They were the losers!

When two airliners struck the World Trade Center's twin towers on 9/11, and another hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania, my students acted with shock then with determination to tell the story and report how students at Appalachian State University were affected.

One wonders, though, how many finally joined a branch of the armed services to serve either in Afghanistan or Iraq. For some of the male students, their testosterone-laden bodies were ready to fight, or so it seemed at the time. Calls were made for us to strike back. To send troops to the mountains of Afghanistan to track down Osama bin Laden and to kill him.

One thing has not changed, however. The faces of our airmen, soldiers, sailors, and marines have not changed since the 1960s. While there was a draft in the sixties, it only snared the young men from working class backgrounds. The likelihood that anyone from an upper crust background getting called up in the draft were slim, pretty slim, hell, almost impossible.

Today, the soldiers and marines who are doing the dying in our two wars look a lot like they did in Vietnam. These are the young people who attend second- or third-rate high schools. And even then they are the students the cream of those schools labeled as the "Losers" with a capital L. They are the students one identifies as not going on to college, or who has to work to help the family, not just help pay for the Jeep in the driveway.

How interesting it is that when it comes to dying for our country, it seems that only those we label as losers are the ones willing to join and serve. Makes one wonder just what is worth saving in our country.

Weather and Politics Enough to Cause a Teetotaler to Drink

The weather has been...well...Boone weather today. It is cloudy, rainy, and there is ice on everything and people are beginning to worry about getting home. Appalachian State has canceled classes tonight and warned everyone to check the Web in the morning for whether there will be further cancelations. All in all, just another dreary day in the High Country.

Actually, the weather is pretty much a match for the funk the nation finds itself in. It seems everyone is pissed at the big banks, angry as heck at Congress and the White House, and, if Massachusetts is an example, angry enough to send any brainless bonehead to Washington in an effort to get change.

It's only been a year, but it seems the Democrats have set a record for how long it took them to completely turnoff supporters and ignite a progressive protest across the nation. If I weren't a teetotaler, I'd go home tonight and pour me a tumbler of scotch.

Who? What are we?

What will we remember about Christmas Day 2009? Will we remember it as a celebration of a Savior’s birth, or will we remember it as the day we, as a nation, showed the world just how feckless and cowardly we are?

Do you remember the 2000 hit movie “Gladiator,” starring Russell Crowe as the Roman general Maximus who was betrayed by an emperor, had his family murdered, and escaped death at the hands of the Praetorian Guard only to find himself in slavery, captured by a North African slave trader who sold him to Proximo and a life in the arena.

One scene in that memorable movie stands out for me and, and at least in my mind has come to represent what I see out of the Washington and media elites whenever some uneducated or obviously mentally deranged scavenger from some Third World country decides he wants to blow up himself along with a bunch of Americans.

Maximus is chained to Juba, played by that marvelous African actor Djimon Hounsou, and they stand with all the other newly purchased slaves in their rags and filth waiting for the crude door to this backwater arena to open and lead them to their fate. The excitement in the scene grows as each character comes to grip with what awaits them. Horns sound. The crowd screams in its bloodlust. The gladiators on the other side of the door, identities hidden behind grotesque animal heads, swing their arms and swords, axes and other implements of death. Maximus and a few others stand tall, tamping down their own fear ready to lead and conquer.

Remember? As a member of the audience the day you saw this film, weren’t you ready for Maximus to avenge himself? You had picked your side in this fight. That’s the image we want the world to see when they see an American. Isn’t that so?

But what image do they see all too often? It’s the image of the little, sniveling coward standing in line, chained to a huge German slave. Tears streak his dirty face and piss slides down his legs to pool at his feet. The others move away from him. The stench of death already rests with him and when the door opens the first to die is the coward.

Wow! I can heard it now. I’ll be accused of not supporting our troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. As a U.S. Marine veteran I’m convinced our men and women in those theatres of operation are performing outstandingly. But of course the British Army was just as professional in the 19^th century when it fought two wars against Afghanistan tribesmen. The first, from 1838 to 1842 ended badly for the Brits. After invading and ultimately reaching Kabul and seating their man on that country’s throne, the British faced insurrection and, ultimately, defeat in the mountain passes as the remainder of its combined Brit and Indian force and 12,000 civilians were wiped out.

It is not the brave men and women on our frontlines that I see as the sniveling cowards. It is all the rest of us who refuse to sacrifice for this struggle. Especially, it’s this daily image of conservative lawmakers and talkers who rant and rave about the inadequacies of our mission, blaming the current leadership, Democrats, for all that’s wrong but never once offering anything that might indicate they have really thought about this war and what our strategy ought to be. Despite all the failure. Despite all the abuse. Despite the war crimes we have committed and, probably, continue to commit, no one offers sound advice for getting ourselves out of this mess, and no one shows any willingness to talk with those in the other party to work it out. The failure, my friends is not with our brave men and women in uniform. It is with the feckless cowards who stroll the protected halls of Congress doing nothing to protect our soldiers, sailor, marines and airmen.

We are constantly bombarded with vitriol from the right. Conservatives in Congress take a perverse pleasure in seeking failure for the country as they see their only route to power as coming with the destruction of those currently in power. We ought to remember this. Democrats, then the minority in both Houses of Congress, crossed the aisle with extended hands offering to work with their Republican colleagues and the Republican administration in 2001 to defeat the people responsible for 9/11. That happened. It is in the historical record. But Republicans decided they controlled Congress so there was no need to be bipartisan. The White House decided it was their way or the highway, not only for the domestic political world but for international strategies as well. That attitude continues in Washington, and not just with the war effort. It is an attitude that will ultimately destroy us.

For me, I am beginning to see strong parallels to these Afghan wars with our own. I’m also beginning to see strong parallels to the Vietnam struggle, despite what our leaders and military analysts say. Cambodia, a neutral country bordering Vietnam was sucked into the maelstrom of war as it was used by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong for safe havens to escape American and South Vietnamese forces in the 1960s and 1970s. Sound familiar? Our leaders at the time opted to carry out secret bombings of that tragic little country, and finally, when that had not worked, invasion. The result was a country toppled into the quagmire of our war. In fact, we opened the gates of hell for Cambodia as the result of our failed strategy was Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It is estimated that 1.7 million people died in the Killing Fields of Pol Pot’s regime.

We bomb the tribal regions of Pakistan trying to kill Al Qaeda leaders using drones and missiles. We badger the Pakistani Army to fight the war for us in the tribal regions, and in Afghanistan we face a growing and persistent threat from the Taliban, the former leaders of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the government we toppled in 2001 when we attacked after 9/11. Eight years later we are still fighting them. Just like the Brits in the 19^th century, we face an insurrection. We have tied ourselves to a leader the people of Afghanistan hate, don’t trust, and whom we do not trust. The Afghans don’t want us there, yet we are afraid to pullout. The Taliban is using that growing hatred of Americans to grow its struggle for regaining control of that backwater little country. And, Al Qaeda is willing to see American blood spilled on any battlefield as long as it leads to the collapse of another super power.

Finally, who will be the next Pol Pot? Is he sitting in some mud hut in the tribal areas today? If we Americans are truly like Maximus, we will not let that happen. However, if we are truly like the sniveling coward with piss on his legs, then we are really at the end of our run as a world power. Which are we?

Two apologies: Night and Day

Serena Williams, after a day and a half to cool off, has offered a sincere apology after her behavior Saturday was deemed inappropriate and threatening by U.S. Open officials.

At least there seems to be one person in this country who, after taking some time to reflect on their actions, is ready to admit they screwed up--BIG TIME. Not so the congressman of South Carolina, Joe Wilson.

The only thing Wilson has proved is that James L. Petigru had it right on the eve of the Civil War when he said South Carolina was too small for a country but too big to be an insane asylum. Joe Wilson certainly appears to be a descendant of those South Carolinians who believed it was OK to kick start a war that would destroy their region and leave 600,000 American from North and South dead.

Here it is several days beyond the episode. Wilson has given his grudging apology claiming he just lost it. Like I and most football fans lose it before the TV in the privacy of our living rooms when we scream at the idiot coaches or hapless players who are spoiling our afternoon.
Wilson apparently believed it appropriate to shout out from the floor of the House at the President of the United States and call the man a liar.

I put that behavior in the same tasteless and threatening arena as those bozos who carried guns to where the president was speaking during the August recess.

Well, we know there are lies and damn lies and I don't know which kind Wilson was accusing President Obama of, or of which Joe Wilson is guilty of himself. One thing we know about our political leadership in this country, most if not all of them lie from time to time. We voters are capable of deciding who is lying and who isn't without Joe Wilson's help from the floor of the House.

We expect Wilson to act like a grown up. And we expect Serena Williams to act like a grown up. She and her sister have commanded center court in tennis for several years. They are well on their way to, perhaps, becoming the best to play the game. There was no need for this outburst, and certainly no need to appear so threatening while using language more appropriate to the parking lot outside a strip club.

But she has apologized, twice, for her misdeed. Good for her. But Wilson is another matter. He is the poster child for a fringe element that seems to have grabbed control of the Republican Party. This radical element is the same that used to control the Democratic Party in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the South. The Democrats at the time were a regional party, pretty much based in the South like the Republicans today.

Party members were basically in bed with industrialists and bankers (sound familiar?), and used race baiting tactics to keep poor whites and blacks at each other's throats. It worked until the 1960s when, for some reason a southern president decided Civil Rights had to be honored in this country and forced Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and other legislation that finally began to remove the second-class status of blacks. The flow of white voters switching parties began to grow in the South, picking up a really fine head of steam when Ronald Reagan decided to announce his candidacy for the presidency in the heart of old Dixie, Mississippi.

Joe Wilson seems happily at home with that pedigree. After LBJ gave it up the Republicans began to attract those in the South who were wanting a better home for their race baiting souls than the one the Democrats then offered. Republicans have become a marginal party, but one still capable of making mighty mischief as they obstruct progress. However, unless their plan is to forment armed insurrection, I don't see how they plan to widen their influence and once again challenge the nation with its political theories.

I tip my hat to Serena. She and Venus are still the best. Joe, it's time you learn how to really lead. And voters of South Carolina, it's time you moved away from Petigru's directions to a lost traveler, "My dear sir, take any road, you can't go amiss. The whole state is one vast insane asylum."

Six minutes: That's all it took!

I read an article in this morning's New York Times by Dan Van Natta Jr. and Abby Goodnough in which it was stated that the call to police about someone breaking into Henry Louis Gate's house was made at 12:45 p.m. the day of the incident. Gates was arrested at 12:51 p.m.

That's six minutes. Six minutes to go from a voice on the end of a telephone line to a cop slapping the cuffs on a 58-year-old, 5-foot seven-inch black man who needs a cane to walk.

Let's break that down if we can. The article didn't provide a timeline for the events, but lets say the call came in at 12:45. It still requires, let's say 30 seconds for the dispatcher to get the necessary information and get that relayed to police in the vicinity. Sergeant Crowley was nearby and responded. OK, let's say it took him about a minute to get there. That puts the time at 14:46:30 or there abouts. Let's say further that it took Crowley about 30 seconds to park his car, get his whatever in order as he walked from the car to the house and knocked. That takes us to 12:47. That leaves four minutes for this situation to deteriorate to the point that Dr. Gates was arrested, and, if you remember, Gates at some point provided Sgt. Crowley with his driver's license and Harvard ID, clearly establishing the residence as his. So it really wasn't four minutes.

And, when Crowley didn't respond to a follow up call after he called in his response, the Cambridge police dispatched six other units to that quiet residential street.

This just further convinces me the police were out of line on this one. Four minutes or less for a cop who wasn't getting the deference he wanted from an uppity black man to slap the cuffs on a senior citizen.

I'm more convinced than ever that too many cops strap on their self-importance when they put on their uniform and that gets in the way of good community policing. Bottom line, I'm more convinced than ever that race was at the heart of this encounter and while Dr. Gates may very well have been confrontational with the policeman, that isn't a crime as long as it remained verbal. Come on, give the man a chance to vent then cool off. Unfortunately that's not the image of police one sees on the cop shows and the reality shows. The image one sees then is of heavily armed Darth Vaders shouting and threatening violence if the suspect doesn't comply. And, at what point does a suspect become a suspect. In this case Dr. Gates should never have been the suspect.

And one always hears that Massachusetts is the most liberal state in the Union. Really?

Procedure and state power are at issue

One doesn't have to spend much time reading the news to come across another example of how stupid we as social creatures have become.

I'm referring to the flap surrounding President Obama and his comments about the arrest and detention of Henry Louis Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research.

Anyone who remotely follows the news in this country is probably familiar with the events recently when Dr. Gates, returning home from a trip overseas, found his front door stuck and as he and his driver, another black man, were pushing against the door to open it were sighted by a neighbor who called the police.

That's where Sgt. James Crowley came into this picture. Crowley is a white police officer and it is the controversy swirling around the interactions between these two men that has the nation buzzing. Was it racism? Was it an over-agitated senior citizen refusing to back down? What really happen?

Let me state my position on this. First, I don't know if racism was overtly at the heart of this situation, but I bet it was there covertly, buried so deep in the psychi of both men that neither could respond in any other way than for Dr. Gates to become angry at being confronted in his own home by an agent of the state, and the policeman seeing an out-of-control citizen confronting him in anger and disbelief. Second, I believe that President Obama did nail it when he made the observation that arresting a man who had demonstrated he was in his own home, wasn't confronting his neighbors with illegal or inappropriate behavior, and who was confronted by what he perceived to be the jackbooted authority of the state was stupid on the part of the police.

Why do I feel that way? Easy. While many don't see the modern American policeman as some Darth Vader figure dressed in black and armed to the teeth with expression stern and eyes masked behind dark glasses, I want you to look at the photograph that went across the country. There is Dr. Gates, a slight man as compared to the giants who have cufffed him and are leading him off his own front porch. There were three of them in the photo, three of them. You have to wonder where these men parked their compassion and understanding. Instead they choose the stern "make and example" position that cops usually take. Their immediate response was to follow procedure to the letter and that's what they did. That's what initial investigations have found, anyway. But that is my point. Perhaps the "procedure" is at fault. Obviously these men, all adults with years under their belts as police, found it too difficult to step back in a situation not going to their liking and choosing instead to not use their mind, compassion, and understanding of a tense, but certainly not life-threatening or bodily-harm threatening situation. Instead they choose to humiliate Dr. Gates.

Perhaps it is time the Cambridge Police review their procedures for cases like this. I certainly feel that once Dr. Gates established his identity and that he was in his own residence, the police, without a duly sworn warrant, were wrong. While many might disagree, it is my opinion that at the point Dr. Gates established that it was his residence, that no crime was in progress, his IV Amendment rights came into play and the police were then at fault.

It seems that on a regular basis we hear of police overstepping the bounds of their authority. Whether it's the tazing of a student who refuses to leave a library, or the killing of a senior citizen who refuses to leave his humble home when confronted by the local SWAT brigade ready to haul him to a rest home, or the simple arresting of a distinguished citizen who happens to be black for becoming angry at being confronted in his own home by one of the state's dark knight, it shouldn't happen. Procedure is always cited as the reason no one is held responsible. My contention is procedure is at fault and should be changed.

Our Creaky Old Space Program

Today is the 40th anniversary of man finally stepping onto the surface of a world on which he wasn't born. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to do that, and shortly after Buzz Aldrin became the second. For a few brief hours they froliced on the surface of our moon, totally alone except for the tenuous radio link to earth and with their orbiting comrade, Mike Collins.

For those of us watching from our living rooms, bedrooms, diners and wherever we could gather to watch those static-filled TV images of this historic event, it seemed that we Americans were finally stepping onto a path that would take us to the stars.

If it were only so. Here we are 40 years later, and we haven't returned to that outpost that circles us a quarter of a million miles away.

That's right. We sent six other crews to the moon and five of those were able to land and send back breath-taking images of our engineering prowress. Unfortunately, the politicians of the day from the White House and Congress couldn't wait to shutdown the program. Three missions were cancelled, and the vast engineering system that built the powerful Saturn V rocket was dismantled. Instead of looking to the outer planets and dreaming of further adventures, we decided to build a space bus and for almost 30 years have been satisfied with NASA's version of Ralph Cramden circling in low earth orbit.

Don't get me wrong. The Shuttle was able to put into space the Hubble Space Telescope and when it proved near sighted as heck, we found men who could go aloft and fix it. That alone justified the program and proved man has a role in space. But the dream, the adventure, the mystery of deep space exploration was left to our imaginations. And we American quickly filled our minds with Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien, and numerous other nameless space westerns.

Of all the movies about space, the one I like best is Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones in "Space Cowboys." Why? Because it showed us what is really true about our present space effort. The adventure of space is dying off as quickly as our mid-70-year-old former moon walkers line up for the rest home and death. How much longer can a 78-year-old Neil Armstrong try to ignite the flame of adventure once again for a generation that sees him and his deeds as just words on the page of a history book?

I remember those days. I was home on leave from the Marine Corps. I was stationed at Cherry Point MCAS in North Carolina, and being around pilots and high-performance aircraft was a real ego booster. I remember sitting in the bedroom of Steve Neighbors, a friend of my brother, watching the images as Walter Cronkite acted like a teenage boy who has just been told by the prettiest girl in the class that she would go to the prom with him.

How were we to know that in just a few short years it would all be over and the only monuments to this achievement would be a few crumbling concrete foundations that marked the spot where once mighty, thundering rockets shook the world as they carried a few lucky men on the greatest adventure ever.

A couple of years later I was stationed in Iwakuni, Japan, and while there purchased a Moon watch. The Omega Speedmaster Professional was the only watch certified by NASA for space missions. I still have that watch. Of course it is like the space program. The seals and gaskets that keep out dirt and moisture have long since deteriorated to the point that if I wear it on a rainy day the crystal will cloud up. It needs an overhaul. But like our country I can't affort the price of sending it to a recognized Omega repair facility for this work. The United States talks big about going back to the moon and setting up a base there. It talks equally as brave about going to Mars. But so far there isn't a spacecraft on deck to do either mission and probably won't be for many years to come. Our shuttle, that aging delivery van of a spaceship, will be retired after a few more mission to the International Space Station. And the space station, despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the efforts of several countries to manufacture and place in orbit the various components needed to build it, will be decommissioned and crashed into the ocean in 2016.

Talk about lack of vision. It's no wonder we haven't made it back to our nearest space neighbor. Perhaps it's time we overhaul the space agency. Start over with new people, those who haven't bought into the current stagnant and fetid play it safe pond that has worked so hard to lower our sights. Let's dream again.