge to harness the current productive wave of popular political sentiment before it turns into a destructive tsunami of violent popular expression.
But, hope is not a strategy, nor an effective course of action.
When applied to the prurient playground of politics, "bait and switch" takes the form of either comely specific campaign promises made with no intention or ability to keep, or nebulous rabble-rousing rhetoric that stirs the heart but has no soul. This deceit is not a recently discovered political art form, but has been in existence for as long as man has interacted with man. Moses recorded in Genesis, perhaps the first known broken campaign promise--the apple, as delightful as the fruit of its consumption seemed in the abstract, did not produce the constituent contentment its consumption promised.
This barely-reconstructed rebel doesn't often offer praise for yankees. However, the Colonel is heartened that the good people of Massachusetts demonstrated this week that even the most closed-eye constituency can be roused from its for granted-taken slumber. But, the Colonel is also aware that the results of Massachusetts' US Senate special election to fill the seat formerly held by Miss Kopechne's last boyfriend are not as insignificant, nor as earth-shattering, as the two political parties would have us believe. True, the results are newsworthy--much more so than most of the tripe that passes the lips of newsies--but, our assessment of them must be tempered by the adage attributed to Tip O'Neil that "all politics is local." In reality, the Democratic candidate, once she secured her party's nomination, believed she had the election sewed up in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 and whose electorate went for H in a landslide barely 14 months ago. When Coakley's campaign awoke to slipping poll numbers, a rash of ham-handed missteps and electorate-insulting gaffes left her wide open to the Republican's deft counterattack.
While the Colonel does believe that an element of anger and disgust at the bait and switch tactics of the Obama administration provided some momentum away from the Democratic column in the Massachusetts senate race, as well as the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, the politicians positioning themselves to catch the wave should not mistake the message. As much as the brokers of power and purveyors of political pablum would have us believe, American political sentiment, on the whole, is not particularly policy-driven. We might say that we want our government to take care of this personal need or to do this or that for us, but, when our government intrudes into our lives in order to provide the service, we react as we nearly always have since 1775--with anger.
What we Americans really want, and for which our Constitution so adeptly provides, is government responsive to our desires for the freedom and opportunity to achieve our personal goals. We want government that provides physical security. We want government that ensures a level playing field. We want government that does our business in the open, so that we can supervise those we have chosen to serve us. We want government that does not take us for granted. Promise us "a chicken in every pot" if that is what gets you elected, but don't tell us how to cook it.
Sadly, the Colonel is afraid that the message coming out of Massachusetts, and Virginia and New Jersey, will be misinterpreted as policy-driven by politicians whose hubris prevents them from accepting that they are there because we put them there. Politicians with personal agendas will attempt to ride the current wave of popular sentiment to the left or to the right, showing off to the crowd on the beach, padding their personal power bases--and their pockets.
The Colonel hopes that real American leaders will emerge to harness the current productive wave of popular political sentiment before it turns into a destructive tsunami of violent popular expression.
But, hope is not a strategy, nor an effective course of action.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
What We Owe Haiti
Were it not for Haiti, the dirt poor nation from which heart-rending pictures and descriptions of earthquake destruction are filling our news, the United States might not exist in any form near what we know today. Certainly the United States should respond to the need of this hemispheric neighbor with the massive and immediate aid that only the United States has the capacity to provide and the means to deliver. Whether that aid will significantly improve the lot of the Haitian people in the long run is another question. However, that is besides the point. The United States owes its very existence to the actions of the ancestors of present day Haitians.
The history of Haiti is perhaps one of the most interesting of all of the lands in the Western Hemisphere. The island of Hispaniola, on the western end of which sits Haiti, was occupied by the Arawakan Taino when Columbus and his crew of misfits and mercenaries blundered ashore in 1492. Within a few generations, due to European diseases and depredations, the Taino all but ceased to exist on the island. The gold and silver, after which the Spanish scoured the island, turned out to be much more prevalent on the New World mainland and the majority of Hispaniola was largely abandoned and left to serve as a base for Caribbean piracy.
While British and Dutch brigands also used Hispaniola, it was French pirates who established the first permanent settlement on the nearby island of Tortuga. In 1652, King Louis XIV commissioned an official French settlement on Tortuga; and in 1664, the French West India Company took over administration of the Tortuga colony and claimed control of the Western portion of Hispaniola. In 1697, Spain ceded this part of the island to France. French plantation owners imported West African slaves to work their fields and by the end of the 18th Century maintaining the over half a million laborers in Haiti accounted for a third of the Atlantic slave trade.
To maintain control over a slave population that outnumbered them 20 to 1, French planters employed the most ruthless and inhumane methods imaginable to discipline and terrorize their charges. Tens of thousands of slaves escaped to the interior where they formed their own communities, supported in large part by raiding their former masters.
On the heels of the revolution that plunged France into bloody chaos, slaves on Hispaniola began a rebellion in 1791. The French attempted to regain control of the island by declaring emancipation in 1793. Turmoil at home and war with Great Britain resulted in French neglect of their colony and former slave leaders filled the power vacuum. The most prominent of these, Toussaint Louverture, led an army of former slaves in turning back a British invasion, and by 1801 had brought the entire island under his control.
Meanwhile, Napoleon had seized power in France, and in 1802 sent a huge force to reclaim French control of the island. His intent was to rapidly subdue the island and then use it as a base for invasion of North America via New Orleans. For all his military genius, Napoleon never did quite learn to take the environment into account when embarking on one of his campaigns (see his experience in Egypt and Russia). Within a year of landing on Hispaniola with the mission of re-enslaving the black population, nearly half of the forty thousand French troops were dead from malaria and yellow fever. The remainder of the French invasion force was destroyed by the former slave army and they declared their independence on January the 1st, 1804.
As Napoleon's dream of Western Hemisphere conquest died, he attempted to salvage what he could and sold his claims in North America to the United States in order to finance his ongoing war with Great Britain. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubled the territory of the United States and allowed the great westward expansion that changed the former colonials into masters of nearly an entire continent. Were it not for the freedom-fighting former slaves whose descendants are clawing their way out of the rubble in Port-au-Prince today, our nation might very well be nothing more than an asterisk in European history.
Of course, the re-United States paid Haiti back in the early 20th Century by sending Brigadier General Smedley Butler and a brigade of Marines to sort things out for them. But that's grist for another post.
The history of Haiti is perhaps one of the most interesting of all of the lands in the Western Hemisphere. The island of Hispaniola, on the western end of which sits Haiti, was occupied by the Arawakan Taino when Columbus and his crew of misfits and mercenaries blundered ashore in 1492. Within a few generations, due to European diseases and depredations, the Taino all but ceased to exist on the island. The gold and silver, after which the Spanish scoured the island, turned out to be much more prevalent on the New World mainland and the majority of Hispaniola was largely abandoned and left to serve as a base for Caribbean piracy.
While British and Dutch brigands also used Hispaniola, it was French pirates who established the first permanent settlement on the nearby island of Tortuga. In 1652, King Louis XIV commissioned an official French settlement on Tortuga; and in 1664, the French West India Company took over administration of the Tortuga colony and claimed control of the Western portion of Hispaniola. In 1697, Spain ceded this part of the island to France. French plantation owners imported West African slaves to work their fields and by the end of the 18th Century maintaining the over half a million laborers in Haiti accounted for a third of the Atlantic slave trade.
To maintain control over a slave population that outnumbered them 20 to 1, French planters employed the most ruthless and inhumane methods imaginable to discipline and terrorize their charges. Tens of thousands of slaves escaped to the interior where they formed their own communities, supported in large part by raiding their former masters.
On the heels of the revolution that plunged France into bloody chaos, slaves on Hispaniola began a rebellion in 1791. The French attempted to regain control of the island by declaring emancipation in 1793. Turmoil at home and war with Great Britain resulted in French neglect of their colony and former slave leaders filled the power vacuum. The most prominent of these, Toussaint Louverture, led an army of former slaves in turning back a British invasion, and by 1801 had brought the entire island under his control.
Meanwhile, Napoleon had seized power in France, and in 1802 sent a huge force to reclaim French control of the island. His intent was to rapidly subdue the island and then use it as a base for invasion of North America via New Orleans. For all his military genius, Napoleon never did quite learn to take the environment into account when embarking on one of his campaigns (see his experience in Egypt and Russia). Within a year of landing on Hispaniola with the mission of re-enslaving the black population, nearly half of the forty thousand French troops were dead from malaria and yellow fever. The remainder of the French invasion force was destroyed by the former slave army and they declared their independence on January the 1st, 1804.
As Napoleon's dream of Western Hemisphere conquest died, he attempted to salvage what he could and sold his claims in North America to the United States in order to finance his ongoing war with Great Britain. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubled the territory of the United States and allowed the great westward expansion that changed the former colonials into masters of nearly an entire continent. Were it not for the freedom-fighting former slaves whose descendants are clawing their way out of the rubble in Port-au-Prince today, our nation might very well be nothing more than an asterisk in European history.
Of course, the re-United States paid Haiti back in the early 20th Century by sending Brigadier General Smedley Butler and a brigade of Marines to sort things out for them. But that's grist for another post.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Ice Age Accoutrements
A rare snow fell here at the northern end of southern nowhere this week. With the white stuff still filling the air, the Colonel layered up, grabbed his trusty musket, and headed out into the storm to conduct a security patrol of the back forty. I enjoy the change of scenery winter brings to the landscape. I like the long, stark views afforded by the leafless woods--even more, the dramatic change wrought by a blanket of snow and ice. I was ostensibly looking for deer or a pesky coyote, but sighted snowy memories instead.
Standing next to a tall cedar as the snow swirled, the Colonel's mind drifted back to other cold, snowy adventures. Thirty years ago, this January, a brash young Lieutenant Gregory was volunteered to attend the Mountain Leader Course at the Marine Corps' base in the Sierra Nevadas. There, in a month's time (amazing, the Corps' economy), this thin blooded southern boy was transformed into an Arctic Warfare "Expert." So tagged (erroneously, at best), I became a member of a small cadre of Marines tasked with leading the transformation of a jungle-fighting Corps into a force capable of fulfilling our Cold War mission of engaging the Godless Soviets on the flanks of the NATO main effort. One said flank was Norway.
When I returned to the swamps of Camp Lejeune from the mountains of northern California, the "word" was our battalion, Second Battalion, Second Marines (2/2), was scheduled to participate in an exercise in Norway in the coming fall. In preparation for subsequent deployments to Norway, battalions would go to Minnesota or Wisconsin to train and prepare for their arctic adventure. To prepare for our upcoming Norway deployment, the Second Marine Division sent us to the Mojave Desert--at the height of the summer. There's just nothing like 18 hours a day of sunlight and 115 in the shade to get you in the mindset to handle 18 hours a day of darkness and 20 degrees in the sunlight.
Luckily for the Marines of 2/2, and this one in particular, our exercise, Teamwork '80, took place in central Norway, before the snow began to fall.
Not a week after our return to the relative warmth of coastal Carolina, I was summoned to the battalion operations officer's office and told that I had been "volunteered" to join a small cadre of "officers with arctic experience" charged with preparing the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines for their imminent deployment to north Norway for the aptly named exercise, Cold Winter '81. In preparation for this exercise 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, 1/6 received a couple of weeks of "classroom" instruction (provided by yours truly and three other lieutenants) at Camp Lejeune, and three weeks of field training at Camp Ripley, Minnesota before boarding amphibious shipping and sailing for Norway. The instructor cadre, of which I was a part, flew to Camp Ripley a couple of weeks ahead of time to set up the field training, and then flew to Norway a couple of weeks ahead of the arrival of the ships bearing 1/6.
During all of this "advanced party" partying, we American Marine arctic warfare "experts" got some very valuable training from the Royal Marine Commando, Captain J. J. B. Lear, who was assigned as to the Second Marine Division as part of an ongoing exchange program. Lear, a giant of a man with cauliflower ears from years of rugby scrums, knew his stuff. The Royal Marines had been exercising in Norway for decades and Lear put us "experts" through a crash course designed to impart as much of his knowledge as possible in the short amount of time he had available. Most of the arctic survival lessons I can still bring to mind are accompanied by the visage of Lear's face and the cockneyed, "Got it? Right, then!"
Reassigned as 2/2's assistant operations officer upon my return from Cold Winter '81, I was given the task of preparing the battalion for it's participation in Teamwork '82, this time in the same northern Norway training area in which 1/6 had floundered and frozen in inadequate clothing and equipment. I was as determined, as any brash lieutenant could be, to right all the wrongs of poor preparation and outdated clothing and equipment foisted on 1/6, and prepared a plan for 2/2 that included some equipment requirements currently not available in the Division.
Most of the clothing and equipment we Marines were still using in the early 80's was Korean War vintage, and it hadn't been very effective in the winters of Korea, for that matter. What we needed, in my not so humble opinion, were the much better arctic clothing, tents, sleeping bags and mats, and stoves used by the Norwegians and Brits, and I dutifully submitted a report to my boss saying so. He passed it to our battalion commander, who drug me along on an office call to our Division Commanding General, then Major General Al Gray. General Gray had been an enlisted man in the 1st Marine Division in the bitter cold days of the Korean War, and was revered as a tough, no-nonsense Marine. My battalion commander had served with Gray before and after brief pleasantries between the two, the general turned to me and said "Well, Lieutenant?"
I handed a one page summary of my brief, which included a laundry list of cold weather clothing and equipment requirements, to Gray and launched into my spiel. I had barely begun, when the general huffed and pitched the piece of paper back across the desk at me. He growled something to the effect of "We didn't have all of this stuff in Korea, and we did alright...," to which I responded with some inanity about the number of cold casualties exceeding that from enemy fire at the Chosin Reservoir. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my battalion commander blanch, and then saw Gray's face redden. But, I was committed and figured that since I had just clinched achievement of my terminal rank, I might as well leave my lance embedded as high up in the windmill as possible.
"General, if you are serious about this Division being able to survive and fight in Norway, we need this equipment." I stole a glance at my colonel and he was glaring at me like I had just dropped trou and mooned the CG. When I looked back at Gray, he too was glaring at me, and I figured I had better shut up--reaching terminal rank is one thing, being beaten to death for my insolence by a couple of combat veteran Marines is something else entirely.
After a stony silence that stretched past what seemed like several chow calls, and during which my, vastly, superiors maintained glares that threatened to set the sparse hair on my head on fire, Gray turned to my colonel and dismissed us with promises to find what we needed and instructions about the proper care and feeding of his lieutenants.
Turns out General Gray was already several miles down the ski slope ahead of us. He knew what we needed, and he got if for us. By the time I made my next trip to Norway in 1987, the Marine Corps had, in the words of a Royal Marine officer who saw our new cold weather clothing, "cornered the market on Goretex." By the time Gray and the next couple of Commandants that succeeded him were done, the entire Marine Corps was outfitted in state of the art individual gear and clothing that made moving and surviving in arctic conditions much more effective.
A wind gust blew light snow in my face and broke my reverie. In the long cold walk back to the big house I tried to think about something warm. The hottest thing I could envision was the butt-gnawing I received from my colonel all the long walk back to our battalion area after leaving Gray's office.
Standing next to a tall cedar as the snow swirled, the Colonel's mind drifted back to other cold, snowy adventures. Thirty years ago, this January, a brash young Lieutenant Gregory was volunteered to attend the Mountain Leader Course at the Marine Corps' base in the Sierra Nevadas. There, in a month's time (amazing, the Corps' economy), this thin blooded southern boy was transformed into an Arctic Warfare "Expert." So tagged (erroneously, at best), I became a member of a small cadre of Marines tasked with leading the transformation of a jungle-fighting Corps into a force capable of fulfilling our Cold War mission of engaging the Godless Soviets on the flanks of the NATO main effort. One said flank was Norway.
When I returned to the swamps of Camp Lejeune from the mountains of northern California, the "word" was our battalion, Second Battalion, Second Marines (2/2), was scheduled to participate in an exercise in Norway in the coming fall. In preparation for subsequent deployments to Norway, battalions would go to Minnesota or Wisconsin to train and prepare for their arctic adventure. To prepare for our upcoming Norway deployment, the Second Marine Division sent us to the Mojave Desert--at the height of the summer. There's just nothing like 18 hours a day of sunlight and 115 in the shade to get you in the mindset to handle 18 hours a day of darkness and 20 degrees in the sunlight.
Luckily for the Marines of 2/2, and this one in particular, our exercise, Teamwork '80, took place in central Norway, before the snow began to fall.
Not a week after our return to the relative warmth of coastal Carolina, I was summoned to the battalion operations officer's office and told that I had been "volunteered" to join a small cadre of "officers with arctic experience" charged with preparing the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines for their imminent deployment to north Norway for the aptly named exercise, Cold Winter '81. In preparation for this exercise 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, 1/6 received a couple of weeks of "classroom" instruction (provided by yours truly and three other lieutenants) at Camp Lejeune, and three weeks of field training at Camp Ripley, Minnesota before boarding amphibious shipping and sailing for Norway. The instructor cadre, of which I was a part, flew to Camp Ripley a couple of weeks ahead of time to set up the field training, and then flew to Norway a couple of weeks ahead of the arrival of the ships bearing 1/6.
During all of this "advanced party" partying, we American Marine arctic warfare "experts" got some very valuable training from the Royal Marine Commando, Captain J. J. B. Lear, who was assigned as to the Second Marine Division as part of an ongoing exchange program. Lear, a giant of a man with cauliflower ears from years of rugby scrums, knew his stuff. The Royal Marines had been exercising in Norway for decades and Lear put us "experts" through a crash course designed to impart as much of his knowledge as possible in the short amount of time he had available. Most of the arctic survival lessons I can still bring to mind are accompanied by the visage of Lear's face and the cockneyed, "Got it? Right, then!"
Reassigned as 2/2's assistant operations officer upon my return from Cold Winter '81, I was given the task of preparing the battalion for it's participation in Teamwork '82, this time in the same northern Norway training area in which 1/6 had floundered and frozen in inadequate clothing and equipment. I was as determined, as any brash lieutenant could be, to right all the wrongs of poor preparation and outdated clothing and equipment foisted on 1/6, and prepared a plan for 2/2 that included some equipment requirements currently not available in the Division.
Most of the clothing and equipment we Marines were still using in the early 80's was Korean War vintage, and it hadn't been very effective in the winters of Korea, for that matter. What we needed, in my not so humble opinion, were the much better arctic clothing, tents, sleeping bags and mats, and stoves used by the Norwegians and Brits, and I dutifully submitted a report to my boss saying so. He passed it to our battalion commander, who drug me along on an office call to our Division Commanding General, then Major General Al Gray. General Gray had been an enlisted man in the 1st Marine Division in the bitter cold days of the Korean War, and was revered as a tough, no-nonsense Marine. My battalion commander had served with Gray before and after brief pleasantries between the two, the general turned to me and said "Well, Lieutenant?"
I handed a one page summary of my brief, which included a laundry list of cold weather clothing and equipment requirements, to Gray and launched into my spiel. I had barely begun, when the general huffed and pitched the piece of paper back across the desk at me. He growled something to the effect of "We didn't have all of this stuff in Korea, and we did alright...," to which I responded with some inanity about the number of cold casualties exceeding that from enemy fire at the Chosin Reservoir. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my battalion commander blanch, and then saw Gray's face redden. But, I was committed and figured that since I had just clinched achievement of my terminal rank, I might as well leave my lance embedded as high up in the windmill as possible.
"General, if you are serious about this Division being able to survive and fight in Norway, we need this equipment." I stole a glance at my colonel and he was glaring at me like I had just dropped trou and mooned the CG. When I looked back at Gray, he too was glaring at me, and I figured I had better shut up--reaching terminal rank is one thing, being beaten to death for my insolence by a couple of combat veteran Marines is something else entirely.
After a stony silence that stretched past what seemed like several chow calls, and during which my, vastly, superiors maintained glares that threatened to set the sparse hair on my head on fire, Gray turned to my colonel and dismissed us with promises to find what we needed and instructions about the proper care and feeding of his lieutenants.
Turns out General Gray was already several miles down the ski slope ahead of us. He knew what we needed, and he got if for us. By the time I made my next trip to Norway in 1987, the Marine Corps had, in the words of a Royal Marine officer who saw our new cold weather clothing, "cornered the market on Goretex." By the time Gray and the next couple of Commandants that succeeded him were done, the entire Marine Corps was outfitted in state of the art individual gear and clothing that made moving and surviving in arctic conditions much more effective.
A wind gust blew light snow in my face and broke my reverie. In the long cold walk back to the big house I tried to think about something warm. The hottest thing I could envision was the butt-gnawing I received from my colonel all the long walk back to our battalion area after leaving Gray's office.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Colonel's Year in Review
It is one of the things I dislike the most about the end of a year. Everyone of any self-considered importance assaults our awareness with an anthology of annualized review and remembrances. Each brings to us a breathless recap of the momentous events of the ending year, bearing bias and little brains as backup material. And, as a special bonus, each year whose numeration ends in the numeral 9 is proclaimed as the "end of the decade," necessitating a breathlessly brainless and biased recap of the last ten years' "important" events. So we have that to look forward to this year. Never mind that the current decade does not actually end until midnight on the 31st of December 2010...but, that's grist for another post.
Needless to say, those of us with no lives (and that includes the three of you who have absolutely nothing better with which to occupy your senses than to regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon) will have eyes glued to the tube as some windbag (the Colonel knows windbags, being a prominent one his own self) winds down the year/decade with prejudiced recollections, replete with arched eyebrows and disapproving vocal inflection when describing the demise or accomplishment of a productive member of society who happens to be a conservative, or worse, a Republican--and lavishes praise on the "world-changing" impact of deviants like Michael Jackson. The Colonel would have you, instead, consider the year's events as they transpired here aboard Eegeebeegee, capital of the Tallahatchie Free State, situated at the northern end of southern nowhere on the periphery of the middle of nowhere.
The Colonel's Year in Review:
January 1st, 2009. The Colonel awoke clear-minded and relatively pain-free after a good night's rest preceded by a quiet non-alcoholic evening with the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda watching Ilidia Batatcha review the most momentous events of 2008.
January 2nd, 2009. In the 73rd playing of Cotton Bowl, and in the last such named post-season match-up to be played in the venerable Cotton Bowl Stadium, the 25th (BCS) ranked Ole Miss Rebels of the vaunted Southeastern Conference defeated the 8th (BCS) ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders of some little known collection of teams out west. In the highest scoring Cotton Bowl in history the Ole Miss Rebels continued their long and storied domination of the aforementioned little known collection of teams out west, having last trounced a team, Oklahoma State, from said little known and lowly regarded conference in the 2003 Cotton Bowl.
January 26th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the completion of 53 solar revolutions standing hours on end waste deep in a cypress swamp whose liquid foundation hovered barely a quarter degree above the freezing mark on Herr Fahrenheit's scale, in vane hope of contributing to the noble cause of defending the northern end of southern nowhere from the annual mallard reenactment of Sherman's march to the sea. The Colonel has always been a sucker for lost causes...
February 2009. Sucked...
March 2009. Didn't suck so bad...
April 22nd, 2009. The Colonel celebrated Earth Day by harvesting timber aboard Eegeebeegee and turning it, with the help of his brand new personal saw mill, Semper Filet (not to be confused with his pick-up truck Semper Fillit, his trusty tractor, Semper Field, and his dearly departed boat, Semper Fish), into a few board feet of lumber and a prodigious amount of sawdust.
July 4th, 2009. The Colonel commemorated the 146th anniversary of the fall of Vicksburg to Grant and celebrated the 233rd anniversary of the independence declaration of the since-re-United States (see events surrounding the fall of Vicksburg to Grant) by loading the worldly possessions of Number 1 son and his family into the world's largest U-Haul truck and subsequently leading the exodus from bondage in the Scumslime State to freedom in the promised land on the shores of Lake Brenda at the northern end of southern nowhere just west of the middle of nowhere.
July 31st, 2009. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda celebrated the 33rd anniversary of her marriage to the man of her dreams, the dashing rake, the man, the myth, the legend... The Colonel. The Colonel celebrated said anniversary in much the same way he has celebrated every day since securing his bride in the bonds of holy matrimony--in amazed appreciation of a good and gracious God whose second act of unmerited love toward this colossal sinner was to place the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda athwart the path of my hitherto errant life.
September 18th, 2009. The Colonel returned from a week-long excursion to the Ozarks and declared definitively that he shall never initiate an overnight leave-taking from the comforting confines of Eegeebeegee as long as he shall live...or until the comely and kind-hearted puts her dainty foot down...which ever comes first.
October 6th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated completion of his second favorite person's 4th air-breathing circle round ole Sol. Master Caleb, first of the Gregory men in his generation, is accumulating worldly wisdom at a much more accelerated pace since his escape from the Scumslime State and subsequent arrival at the center of the universe here at the northern end of southern nowhere. The hope of 21st Century Civilization is fast learning the manly arts only practicable in a rural setting. Freedom cannot be truly appreciated until one relieves himself, without fear of neighborly recrimination, at any place of one's own choosing in one's own expansive back yard--for example.
November 10th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the 234th birthday of his beloved Corps. Many of his fellow Marines celebrated in the midst of combating the enemies of our great republic.
December 7th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the completion of his third favorite person's 2nd air-breathing trip around the sun. Master Taylor is taking great advantage of the wide open spaces here aboard Eegeebeegee and is fast becoming a race-runner of great renown.
My friends, the Colonel is quite sure that the last few minutes of your life have been spent in frantically bored hope that the next paragraph of this missive would in some small way improve upon the previous. Sorry to disappoint. The Colonel expects that the next year will not fulfill our lofty expectations, as well. Here's hoping I'm wrong.
That, in and of itself, will be a rare event worthy of recollection this time next year.
Needless to say, those of us with no lives (and that includes the three of you who have absolutely nothing better with which to occupy your senses than to regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon) will have eyes glued to the tube as some windbag (the Colonel knows windbags, being a prominent one his own self) winds down the year/decade with prejudiced recollections, replete with arched eyebrows and disapproving vocal inflection when describing the demise or accomplishment of a productive member of society who happens to be a conservative, or worse, a Republican--and lavishes praise on the "world-changing" impact of deviants like Michael Jackson. The Colonel would have you, instead, consider the year's events as they transpired here aboard Eegeebeegee, capital of the Tallahatchie Free State, situated at the northern end of southern nowhere on the periphery of the middle of nowhere.
The Colonel's Year in Review:
January 1st, 2009. The Colonel awoke clear-minded and relatively pain-free after a good night's rest preceded by a quiet non-alcoholic evening with the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda watching Ilidia Batatcha review the most momentous events of 2008.
January 2nd, 2009. In the 73rd playing of Cotton Bowl, and in the last such named post-season match-up to be played in the venerable Cotton Bowl Stadium, the 25th (BCS) ranked Ole Miss Rebels of the vaunted Southeastern Conference defeated the 8th (BCS) ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders of some little known collection of teams out west. In the highest scoring Cotton Bowl in history the Ole Miss Rebels continued their long and storied domination of the aforementioned little known collection of teams out west, having last trounced a team, Oklahoma State, from said little known and lowly regarded conference in the 2003 Cotton Bowl.
January 26th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the completion of 53 solar revolutions standing hours on end waste deep in a cypress swamp whose liquid foundation hovered barely a quarter degree above the freezing mark on Herr Fahrenheit's scale, in vane hope of contributing to the noble cause of defending the northern end of southern nowhere from the annual mallard reenactment of Sherman's march to the sea. The Colonel has always been a sucker for lost causes...
February 2009. Sucked...
March 2009. Didn't suck so bad...
April 22nd, 2009. The Colonel celebrated Earth Day by harvesting timber aboard Eegeebeegee and turning it, with the help of his brand new personal saw mill, Semper Filet (not to be confused with his pick-up truck Semper Fillit, his trusty tractor, Semper Field, and his dearly departed boat, Semper Fish), into a few board feet of lumber and a prodigious amount of sawdust.
July 4th, 2009. The Colonel commemorated the 146th anniversary of the fall of Vicksburg to Grant and celebrated the 233rd anniversary of the independence declaration of the since-re-United States (see events surrounding the fall of Vicksburg to Grant) by loading the worldly possessions of Number 1 son and his family into the world's largest U-Haul truck and subsequently leading the exodus from bondage in the Scumslime State to freedom in the promised land on the shores of Lake Brenda at the northern end of southern nowhere just west of the middle of nowhere.
July 31st, 2009. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda celebrated the 33rd anniversary of her marriage to the man of her dreams, the dashing rake, the man, the myth, the legend... The Colonel. The Colonel celebrated said anniversary in much the same way he has celebrated every day since securing his bride in the bonds of holy matrimony--in amazed appreciation of a good and gracious God whose second act of unmerited love toward this colossal sinner was to place the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda athwart the path of my hitherto errant life.
September 18th, 2009. The Colonel returned from a week-long excursion to the Ozarks and declared definitively that he shall never initiate an overnight leave-taking from the comforting confines of Eegeebeegee as long as he shall live...or until the comely and kind-hearted puts her dainty foot down...which ever comes first.
October 6th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated completion of his second favorite person's 4th air-breathing circle round ole Sol. Master Caleb, first of the Gregory men in his generation, is accumulating worldly wisdom at a much more accelerated pace since his escape from the Scumslime State and subsequent arrival at the center of the universe here at the northern end of southern nowhere. The hope of 21st Century Civilization is fast learning the manly arts only practicable in a rural setting. Freedom cannot be truly appreciated until one relieves himself, without fear of neighborly recrimination, at any place of one's own choosing in one's own expansive back yard--for example.
November 10th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the 234th birthday of his beloved Corps. Many of his fellow Marines celebrated in the midst of combating the enemies of our great republic.
December 7th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the completion of his third favorite person's 2nd air-breathing trip around the sun. Master Taylor is taking great advantage of the wide open spaces here aboard Eegeebeegee and is fast becoming a race-runner of great renown.
My friends, the Colonel is quite sure that the last few minutes of your life have been spent in frantically bored hope that the next paragraph of this missive would in some small way improve upon the previous. Sorry to disappoint. The Colonel expects that the next year will not fulfill our lofty expectations, as well. Here's hoping I'm wrong.
That, in and of itself, will be a rare event worthy of recollection this time next year.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Declare WAR or Bring 'Em Home
First reports indicate that the latest attempt to terrorize the American public by attacking an airliner over the homeland was planned, ordered, and supported by a radical islamist group operating out of Yemen. Sen. Joe Lieberman, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, assesses the threat thus: "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war. That's the danger we face." The fact of the matter is that Yemen has been a battleground of the West's cultural war with the islamo-fascists since the last century--the USS Cole was attacked in a Yemeni port in 2000, killing 17 Americans.
The Colonel's personal frustration with this issue is rooted in the strategy (and that is stretching the definition of the word) by which these re-United States and our (ahem) allies have pursued the amorphous "war on terror." Despite W's claim post 9/11 that the battle lines would be drawn clearly between us and those who did not wholeheartedly ally themselves with us in the fight, we have instead flailed against our enemy's tactic in a nearly single-handed, global, force-exhausting game of whack-a-mole and all but ignored the strategic centers of gravity--nation states supporting, at whatever level, the islamo-fascist movement. To use a well-worn war analogy: instead of "making Georgia howl" or "following Lee wherever he goes," as Sherman and Grant correctly attacked the Confederacy's centers of gravity; or threatening (quite convincingly, given the world's largest army and navy being built) Britain with war if they recognized the Confederacy, as the Union did to isolate the South internationally; we have chased individual rebel cavalrymen around the countryside and weakly implored governments harboring islamo-fascists to take actions which are clearly against their interests.
The clear strategic center of gravity of islamo-fascism is Iran, and Iran's ally, Syria. Instead of directly attacking this source of support of terrorists world-wide (Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Fatah, and the list goes on...) we have attempted to "isolate and encircle" Iran with neo-democratic states. The problem with this strategy is that Iran has not sat idly by while we attempted to install one of the weakest forms of government (democratic republics are, by design, weaker than the will of the people in order to protect the people) in the countries on the peripheries of Iran and Syria. Iran has continued to fund and direct the operations of its proxies both in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as world-wide. It's as if we declared war on Japan's naval aviation and kamikaze tactics post 12/7 and conducted single-carrier task force operations primarily focused on eliminating that threat at sea--without ever dropping even one 250 lb bomb on a war materiel producing factory or supporting industrial center on the Japanese home islands. Until we take this fight to Iran, we will not win the war.
We had a golden opportunity dropped into our laps several months ago when the people of Iran took to the streets in opposition to the islamo-fascist clerics running and ruining their great country. We blew it. The Iranian people now know, just as the clerics tell them, that America has gone soft and cannot be depended upon to come to the aid of freedom-seekers.
My friends, we cannot indefinitely fight this "war" as is the plan of the political elite. We will lose it. The American people were "war weary" after only a couple of years of fighting during the Second World War. We are eight years on in this struggle with no end in sight. It is a crime against our people to pour, year after year, our blood and treasure down this rat hole without a clear vision of victory.
Declare WAR and bring our enemy to their knees or bring our soldiers home.
The Colonel's personal frustration with this issue is rooted in the strategy (and that is stretching the definition of the word) by which these re-United States and our (ahem) allies have pursued the amorphous "war on terror." Despite W's claim post 9/11 that the battle lines would be drawn clearly between us and those who did not wholeheartedly ally themselves with us in the fight, we have instead flailed against our enemy's tactic in a nearly single-handed, global, force-exhausting game of whack-a-mole and all but ignored the strategic centers of gravity--nation states supporting, at whatever level, the islamo-fascist movement. To use a well-worn war analogy: instead of "making Georgia howl" or "following Lee wherever he goes," as Sherman and Grant correctly attacked the Confederacy's centers of gravity; or threatening (quite convincingly, given the world's largest army and navy being built) Britain with war if they recognized the Confederacy, as the Union did to isolate the South internationally; we have chased individual rebel cavalrymen around the countryside and weakly implored governments harboring islamo-fascists to take actions which are clearly against their interests.
The clear strategic center of gravity of islamo-fascism is Iran, and Iran's ally, Syria. Instead of directly attacking this source of support of terrorists world-wide (Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Fatah, and the list goes on...) we have attempted to "isolate and encircle" Iran with neo-democratic states. The problem with this strategy is that Iran has not sat idly by while we attempted to install one of the weakest forms of government (democratic republics are, by design, weaker than the will of the people in order to protect the people) in the countries on the peripheries of Iran and Syria. Iran has continued to fund and direct the operations of its proxies both in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as world-wide. It's as if we declared war on Japan's naval aviation and kamikaze tactics post 12/7 and conducted single-carrier task force operations primarily focused on eliminating that threat at sea--without ever dropping even one 250 lb bomb on a war materiel producing factory or supporting industrial center on the Japanese home islands. Until we take this fight to Iran, we will not win the war.
We had a golden opportunity dropped into our laps several months ago when the people of Iran took to the streets in opposition to the islamo-fascist clerics running and ruining their great country. We blew it. The Iranian people now know, just as the clerics tell them, that America has gone soft and cannot be depended upon to come to the aid of freedom-seekers.
My friends, we cannot indefinitely fight this "war" as is the plan of the political elite. We will lose it. The American people were "war weary" after only a couple of years of fighting during the Second World War. We are eight years on in this struggle with no end in sight. It is a crime against our people to pour, year after year, our blood and treasure down this rat hole without a clear vision of victory.
Declare WAR and bring our enemy to their knees or bring our soldiers home.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Not "Merry"
Twenty years ago the Colonel was serving as the Operations Officer for Battalion Landing Team 1/8, deployed aboard amphibious shipping in the Mediterranean for a six month tour. We were the ground combat element of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) and quite literally the tip of the American "presence" spear that has been maintained in that area since just after the Second World War. Twenty years ago this week, several other Marine officers and I were in Israel attending a planning conference for our unit's upcoming training in that country. I had been to Israel before, on Uncle Sam's behalf, but this visit was a surreal experience. While we were keenly aware that it was the Christmas season and that we were spending it away from our families, there was nothing visible in Tel Aviv to remind us.
It was one of my most memorable Christmases, nonetheless.
There were no commercial and/or secular distractions from my Christian beliefs regarding the reason for celebrating the season. No decorated evergreens. No Santa. No Rudolph. No frenzy to buy gifts. But, if one was observant of the countryside (as is this curious geography nut) on the commutes from downtown hotel to rural training areas, one could see people engaged in activities whose technology and technique had not changed for millennia. For this man, it was one of the greatest feelings of nearness to my God that I had ever experienced.
It has been thus for me ever since. The more I resist the will of merchants, family and friends to "get in the Christmas spirit," the closer I draw to Jesus and His will.
At the risk of incurring the wrath, disdain, or even mild displeasure of those of you for whom the cheery greeting means everything to you this time of year, the Colonel does not wish you a "Merry Christmas." Not if by "merry" you mean so absorbed in the giggly, brainless fluff of the season that you find no time for quiet, reverent reflection on the unfathomable love that God showed man with the gift of salvation through the sacrifice of His Son.
Here's wishing you a very reflective Christmas!
It was one of my most memorable Christmases, nonetheless.
There were no commercial and/or secular distractions from my Christian beliefs regarding the reason for celebrating the season. No decorated evergreens. No Santa. No Rudolph. No frenzy to buy gifts. But, if one was observant of the countryside (as is this curious geography nut) on the commutes from downtown hotel to rural training areas, one could see people engaged in activities whose technology and technique had not changed for millennia. For this man, it was one of the greatest feelings of nearness to my God that I had ever experienced.
It has been thus for me ever since. The more I resist the will of merchants, family and friends to "get in the Christmas spirit," the closer I draw to Jesus and His will.
At the risk of incurring the wrath, disdain, or even mild displeasure of those of you for whom the cheery greeting means everything to you this time of year, the Colonel does not wish you a "Merry Christmas." Not if by "merry" you mean so absorbed in the giggly, brainless fluff of the season that you find no time for quiet, reverent reflection on the unfathomable love that God showed man with the gift of salvation through the sacrifice of His Son.
Here's wishing you a very reflective Christmas!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Tea Party Problematics
On this date in 1773, the colonial caper known as the "Boston Tea Party" took place in Boston Harbor. The event has reverberated through the years as "Americans objecting to taxation without representation." The truth is a lot more complicated and a lot less noble.
In truth, taxes levied on the British Colonies in America by the British Parliament did indeed raise the question of "taxation without representation." According to the British Constitution, British subjects could not be taxed without the consent of their elected representatives in Parliament. Since the British colonists in America did not vote for, nor have, representation in Parliament, political rabble-rousers in the colonies argued, with increasing vociferation, that Parliament's taxation of the Colonies, such as was the case with the Stamp Act, was "unconstitutional." In response to the outcry from the Colonials, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1765 but maintained, in the Declaratory Act of 1766, that they had the right to raise revenue in the colonies. The irony is that any of the taxation Parliament attempted to impose on the American colonies was much less of a tax burden than that paid by citizens back in the British Isles.
Even more ironic is that the "Boston Tea Party" was in fact a reaction to lowered taxes on tea imported to Britain and then exported to America by the East India Company. British law, in granting a virtual monopoly on the British tea trade, required the East India Company to bring the tea to Britain first (in order to be taxed) and then auction the tea to middlemen who then shipped it to America. The taxes imposed and the cost incurred to make this indirect delivery to the colonies in America, meant that the Dutch could smuggle (a costly enterprise, considering the risks of confronting Britain's naval patrols) tea into American (as well as Britain's) ports and sell it much more cheaply than could the East India Company. When Parliament's Tea Act of 1773 reduced the taxes to undercut the Dutch smugglers and eliminated the requirement to auction the tea to middlemen, it directly impacted on the profits of American merchants who sold the smuggled tea. And, many merchants who had heretofore legally sold East India Company tea, were not given consignee commissions by the East India Company which could now ship its tea to America on its own right.
It was, therefore, a coalition of political rabble-rousers and undercut merchants that spawned protests against the new tea system, even though it meant that the people could now enjoy their cherished tea much more cheaply than before. Coercion--the threat of great bodily harm that was becoming an American talent--caused most of the East India Company consignees to resign their commissions and most of the tea sent to the Americas in 1773 returned to Britain in the ships whence it had come. Except, that is, for the three ships bearing tea to Boston. Seems the governor of the Massachusetts colony, whose two sons just so happened to possess East India Company tea consignee commissions, was not a man to back down in the face of threats. While every other colony's consignees had resigned their commissions, Governor Hutchinson's sons did not, and three ships bearing tea were tied up in Boston Harbor by the middle of December amid a standoff between the governor and colonists who refused to allow the tea to be unloaded.
British law allowed customs officials to confiscate cargoes for which import duties had not been paid within 20 days of arriving in port. When the first tea-bearing ship, the Dartmouth, arrived in Boston in late November, the local cabal of political rabble-rousers and undercut merchants called a mass protest meeting at which chief political rabble-rouser Samuel Adams led passage of a resolution calling for the Dartmouth's captain to return his ship and cargo to England. This impromptu congress also assigned a guard to prevented unloading of the Dartmouth, and Governor Hutchinson refused to allow the Dartmouth to leave Boston and return to England. With the deadline for paying the import duties looming and the possibility of custom officials seizing the Dartmouth's cargo, Samuel Adams was rousing the rabble at another meeting of the people on the evening of the 16th of December. At the end of the meeting, a group of men, the immediate impetus for whose actions is lost to history, disguised themselves as Native Americans, boarded the Dartmouth and two other vessels that had recently arrived bearing tea, and dumped all of the ships' tea cargo into the water.
We Americans point proudly to the "Boston Tea Party" as one of the seminal events in our revolution against British "tyranny." Many of us are invoking the event's remembrance in our protest against the current fiscal irresponsibility of our federal government's elected leadership. I'm okay with that. But, just know that no revolution, war, nor any other political movement is as pure in motive as our idealistic recollection of it years later.
Revolutions are bloody, divisive affairs. Perhaps it is better to ease our collective conscience with selective memory and revisionist remembrance.
In truth, taxes levied on the British Colonies in America by the British Parliament did indeed raise the question of "taxation without representation." According to the British Constitution, British subjects could not be taxed without the consent of their elected representatives in Parliament. Since the British colonists in America did not vote for, nor have, representation in Parliament, political rabble-rousers in the colonies argued, with increasing vociferation, that Parliament's taxation of the Colonies, such as was the case with the Stamp Act, was "unconstitutional." In response to the outcry from the Colonials, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1765 but maintained, in the Declaratory Act of 1766, that they had the right to raise revenue in the colonies. The irony is that any of the taxation Parliament attempted to impose on the American colonies was much less of a tax burden than that paid by citizens back in the British Isles.
Even more ironic is that the "Boston Tea Party" was in fact a reaction to lowered taxes on tea imported to Britain and then exported to America by the East India Company. British law, in granting a virtual monopoly on the British tea trade, required the East India Company to bring the tea to Britain first (in order to be taxed) and then auction the tea to middlemen who then shipped it to America. The taxes imposed and the cost incurred to make this indirect delivery to the colonies in America, meant that the Dutch could smuggle (a costly enterprise, considering the risks of confronting Britain's naval patrols) tea into American (as well as Britain's) ports and sell it much more cheaply than could the East India Company. When Parliament's Tea Act of 1773 reduced the taxes to undercut the Dutch smugglers and eliminated the requirement to auction the tea to middlemen, it directly impacted on the profits of American merchants who sold the smuggled tea. And, many merchants who had heretofore legally sold East India Company tea, were not given consignee commissions by the East India Company which could now ship its tea to America on its own right.
It was, therefore, a coalition of political rabble-rousers and undercut merchants that spawned protests against the new tea system, even though it meant that the people could now enjoy their cherished tea much more cheaply than before. Coercion--the threat of great bodily harm that was becoming an American talent--caused most of the East India Company consignees to resign their commissions and most of the tea sent to the Americas in 1773 returned to Britain in the ships whence it had come. Except, that is, for the three ships bearing tea to Boston. Seems the governor of the Massachusetts colony, whose two sons just so happened to possess East India Company tea consignee commissions, was not a man to back down in the face of threats. While every other colony's consignees had resigned their commissions, Governor Hutchinson's sons did not, and three ships bearing tea were tied up in Boston Harbor by the middle of December amid a standoff between the governor and colonists who refused to allow the tea to be unloaded.
British law allowed customs officials to confiscate cargoes for which import duties had not been paid within 20 days of arriving in port. When the first tea-bearing ship, the Dartmouth, arrived in Boston in late November, the local cabal of political rabble-rousers and undercut merchants called a mass protest meeting at which chief political rabble-rouser Samuel Adams led passage of a resolution calling for the Dartmouth's captain to return his ship and cargo to England. This impromptu congress also assigned a guard to prevented unloading of the Dartmouth, and Governor Hutchinson refused to allow the Dartmouth to leave Boston and return to England. With the deadline for paying the import duties looming and the possibility of custom officials seizing the Dartmouth's cargo, Samuel Adams was rousing the rabble at another meeting of the people on the evening of the 16th of December. At the end of the meeting, a group of men, the immediate impetus for whose actions is lost to history, disguised themselves as Native Americans, boarded the Dartmouth and two other vessels that had recently arrived bearing tea, and dumped all of the ships' tea cargo into the water.
We Americans point proudly to the "Boston Tea Party" as one of the seminal events in our revolution against British "tyranny." Many of us are invoking the event's remembrance in our protest against the current fiscal irresponsibility of our federal government's elected leadership. I'm okay with that. But, just know that no revolution, war, nor any other political movement is as pure in motive as our idealistic recollection of it years later.
Revolutions are bloody, divisive affairs. Perhaps it is better to ease our collective conscience with selective memory and revisionist remembrance.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The Explosive Pride of Narcissism
One hundred and thirteen years ago today, Alfred Nobel died. Today, his mortal remains set a new grave-spinning speed world record. On the fifth anniversary of their benefactor's death, the first Nobel Prizes for accomplishments in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace were awarded. Upon his death, Alfred Nobel, perfecter of the use of nitroglycerin, inventor of dynamite and the blasting cap, and, paradoxically, an avowed pacifist, bequeathed a fund from which monetary prizes would be awarded "...to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Nobel's Peace Prize, decided upon by a committee chosen by the Norwegian Parliament, was to be awarded to "...the person who has done the most or best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
Our young President was chosen for the Peace Prize, presumably, for his speeches. He has done nothing else of substance to merit the award. Even Jimmy Carter, as misguided in his decision-making and prone to pompous pronouncements as any President in the history of the Republic, has a resume of accomplishments (if mostly unmitigated disasters; with the one exception being his work with Habitat for Humanity) upon which one could deliberate for the purpose of such an award. President Obama has speeches.
Seems to the Colonel that President Obama could have boosted his stock enormously among adults by laughing off (and declining) the Peace Prize. He would have demonstrated that he "got it." Instead, he showed that he wanted it.
Therein lies the measure of a man.
Our young President was chosen for the Peace Prize, presumably, for his speeches. He has done nothing else of substance to merit the award. Even Jimmy Carter, as misguided in his decision-making and prone to pompous pronouncements as any President in the history of the Republic, has a resume of accomplishments (if mostly unmitigated disasters; with the one exception being his work with Habitat for Humanity) upon which one could deliberate for the purpose of such an award. President Obama has speeches.
Seems to the Colonel that President Obama could have boosted his stock enormously among adults by laughing off (and declining) the Peace Prize. He would have demonstrated that he "got it." Instead, he showed that he wanted it.
Therein lies the measure of a man.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
The Last Legal War
Sixty-eight years ago today the Congress of the United States fulfilled its duty under the Constitution and declared war on the Empire of Japan. It has shirked that duty ever since.
On December 8th, 1941, President Roosevelt addressed the Congress for only ten minutes. With the rest of the nation listening by radio, Roosevelt declared that the previous day's date would "live in infamy" and called Japan's strike against Pearl Harbor a deliberate, premeditated act of war. His request for a formal declaration of war by the Congress was agreed to by every member of that body, save for a lone pacifist dissenter who presumably voted his principles and did not really believe that the United States should not respond with force against the Pacific expansionists threatening our Pacific expansionism.
While the Colonel is tempted to glaze the eyeballs of you three gentle readers whose lives contain so few pressing matters that wasting time plodding through this pedantic post is of no consequence, we will dispense with the history lesson describing the geo-political tidal forces and American interventionism that alternately encouraged and then condemned Japanese self-assertion in the Orient. Suffice it to say that the Japanese leadership didn't wake up on the wrong side of their futons in late November of 1941 and launch the carrier strike force toward the Sandwich Islands on a sake-induced hung-over whim. I'm not trying to justify their actions, any more than I would attempt to justify Hitler's, Stalin's, Mao's, Johnson's, or bin Laden's. It is just important to understand that no geo-political action, no matter how heinous, spontaneously occurs independent of other factors. The only vacuums in international politics occur in the brain-housing groups of those who believe that bad actors are always "unprovoked."
However, the point of this missive is that in every instance of the use of American military power since 1945, the Congress of the United States has been negligent in the disregard of its Constitutional duty. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution places the responsibility of authorizing and paying for war squarely on the shoulders of the Congress. The Executive Branch may have responsibility for execution of military operations to accomplish a national strategy, but it is the Congress’ role to declare that a state of war exists between the United States and another state (or non-state) entity. In this regard, Congress has been woefully remiss in its duty for nearly seven decades. In 1950, President Truman committed American forces to full scale military operations without a formal declaration of war. President Johnson did the same in Vietnam beginning in 1964. Following the Vietnam conflict, force “authorization” for which the Congress passed the unconstitutional Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Congress sought to limit a future President’s use of military force with the cumbersome and impractical (not to mention, unnecessary) War Powers Resolution, which accomplished both an unconstitutional abrogation of Congress’ responsibilities and an unconstitutional infringement on the Executive Branch’s powers. The unconstitutional resolutions “authorizing” force against Iraq in 1990 and 2003 are further cases in point regarding a cowardly Congress bowing to an over-reaching Executive for the sake of re-election.
The Colonel would not have you think that the use of force in Korea, Vietnam, and against Iraq were not in the nation’s security interests. While cogent arguments can be made on both sides of that issue, the point is regardless the efficacy of the “vital national interest argument” in a given instance, our Constitution, and the will of its Framers, is quite clear regarding the way our nation may legally go to war. The Constitution, in Article I, gives the Congress the express authority “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water…” Absent Congress’ formal declaration of war, the use of offensive military force by the Executive is unconstitutional—therefore illegal, and grounds for impeachment.
The constitutional remedy for congressional constitutional malpractice is, in our democratic republic, vested in the hands of the people via the ballot. The Colonel not-so-humbly suggests we use our power accordingly at the earliest opportunity, and every one thereafter.
On December 8th, 1941, President Roosevelt addressed the Congress for only ten minutes. With the rest of the nation listening by radio, Roosevelt declared that the previous day's date would "live in infamy" and called Japan's strike against Pearl Harbor a deliberate, premeditated act of war. His request for a formal declaration of war by the Congress was agreed to by every member of that body, save for a lone pacifist dissenter who presumably voted his principles and did not really believe that the United States should not respond with force against the Pacific expansionists threatening our Pacific expansionism.
While the Colonel is tempted to glaze the eyeballs of you three gentle readers whose lives contain so few pressing matters that wasting time plodding through this pedantic post is of no consequence, we will dispense with the history lesson describing the geo-political tidal forces and American interventionism that alternately encouraged and then condemned Japanese self-assertion in the Orient. Suffice it to say that the Japanese leadership didn't wake up on the wrong side of their futons in late November of 1941 and launch the carrier strike force toward the Sandwich Islands on a sake-induced hung-over whim. I'm not trying to justify their actions, any more than I would attempt to justify Hitler's, Stalin's, Mao's, Johnson's, or bin Laden's. It is just important to understand that no geo-political action, no matter how heinous, spontaneously occurs independent of other factors. The only vacuums in international politics occur in the brain-housing groups of those who believe that bad actors are always "unprovoked."
However, the point of this missive is that in every instance of the use of American military power since 1945, the Congress of the United States has been negligent in the disregard of its Constitutional duty. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution places the responsibility of authorizing and paying for war squarely on the shoulders of the Congress. The Executive Branch may have responsibility for execution of military operations to accomplish a national strategy, but it is the Congress’ role to declare that a state of war exists between the United States and another state (or non-state) entity. In this regard, Congress has been woefully remiss in its duty for nearly seven decades. In 1950, President Truman committed American forces to full scale military operations without a formal declaration of war. President Johnson did the same in Vietnam beginning in 1964. Following the Vietnam conflict, force “authorization” for which the Congress passed the unconstitutional Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Congress sought to limit a future President’s use of military force with the cumbersome and impractical (not to mention, unnecessary) War Powers Resolution, which accomplished both an unconstitutional abrogation of Congress’ responsibilities and an unconstitutional infringement on the Executive Branch’s powers. The unconstitutional resolutions “authorizing” force against Iraq in 1990 and 2003 are further cases in point regarding a cowardly Congress bowing to an over-reaching Executive for the sake of re-election.
The Colonel would not have you think that the use of force in Korea, Vietnam, and against Iraq were not in the nation’s security interests. While cogent arguments can be made on both sides of that issue, the point is regardless the efficacy of the “vital national interest argument” in a given instance, our Constitution, and the will of its Framers, is quite clear regarding the way our nation may legally go to war. The Constitution, in Article I, gives the Congress the express authority “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water…” Absent Congress’ formal declaration of war, the use of offensive military force by the Executive is unconstitutional—therefore illegal, and grounds for impeachment.
The constitutional remedy for congressional constitutional malpractice is, in our democratic republic, vested in the hands of the people via the ballot. The Colonel not-so-humbly suggests we use our power accordingly at the earliest opportunity, and every one thereafter.
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