Memorializing Eternal War?

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UPDATE: August 14, 2012: This post was written July 23, 2009. Last month, James Skakoon visited the ND-Manitoba International Peace Garden, had the same general feelings I had, and when he came home searched the internet to see if he could find any opinions which were similar to his. He found my post, we got in correspondence with each other, and as a result, he submitted his own opinion, which was recently published in the Bismarck (ND) Tribune. You can read it here. (The text of this column is included at the end of this post.)
This is yet another reminder that results are possible: sometimes they just take a little while.
The original article follows:
See Updates at end of the original post.  Specific links, including contact information, are at the very end of the post.
A reader requested specific information on the location of the International Peace Garden.  Here is the link: http://www.peacegarden.com/maps.htm
international-peace-garden-day-pass-july-18-090021
The first 25 years of my life – 1940-65 – I was a resident of North Dakota.  During that time, or since, I had never visited the famed International Peace Garden, which forms part of the boundary between North Dakota and Manitoba.  (The story of the Peace Garden, which was dedicated in 1932,  is at http://www.peacegarden.com .)

International Peace Garden North Dakota-Manitoba July 18, 2009

International Peace Garden North Dakota-Manitoba July 18, 2009

July 17-18 I was at a conference at Belcourt, ND, and noted that the Peace Garden was only 35 miles or so away.  On July 18, a beautiful summer day, I decided to leave my conference early, drive up to the Peace Garden, and then head back to Winnipeg, where we were visiting relatives.
I found a most beautiful, serene and interesting place…with some dissonance.
The Peace Garden essentially consists of two parallel sidewalks, straddling the international border with beautiful gardens in between.  Off to the sides, on both sides of the borders, are scenic drives.  I had time to do the approximately one and one-half mile walk, from end to end.
About half way down the American side, off to my left, I saw a pile of what looked like construction debris.
Coming closer, I saw a plaque with the headline “Let Peace Prevail“ which described the rubble: “The International Peace Garden represents a unique and enduring symbol of the strength of our friendship as nations, our mutual respect and our shared desire for world peace.
“The events of September 11, 2001, failed to shake the foundation of our shared vision of peace and prosperity for all the word’s people.
“This cairn, composed of steel rescued from the devastation of the World Trade Center in New York , ensures the memory of this tragedy will not be lost and reminds us to cherish tolerance, understanding and freedom.
“Officially unveiled by the Honourable Gary Doer, Premier of Manitoba, September 11, 2002.”

Girders from the Twin Towers at International Peace Garden July 18, 2009

Girders from the Twin Towers at International Peace Garden July 18, 2009

It startled me to see this symbol of what seems to have become justification for Eternal Fear and War occupying this place of Peace, but there it was.  The park brochure, which I looked at later, announced that “in 2010, visitors will see the creation of our 911 Memorial Contemplative Garden sponsored by Rotary Clubs International….”
I continued my walk, reaching the halfway point at the Peace Chapel, near the Peace Tower and straddling the border.  The Chapel was dedicated in 1970 and is sponsored by the General Grand Chapter Order of the Eastern Star.  http://www.ndoes.org.
The walls of this simple and beautiful chapel include 56 quotations all on the most peaceful topics…but in each of the corners were displays of many front pages of international newspapers for September 12, 2001 all, of course, featuring the World Trade Center towers in flames.  To me, it was dissonance.

One of many worldwide newspaper front pages on display in the four corners of the Peace Chapel, primarily from September 12, 2001

One of many worldwide newspaper front pages on display in the four corners of the Peace Chapel, primarily from September 12, 2001

I am glad I went to the Peace Garden, and I do think that its basic message remains as it was when it was dedicated July 14, 1932: “To God in His Glory.  We two nations dedicate this Garden and pledge ourselves that as long as man shall live; we will not take up arms against one another.”  It is “enobling peace”, but its overemphasis on the 911 tragedy is troubling, especially since that tragedy was used almost immediately to justify a war against Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with 911, and the war left huge moral and financial consequences for ourselves and countless other innocents.  “Peace” and “War” became synonyms, in effect.
All the way back to Winnipeg I kept thinking of those 9-11 displays.  I am still considering the letter I plan to send to the assorted officials connected with the Memorial.  I think I will suggest that it is time for those newspapers to leave the Peace Chapel; and that I hope great care is taken to not let a message of fear and war creep into the 911 Memorial Contemplative Garden which likely will surround the twin towers debris.
The drive from the Memorial back to Winnipeg was long and peaceful.  Entering the Red River Valley west of Cavalier on highway 5 I spied a gigantic concrete structure a mile or two off the road.  I knew it was there – I’d seen it before: a visible symbol of an earlier era of fear and loathing, during the 1950s era of guided missiles aimed at the Soviet Union from numerous places in North Dakota.  I went up and took a look.
Here it is:  The story is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program.  Scroll down a bit for more on this particular site.

Cold War Relic (still used for something) off Highway 5 west of Cavalier ND July 18 2009

Cold War Relic (still used for something) off Highway 5 west of Cavalier ND July 18 2009

“Let Peace Prevail”?

 

Display of a 1960s Minuteman Missile LaMoure ND August 17 2009

Display of a 1960s Minuteman Missile LaMoure ND August 17 2009

Update August 5, 2009:
On July 23, I wrote the CEO of the International Peace Garden, Mr. Doug Hevenor (text below).  I copied the ND Governor, Manitoba Premier, Grand Secretary of the ND Order of the Eastern Star and the President of Rotary International.
On August 5, Mr. Hevenor graciously responded to my letter.  I will post his response here if/when I have his permission.
A few days ago, Madeline Simon posted as follows: “Having looked at the Peace Garden website and checking out the “What to See” item and the listing for the 9/11 memorial, I found that the winners of the competition for a design were listed with this statement:
“On November 26, 2002, their design, with the message of recall, reflect, remember, understand, forgive, and grow selected as the first place winner.”
Thus far, the first three of these are directly reflected as the titles of the three interdependent chambers titled Recall, Reflect, and Remember, and they appear to be soliciting funds for the project.” (emphasis added)
On July 30, Bob Heberle said this: “Loved and agreed with your disappointment with the Peace Garden between ND and Canada.  The use of 9/11 is appalling and irritates me too.  It’s the very subtle way of totally misdirecting our thoughts and energies.  It is not too dissimilar to the change of the original meaning of Armistice Day by converting it to Veterans Day.  This was done in 1954 by President Eisenhower at the insistence of many military lobbyists.  It is easy to see how by simply adding the word, “veterans” where “Armistice” once was so easily manipulates the thought and changes the idea of honoring perpetual peace to honoring war.  After all, soldiers are for the most part considered warriors.  With all due respect to the honored warriors of native American tradition, Veteran’s Day now promotes glorification of war.
This is why our local, now national,  Veterans for Peace group encourages us to salute November 11 as Armistice Day and ring bells eleven times in honor of the peace pledges of the world that were orginally honored.  We do not encourage the firing of rifles nor fly overs for obvious reasons.
So, for me to turn the Peace Garden into a memorial for 9/11, changes entirely the notion of peace to reminders to avenge.
Relevant portions of letter to International Peace Garden and other officials from Dick Bernard, July 23, 2009:
“The Peace Garden is a beautiful place, but I am concerned about the emphasis on and symbolism of 9-11-01 at the Peace Gardens.
I have no concern whatsoever about 9-11 as a reminder of a departure from Peace.  Indeed, when I developed my own website in March, 2002, the peace and justice section of the website featured two snapshots I had taken of the Twin Towers in June, 1972…I write about 9-11 there: www.chez-nous.net/tree_radio.html .
I am no stranger to the power of symbols.  My uncle Frank, my Dad’s brother, eternally rests aboard one of those symbols: the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.  The Arizona was his home for the last six years of his too-short life.  Each December 7 I see his home blow up.
My concern with the Peace Gardens I saw [July 18] is the distinctly negative symbolism that 9-11-01 has come to represent after 2002.  It has been and still is used as a reminder to fear and despise others, rather than as a symbol of Peace.
Of course, I am only one person, with a very limited ability to influence decisions.  But I hope those of you receiving this letter will pay more than casual attention to my concern.
*
More specific info on who manages the International Peace Garden and about the 9-11 project at:
http://www.peacegarden.com/gardeninfo.htm
http://www.peacegarden.com/allpdf/911%20recall.pdf
Mailing address for letters Mr. Doug Hevenor, CEO, International Peace Garden, 10939 Highway 281, Dunseith ND 58329.
October 9, 2009: Relevant portion of letter sent to all 16 members of the Board of the International Peace Garden.
“,,,The matter of the Peace Garden focus on 9-11-01 is never far from my mind.
I think the seeming continuing emphasis on the terroristic aspect of 9-11 is inappropriate at this stage in our history (if it ever was appropriate), and sends a message contrary to the very mission of the International Peace Garden.  9-11 has come to be a symbol of war and enmity more than of peace and reconciliation.  It is most especially inappropriate at a place of peace, as the Peace Garden is supposed to be.
At the absolute minimum, I would ask that the website reference #mce_temp_url# be cleaned up and expanded to include all aspects of the proposed memorial*.  But I’d like the efforts to go beyond just that.
I am very well aware that actions such as implanting girders from the World Trade Center complex are, once taken, often difficult to impossible to reverse, for all sorts of reasons, good and not so good.  It is easier to dismiss solitary objections like mine, than to seriously look at their possible validity.
About all I can do is to call attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Dick Bernard
* – This page at the website gives only passing, almost invisible, mention to the other three components of the 9-11 Memorial at the Peace Garden: UNDERSTAND, FORGIVE and GROW.  They are mentioned in the letter, but given no emphasis whatever, compared with the other words.
Crisis Sequence handout also sent to the Board.  This is a handout from some long ago workshop I attended, and it well identifies how human beings normally react to major crises (like the World Trade Center attack) – it’s a matter of months, not years.  I prefer to use the original somewhat ragged copy, rather than reconstruct it.  Succinctly,  a continuing crisis needs to be nurtured, and that is what I think has happened with 9-11.  The words are not visible below, but in the heading, and the line, where the two words are circled, these are the words, from left to right:
Phase: – Impact – Recoil-Turmoil – Adjustment – Reconstruction
Time Period: – Hours – Days – Weeks – Months
The other lines:
Time Perspective: – Present – Past – Future
Emotions – Fight-Flight – Rage-Anxiety-Guilt-Depression – Hope
Thought: – Disorientation/Distractibility – Ambiguity/Uncertainty – Problem-Solving
Direction: – Search for lost object – Detachment – Search for new object – Re-attachment
Search Behavior: Reminiscence – Perplexed Scanning – Exploration – Testing

Crisis Sequence circa 1972

Crisis Sequence circa 1972

James Skakoon column in August 13, 2012 Bismarck Tribune (direct link is at beginning of this post):
The International Peace Garden lies in the Turtle Mountains between Manitoba and North Dakota. Its long central garden parallels the border, with one half in Canada, one half in the United States.
Approaching the Peace Garden from north or south, one can drive unimpeded into the garden grounds. Returning to either country, however, requires re-entering through Customs at the border crossings. This suggests that the International Peace Garden sits outside any national boundaries and is thus devoid of political and national conflict.
I recently visited the International Peace Garden. Although I had been there many times before, it has been some 40 years since my last visit. My expectations, however, had not changed. I expected a pleasant, beautiful, calming place where I could experience positive thoughts of peace and good will.
My expectations were quickly dashed upon seeing a gruesome memorial to 9/11 within the International Peace Garden. The memorial is centered around a mass of 10 damaged, twisted girders salvaged from the World Trade Center rubble. I was appalled to see something so incongruously out of place in a space dedicated to peace. The sight of these girders is hardly calming and not at all peaceful.
To be fair, the Carillon Bell Tower at the Peace Garden is dedicated to war veterans, perhaps suggesting a precedent for other memorials on the garden grounds. It was erected by the North Dakota Veterans Organization in 1976 as a bicentennial project. Also to be fair, an attempt has been made by the Peace Garden to make something positive, if not quite suggesting peace, out of its 9/11 memorial. For example, the headline on a placard at the display reads, “Let Peace Prevail.”
The winning entry of a student design competition for the area around the girders offered a message of “recall, reflect, remember, understand, forgive, and grow.”
This compassionate entry is the theme for the final display areas around the girders. But neither these elements, nor anything else about the memorial are likely to change our automatic emotional reaction to 9/11, and a memorial to veterans such as the Carillon Bell Tower is unlikely to evoke a similar reaction.
September 11th and its aftermath represent religious zealotry, terrorism, revenge, destruction, political strife, military and civilian casualties, hatred, and war. And yes, heroism, service, bravery, and loss as well. One peace-like word, cooperation, applies to the Western world’s response to 9/11 (although it was largely one nation imposing its political will on others). Then again, this cooperation led most prominently to waging a war.
At a Sept. 10, 2003, ceremony at the Peace Garden remembering the terrorist attacks, Kent Conrad, a U.S. senator from North Dakota, said of 9/11, “It was a day that roused a mighty nation to anger, and to action.“
None of this relates to peace, at least not now or in the foreseeable future.
I have no untoward contempt for memorials to human tragedies, wars, and other catastrophes. In Berlin, I visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Holocaust Memorial). I cried. I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. I cried there, too.
I visited Wounded Knee, S.D., the site of an 1890 massacre of Native Americans by U. S. Cavalry. I cried again.
These memorials are either in their original locations or in spaces dedicated to and evoking their purpose. The same is true of every other memorial I have visited or can think of. Removed from its immediate context, the Peace Garden’s 9/11 memorial poignantly accomplishes its mission.
The articles of incorporation for the International Peace Garden, which was dedicated in 1932, state the purpose as “Creation and maintenance of [a] garden or gardens…as a memorial to the peace that has existed between the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada.” The inscription on the stone cairn at the entrance to the Garden pledges eternal peace between Canada and the United States: “…as long as man shall live we shall not take up arms against each other.”
A June 3, 2002, Manitoba government press release quoted then Manitoba Premier Gary Doer as saying, “The International Peace Garden is a magnificent and unique site and I can think of no place more appropriate or fitting for a memorial of this kind.”
Although Doer surely intended a purely positive comment for the 9/11 memorial effort, perhaps he should have examined the garden’s purpose beforehand. Everyone is allowed his or her opinion; some are quite different.
When I explained about the 9/11 memorial on the Peace Garden grounds to a friend, he replied, “9/11 doesn’t have to be everywhere.”
What 9/11 has to do with peace is beyond me. Visitors to the International Peace Garden should not have to be reminded of terrorism, hatred and war. This memorial does not belong there.
(James G. Skakoon is an engineer, inventor, and author. He was born and raised in North Dakota and now lives in St. Paul.)

#51 – Dick Bernard: Death: Michael (Jackson), Robert (McNamara), Sarah (Palin)

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Yesterday while I was donating blood, I asked the nurse if she had watched any of the Michael Jackson memorial or other goings on surrounding his death.  Mostly, she was non-commital, but her response was pretty succinct and wise.  There are two things certain in our lives, she said: we are born, and we die.  This led to a little sidetrip for the two of us into another reality: unless someone really truly plans their death, none of us know when or how our end will come.  All we know for sure is that there is a temporal end.  We agreed that is good that we don’t know the details about our dying….
Of course, nobody knows what’s on the other side of life.  There is endless speculation, and opposing absolute certainties, expressed about that too.
About all that matters, some of which is within our control, happens between the beginning and the end.  In this middle is where we make our mark, whether for good or ill or not at all (by taking a pass from working for change we feel is important.) 
Michael Jackson (51) and Robert McNamara (93) walked into the unknown in recent days.  Sarah Palin walked into another kind of potential – and horrible (for her) – death.  Political death.  All of them are celebrities; all of them are more a window into who we are as a people, than personalities unto themselves.
Of the three, certainly Michael Jackson got the most attention.  Probably Sarah Palin came in second; Robert S. McNamara third.  Full disclosure: I never followed Michael Jackson, and saw only snips of the service yesterday; I have gained a certain amount of respect for McNamara, solely because he seems to be the rare individual, especially a powerful one, who’s willing to expose the possibility that some of his decisions were flat out wrong.  Palin?  I think that when the dust settles – I give it a year – she’ll have made a few million, and be yesterday’s news. 
There are millions of other deaths too, of course; some make the papers, most don’t.  But these three dominated recent news.  I don’t pretend to have anything other than my own opinion, and I’ll take them in order, very briefly.
Michael Jackson was immensely talented and ultimately a victim of our societies slavish devotion to celebrity.  He reached the pinnacle, and what did it get him in the end?  Our celebrities become our targets.  He’s dead now, and his riches (or his debt) is of no personal concern to him.  People will make a mint off of his memory and fight over the remnants of his economic carcass, like so many vultures.  What was good or bad about him will be flogged mercilessly for as long as it will attract attention. 
Robert S. McNamara was brilliant and loyal and what did it get him in the end?  He took a huge cut in pay to leave a high-paying corporate job with Ford Motor Company to become Secretary of Defense in early President John F Kennedy times.  In a temporal and governmental sense he was powerful, and trusted.  He thought he knew what he was doing; his certainty(and that of others) ended in disaster.  He rose and fell during my early adult life.  I will mostly remember his documentary, “The Fog of War”, as well as a commentary of his, published in August, 2003, entitled “We must minimize cruelties of war” (reprinted at the end of this post.)  At the end, his certainty was replaced by his doubt.  He will be judged on his certainty.  “As I speak”, there’s teams of people attempting to rewrite the history of Vietnam, so that it seems like a necessity and even a success.  I wonder what McNamara would say. 
Sarah Palin ?  In a physical sense, she is very much alive.  But I can’t escape the thought that when she resigned from the Alaska Governorship this past weekend, she effectively committed political suicide, one of the more horrible deaths: yesterday’s darling, tomorrow’s irrelevancy.  Oh, initially she’ll make a ton of money inspiring her base, but even they will tire of her, sooner than later.  And she won’t have the Michael Jackson legacy to bank on.
So it goes…life and death, in all their many forms.
There is something to be said for lacking fame, and not being well known.  Best that we do what we can in our relative anonymity.  In the end, what little we seem to do can make as much or more difference, than that of the celebrities and those seemingly more “powerful”.  It just doesn’t seem so.
FOOTNOTE:
Robert S. McNamara: “We must minimize cruelties of war” as printed in the St. Petersburg FL Times, August 8, 2003.  Many thanks to Eugenie Fellows, who sent me this article years ago.
On the night of March 9, 1945, when the lead crews of the 21st Bomber Command returned from the first firebombing mission over Tokyo, Gen. Curtis LeMay was waiting for them in his headquarters on Guam.  I was in Guam on temporary duty from Air Force headquarters in Washington, and LeMay had asked me to join him for the after mission reports that evening.
LeMay was just as tough as his reputation.  In many ways, he appeared to be brutal, but he was also the ablest commander of any I met during my three years of service with the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.
That night, he’d sent out 334 B-29 bombers, seeking to inflict, as he put it, the maximum target destruction for the minimum loss of American lives.  World War II was entering its final months, and the United States was beginning the last, devastating push for an unconditional Japanese surrender.
On that one night alone, LeMay’s bombers burned to death 83,793 Japanese civilians and injured 40,918 more.  The planes dropped firebombs and flew lower than they had in the past and therefore were more accurate and more destructive.
That night’s raid was only the first of 67.  Night after night – 66 more times – crews were sent out over the skies of Japan.  Of course we didn’t burn to death 83,000 people every night, but over a period of months American bombs inflicted extraordinary damage on a host of Japanese cities – 900,000 killed, 1.3 million injured, more than half the populaiton displaced.
The country was devastated.  The degree of killing was extraordinary.  Radio Tokyo compared the raids to the burning of Rome in the year 64.
LeMay was convinced that it was the right thing to do, and he told his superiors (from whom he had not asked for authority to conduct the March 9 raid), “If you want me to burn the rest of Japan, I can do that.”
LeMay’s position on war was clear: If you’re going to fight, you should fight to win.
In the years afterward, he was quoted as saying, “If you’re going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force.”  He also said: “All war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.”
Looking back almost 60 years later – and after serving as secretary of Defense for seven years during one of the hottest periods of the Cold War, including the Cuban missile crisis – I have to say that I disagree.
War may or may not be immoral, but it should be fought within a clearly defined set of rules.
One other thing LeMay said, and I heard him say it myself: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.”  We would have been.  But what makes one’s conduct immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
The “just war” theory first expounded by the great Catholic thinkers (I am a Protestant), argues that the application of military power should be proportional to the cause to which you’re applying it.  A prosecutor would have argued that burning to death 83,000 civilians in a single night and following up with 66 additional raids was not proportional to our war aims.
War will not be eliminated in the foreseeable future, if ever.  But we can – and we must – eliminate some of the violence and cruelty and excess that go along with it.
That is why the United States so badly needs to participate in the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, which was recently established in The Hague.  President Clinton signed that treaty on New Year’s Eve 2000, just before leaving office, but in May, 2002, President Bush announced that the United States did not intend to become a party to the treaty.
The Bush administration believes, and many agree, that the court could become a vehicle for frivolous or unfair prosecutions of American military personnel.  Although that is a cause for concern, I believe we should join the court immediately while we continue to negotiate further protection against such cases.
If LeMay were alive, he would tell me I was out of my mind.  He’d say the proportionality rule is ridiculous.  He’d say that if you don’t kill enough of the enemy, it just means more of your own troops will die.
But I believe that the human race desperately needs an agreed-upon system of jurisprudence that tells us what conduct by political and military leaders is right and what is wrong, both in conflict within nations and in conflict across national borders.
Is it legal to incinerate 83,000 people in a single night to achieve your war aims?  Was Hiroshima legal?  Was the use of Agent Orange – which occurred while I was secretary of Defense – a violation of international law?
These questions are critical.  Our country needs to be involved, along with the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, in the search for answers.

#48 – Dick Bernard: the 4th of July

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For several years now, we’ve gone to the annual 4th of July Parade in nearby Afton MN.  Afton is a tiny place on the St. Croix River, part of Minnesota’s eastern border, and mostly known for its big Marina and as  an artsy place.  Yesterday we were there.
On the 4th of July Aftons population increases dramatically for the noon-time Parade, which is the only one I know of which goes to the end of Main Street, then doubles back.  The spectators can thus see the parade twice; the participants in the Parade can actually “watch” it themselves as the units return on the other side of the street.
The latter fact would have been approved by my Grandpa Bernard who had a 1901 Oldsmobile (it’s still a working automobile in California), and was often asked to drive it in the local July 4th parade in his town of Grafton ND.  He rarely took the bait for this since, he would complain, “I can’t watch the parade, only the back-side of the unit in front of me“.  Those days – he died in 1957 – there weren’t means of recording the parades for replay back home on cable television or otherwise.  You saw it in real time, or you missed it. 

Grandpa Bernard (in the suit) in his 1901 Oldsmobile, Grafton ND July 4 parade, sometime in late 1940s or early 1950s

Grandpa Bernard (in the suit) in his 1901 Oldsmobile, Grafton ND July 4 parade, sometime in late 1940s or early 1950s


I have sometimes walked in parades, usually for political candidates, so I understand Grandpa’s complaint. 
I like parades.
Yesterday’s, though, for some reason seemed a bit flatter than usual.  There were fewer units and less enthusiasm. 
As is usual, the parade was headed by a couple of old (my age) military veterans carrying the U.S. flag.  People, including myself, stood, doffed their hats, and applauded either the veterans, or the flag, or both. 
Following behind was a gigantic Armored Personnel Carrier, and behind, and included with, it a troop of Boy Scouts.  It was a rather odd combination, I felt, but I’m used to odd combinations.
Back home, afterwards, the cacophony, and dissonance, of the internet brought endless competing views of what July 4 means, or should.  Some enterprising bunch was selling robo-faxes at a steal, to send fax’ed tea bags to every member of Congress (it’s worth a blog entry of its own, to follow tomorrow): an anti-tax protest on the 4th of July.  A patriotic piece came around that caused me to check on the urban legends website, and indeed, the piece was part fact, and part fancy, with no effort to separate myth from real.
On the other side, came an appeal to do more Peace vigils in the coming months.  Etc.
The President weighed in with a brief statement of the signicance of the day with the concluding sentences “It is a day to celebrate all that America is.  And today is a time to aspire toward all we can still become.” with an ending “P.S — Our nation’s birthday is also an ideal time to consider serving in your local community.  You can find many great ideas for service opportunities near you at http://www.serve.gov. “
Last night  there were the annual fireworks in a nearby park.  A particularly loud crescendo of the traditional “bombs bursting in air” woke me from a sound sleep.
I think, wouldn’t it be nice if some day in this country, the Parade would be headed by some kind of group carrying a World Peace flag, and people were applauding them.  
To hear John Denver sing “Last Night I had a Strangest Dream” go to http://www.amillioncopies.info.  Click on Denver’s image at the left of the home page.  And wander around in the website for a bit….
UPDATE 5:20 p.m. Sunday, July 5, 2009
Immediately after clicking ‘publish’ on the above, I went in to my Church, Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, for the usual Sunday Mass.  Basilica is a very large and very diverse Parish, at the edge of downtown on downtowns historically premier street, Hennepin Avenue.  Typically Basilica has lots of visitors; it is conservative and it is liberal, rich and poor.  On a typical Sunday, a fair number of homeless show up for coffee and donuts.
Basilica is also a Peace Site, and a year ago made a formal commitment to Peace as a key part of its Centennial celebration.
Today I saw that commitment before and during the service.  A large “Peace” sign welcomes people to the church (see photos from Basilica calendars at the end of this article.)
In today’s service, the opening song was Sibelius’ “This is My Song” from Finlandia: (“But other hearts in other lands are beating, with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”)  In the sermon, a key part of the message was recollection of a young man at a July 4 celebration who carried a sign “God Bless the whole world.  No exceptions“.  The intercessions included prayers for Peace and for those in service to this country of ours; the recessional was America the Beautiful, and the Postlude was Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever.
I had nothing to do with how today’s service was put together.  But I liked it, a lot.
In short, Basilica seems to cover all the bases towards a better world.  Basilica is a formal Peace Site, #419 at http://www.peacesites.org/sites/map

Art Work on 2007 Basilica of St. Mary annual calendar. Note Peace sign in lower left.

Art Work on 2007 Basilica of St. Mary annual calendar. Note Peace sign in lower left.

 

Peace Pole featured on Basilica of St. Mary calendar for September, 2009

Peace Pole featured on Basilica of St. Mary calendar for September, 2009

#45 – Bob Barkley: Guns and America

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Moderator:  A previous writing on this general topic is at #3, published April 3, 2009.

Guns: Guns are used for sport. I have absolutely no interest in such sports. But as long as my safety is not seriously threatened, I believe individuals should have the right to engage in such sports and use any reasonable sporting guns they choose to.

 

On the other hand, I do not support guns in homes—and certainly not other than under lock-and-key – and in no way do I support assault or other military weapons in the possession of civilians. To paraphrase Bierce, “guns are instruments used by supposedly civilized peoples in order to settle disputes that might become troublesome if left unadjusted.” This points out the absurdity of violence as a means of generating peace. The use of guns indicates a reliance on force when there is little competence or inclination to rely on the power of more civilized means. I have little tolerance here, and the international data—viewed over time—demonstrates without question the ridiculousness of the US fascination both with weapons and with force.

To give a little context to this issue, “Guns Take Pride of Place in US Family Values” by Paul Harris, and published in the UK Observer on October 14, 2007 stated, “Guns, and the violence their possessors inflict, have never been more prevalent in America. Gun crime has risen steadily over the last three years. Despite the fact that groups like the NRA consistently claim they are being victimized, there have probably never been so many guns or gun-owners in America – although no one can be sure, as no one keeps reliable account. One federal study estimated there were 215 million guns, with about half of all US households owning one. Such a staggering number makes America’s gun culture thoroughly mainstream. An average of almost eight people aged under19 are shot dead in America every day. In 2005 there were more than 14,000 gun murders in the US – with 400 of the victims children. There are 16,000 suicides by firearm and 650 fatal accidents in an average year. Since the killing of John F. Kennedy in 1963, more Americans have died by American gunfire than perished on foreign battlefields in the whole of the 20th century.”  
And later Harris adds, “But the key question is not about the number of guns in America; it is about why people are armed. For many gun-owners, and a few sociologists, the reason lies in America’s past. The frontier society, they say, was populated by gun-wielding settlers who used weapons to feed their families and ward off hostile bandits and Indians. America was thus born with a gun in its hand. Unfortunately much of this history is simply myth. The vast majority of settlers were farmers, not fighters. The task of killing Indians was left to the military and – most effectively – European diseases. Guns in colonial times were much rarer than often thought, not least because they were so expensive that few settlers could afford them. Indeed one study of early gun homicides showed that a musket was as likely to be used as club to beat someone to death as actually fired. But many Americans believe the myth.”
Recently it was reported that if you have a gun in your home there is 22 times as great a likelihood that it will be used against you or someone you know than against an intruder/criminal. And as the New York Times reported on April3, 2009: “Contrary to gun lobby claims, the evidence suggests that permitting concealed weapons drives up crime rather than decreasing it.”

The second amendment recognizes the need for a “well regulated militia” being the only basis for the possession of arms. With the abundance of formally organized and regulated police, safety, and military forces in the US—none of which existed at the time of the amendment—it is a huge stretch to use this amendment to suggest that it provides for random and indiscriminate individual possession of arms. It does not. And the Supreme Court, is dead (no pun intended) wrong! We must move into modern civilization and seriously regulate arms possession and use. However, the fundamental right to bear arms—as long as they cannot be used to threaten me and mine—remains a matter of individual choice and intelligence. We cannot legislate wisdom – or even common sense it appears.

 

And to expand on the Second Amendment arguments, it is only those who are ignorant of, or choose to ignore history, that fail to recognize that the founders were strongly set against a standing army.  They considered it a horrendous threat to the future of the democratic republic they envisioned.  And it was solely because they anticipated no standing army that they endorsed ordinary citizens owning and learning to use muskets so that they might be called upon to defend our country if needed.

 

Thus, we have ended up with two violations of our founder’s intentions: 1) the presence of a standing army of gigantic excess, and 2) the support of the people’s license to possess arms of unlimited dimension for reasons that no longer exist.

 

Jane Smiley, novelist and essayist, in April 2007, had this to say about the subject, “…guns have no other purpose than killing someone or something. All the other murder weapons Americans use, from automobiles to blunt objects, exist for another purpose and sometimes are used to kill. But guns are manufactured and bought to kill. They invite their owners to think about killing, to practice killing, and, eventually, to kill, if not other people, then animals. They are objects of temptation, and every so often, someone comes along who cannot resist the temptation–someone who would not have murdered, or murdered so many, if he did not have a gun, if he were reduced to a knife or a bludgeon or his own strength. I wish that the right wing would admit that, while people kill people and even an “automatic” weapon needs a shooter, people with guns kill more people than people without guns do.”

 

But above all else, I am swayed to my negative thinking regarding guns by the following: “In the U.S., 12 children each day die from gun violence. Homicide was the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 24 in 2001, with rates 10 times that of other industrialized nations.” (Source: Marianne Williamson of The Peace Alliance.) No sporting interests can trump that revelation.

 

I also believe that everyone that purchases or owns a gun should be forced to buy special insurance to cover its misuse or accidental injury. Why not? Isn’t auto insurance the same thing?

 

Individual rights—particularly when it comes to minority interests—are what our nation was founded upon and those rights must take precedence over ideological preferences. Nevertheless, it is my considered belief that many people are pretty dumb and guns have a way of helping those people prove it.

#40 – Dick Bernard: Dr. George Tiller May 31, 2009; Stephen T. Johns June 10, 2009: Some thoughts about a conversation

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I think I might have a somewhat unusual “spin” on the tragic deaths of Dr. Tiller and Mr. Johns.
What Dr. Tiller and Mr. Johns have in common is that they were gunned down in public settings by cold-blooded killers who doubtless felt they were righteous in their deadly actions.
After Dr. Tiller was gunned down while ushering at his Lutheran Church in Wichita KS,  I heard a tidbit of information that I hadn’t noticed before.  The same tidbit was in the news again on June 10 when Officer Johns was killed at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.  It jogged my mind back to an angry  conversation a few weeks earlier.
More on the tidbit in a moment; first, a personal “back story” about the angry conversation….
Wednesday, May 6, the local paper in my town published a letter I had written, challenging my local Congresswoman’s deliberate lying about a simple fact relating to the outbreak of the Swine Flu.  I wrote on “the false “coincidence” connecting two [Democrat] presidents [Carter and Obama] to the Swine Flu.”  It wasn’t even a clever lie.  It was exceedingly easy to disprove. 
I closed by saying “Lies are no little deal“.  (The entire letter is at the end of this post.)
I have noticed that the more “local” the “politics” is, the more “down and dirty” it can be.  
The afternoon the newspaper arrived in our mailboxes I received a phone call from a neighbor down the block.  The lady – let’s call her Jane – is a prim, retired, church-going lady.  We know her.  She’s a nice lady. We knew her politics.  But, while firm, she was anything but argumentative.
This particular afternoon, though, was different.  She had read my letter, and she was outraged.   It took me aback, it was so unlike her.  I think I might have inadvertently set her off by saying, in my letter, that my Congresswoman spread “viral messages” which she hoped would “stick in the minds of gullible consumers“.  Nobody likes to be called “gullible”. 
The neighbor went on a rant, including being  incensed that Obama’s Homeland Security had, she said, a list of Christians they were watching, and that she’d heard that on Fox News.  Things settled down, but I wouldn’t call what we had a “civil conversation”.
There have been no followup calls, nor rebuttal letters to the editor on my topic.  Next time I see “Jane” we’ll get along just fine.
I was puzzled by her Homeland Security assertion, until Dr. Tiller was gunned down, and then Mr. Johns.  In the wake of both killings the Homeland Security Assessment, released in early April, 2009, became a topic of news commentators.   It created such controversy at the time that the Secretary of Homeland Security felt a need to apologize.  The problem, it is now clear, is that it was and is a very prudent document, no apology needed.
We will never get rid of extremists in this country.  We have a large population, and there are plenty of very well-armed and very angry folks who exploit their freedom, targeting people with whom they disagree.  Our domestic al Qaeda has been known and in existence for ages through vigilante and terrorist groups and individuals like the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and their ilk which target certain “others”.  Most of the member of these groups seem a lot like me – almost all white men.  They would be outraged to be called “terrorists”, but that is what they are, and they depend on people like all of us to not take a stand.
I hope that the two assassinations, less than two weeks apart, are not harbingers of a trend.  At the same time, this is definitely a time to be vigilant and to be in dialogue about our own very real problems within our own society.
I take some lessons from the above recounted events:
1.  However “ragged” it was, my neighbor and I were in conversation, even dialogue, something not usual enough in our polarized society.  We were polar opposites, but we were talking.
2.  My letter to the local paper, and their willingness to publish it, helped facilitate the conversation that otherwise would never have happened.
3.  It is by small steps that big changes come about, but we need to take the small, sometimes frightening, steps.  My letter, and Jane’s phone call, were probably equally scary for us.  I appreciate her calling me.
We learn from those views we resonate with; we also learn by crossing boundaries, and listening to others with different points of view.  Make the opportunity to engage with others.   
*
The letter, published May 6, 2009.
“It would be nice to dismiss Rep. Bachmann’s assorted factual errors as amusing, but what she and her advisers are about is dead-serious: they wish to implant in the public mind sundry lies, such as the false “coincidence” connecting two Presidents to the Swine Flu.
Bachmann seems more than willing to carry these viral messages, which are then duly reported, hopefully to stick in the minds of gullible consumers.
I happen to be from a Christian tradition, where we were taught that one can lie either by omission (leaving something important out) or commission (telling a whopper).
It is my understanding that in the Jewish tradition, a lie was an even bigger deal: assassination of one’s character was a potential capital offense.
This is no laughing matter.
Three years or so ago my best friend in [this town] left town solely because his teenage daughter was being hounded by teenage “friends” who did everything in their power to malign her.
Lies are no little deal.”

#38 – Dick Bernard: Seeing Community (it's all around us)

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Last night I was at a celebration dinner for an organization, World Citizen http://www.peacesites.org .  World Citizen is a good group to get to know.  It’s Mission Statement: “Empower the Education Community to Promote a Just and Peaceful World.”
At the celebration, one of my table mates was a new acquaintance, Abby, irrepressible, four years old, an aspiring ballerina with a tee-shirt to match: a ballerina dress and ballerina shoes on the front. 
Abby was the only small person at the meeting, a fact she doubtless noticed.  Her great-grandpa, Lynn Elling, who founded World Citizen in 1982, got up to speak.  Lynn, now 88, still strong in voice and vision and ideas, remembered again how he began his quest for world peace, for the children of the world.  He remembered being a young officer on an LST, arriving at Tarawa  beachhead some weeks after the carnage there in November, 1943.  He remembered walking on the beach, finding the horrific remains of some Japanese soldiers killed by napalm; he remembered GIs bringing back remnants of the battle: clothing, skulls, etc.   It was there his life changed, and his commitment to peace for coming generations was sealed.
Abby danced around a bit.  At one point she said a bit too loudly that great-grandpa’s speech was “boring”, though that certainly didn’t change her obvious love for great-grandpa.  Such is how it is for youngsters.  For Abby, dancing was much more fun than listening to a speech!
A little later in the program, Rebecca Janke, herself a grandmother, who’d been awarded the Outstanding World Citizen award, rose to speak.  Lynn’s memories brought back her own: her father, she said, was also in WWII, and one of his duties was to put dead bodies in body bags.  He never really recovered from the trauma of that duty.  His war-time experience haunted him his entire life.   He was one of those countless uncounted casualties of war.
The program over, I reflected on the last few days which were full of “community” kinds of experiences: people, often  unknown to each other, getting together for one reason or another.  The organizing mantra: “food, fun and family” usually identifies essential components of these successful events, small and large.
Last Thursday, for instance, in the afternoon I was at a gathering to recognize volunteers at an elementary school in a nearby suburb.  I met, there, a lady who likes to dress up in costumes, and read to first graders.  My grandkids go to that school.  Thursday, the kids had to wait while the elders had first pick at the assorted goodies…the storyteller knew this wait was excruciating for the tykes, and parcelled out some of the M&Ms in a dish at our table.
A couple of hours later, I was with about 30 parents of school age kids who have organized a growing organization to lobby for adequate support for public education – a difficult issue these days.  These were people who truly care about the future for the Abby’s of the world, their own and others. http://www.parentsunited.org .
There were other events as well, before and in between, which basically helped, once again, to define “community” for me. 
“Community” is all of us together, working for a common good.
A final note on World Citizen, whose celebration I attended last night:  I first attended its annual celebration just two years ago.  I went there on a whim, when I heard about it at another meeting I had just attended.
At that celebration, the same Lynn Elling got up to speak, and led us in a rendition of a song John Denver made memorable in the 1960s: “Last Night I had the Strangest Dream”, (ca 1950 Ed McCurdy).  I was hooked.
The song, sung by John Denver, and Lynn Ellings dream, live on at http://www.amillioncopies.info .  Take moment to visit.  And, again, visit http://www.peacesites.org.
And speaking of “food” and community, here’s a gift recipe received yesterday from a friend:
Carol’s Caramel Corn (use big kettle)
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup light syrup
2 sticks oleo (margarine)
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
Stir/boil for 5 minutes
1 teaspoon soda
Pour over 5 quarts popcorn.  Mix.
Put on cookie sheets and bake at 250 degrees for 45 minutes.
Dump out.  Break apart.
(The recipe doesn’t say what to do after it’s prepared.  I guess I can figure that out!)

#36 – Dick Bernard: President Obama builds a wall behind U.S. (and everyone else)

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For previous posts mentioning President Obama, see Categories.
A reader comment follows this post
Today President Obama is at Normandy; yesterday at Buchenwald; Thursday at Cairo….
The analysis of the Presidents words is and will be unending, but one particular piece of analysis by a single “special interest” group, and some more general articles about what the speech meant have most caught my attention:
At Cairo, the President, glaringly,  seems to have not used the “T” word, not once.  This has caused great distress in certain circles in our country and elsewhere.  Symbolically, I felt, with his speech he seemed to deliberately end the War on T, the war on a word and the war on everybody, everywhere….
Also, in more than a few instances in that speech, he had made promises – commitments – such as closing Guantanamo, which are politically extremely difficult.  And he challenged others in other countries to figure out  how to solve their problems, with our help.
President Obama’s rhetoric is solutions driven, not problem centered.  Solutions by their nature require cooperation, working together towards a common goal.  They do not presume delegation to someone else or defending the status quo.
The more I think of his words during, and the symbolism of, this most important trip to Europe and the Middle East, the more I am convinced that his administration is consciously and deliberately building “a wall behind” all of us, to at minimum make it more difficult for each and every one of us to retreat back to the familiar, of what was, however dismal that past might have been.
For those whose reputation was made, and whose future relies, on the war on “T” , that “wall behind” has a certain meaning.
For those who railed against that mindset, the same “wall” is as certainly built behind them.  They can choose to take the risk of moving forward into an uncertain future, learning new ways of engagement; or to turn around and try to tear down that wall to go back to the comfort of what was.
Likely each of us can remember some time or circumstance when we built a “wall” of some kind behind us which forced us to go forward, doing something we didn’t want to do.  (Sometimes this is also referred to as “burning bridges behind us”).  This is a good time to reflect on what our “wall” (or “bridge”) might have been, and how we grew when forced to move forward rather than able to go back.
George Santayana was correct in his famous statement “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it“, but there are certainly equally persuasive arguments about the folly of becoming mired in the past and refusing to move on.   It is hard to move forward while always looking back.
We need to look forward, and personally own the future we’re all creating.  The future for ourselves and our fellow world citizens is a future that we build, together.  We depend on this forward looking and acting; even more so, the future of the generations which follow us depend on us.

#35 – Dick Bernard: President Obama speaks from Cairo

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Yesterday afternoon I made a spur of the moment visit to an administrator at a Minneapolis college.  I found his office.  Luckily he was in.  I knocked.  “Come in”, he said.  He was looking at his computer screen, watching a replay of the President Obama speech in Cairo from some hours earlier.
My visit to this college office was not to talk about Obama or the Middle East or such.  I did the business I planned to do, and departed.  We didn’t even mention the speech.  He and I have never talked politics.  I don’t know what his politics is. 
But one of my enduring memories of Obama’s speech in Cairo will definitely be walking into that office, and seeing Tom watching the President speak on his computer screen.  It will remind me of those iconic photographs of families sitting around their radio listening to President Roosevelt address the nation on some critical issue or another in the 1930s or 1940s.  Roosevelt, too, was a master of the art of communications with a distant public. 
My guess is that the scene I witnessed yesterday was repeated  in countless and varied settings here and around the world, particularly in the Muslim world.
As is predictable, every word, every facial expression, every single nuance of the Presidents long speech will be dissected, analyzed and interpreted for its meaning.   The interpreters will focus on their own particular favorite issue, whether he said the right or wrong thing about it, and then “spin” it to their particular preference.
It was an international speech, to the Muslim world in particular, and because of the miracle of technology it can be watched and re-watched over and over and over again.  What Obama said, yesterday, he knows he will be held to.  This was not a campaign speech; rather it was the leader of a powerful country speaking to the entire world. 
Personally, I think the key facets of this speech, yesterday in Cairo at about this time of day U.S. time, were its symbolic aspects:
A.  that it was specifically addressed to the Muslim world;
B.  that it was given in the Muslim world, in Cairo;
C. that it specifically acknowledged and honored the Muslim tradition and the people who are part of that major world religion;
D. that he chose specifically to publicly acknowledge the role of the United States in the overthrow of the elected government of Iran in 1953.
Yesterday, today and beyond there will be endless analysis of the Presidents speech. 
While there are endless and immense problems which no speech can pretend to solve, my own prediction is that President Obama’s speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, is historically very significant, and can give impetus to a major shift in global relationships.  It provides a floor for new conversations; an opportunity to think in different ways.
He was speaking to world leaders, yes; but he was speaking even more to those ordinary people who in many settings throughout the Muslim world were watching his image on television and listening to his words, perhaps much like common Americans listened to Roosevelt during the Great Depression and World War II, and then went out and contributed to the necessary effort to accomplish the tasks at hand.
My hope is that all of us will use this speech as an opportunity to move forward, rather than to get mired in the “same old, same old” of focusing on what was or wasn’t said, and how precisely the administration follows through on the text, or not.  Certainly it is important to be vigilant, and to even be critical, but this speech was an entire “book”, more than simply a chapter or a few paragraphs.   
http://www.whitehouse.gov to access a video or transcript of the entire speech

#29 – Dick Bernard: Memorial Day 2009: A snapshot of the last year of WWII as experienced by two ND farm families

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Taps:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn_iz8z2AGw

Today is Memorial Day, with all the varied meanings attached to it, all of which are deemed by their interpreters to be the proper meaning, all of which commemorate the tragedy of war. 

An e-mail from Mel in California on Friday, May 23, led me back to a treasure trove of copies of old letters I’ve had for years.  Most of them were written on my grandparents kitchen table, which would have been within the grove of trees included in the photo on the cover page of this blog.  The others would have been written on another kitchen table on a farm about three-fourths of a mile to the right of Sam and his photographer, myself. 

These letters were all written in 1944-45, and provide a snapshot of the impact of one war on one tiny community in the United States.  The quotes were interspersed among mundane bits of news: harvesting, cold weather, going to town and church.  I could have included more than these, but they suffice.  Grammatical and punctuation errors are as they were.  No editor was looking over the shoulder of these writers.  They wrote from the heart to their son, brother, cousin….

My correspondent, Mel, my mother’s first cousin who grew up on the neighboring farm in North Dakota, wrote about “Francis [Long] (marine killed in Tarawa)”.  I knew of Francis; Tarawa particularly interested me, as my friend, Minneapolis businessman Lynn Elling, was a young Navy officer, early in his tour, when his LST arrived at the gosh-awful remains of the Tarawa campaign in late 1943.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa  His experiences there, and later, seared into his memory, led him to a life long and still continuing quest for peace. http://www.amillioncopies.info .

Mel had his facts slightly wrong: his Aunt, my Grandma Rosa, wrote her son, George, an Officer on the USS Woodworth in the Pacific Theatre, on August 20, 1944: “Fri we had a Memorial Mass for Francis Long killed July 2 on Saipan…”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan

George kept letters he received in WWII, and a few years ago I incorporated all of the letters from home into a family history of two neighboring farm families, the Buschs and Bernings, rural Berlin, ND.

Deadly World War II comes alive simply from pull quotes from a few of the letters written to George from the kitchen tables.  Following are a few samples:

Grandma, September 22, 1944: “I must give Francis Long a spiritual bouquet yet in a Mass they feel so badly.”

September 22, 1944, Uncle Vince writes his brother: “Threshing is coming along fine…[one hired man], a ex-marine from Guadacanal.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Guadalcanal

October 22, 1944, Aunt Edith: “[our sister Florence] wrote they were afraid they were loosing their hired man to the Army.  He got his 1-A….”

Also October 22, Grandma Rosa “[my neighbor and sister-in-law Tina and her daughter Agnes] are going out to Whyoming… to see [their daughter and sister] Rose as Pinkey [Rose’s husband George Molitor] has to go across now too she expects a baby in Nov. so its to bad he has to go at this time.  Mrs. Heim says Elmer is in Holland now was in England & Belgium driving a tank so is in the front too at times Delores is in Italy….”

October 30, Grandma writes “[Vincent] got a card from the draft board saying he was in class II-C till Feb… How I wish it were all over.”  (II-C was likely a military deferment for essential work at home.  Vincent was needed on the farm.)

November 5, Grandma: “The Bernings are well Aug[ust] is still at camp LaJeune NoCar…  Ruby is in cadet nurse training in [Rockford] IL.  Rufina is in training at Iowa City.”

January 1, 1945, Grandma writes “[three] are leaving for the service soon…[another Long] is in Class A 1 now too….”

There is “radio silence” on the letters until June, 1945.  Doubtless letters continued, but don’t remain for posterity. 

June 11, 1945, Aunt Tina, Rose’s mother, writes “[daughter] Ruby has gone on to Montana to cheer up Rose a bit as her hubby is missing now for a month or so.  I hope…that he turns up liveing.”  (George Molitor KIA over Italy April 4, 1945, leaving Rose with two daughters, aged two and six months.)

July 25, 1945, Grandma: “…had a letter from [Marine Captain] August [Berning] is on Okinawa he had a bad battle there got shot through his jacket…The boys were to a show last night in LaMoure “30 seconds over Tokyo”….”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa

August 8, 1945, Grandma: “Lorin H____ is at home now again they say he is nervous and has some shrapnel in his body but I bet he is glad to be home and will soon mend.”

August 26, 1945, Grandma:  “Hurrah! The old war is over I can’t say what that means to me….”

The surrender documents were signed by the Germans on May 7; and by the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945.

War continues.  “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

#20 – Dick Bernard: The Drones as Solution, or Problem?

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A reader comment follows this post.
The May 10 edition of CBS’ “60 Minutes” featured a segment on the military’s new star: an unmanned reconnaissance and war plane called a Drone. The segment, “Drones: America’s New Air Force”, likely remains available for viewing at http://www.60minutes.com. It is worth watching.
The Drone has those same qualities that used to attract me, as a kid, to the Ray Guns of the science fiction world of Flash Gordon, and the two-way wrist radio of super cop Dick Tracy. Lasers and digital phones are now old news in our society. The $11 million Drone with its $1 million camera is simply the latest rendition, allowing an operator sitting in a windowless high tech building in Nevada to take out bad guys in Afghanistan or other places thousands of miles away.
No more is there any risk to our “side”: someone simply presses a button, and out of existence goes some evil doer or group of evil doers over there. We are safe and in control. We don’t need to see the “whites of their eyes”; indeed, part of the star quality of this weapon is that the victim of it is not even aware that he is even being watched. (I think I can say “he” with a certain amount of confidence.)
There are downsides, of course, like possibly killing innocent civilians, or maybe even blasting out of existence an erroneous target, but that’s small price to pay, or so would say the supporters of this new smart warfare.
But is it so “smart”?
The program drove me to my internet search engine for some very elementary statistics: The United States has 3 million square miles of land surface compared with a world total of 57 million square miles. This translates into the U.S. occupying roughly 5% of the world’s land mass. Similarly, we have roughly 5% of the world’s population. And we’re a very large country.
What are the odds that an ever more sophisticated generation of Drones can successfully patrol the world for us, and rid it of all evil doers. For that matter, what are the odds they could control the evil doers in just our country, or my state, or town, or even neighborhood?
The odds of course is essentially zero, unless some target has been tirelessly tracked for months, and is a creature of habit, never moving, always following the same routine. Of course, a smart potential target blends into the neighborhood as well, putting at risk people who don’t even know he is there.
I think, here, of the lowly cows who used to be in the pasture at my grandparents place in North Dakota. They used to occupy the pasture south and west of the barn, wandering at will throughout the day, except for morning and afternoon when they would march along the proverbial cow path to the barn to be milked. Now, these were creatures of habit, easily predictable targets. How well would the Drone do its job if its target was a single one of those cows, a renegade one, who needed to be taken out? Could it single out its target, and not damage the other cows in its company? Would these other “productive citizen” cows just be considered a dispensable collateral damage?
Ah, high tech weaponry seems so innocuous and effective until you look the tiniest distance beyond it. They are, first of all, like all aggressive weaponry, a waste of natural resource. There is little “productive” that can be said of weaponry: it’s function is to destroy including, in the case of bombs and bullets, itself.
Conversely, the very survival of Humanity, from the basics of family onward, in the most primitive society to the most advanced, is rooted in the business of positive relationships.
The more powerful we became (I speak in the past tense), the less we felt we needed to engage continuously and positively with the world citizens who occupy the rest of the 95% of the planet. Unlike cows (so far as I know), humans whatever their language or culture have a tendency to develop relationships, and to not forget how they were treated.
Without positive relationships, no number of Drones will save or even protect us.