Remember when?

I received an interesting e-mail from an old friend a few days back that brings up a number of interesting points about Mr. Obama’s “accomplishments” over the last four years.  It also managed to prove once again that Mr. O’s doings are definitely bad for my blood pressure!  I guess the anointed one and his supporters are rather proud of themselves however, with what they’ve managed to do to our nation despite the objections of the majority of the American people, and the (said somewhat tongue in cheek) “opposition” of mainstream Republicans. 

I can remember back to the days when a conservative war hero sat in the White House, and our nation was in the midst of those dark, threatening days of the cold war.  Yet the economy was thriving… people had jobs, Mom didn’t have to balance working and her family to make ends meet, we were building a national highway system second to none, the post office could send a letter clear across the country for three cents and still show a profit, gasoline was 25 or so cents a gallon, illegal immigration was effectively a non-existent problem, criminals were in jail instead of in government, and the only “terrorist” I knew of was that big mean kid living down the street.  With all this our national debt was diminishing!  The nation was in the midst of a “golden age” that we still fondly look back on, where schools taught patriotism, churches taught morality, John Wayne was our movie hero, and we were proud to be Americans.  But then, things do change…

Do ‘ya remember when… Mr. Obama refused to disclose who donated money to his election campaign, and then it became known that multi-billionaire Marxist George Soros had spent gobs of money to get him elected?  Or do you remember when he received glowing political endorsements from people like Farrakhan, Kaddafi, and Hugo Chavez, along with his radical friends Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn… and people said that it didn't matter.

Do you remember when…  He refused to wear a flag lapel pin in honor of the Americans killed on 9/11, and did so only after a public outcry, or when he stood with his hands over his groin for the playing of the National Anthem and the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance… or when he claimed he was a Christian during the election, and tapes later surfaced showing the man with three Muslim names speaking to a Muslim group stating that he was raised a Muslim, was educated as a Muslim, and is still a Muslim… and people said it didn't matter?  When, as President of the United States, he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia and to the Emperor of Japan while traveling around the world criticizing America and apologizing for our greatness…  Or do you perchance remember when his personal background was so well hidden that nothing could be found out about him… or when the place of his birth was questioned, and he refused to produce a birth certificate… and people thought nothing of it.

How about when… he surrounded himself with advisors who were pro-gun control, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marriage and who wanted to curtail freedom of speech to silence the opposition.  When he said he favors sex education in kindergarten, including homosexual indoctrination, or when his followers started treating him as a Messiah, or when children in schools were being taught to sing his praises… and Americans said it didn't matter

Do you remember when he started appointing White House “Czars” that are radicals, revolutionaries, and even avowed Marxist /Communists.  When he appointed a Science Czar who believes in forced abortions, mass sterilizations, and seizing newborn babies from un-wed teen mothers…  When he selected a Regulatory Czar who believes in harvesting human organs without family consent.  When he appointed the homosexual organizer of a group called Gay, Lesbian, Straight, and Education Network, as our Safe School Czar?  Or appointed as Diversity Czar a man who believes in curtailing free speech, and who supports Hugo Chavez.  When he selected an avowed Socialist as Senior White House Advisor, when his White House Communications Director said Mao Tse Tung was her favorite philosopher and the person she turned to most for inspiration, when his pick for Health and Human Services Secretary could not be confirmed because he was a tax cheat… and people still said it didn't matter.

Do you remember when… he started spending us into a national debt that’s so big we’ll probably never get it paid off, when he generated another huge spending bill under the guise of stimulus and used it to pay off the various organizations, unions, and individuals that got him elected…  When he took over our nations insurance companies, car companies, banks, etc., and set into motion a plan to take over the control of all energy production in the United States through his Cap and Trade scheme… and Americans said it didn't matter.

Do you remember… his radical plan (now the law of the land), to take over the nations entire health care system and put it under government control, giving us a Soviet Union style socialized medical care system complete with rationing and death panels… and people still think it doesn’t matter.  How about when he signed the executive orders setting into place his capability to bypass Congress at will, and totally take over every means of transportation, communications, production, banking, and even individual property rights… and people said it doesn’t matter.

So what does matter?!  Well, I remember when he stood before the Nation and told us that the United States was the greatest country in the world, and that his intentions were to "fundamentally transform this Nation" into something else.  Add these accomplishments up one by one and you get a huge score attesting to the fact that Barrack Hussein Obama is determined to turn America into “just another” third-world Marxist-Socialist society.  Even as we contemplate the upcoming election, he has nearly completed transforming us into the ‘United Socialist States of America’, with himself as our first Premier, a place where our hallowed Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and our precious liberty, are only a vague memory.   

If the American voter allows Mr. O to continue with his “master plan” this November, people will finally begin to remember that it does matter… but by then it will be far too late.

Freedoms Pledge

For a number of years now we have been hearing about the dissolution of our distinctly American euro-centric culture, and the high value of “Cultural Diversity” in our lives today.  Most of this spiel seems to be coming from the liberal left, so I of course will take the statement with a grain of salt  In part at least, I’ll agree that our American culture is coming apart at the seams, but I certainly don’t agree that all this diversity is a good or desirable thing.  In describing our American identity, author Samuel P. Huntington attempted to reject the concept that America is “a nation of immigrants.” He gets a bit picky with sematics, claiming that America's founders were not immigrants, but settlers, since our origional forebearers came to North America to establish a new society.  Well, Okay, but I’ll bet the Indians that met the Mayflower would dispute that statement.  Later peoples joining the origional colonists were indeed immigrants according to Mr. Huntington.  To avoid a literary donnybrooke with assorted left wing English professors, I’ll give Mr. Huntington the point, but I still doubt the Indians will! 

I’ll further agree with his claim that the political and legal institutions created here in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were in large part based on the legal practices of England’s sixteenth and seventeenth century.  These included the concept of the law being superior to the government (which England inherited from the Romans), the division of executive, legislative, and judicial functions within the government, a two-house legislature, the responsibility of legislators to their local constituencies, and a reliance on militia rather than a standing army for defense.  While abiding with that, any new immigrants were expected to become law abiding, english speaking citizens, no matter where they came from, what the color their skin, or what religion they happened to follow.  For well over two hundred years that system served us well.

By the 1960s our uniquely American identity had begun to disappear as a result of several mildly interconnected factors.  The beginning of economic globalization and the easing of the Cold War reduced the importance of a national identity.  Candidates for political offices began to stress ethnic conflicts in an effort to win over particular groups of voters.  There was (and remains today) a strong desire among the various ethnic leaders to enhance the status of their particular group, and thus their personal status within that group.  There was and remains the problem of legal (and quite loose) interpretation of Congressional acts, that lead to their execution in ways not necessarily what their framers intended.  The feelings of “sympathy and guilt” for historic “wrongs” is taught by self-proclaimed academic elites and intellectuals, while assorted ethnic appologies are encouraged, and severe changes to our immigration laws are demanded.  To that I’ll add that our drug induced utopian “counter culture” hasn’t helped things either.  Huntington further considerd other ways in which America’s identity has weakened, including the denationalization of business, professional, intellectual, and academic elites, and the influence of intense non-english speaking immigration.  By “denationalization” Huntington means that “new” Americans do not think of themselves citizens of the United States, but merely as temporary residents.  Huntington further proposes a solution to these problems, arguing that unless Americans “participate in American life, learn America’s language, history, and customs, absorb America’s Anglo-Protestant culture, and identify primarily with America rather than with their country of birth”, our once proud nation won’t be here much longer.

Apparently this general idea has been around for quite some time.  During the 160th anniversary year of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, then Attorney General Tom C. Clark presented President Harry S. Truman with the idea for a nationwide display of our nations greatest treasures, something that was eventually called the “Freedom Train”, that would travel around the country carrying historical documents and artifacts for all Americans to see.  Envisioned as a way to reawaken Americans to their taken-for-granted liberty in the years following WW II, President Truman approved the idea, and the Freedom Train was soon (1947 – 1949) visiting every state in the union, spreading the “Spirit of ’76.”

Never before had any nation contemplated sending on tour its treasures and national symbols.  For 413 days the train was the temporary home of America's most precious documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, one of the 13 original copies of the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and the Iwo Jima flag.  Among the 127 documents and six historical flags on board, the train carried many treasures that were the earliest inspirations for American liberty.  Some were from a distant and oppressive age, when there was little or no consideration for the rights of ordinary men, such as an original copy of the Magna Carta, written in 1215 as the first guarantee of the Rights of Englishmen, much of which became part of our law as well.  Other documents included the first guarantees of individual rights to freedom of speech and of religion dating from Colonial days.  Others proclaimed women’s rights, and racial equality.  Many of the displays aboard the train had never left Washington D.C. before, nor have they since.  These and other historic symbols were reminders of just how precious freedom is, and the price Americans have paid to keep it.

When the train made its stops, organizers urged visitors to recite the “Freedom Pledge” and sign its scroll.  While most Americans know the Pledge of Allegiance by heart, not many of us are familiar with this lesser known Freedom Pledge:

The Freedom Pledge

I am an American.  A free American.

Free to speak – without fear.

Free to worship my own God.

Free to stand for what I think right.

Free to oppose what I believe wrong.

Free to choose those who govern my country.

This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold,

for myself and all mankind.

While this proud pledge was quite meaningful to our citizens in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most Americans today have no idea of what it means.  Our educational system certainly doesn’t appear to be teaching Americanism, and today’s parents don’t seem to be making much of an effort either.  We have I think, lost our way both as a nation and as a people.  Perhaps it’s time for another “Freedom Train” carrying the meaning of “America” to all our citizens, explaining, and urging a repeat of, freedom’s pledge.

Quickly...

Not long back I was told that I should "get mad" about my subject material.  The following, "Enjoy the party?" is what happens when I do get upset.  Kinda windy ain't I?  ;-)

Enjoy the party?

There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Will Rogers

Well folks, I hope you enjoyed the party, as it may well have been our last holiday celebrating American independence and the birth of our free nation.  No matter how you celebrated, or what you believe, you by now recognize that a major change in American life and our political system is quickly approaching.  If this process continues, it'll completely change how you, and the rest of the world, see America.  It'll change how you live, where you work, what you eat, where you shop, how you travel, how you worship, and indeed, how you obey your new masters.

The facts are these; Mr. Obama has gone out of his way to divide this country in a manner unseen since the days of the civil war.  In line with his apparent Marxist/Fascist worldview he has split our people on economic lines, he has divided us politically even more than we were in 1860, and he has been busily separating us from our various religious beliefs.  “His” government is pitting the “takers” against the “producers” in a form of class warfare we’ve never seen before, and is rapidly accelerating the taking of our individual wealth such as it may be, and giving it to somebody else, all in the name of “sharing the wealth”.  His taxes are forcing American business to move overseas to survive, and leaving American jobs behind.  He has spent us into a totally unprecedented national debt that we’ll be centuries paying off.  He antagonizes our friends, and cozies up to our mortal enemies.  He has subverted the mainstream media, which now happily “twist the facts” to his advantage, while demonizing any and all political opposition.  He ignores the “inconvenient” provisions of our Constitution and declares that revered document to be an outdated relic of the past.  He now informs us that Americans did not succeed at building much of anything by their own effort, and that only “the government” made our great nation possible.  Skillfully utilizing our laws and the mistakes of the past to his advantage, he has set us up for a complete takeover of our government, turning us into a Hitlerian state with himself at the helm and his cronies as our new socialistic commissars.  And now he expects us to reward him for all this in the November elections!

Think about it, since taking office, Obama has made himself a dictator in all but name.  He appoints “Czars” answerable only to him, directing the nation’s day to day business, ignoring both Congress and our law.  His “Obamacare” program opens the door for the government to order us to do just about anything a bureaucratic mind wants, with no legal recourse.  He controls the media, and through it he can control what we think!  He now has a number of new programs in the pipeline that will go into effect in January 2013, just in time for a second term in office. The economic burden and increased taxes on everyone will be enough to cause a complete economic collapse, at which time he can declare Martial Law and assume complete dictatorial control of this once free nation.

Many Americans assume that the armed forces would refuse to cooperate with such a takeover, and I’m sure that many of our soldiers will so refuse.  However, personnel cutbacks, allowing homosexuals to serve, and a changing retirement program is causing many servicemen to leave the military.  It’s been noted that they are being replaced with a large increase in the enlistment of radical Muslims and illegal aliens, people with no allegiance to the provisions of our constitution. These “new” soldiers, loyal only to their paymaster, are equipped with our most modern weapons and receive extensive training in their use.  (Ahh… we don’t have any idea of how many of them there, who they are, or what positions they hold.)  And please don’t think that we’re going to have another revolution either, American citizens may be armed, but we don’t have near the weapons that even the poorest Islamic revolutionaries have in their fight for freedom.    Our few deer rifles and shotguns aren’t going to be very effective in a fight against Abrams tanks, attack helicopters, and guided missiles!

Under Mr. Obama, the Department of Justice has happily been subverting federal laws to strip us of any number of freedoms.  Many federal courts have been loaded with left wing socialist judges that rule in Obama's favor on virtually anything, thus ending constitutional rule and law.  When Congress doesn’t immediately roll over and do his bidding, he simply bypasses them by using executive orders to accomplish whatever it is that he wishes.  This has set the stage for dissolving Congress, and would not be the first time in history that a dictator took control of a nation by dismissing a more or less powerless legislature.  

By effectively using a pliant media, Mr. Obama has been anesthetizing the public to the danger he poses.  The American people ignore the changes he has already brought about, and won't have a clue to what happened until they wake up one morning and realize that a free America has been replaced with a regime that parallels those of Stalin, Mao, and Castro.  Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum told a group of people in Iowa that "Barack Obama is not incompetent, ladies and gentleman. He knows exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it.  He sees America differently than you or I see America."  Indeed, Mr. Obama gives every indication of actively hating American exceptionalism and our premier position in today’s world.  He seems to object to our defense of human rights and individual freedom around the world.  He, and his minions object to the high degree of freedom and independence American citizens are supposed to be enjoying.  So… he’s hard at work attempting to destroy it all.

We’re seeing more and more of the real Barack Obama as Election Day draws close.  And what we see is an angry far left radical hiding behind the mask of Hope and Change.  His remark; “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen” is astonishing, and is somewhat similar to the Department of Homeland Security report claiming that pro-life citizens, returning military personnel, gun-owners, Ron Paul supporters, Christians, and just about everybody else in the "Red States" can be classified as domestic terrorists to potentially be locked away in internment camps.  Words like this represent a declaration of war on our American way of life and even the concept of private property. They tell every citizen, every businessman, and every property owner, that the fruits of your labor are not yours, and that government and those whom it claims to represent are free to appropriate your property at their will.  Now we see Obama standing firmly in the line of radical thinkers going back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who claimed that owning private property is theft from the masses.  (A concept picked up and used by Karl Marx you might note.)  Obama wants us to believe that “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.”  Because (goes the argument), your success depends on roads and bridges and police and fire departments and the labor of your employees.  What you own, Mr. Obama is saying, is a public holding subject to his rules of “fairness” and “common good.”   Even though you paid the taxes that paid for those roads and bridges, and you paid wages to those employees, it all, even your home, belongs to “them”, not you.  It doesn’t just gut the concept of private property; it opens the door to complete social chaos.   

Barack Obama and his minions are often described as Socialists, or in the extreme as Marxists, and I have done so myself.  Bill O’Reilly calls him a “Social Justice Anti-capitalist”.  Whatever, his actions are beginning to appear to be more a modern copy of a fascist economic system than a socialist system… the modern version of Nazi fascism without the militarism of Germany in the 1930s.  Socialism seeks control of an economy through state ownership of the means of production and income, with all valuate going directly to the state.  Fascism, an off-shoot of socialism, seeks the same control by “state domination” of private ownership, and limits individual wealth by severe taxation.  Thus, in a fascist state, when something goes right, the “benevolent government” can take the credit.  When things go wrong, it’s all the fault of those evil private businessmen, for not doing as the all knowing state directed.   

We face another “plot” dear to the heart of the radical left in "AGENDA 21”, another UN plan supported by the Obama regime that proposes an array of actions intended to be implemented by (perhaps I should say ‘against’) every person on earth.  Effectively, Agenda 21 is a reorientation of human society and a redeployment of Earth’s human and economic resources, a plan that will turn the United States into a massive planning and zoning district and internationally controlled third world sub-state. It does nothing less than turn the United States, and indeed the world, over to the EPA and various echofreak groups, to establish "international norms" of personal behavior, dictated by a handful of elitists who believe they know best how people ought to live.  This one decrees where you will live and work, it even goes so far as to decree how much and of what you will eat!

As part of his plan for “change”, Mr. Obama has called for the establishment of a national police force to combat crime and internal terrorism.  It’s to be a parallel our armed forces, nearly as large, to be just as well armed, and answerable of course only to the presidency.  (Shades of the Nazi Gestapo and the black shirted SS!)  To make things easier for his personal police force, he now has his Secretary of State sidestepping the Second Amendment, and negotiating with the UN to disarm American citizens!  With the so-called "Small Arms Treaty" the gun-grabbers are coming clean with what they want...  full-scale international firearm registration, soon to be followed by confiscation, particularly in the U.S. which is one of very few countries with a constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.  So, the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs states, "Insurgents, armed gang members, pirates, terrorists - they can all multiply their force through the use of unlawfully acquired firepower."  The UN fails to mention that the weaponry of those groups was produced by and for the old Soviet Bloc, and are now being sold around the world by the very people who control this “Office of Disarmament Affairs”!  People who happen to see your gun rights as a "loophole" in the international arms trade, even though US law denies you the right to have a machine gun or rocket launcher!  You might also have noticed that the “Fast and Furious” fiasco was directed by the Obama regime, not by American gun owners or the NRA.  And of course, Second Amendment supporters have been labeled as "domestic terrorists" in Janet Napolitano's Homeland Security report.  According to the United Nations, the US government needs to crack down on the Second Amendment, and then everything will be fine in the world… and Mr. Obama is only too willing to oblige.

While we don’t think about it much, the American people are being watched, tracked and monitored more today than at any other point in history.  The growth of technology has given governments, police, and spy agencies the monitoring tools that dictators of the past could only dream of.   Today we have to deal with “pre-crime” surveillance cameras that use body language to spot criminals.  We have unmanned drones watching us from far above.  Street light cameras, and cell phones are, and our home appliances may soon be, spying on us in this hi-tech world!  We are rapidly heading into an era where there is no such thing as privacy, where government has become an all-invasive means of controlling every moment of our lives.  Our world is changing at a breathtaking rate, and most of those changes are not for the better.  The days of  Orwell’s “Big Brother” have finally arrived.

It’s crucial to the freedom we all enjoy that the American voter resoundingly defeats Mr. Obama and his cohorts in the November election.  If Team Obama wins the election, we can expect to see a flood of unwanted changes hit us head-on in January.  If he looses… well… I have little faith in politicians, so I can only hope that the victor will reverse the course we’re presently on.  But, it’s still possible that between the election and Inauguration Day he might use the power of Executive Orders… to declare the election null and void… suspend the Constitution… dissolve Congress… and become America’s sole ruler.  Will this happen?  I don’t know.  But it certainly could happen!

I hope you enjoyed the fireworks, the parades, the hot dogs and beer over the fourth.  I for one am not looking forward to next year, as the Fourth of July became a rather ironic holiday with the passage of the Patriot Act, and now, with the upholding of Obamacare and all it portends, our Independence Day has become little more than a sick joke.

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Freedom isn't Free

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Edmund Burke

A long time ago I heard the comment “That’s the sound of freedom” in response to a complaint about the noise caused by Air Force jet fighter aircraft taking off.  I don’t know who origionally thought up that idiom, but it’s one I fully agree with, and have always remembered.  Years of close exposure to those jet engine noises has cost me most of my hearing unfortunately, but I think that’s a small price to pay for that which I value so highly, the freedom of every American.  Another idiom that says much the same to me is “Freedom isn’t Free” (This one was authored by Colonel Walter Hitchcock, USAF, Retired), that expresses gratitude for the sacrifices made by members of the military through the years of our nations existance.  Written as a poem by Cdr. Kelly Strong, USCG Ret, the later half goes something like this;

“I heard the sound of taps one night,
When everything was still
I listened to the bugler play
and felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That taps had meant "Amen,"
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
of the mothers and the wives,
of fathers, sons and husbands
with interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn't free.”

Quite so… retaining the freedom enjoyed by Americans has been very expensive over the years, but we must also remember that the service and sacrifice of our servicmen isn’t the only thing that makes us a free nation.  There was the wisdom and foresight of the men who gave us our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to give our flegling nation a start.  There are the untold multitudes who gave their all to push back the frontier and gave our young nation room to grow.  Countless public figures have served us and the nation well through the decades, joined by the millions of young men who guarded us from those who, jealous of our freedom, would destroy us.  Or consider the three quarters of a million young men who gave their lives during our civil war, proving to all and sundry that freedom and liberty are for all Americans, and that freedom is the cornerstone of all that America stands for.  You might think of the young men who marched off in two great wars to prove once again that America was a most terrible enemy of tyrany wherever it raised it’s ugly head.  And of the women left behind, who worked the farms and factories so necessary to forge the critically needed weapons of war.  There, in all those Americans, you will find the effort and sacrifice made by the American people for the last 236 years.    

No, freedom is not free, and today the price we must pay is eternal vigalance.  Our world is full of greedy, evil men whose only wish is to be powerful at our expense.  It is our duty as citizens of this great land to stand guard against such people and their plots against our liberty.  It is for us, the citizens of America, to root out the oh-so-many enemies of our nation, enemies both foreign and domestic, who wish nothing less than to see us enslaved, subjected to their every whim, and our free nation not even a memory.  Far to many Americans, some of them elected officials, some educators, others merely common people who know no better, expect us to believe the fuzzy thinking, the failed political theories, warped morality, and the outright lies spread by those evil people, in hopes of changing the very things that make us a free nation.  Innocent American lives are being taken everyday, and our precious freedoms steadily eroded, because some people just want to be powerful. 

The leaders of our country from long past fought against great odds for the rights that make up our treasured freedoms.  Freedoms that form the basis of the Constitution which has bound us together as a nation for over two hundred years.  Today these rights are being twisted into totally unrecognizable form, and used in courtrooms, schools, our neighborhoods, and even our nation’s highest office, to strip us of our rights.  It's hard to realize that today, while many countries around the world continue to fight for any basic freedom, Americans seem so willing to surrender our rights to powerful men in the name of “safety” and “security”.  

America is in deep trouble today, and unless we soon begin selecting leaders who believe in American values, my grandchildren will live in a third world country, a mere parody of the America I remember.  This situation is enough to break an old soldiers heart.  We served to protect our Constitution, the nation’s freedom, and the greatness of our country, and yet Americans today constantly elect people to high office who only desire to take that freedom away from us.  And it’s all happening without our even putting up a fight!  I’m constantly heard bemoaning the fact that we lack leaders with high moral courage and values.  (In some cases, any morals or values!)  Consider, in today’s world, where Americans are so absorbed in the antics of assorted celebrities, where greed overshadows morality, where our young people are not even taught our history or just what it is that America stands for, we expect inspired leadership.  Yet can we really expect to see, just in the nick of time, another Jefferson or Franklin, Lincoln or Reagan riding forth on a white horse to defeat those evil men and lead us into the promised land?  Or will we, the citizens of this failing nation, have to do it the hard way, one vote at a time, all by our lonely selves? 

If George Washington were alive today, and could see what has happened to the founding fathers dream, he’d probably sue us for calling him “The Father of the Country”.

Drones...

The thing that won't die, in the nightmare that won't end.

A quite realistic replacement for the notorious government “black helicopters” of conspiracy theory fame are UAV’s (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), or as they’re more popularly called, Drones, that seem to be much in the spotlight lately. Being much less expensive to purchase or to operate than manned helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft, both the military and the CIA have been using an assortment of these remotely controlled flying machines to very aggressively prosecute the war on terror in the mid-east.

On the home front we now have reconnaissance drones patrolling a section of the Canadian border under the control of those ever so popular Homeland Security folks, more of them playing around on the southern border, and even some of our smaller police departments have taken to using smaller versions for assorted surveillance flights. Then there are quite a number of privately owned “mini-drones” in existence, used for everything from commercial power line inspections to simple hobby flying enjoyment.

We have drone aircraft, drone helicopters, drone gliders, and a couple of things that I haven’t figured out quite how to classify cluttering the skies of the world today. These aircraft come in all sizes as well, from the “really big” on down to some very specialized reconnaissance units about the size of an insect. (Humm… don’t swat that strange metallic looking “bug” on your wall, you might find yourself charged with the destruction of government property!) Their flight characteristics are just about as unusual. While some can fly for only a few minutes with a range measured in yards, a solar powered craft under development NASA and the DoD can stay aloft for nearly five years, flying at 100,000 feet! Military drones are generally quite stealthy, and some are acknowledged to operate well in excess of 20,000 feet while traveling a couple of thousand miles, at 500+ miles per hour, and carrying thousands of pounds of death and destruction!

Originally these were simple camera equipped radio control model airplanes intended to be used in real-time short range battlefield reconnaissance operations. Oh how they’ve grown! UAV’s have been developed into quite successful tactical and even strategic reconaissance platforms equipped with any number of nearly science fiction spy devices! Devices ranging from optical cameras to infra-red sensors, or if your mission requirements prefer, a wide assortment of electronic equipment that can include ground penetrating radar. Rest assured, they can see and probably identify you and what you’re doing, even if you have no idea they’re anywhere nearby. Currently, operational drones are remotely controlled by a human operator, much like the model planes that preceded them. They are however semi-automatic in that the operator tells the machine which direction to turn, when to start taking pictures or launch a missile in Pakistan, and even when to come home, leaving the machine to do everything else. That “Practically everything else” is controlled by on-board computers, assorted flight data sensors, and up-to-date GPS technology.

In the interest of protecting our soldiers from harm, drones are being armed, in some cases quite heavily with everything from “smart” iron bombs to long range “fire and forget” target seeking guided missiles. (If you can put a weapon on an airplane, you can put it on a drone.) These weapons can find, and hit, a target designated from miles away by a laser beam or radar. They can track a target, day or night, from the heat it radiates. They can be guided remotely by built in television. Or they can seek out and hit a specific GPS position. (Remember not long back, when the census folks came by and recorded the GPS position of your front door?) Mr. Obama’s eye-in-the-sky can quite easily find you nowadays. And, if it can find you…

Additionally as one pundit comments, they can quickly determine if you’re properly recycling your trash according to whatever current government standards demand, or perhaps if you’re speeding a bit on the highway… well, they can also determine if the old roof on your house is leaking more heat than whatever the EPA has determined is proper energy usage in fighting global warming. Get used to living in a government controlled and operated fishbowl folks, there’s very little you can do, either indoors or out, that can’t be observed, and reported to the “proper authorities”, by these government controlled aerial spy-eyes.

Nor is it just airborne drones that concern me. The Army and law enforcement agencies are developing an entire stable of ground bound robotic vehicles as well. This includes everything from full grown tanks with big guns, to cargo trucks that don’t need a driver (scratch yet another American job), to robot cops and security guards. Some move on treads, some roll on wheels, and some even walk on two legs! And the majority of these are, unfortunately, armed! Dunno about anyone else, but the thought of a machine-gun toting robot suddenly telling me to halt and produce my papers is quite frightening! Slightly behind the deployment curve, the Navy is also working on drones, predominantly small warships and even robot attack submarines!

Another frightening aspect of these things is that they are slowly becoming completely autonomous, where in accordance with pre-set generalized instructions, the machine “thinks” for itself in following those instructions, without a human operator in the loop. But still, it’s a machine that can only do what it’s told. We are also familiar with the ills that can befall a computer, and what results might occur… The Navy X-47B currently under test is a fully automated aircraft carrier based strike drone that only needs to be told where to go and who to kill… unless it decides to just kill everything in the target area. After all, who’s the bad guy, the Arab looking dude sneaking up on you with an RPG… or perhaps it’s that evil conservative guy down the street, who objects to the Obamacare program?

So here we have the scenario of an almost undetectable killing machine, armed with terribly precise weapons, flying over our heads and looking over our shoulders. I certainly hope there’s no hiccup in the master computer, or that another Hitler or Stalin hasn’t somehow gained control… and it’s already been demonstrated that computer hackers can access the system, feeding wrong targets, positions, and even control information to the on-board computer. I have no issues with the limited use of military drones during wartime. I can also quickly understand and approve of some civilian use as well. I do, strenuously, object to the use of drones of any sort being used by the government to “spy” on American citizens for any reason. If the government or the police want to know what I’m up to today, they can darn well come and ask me in person. They most definitely do not “need these new tools” to control my life. Even more so, I object to the very idea of armed, autonomous, robots running around looking for somebody to kill, no matter what the motive!

Nearly all of us have seen the opening scenes of the movie “Terminator”, where robot fighting machines battle humans for control of the Earth. The movie is futuristic science fiction of course… but that future may be getting much closer than you think.

Executive Order

Mr. Obama’s recent signing of an amended version of Slick Willie Clinton’s EO (Executive Order) 12919 (titled “National Defense Resources Preparedness”), has a good many conservatives up in arms, with more than a few going so far as to claim that this is nothing less than a coup aimed at US citizens. Left wing apologists on the other hand state there’s nothing to worry about, 12919 is merely updating the existing National Defense Preparedness Act, and that everything is more or less “normal”. I rather suspect the truth lies somewhere in between.

In this country an “executive order” is a directive issued by the head of the executive branch at some level of government. The term is most commonly applied to orders issued by the President in his role as chief executive of the federal government. Executive orders may also be issued by a state governor or a city’s mayor. In other countries they’re often known as decrees or orders-in-council. U.S. Presidents have been issuing executive orders since 1789, usually to help agencies of the executive branch manage the operation of the federal government, and they do have the full force of law, since they are usually issued in accordance with Acts of Congress which give the President some degree of discretionary power. Harmless enough, right?

According to Article 1 of the United States Constitution, only Congress shall make federal law. However, since the "War and Emergency Powers Act" was passed in 1933, every president has usurped lawmaking powers via “Executive Orders”. In some cases (notably FDR) the justifications cited by the President when issuing an Executive Order have come under considerable criticism for exceeding Executive authority, and challenges to the validity of an order have sometimes resulted in legal proceedings and the order declared unconstitutional. While there is no provision in the Constitution that specifically permits executive orders, there is a vague mention of "executive power" given in Article II, and the declaration that the President "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". Most Executive Orders use these Constitutional reasonings as the authorization allowing for their issuance to be justified as part of the President's sworn duties. But wars have (and are) being fought on executive order, including the Kosovo Air War during Clinton’s second term, without the required congressional declaration of war. However, the extent to which the president may exercise military power independently of Congress remains continues to be an unresolved constitutional issue.

Critics have accused various presidents of abusing executive orders, using them to make laws without Congressional approval, and of moving existing laws away from their original intent. It’s also quite common for presidents to issue executive orders that allow federal agencies to enact administrative regulations in order to circumvent the legislative process, often pointing to EO 12148 which includes authorization to put ALL executive orders into effect in times of increased international tension, economic crisis, and/or financial crisis. Further, EO 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over production, distribution, energy sources, wages, salaries, credit, and the flow of money. Now, Mr. Obama signs on to EO 12919, which hands the office of the President the power of absolute rule. The Drudge Report calls it “Martial Law”, the Huffington Post says it places the US on a “war footing”, and others call it a “coup against US citizens”. But while no one really agrees on what it means, a lot of knowledgeable folks seem to think it’s bad. So what’s in this document?

This EO simply authorizes the different Cabinet departments to take command of their respective parts of the economy during a national emergency, which is an “emergency” that the president declares, not congress. We all know that in a true national emergency or war the government is going to do whatever it takes to stay in power, regardless of Constitutional niceties, and this order merely "legalizes" that process. It’s no longer open for debate, and it's not a conspiracy theory, it's the Obama administration’s official policy. It does not necessarily mean that at 0600 hours tomorrow morning FEMA thugs will come marching up the lane to seize your farm. It does not mean that at noon on next Tuesday the FBI will start marching us off to the camps. It does not mean that the federal reserve is about to grab your bank account, nor does it mean that local law enforcement officers will immediately be ordered to seize the contents of your pantry. And it does not mean that UN troops will start patrolling Main St. What it does mean is that any or all of this can happen, merely on a presidential whim, without the benefit of Congressional approval, and despite our rights under the Constitution! Additionally, in my view 12919 fits all too conveniently into Mr. Obama’s announced plan to change America… at any rate it certainly would redistribute the wealth in one fell swoop! You might also want to think about how the officially sanctioned killing of American citizens without benefit of a trial, the Patriot Act’s stripping us of our rights, the unprecedented powers of the Department of Homeland Security, and the fact that we’ve been told by government officials that the Constitution, and Congress, are now irrelevant, all fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Now my question is… why would this order even be considered necessary by the government if the powers-that-be did not see it as a viable means of retaining their control of the nation? (Keep in mind that they also control the armed forces and law enforcement.) This piece of paper states that the President alone has the authority to take over all resources in the nation (labor, food, land, industry, etc.) in the name of “national defense" -- a vague phrase that could be twisted to mean almost anything. Mr. Obama now has the authority (technically) to decide what he wants to do, and then (legally) order the army carry it out. The triggering excuse could be something as simple as a fabricated intelligence report threatening an attack with weapons of mass destruction. But wait, it gets even better! Mr. Obama and President Bush have both declared that we are under a state of National Emergency (which has never been rescinded), and thus the enabling conditions of this order have already been met. Technically EO 12919 is already in effect!

You might also notice that nothing in the order talks about protecting the rights of the American people, but rather it's all about protecting the government. The government needs stockpiles of weapons, food and resources, but John Q. Citizen doesn’t… or at least that seems to be the philosophy of our current government which sees itself as being all powerful. With Executive Orders the state, in a manner surprisingly similar to the Soviet Union, is supreme. The federal government, thanks to the activities of the political left in America, now has the right to do whatever they want to do, at a bureaucrat's whim, a federal department's press release, or due to a politician’s failing polls. Your property, your desires, your children, your job, your rights as an American citizen, your very life… now belong to the government.

Does any of this sound familiar? Well… Heil Hitler ya’all.

Ron Paul

Once again Texas Congressional Representative Dr. Ron Paul is running for president, once again the mainstream media infers that he’s a fringe candidate, and once again the “Ron Paul Revolution” is putting on a pretty impressive showing for being a grass roots operation. Oh Yeah… once again the establishment GOP is trying very hard to ignore him.

One internet pundit, in describing the GOP candidates explains it this way, “Here is the choice, those with integrity… -- a theocrat who wishes to impose his historical religious fantasy on the States, and… -- a cranky old dude who has some good ideas, but has a loose connection with reality. Then there are those with no integrity… -- a stuffed shirt magic underwear bozo who thinks a corporate kleptocracy is good for all, and -- a time proven personal, and professional, liar with massive ethics violations who says "trust me." Well, personally I rather think these descriptions might be just a little bit on the extreme side, but that’s what the man said…

At any rate, considering the Democratic Party’s presidential offering, I have absolutely no choice but to vote for one of the Republicans in the race, and I’m personally not real impressed with the choices the GOP has made available. What I see are three slick professional politicians, and one “cranky old dude who has some good ideas”. Humm… I’m somewhat of a cranky old dude myself, and I like to think I’ve got some good ideas as well (although a lot of people will argue that point), so…

I have a Ron Paul for President campaign brochure in front of me that says he wants to dump the Federal Reserve, along with phasing out the IRS and Income tax. Personally I think that’s one of the better ideas to come along in many a year. He wants to do away with the FED, for without the Fed creating fiat “money” out of wistful thinking and hot air, who knows, maybe we can get federal spending under control, and reduce the national debt as well! (Gee… with that the banks that are “to big to fail” might have to break-up into a lot of little banks, and the high dollar folks in the financial industry might have to go out and find an honest job for a change!) Nobody has ever gotten the overly complex IRS tax code straightened out, so, if we just dump the whole thing, the IRS can no longer be making up the rules as they go about fleecing us. He wants to balance the budget, abolish corporate subsidies, and return spending to 2006 levels, all quite admirable ideas. Another campaign promise he makes that I particularly like is to repeal the Patriot Act, and to return power to the states. The Patriot Act did after all, effectively dump our Constitution in the waste basket, eliminate the rule of law, and make our unelected federal bureaucracy the supreme power in the land. In the past Rep. Paul also voted to put a lid on “gun control” and to limit the power of the executive branch… (the presidency), which means strict limits on the war powers act and the infamous “executive orders”. But dumping the IRS has one potential drawback. Without all those tax dollars coming in every year, what are congressmen going to spend to buy their loyal following and get reelected? Many of his ideas aren’t going to set well with the really big businessmen in this country either, which probably means a lot of irate phone calls to their tame congressmen, which would make the Senator from Boeing, or the Representative from General Mills quite unhappy with the oval office. Returning power to the states obviously reduces the power of the federal bureaucracy, which also won’t set well in Sodom-on-the-Potomac. And of course Congressional business as usual again threatens to be the brick wall facing any meaningful reform, so how does he plan to get all these ideas past the great hot air generator on the hill? I dunno, but I’ll certainly wish him well!

The other problem facing Rep. Paul is the Democratic Party. You know who they are of course, those wonderful folks who voted for Mr. Obama because while we live in the greatest, most wonderful country in the world, they want to "CHANGE" all that. They also believe that the government would do a better job of spending the money I earn than I can. Well, they also think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits, while business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. Business only needs to break even and give the rest of the profits to the government for redistribution… as the Democrats see fit…

Rep. Paul would also have the problem of liberal left wing judges who rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some nut who would never get his agenda past the voters. Humm… In defending their usurpation of federal power, would the Supreme Court declare Mr. Paul’s candidacy “invalid” and kick him out of the running? But then the courts didn’t seem to have much of a problem with the highly questionable Mr. Obama…

At any rate it’s all pretty much a moot point despite Mr. Paul’s quite creditable showing in the primaries. It seems that his Libertarian background is the dragging anchor that will keep him out of office. So… I guess we’re stuck with making our choice from among three slick mainstream politicians. Which leaves me wondering, where-oh-where is Ronnie Regan when we really need him!?

The Moon?

Earth is the Cradle of Mankind,
But one cannot stay in the cradle forever.

If you’ve been following the GOP political campaign circus of late, you could hardly avoid Newt Gingrich’s proposal to build an American Lunar Colony. And you could hardly miss the ridicule being heaped on him from left and right alike. But, before we question his sanity, we might want to remember that prior to Mr. Obama’s decision to scrap the NASA program, it was official (and quite popular) US policy to “return to the moon” by 2020, as the next step in the route to Mars. So, if Newt’s got the wrong idea, so do a lot of other folks. Understand that I’m not particularly endorsing his presidential campaign, but he has brought up a point that’s dear to my heart, and one that I wish all the candidates would address.

The big opposition view in our society’s current thinking about space flight is apparently “why waste the money”, or in words of one syllable “we can’t afford it”. The political right looks at the burgeoning national debt and gets hysterical whenever someone mentions spending even more money. The left on the other hand is quite comfortable with spending a few trillion more dollars, but they want the money dumped into ObamaCare and/or a vastly expanded welfare system under the guise of “redistributing the wealth”. But there are some of us on the middle ground that see a different sort of alternative. Just how much money are we talking about when we say “Lunar Colony”? One guesstimate predicts somewhere around the high side of $130 billion, spread out over the next eight to ten years. Well, let’s consider that the price of an F-35 jet fighter is about $156 million, while the B-2 bomber costs an average of $737 million per copy. Nuclear submarines cost us anywhere from 5 to 13 billion dollars, each, while a nuclear carrier has a sticker price of about 22 billion dollars to build, and in well in excess of $168 million a year to operate! The 2009 defense budget was $680 billion dollars, and quite a bit more in suplimental “wartime” spending. HEW on the other hand has an annual budget of around $700 billion. You can figure that the US annual budget is almost $3 trillion dollars, and NASA’s current $17 billion cut of that is quite a bit less than the cost of building just one nuclear carrier. That’s not very much in comparison with the rest of the budget. Sure, it’s going to be expensive, but with those numbers spaceflight isn’t unaffordable, and we would be creating hundreds of thousands of high paying American jobs as well. Remember the Apollo lunar landing program? When a shortsighted Congress cut the funding, high-tech unemployment skyrocketed, and we soon had PhD’s pumping gas at the corner service station.

Part of the manned spaceflight bad press comes from so many highly specialized space scientists claiming that we can do the science far cheaper with robotic craft. I’m quite sure we could… if the darn things worked properly… all the time! How many space missions have you heard of lately that failed, due to any number of “minor” glitches? How many times have panicky remotely controlled software fixes saved a mission, or at least a part of it? In general the highly successful mission of the Opportunity Mars Rover is an aberration, abit a happy one. There’s a reason that aerospace engineers (and the flight dynamics people) call Mars the “planet of death”, and any mechanical or electronic equipment can fail, usually at the worst possible time! If those expensive lost missions had been manned, how many of them could have been saved by a flight engineer with a toolbox and a few spare parts? Remember the Mars mission that crashed because a computer programmer forgot there’s a big difference between miles and kilometers? Could a human pilot or navigator have spotted the problem and saved the mission? Quite probably. The Viking Mars landers of the late ‘70’s conducted tests to detect signs of life. One experiment came up positive, but the results of the other two failed to reveal any organic material in the soil, leaving many to believe that the positive results were caused by non-biological chemical reactions from soil conditions. That argument rages on today, and could have been readily settled at the time by a on-scene scientist or two. Certainly, in some cases a robotic system is indicated for several reasons, as the various multi-year photographic flights to the outer planets show… but a robot can only do what it’s previously been told to do… and when something breaks, will the computer programers have always anticipated every possible failure? No, there’s lots of argument for manned spaceflight, and I rather think that space exploration of the future will be manned, and have a lot of robotic assistance.

Throughout history, humanity has been blessed (or cursed, depending on your viewpoint) with people who are never quite satisfied with a humdrum life. They are driven to find something newer or better, or just to see what’s on the other side of the mountain. These are the explorers, the “long hunters” and mountain men, the colonists, the pioneers, who will happly risk everything in search of their personal El Dorado. Thousands of years ago explorers began spreading humanity across the face of the Earth. More of them came to the new world a few hundred years ago and preformed a near miracle of nation building. Certainly there are those in each generation that are quite happy in their nice warm, safe, totally boreing little niche in their all to familiar world, and they are quite welcome to stay home if that’s their desire. But in America our ancestors were a bit more adventurous than most, and being a somewhat cranky and disruptive sort, were dissatisfied with their stifiling old world society, it’s rules, regulations, taxes, and overcrowding. They picked up their marbles, left their homeland, and went on to build a new country that became the showpiece of Earth. Those sort of people are still with us, and, being fresh out of new lands for them to explore, the population pressure is again building, and we’ve got to find a relief valve, a means for them to go pioneering, lest they disrupt that nice safe world prefered by the stay-at-home types.

Another problem facing humanity is the fact that we’re running out of accessable resources. For the most part we’re now mining low grade materials to feed our industrial demands, and even those materials are getting scarce. (Globally we use about 3 billion tons of iron and steel each year, and little of that is recycled.) We’re running out of energy sources as well. What’s going to happen when the oil finally runs out? The enviro’s object to our burning coal, they won’t let us develop nuclear fission, and their alternate “green energy” programs have been a total flop so far. Yet the sun each second puts out about forty million times as much energy as we need on Earth, which leaves the possibility of building efficient space based solar power systems to solve our energy problems… until the sun burns out in a few billion years.

It would be nice if we could develop a new supply of natural resources… before we’re reduced to living in an updated version of the stone age! The moon, and the near Earth asteroids, contain a plentiful supply of just about everything we need here on Earth, and to live and work in space itself. Professor John S. Lewis, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona states that an asteroid only two kilometers in diameter, and assuming typical meteorite composition, would be worth (at todays prices) around 300,000 trillion dollars! That’s about the gross GLOBAL product for a very long time into the future! In one dramatic estimate, Professor Lewis highlights that main belt asteroid 3554 Amun as potentially having $20 trillion in gold beneath its surface, along with another $8 trillion in iron and nickel, $6 trillion in cobalt and $6 trillion in platinum! Humm… anyone for a gold rush in space?

Due to its proximity to Earth, the Moon is often discussed as the primary target for space colonization, an idea with its good and bad points. To start off, it’s fairly easy to get there, at least in comparison to a trip to Mars or Venus. Then, once on the moon we can, in reasonable safety, learn the tricks to living and working in space, which is going to prove a necessity to the future of the human race. Additionally, the moon has only one sixth Earth gravity, which makes it much easier and cheaper to launch deep space missions (including a trip to Mars) than it is from Earth’s surface. The main drawback to utilizing moon resources is that some of the materials we need are lacking… but we can get those materials from the near Earth asteroids, which are even easier to reach from Earth orbit than the moon is! Many people say it can’t be done, yet the Department of Defense had quite viable plans to build a permanent lunar base… in 1958. That’s ten years before Apollo flew. The science was done decades ago, now it’s simply a problem of engineering, and of course finding the will to make the effort.

We couldn’t, even if we wanted to, specify the political systems, religious beliefs, or social mores our descendants will live under. But in the question of space colonization, we have in our hands should we decide to use it, the power to leave them a shining future in which they can choose their own way.

A GI's Christmas

The holiday season is upon us, and despite my best efforts I’m still a long ways from being prepared. I guess that’s about normal, as over the last sixty plus years I have yet to be ready for Christmas! Even so, I can’t help but remember the days long ago when I served in the US military and had little to look forward to except a lonely Christmas Eve in some strange and far away places. Actually, “strange” is hardly the proper term for some of them… I’ve stood alert hangar duty on Christmas day a couple of times, I was once unfortunate enough to be subjected to a pretty respectable rocket and mortar barrage on Christmas Eve, and like most GI’s, I’ve often had nothing to do other that sit around the NCO club soaking up a few bottles of suds. (If you catch me at the right time I might even tell you about a certain Easter Sunday I spent hiding in the bushes while the bad guys sat around almost within touching distance, enjoying their Nuc-nam and rice!) No, holidays, particularly Christmas, are not an easy time to be a serviceman stationed in a strange and often hostile land, a long ways away from home and family. “Care Packages” were particularly valued, especially if they contained a batch of Mom’s home made cookies, and probably the best gift of all was a long rambling letter from the folks at home. Christmas carols came over AFN (the Armed Forces radio Network), and Santa Claus kept his distance for fear of being shot down (if he did show up, it was probably in an armored personnel carrier)! Then too, the strains of “Silent Night” hardly sound proper when punctuated by the roar of aircraft engines as fighter-bombers take off to drop hate and discontent on other peoples heads. And “Joy to the World” hardly fits when the artillery guys down the road are shooting off a few salvos of Christmas greetings from Uncle Sam.

Still, despite my maudlin reminiscing, the military went to a lot of effort to make the holidays bearable for young soldiers. Generally, in somewhat peaceable area, the barracks rats (the young bachelors) would take the duty on Christmas so that the married guys could be home with their wives and kids. In a combat zone like Vietnam it didn’t matter, Christmas was just another workday, as the much vaunted “Christmas Truce” was little more than a propaganda ploy by Charlie. ‘Course in our case the married guys returned the pulling duty favor a few days latter when we had a big party coming up. It’s interesting to note however, that in both World Wars the troops (in Europe at least, and across the hatreds of war) would declare their own impromptu Christmas Eve cease fire, and in the unexpected silence of the night would sing the old familiar carols to each other. The same happened during our civil war, when groups of opposing soldiers would meet in the middle of “no mans land”, and sit around for a couple of hours singing the old tunes and discussing their plight, all the while smoking Confederate tobacco and drinking Union coffee, until some rather indignant officers put an end to that!

In my day, for the most part nobody got stuck with KP on Christmas, as that was traditionally handled by the senior officers and NCOs. The chow wasn’t all that bad, particularly considering that the mess hall was cooking for hundreds (or even thousands) of soldiers. No, we got a real live properly cooked meal (although probably not up to Mama’s standards), and it certainly beat out ‘C” rations, ‘K’ rations, or MRE’s! If you were up on the firing line, dinner was probably served from insulated containers and might still be lukewarm when you got it, but at least it was the traditional Christmas dinner and not the inevitable hardtack and salt pork of Civil War days. A proper salute is due the cooks and bakers; as they put a lot of extra effort into those holiday meals! Where I was at, it was another tradition that the Commander, accompanied by the First Sergeant, would make a round of the maintenance area on Christmas Eve with a bottle of whisky, sharing a tot of cheer, and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

While we may have felt sorry for ourselves during my soldiering days, we had things infinitely better than some in that long line of American soldiers stretching out through our nations history. Consider the tired and hungry American soldiers at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, or remember the words of George Washington’s letter to Congress while at Valley Forge in 1778… "To see the men without clothes to cover their nakedness, without blankets to lie upon, without shoes...without a house or hut to cover them until those could be built, and submitting without a murmur, is a proof of patience and obedience which, in my opinion, can scarcely be paralleled." I doubt that Christmas was very enjoyable for the men of the Army of the Potomac at Falmouth in 1862 either, or we might consider the plight of the soldiers and marines at Frozen Chosin in 1950. The Cold War may be over, and our troops may be coming home from Iraq, but many others still stand in harms way in Afghanistan this Christmas, risking sudden death or painful wounds. American soldiers still watch, far from home and family, over the shaky truce in Korea, and to keep the antagonists separated in Kosovo. They still stand guard in this dangerous world,at lonely outposts, from the frozen artic to blistering deserts to the silent depths of a cold dark sea.

So while you enjoy this holiday season, home and hearth, the company of your family, and I would hope a scrumptious Christmas dinner, take a moment to remember those millions of young Americans, past, present, and future, who gave up their Christmas so that you might have yours.

From the Fogarty household to yours, A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.