Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Military

  • Christianity by Force or Manipulation

    There is very little that offends me more than the idea of manipulating people into Christian events or trying to convert them by force.

  • Essence Restored on the Repeal of Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell

    He thinks Christians should support the repeal, and explains his position very clearly.

  • Is Tomorrow a Down Payment on the Dream?

    On Meet the Press on Sunday Tavis Smiley made a comment that stuck with me. I have to extract this from a longer statement, and you can find the whole thing here. He said:

    … I think, though, it’s important to state that Obama’s election is a down payment on King’s dream, it is not the fulfillment of King’s dream, and that’s a crucial, I think, and critical distinction we have to make. A significant down payment to be sure, and King would certainly be celebrating this moment. But the closest thing in King’s lifetime to this Obama moment was the election of the first black mayor of a major American city, Carl Stokes in Cleveland. King went to Cleveland and, if I can paraphrase it this way, talked about this notion of black faces in high places. And while that’s something to celebrate, there is work to be done and we have got to keep the focus on the issues. And where Mr. Obama is concerned, while black America and all of America will certainly celebrate this, because King is, again, not just a black leader, he’s the best of what America is all about. …

    Now Mr. Smiley makes a good point. Election of the first African-American president is not the end of the story in terms of equal rights in America. There will be much more to be done. One of the benefits I see in having Barack Obama as president is that the very fact of his being in office will start many discussions and help change perceptions. He is not so much the sign of the end of a process but rather a milestone showing how far we have come and how far we have to go.

    But there is a problem with the whole “payment” and “down-payment” type of language with reference to what has gone on. I’m not talking about the validity of any claims for reparations. I’m talking about the way we think about equal rights and freedom for everyone. It’s practically a cliche to say that if one person isn’t free, then nobody is free. But I don’t believe we often think about how true that is.

    In doing injustice to one group of our citizens, we also injure ourselves. It is tragic for any group to be oppressed, but what about the insanity of oppressors? One of the things that the bus protest in Montgomery managed to communicate to some remarkably thick headed people was that the African-American community was part of the same economy, and that by oppressing that part of the community the opportunities of everyone were limited.

    The south didn’t lose the civil war because they were morally wrong, though they certainly were–they lost because they did not have the economy to handle such a war. One reason was that a slave economy was really not all that efficient.

    I would regard slavery as immoral even if it was not also quite insane, but there is a certain disgusting pathos about people who are oppressing someone else while at the same time making their own lives worse than they might be otherwise. Perhaps there is a reason why white-supremacy rallies do not appear to be attended by the best and the brightest!

    Now there are certainly some people who can prosper in such an economy, but overall and in the long term such things tend to fail, and to fail in a spectacular manner.

    As a Christian I believe we do owe one another allegiance, and that we do have a duty to help free the oppressed, to care for the poor and needy. I think there is a moral duty to do such things not because they are good for me, but because they are good. At the same time, I think God has so ordered the universe that it seems that I can do good for myself by doing good for others, that I will live in a richer and better society if I am willing to sacrifice for others and fight for their rights.

    Ultimately, the greatest good that can come from this election is not in the person we elected, or in specific milestones in our progress, but in the changes in the way we think about freedom, and in a determination to pursue freedom and justice for everyone. The down-payment was paid much more when each person made his or her decision about the election, and decided to vote based on the content of the candidate’s character and the good of the country, rather than on the color of that candidate’s skin.

    (Note that, as I wrote before [see Yes, Race Influences my Vote], I believe there was a value in electing an African-American president of the United States. I put that under “good of the country.” Were the content of his character not appropriate, however, the value of that symbolism would be inadequate to drive my vote.)

    Now some people did vote purely or mostly on the basis of race, at least as indicated by the polls. Some cast their vote out of hatred. But I believe that the majority went out a voted their conscience, and that was the down-payment–not the inauguration of the particular person who was elected.

    We have much further to go in terms of equal treatment of all people. One example of the type of insanity I described is the discharge of much needed linguists from the military simply because they are gay or lesbian. In a time when we have a documented need for more linguists, we have released some of them because of a sexual preference. There is an unmeasured and unmeasurable claim that morale will suffer that is allowed to overcome a demonstrable need. That’s insanity, in my view. We need to change it.

    “Don’t ask, don’t tell” means that qualified people who want to serve their country are not permitted to do so. At the same time the country is denied their services. That’s insanity and it needs to stop.

    Our attitudes towards race and toward all other forms of discrimination–all discrimination that is based on irrelevant factors is not only immoral in itself, it is insane. In allowing freedom to be withdrawn from others, we cultivate oppression for ourselves.

  • PTSS and Military Discharges

    This is the sort of story that makes me so angry that I want to hope it’s not really true. Fortunately, it appears a couple of senators with some substance are on the case, and hopefully will get to the bottom of this and hold some people’s feet to the fire as appropriate.

    According to an AP Report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (HT: Thoughts from the Heart on the Left):

    After two combat tours in Iraq on a “quick reaction team” that picked up body parts after suicide bombings, Donald Schmidt began suffering from nightmares and paranoia. Then he had a nervous breakdown.

    The military discharged Schmidt last Oct. 31 for problems they said resulted not from post-traumatic stress disorder but rather from a personality disorder that pre-dated his military service.

    Assuming the facts are correct, I wouldn’t care if he did have a pre-existing condition. After two combat tours the military should be taking care of him.

    Amongst those in congress who are moving to take action, Senators [tag]Barack Obama[/tag], Senator [tag]Christopher Bond[/tag] are investigating this in the Senate, and Rep [tag]Bob Filner[/tag] in the house.

    Please read the whole St. Louis Post-Dispatch article. It has more information and the Pentagon’s response, which thus far doesn’t impress me.

  • Honoring the Troops

    Ten years in the U.S. Air Force have made me look differently at the news and feel differently on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Memorial Day, of course, is to remember those who have fallen, but rarely do I attend a Memorial Day service any more at which there is not something done to honor both serving troops and veterans. As the armed forces medley was played at the service Sunday night in our nation’s capital, there was still a thrill, even sitting in my living room, when I heard “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder . . .”

    When a civilian hears about a troubled spot in the world, he or she will often think about the grave hardship for those who are in that situation. If it’s one that might involve U. S. forces, there is perhaps a moment of wondering whose son or daughter is headed off to help deal with the situation. But for ten years when I heard about certain trouble spots, such as Grenada, Panama, and then Iraq in the first gulf war, I knew to pack my bags and wait for the telephone call that would surely follow. There’s a big difference in the way you think about it when you are going to pack your bags.

    Now don’t get me wrong. My service was not some incredible series of hardships. As I was telling my wife, I was very anxious to go. It was what I had trained for and I wanted to do it! In fact, I had it rather light, compared to what our young people are going through in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. But what I did doesn’t even compare. I tell my family that I had the right perspective on war, assuming one has to be in it–looking down from about 32,000 or so feet. As an aircrew member (not pilot or flight crew, but working on an aircraft), I didn’t have to slog through sand hoping I didn’t encounter an IED, nor was I under hostile fire. But my experience gave me some extra sympathy.

    I remember a call from my best friend’s wife after the first gulf war. I had been so lucky as to be rotated out of Saudi Arabia before Desert Storm. I got back in the war in another area, and I will say simply that it was the lap of luxury by comparison. My best friend, on the other hand, stayed in Saudi Arabia and was extended for some time. New housing for which they had been waiting for months had become available and she had to move before he would return. Those of us at our unit who were back home managed to move her, and I got the task of assembling the kids’ swing set. The best I can say of that was that it stayed together!

    That word “extension” meant something different to her than it does to most people who watch television. It meant her husband wasn’t there to help with the move. It meant a son who was crying because he saw other people’s daddies coming home and wondered when his daddy was coming home. We hear things like, “Tours of duty will be extended 3 months,” (or 6 months, or whatever), and often we don’t think of the impact of that word on people’s lives. It’s not at all like having your boss tell you that you need to stay on a project you don’t like for a few extra months. To a serviceman, that’s three more months of danger for you, three more months of fear for your family, three more months for your finances to fall into disaster, three more months for your home to deteriorate, three more months of loneliness, and three more months of weariness. Yet you’ll do it, because you signed up for it, and it’s what you do.

    Back home people will appreciate the things you do mostly with words and mostly on holidays. I don’t mean to belittle words and special holidays. The moments in these various services and commemorations are important, but they are only words unless they become motivators to drive us to do better.

    I wrote a devotional for my wife’s list in which I asked whether we really thought that love, as defined in 1 Corinthians 13, was the sort of thing we talked about and wanted to listen to. To be honest, I don’t think it is. In that post I talked about a question my pastor asked on Sunday, about our view of celebrities and heroes. When we’re asked, we talk about how much we honor our heroes, but our actions show that we really care more about celebrities. The way you can tell is by checking what we listen to, what we watch, what we talk about, and where our money goes.

    It’s important that we think about this, because whatever happens in Iraq at this point, we are going to need our armed forces for some time to come. Terrorism isn’t over. We haven’t run out of rogue governments that will sponsor terrorist activity. The tendency for the civilian population is to forget about the troops quickly after wars. Right now, even with fighting going on, we are behaving in this country as though the war is over. There is the sense among many that if we can just get the troops home from Iraq, that will be it.

    But the state of the world is analogous to a ticking time bomb. It is not a matter of if we will again be the target of a terrorist attack, but of when. And when that happens we need to be ready to respond defensively, and ready to take action when appropriate targets present themselves. It is very easy for those who have opposed the war in Iraq (as I do) to slip into the assumption that this is it, that everything else can be solved through purely diplomatic means. But there are no purely diplomatic means. Diplomats only succeed because there are some unsung heroes holding the weapons of war. Even when diplomacy prevents a war, you can thank the folks who were willing to fight it. Nobody is stopped diplomatically where there is no force to back up the talks.

    To honor the troops we need to pay them better, equip them better, train them better, provide them better medical care, and honor them not just for a few moments at a time, or for a few weeks after they come home, but for the long term. You don’t have to pack your bags and flee from your home, because there are thousands of young men and women who will pack their bags and voluntarily head toward where the trouble is.

    A few moments of singing and talking doesn’t thank them enough for all that. If you don’t believe me, you go tiptoe through the minefields in a desert half way around the world. As I said, I’ve never done that. I had to go, but my life was comparatively comfortable. But I’m terribly thankful to this folks who have done it, or are doing it, or will be soon.

  • Turning Point? What Turning Point?

    From the Washington Post:

    Feb. 22, 2006, is the day the Bush administration says everything in Iraq changed.

    Before that day, military and administration officials frequently explain, Iraq was moving in the right direction: National elections had been held, and a government was forming. But then the bombing of the golden dome shrine in Samarra derailed that positive momentum and unleashed a wave of brutal sectarian violence.

    This is what gets me about people’s reaction to this war. I simply do not understand the number of people who have changed their mind about it. I’m especially annoyed with politicians like Hillary Clinton who seems to think she was deceived about the war. I commend John Edwards for saying he was wrong and apologizing. Nonetheless, I simply question all of their good judgment, and I have to ask what it is about this war that is surprising such as to cause them to change their minds? What on earth did they expect would happen?

    The one doubtful issue was the presence of weapons of mass destruction. I opposed the war even if such weapons existed in the region not because I think a nation like Iraq, then or now, should have such weapons but because I didn’t think that was the most useful place to get them anyhow. People overestimate the value of a large country, friendly to terrorists, as a base. No doubt it is useful, but terrorists are often, unfortunately, more creative than their opponents. Governments keep thinking massive logistics, coordination, detailed planning, and command and control, while terrorists work around those things as necessary.

    Nonetheless, even though I personally didn’t think it merited such priority, destroying materials and weapons would have been a reasonable goal for a war. It could be accomplished, finished, checked off, and declared a victory. The Iraqis were acting guilty, and there was enough evidence for a warrant.

    But again, even so, there was the problem of what you’re going to leave behind. From a military point of view, you need a specific objective and the means to accomplish it. From the political point of view, and even from a more strategic military point of view, you need to see a situation develop from accomplishing those objectives that is better than the previous situation. Is Iraq less or more dangerous when all is said and done than it was before? And that is where I see the problem. Our troops didn’t fail. Certainly there have been problems of tactics and logistics, and political maneuvering that is not the greatest. But the one big problem with this war was there before we went in and remains there now. It hasn’t changed. There simply is no “after the war” scenario that is going to make things better than they were before.

    We want contradictory things. Democracy, but no Islamic republic. The will of the Iraqi people, when the Iraqi people themselves divide into community without a strong, common national interest. Iraqi sovereignty, but measures that guarantee the security of the United States.

    If we could accomplish all those goals, the cost in lives would be reasonable. I know many people will protest, but I’m a veteran myself, and when you go into the military, you know you might die. You may not think that you, personally will die, but you must be ready to put your life on the line for your country. If I were still in the military, that would be what I’d do. Further I expect politicians to be able to look at the folks in the military services and ask whether their lives will be well-expended. A peaceful, stable, democratic Iraq without weapons of mass destruction would be worth such lives.

    The problem is that it isn’t going to happen, not with any amount of resources and lives we have at our disposal. That’s the tragedy of all this. There’s no turning point. Our troops have done well with the resources and the goals they were given, but the goals were badly laid out–not just badly stated. They were bad goals.

    I recall a national championship game in which Nebraska played Florida and defeated them overwhelmingly. A radio commentator and Florida fan were discussing the game the next day on a call-in show, and the fan asked what was the turning point of the game. “Turning point?” said the commentator. “The turning point was the singing of the national anthem.” In the case of Iraq, the turning point was when the military was sent in to do a job that was not politcally feasible. No blame should attach to them for not accomplishing the impossible.

  • Persecution Victim as a Profession

    It seems that former Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who claims to have been dismissed from the Navy for praying in the name of Jesus, is making a career now of being persecuted. The story is being kept alive. I was alerted to the current edition through my Breaking Christian News e-mail alert, a source that often provides me with valuable, positive news, but in this case refers me to the WorldNetDaily which appears to be a bit apoplectic.

    WND said:

    A chaplain who was dismissed from the U.S. Navy when he refused to following orders to make his prayers “nonsectarian” and remove the name of Jesus from them now has been commissioned by the governor of Kentucky as an honorary “Kentucky Colonel.

    But CNN reported:

    In September a military jury found Lt. Gordon Klingenschmitt had disobeyed a superior officer’s order not to wear his uniform to a political protest at the White House in March 2006.

    Ah, he was not dismissed for praying in Jesus name, but for disobeying a lawful order. Interesting difference. The Kentucky legislature should be ashamed of themselves for commending an officer for disobeying orders. Kentucky’s governor should be ashamed of himself for giving such a person an award for courage.

    Since I have commented on the issue before, I’m not going to go through the details of the original problem about prayer. Suffice it to repeat here that Klingenschmitt’s view on this differs substantially from that of others, including other Christian chaplains.