Greetings and Salutations…

If, by chance, you do not recognize this – it is the memorial to the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese military, on this day in 1941. The building floats in the air over the resting place of the USS Arizona and, 900 of its crew, which still lies on the bottom of the harbor, below the structure. If you are an American citizen, and do not recognize this, perhaps it would be a good thing to become more involved in the educational system and make sure that more history is taught. The only way we can learn from history is to study it, learn it, and debate about it. Speaking of which, click on the image to go read about the memorial, Pearl Harbor, and the events that transpired there.

I suppose that most of us have monuments to the futility of war that are lodged in our mind, and bubble to the surface on a particular date. It is an uncomfortable truth that conflict is perhaps the best way to produce snapshot images that can never leave us or be purged from our minds. To reach back a bit, there is the stark contrast between the reality of boots on the ground in the Korean conflict, and how it was presented in the seminal television program "M.A.S.H.". M.A.S.H. was ground-breaking in its treatment of the war, in that it was one of the first productions to present not only a glimpse of the heroic and often bloody and difficult work that the medical units did during that conflict, but, to go out of its way to avoid demonizing the Korean civilians whose homes had been turned into a battleground, and the military forces of North that were little more than hand puppets for the Peoples Republic of China.

Then, we skip ahead to the Vietnam War. For many of us, that war produced more striking images (and internal conflict) than any before it, perhaps because it was the first war to be broadcast live. I remember having dinner and then tuning in for the daily body count. There were the images on the nightly news of the Douglas AC-47 (nicknamed Spooky, or as I tend to remember it "Puff the Magic Dragon") circling an area and, using its Gatlin-design miniguns, putting out a stream of bullets into the area. That minigun, a scaled down Vulcan, was impressive in that it would shoot at 4000 rounds per minute as long as ammo was fed to it, and, this firehose output of lead had the same effect as a shredder on anything below…But I digress… There was the snapshot of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan casually raising his pistol to the temple of a bound vietcong fighter and putting a round through his brain. There were the images of our soldiers returning from their tours of duty, to be treated with contempt by people protesting the war. That was a sad mistake on the protestors part. While protesting the war was quite appropriate, the fact that the dislike of of the war was focused on the soldiers who had served and done their duty with courage and resolve was a terrible failure and left scars in the minds of those soldiers that may never have healed, or, at best, left them severely injured on an emotional as well as a physical level. The Vietnam war also left terrible scars on the psyche of the American people. It was such a polarizing event that it became very hard for people to be on opposite sides of the issue without ending up hating and dismissing the other side’s point of view. It was, I believe, a major factor in the growth of the tendency to demonize one’s opponent that is such a disgraceful component in political campaigns and speeches these days.

Recent conflicts, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, have presented the American public with relatively few strong images, and, so, alas, it is far too easy to forget the reality of what is happening over there. Actually, while there have been some amazingly shocking images, they have only appeared in the foreign press, and stories that might bring these conflicts into question have been carefully controlled by the military and the media. That is one of the unspoken legacies of Vietnam. The military learned a strong lesson there about the dangers of information, and, so since then have worked very hard to control the flow of that information out of the conflicts they have been involved in. There is no "up side" to this, only varying degrees of "down side". How can we, as citizens, make good decisions about what actions to support if we are limited in the information available about a situation? The short answer is…we cannot, and, many of the actions "supported" by the population over the past decade gained support because only a limited number of facts were presented, and they were presented in such a way as to inflame the fears and anger of Americans. Look at the blooming industry surrounding the concept of "terrorist threats", and, the huge increase in governmental control over citizens implemented in the name of that threat. America is not a totalitarian state – but it has taken more, larger steps towards that goal in my lifetime than I have seen since its inception as a country.

Having mulled over and dredged up some of the ugliness of war, I suspect you may be asking so what does this have to do with Pearl Harbor Day, 2011?

As the first few hours of this day pass, the contrasts of the day bubble through my mind. Most immediately, here I am, sitting in a recliner, providing a comfortable pillow for two sleeping cats (Gretel and Adele, for what it is worth), it is a peace-filled moment, and, no matter how bad the coming daylight hours may be, nothing will compare with that day in 1941 and the events that followed. Looking at Pearl Harbor, itself, there is the beauty of the place, with the blue skies and puffy white clouds above, the ever-changing, fractal surface of the waves, and, the delicate arch and pure white of the memorial itself, as it hangs in the air over the dark, rust-colored shadow of the USS Arizona that still, today, disgorges dollops of oil which float to the surface and spread a rainbow sheen for a few moments before being disrupted. Below beauty are the roots of sacrifice, death and decay. The aura of life from the visitors on the memorial, and the sea with its abundant wildlife resonates against the 900 names posted on the wall of the structure – the names of the crew who went down with the ship and shall remain, entombed there forever.

Perhaps, more to the point, is how Americans, supposedly citizens of the nation that is supposed to exemplify Freedom and Liberty to the world, continue to fail to learn from the lessons of history, and, continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. This lack of understanding not only hurts our position in the world, but, costs us dearly in terms of lives and economic resources. The three areas of external aggression I mentioned above are, for me, a perfect examples of this… In the Korean war, North and South Korea were little more than sock puppets for the PRC and America, proxies to allow these two governments to fight it out without the actual danger of a face to face confrontation. It cost America close to 54,000 lives, and about $341 Billion (in constant FY2011 dollars). What did it accomplish? It allowed two superpowers to get into a slap fight with each other without the danger of starting another world war. It also left Korea artificially split in half, and nearly ruined. In the Vietnam war, the cost in lives went up a bit, to 55,000 and the dollar cost was closer to $738 billion. What did it accomplish? Well, very little good. It was, again, a proxy fight where the stated reason for America’s involvement was to keep the Domino theory from causing the entire area to become a communist state. However, alas, America lost, was forced to withdraw, and left the country in a state of turmoil and purges that killed millions of civilians. As for the Middle East conflicts…now we are talking about only a few thousand killed but close to 40K wounded. It was a situation that was started on a lie, with an impossible goal. The stated goal was to, essentially, impose democracy from the top down. Anyone who has studied any history would realize that this is impossible – the only stabile democracies come from the bottom up. It gets back to the fact that in a democracy, the people are the power, and the government is the weak servant, not, as some would have us believe, the other way around.

War is a messy business and can do as much damage, economically, physically and psychically to the victor as it does to the loser. While there are "just" wars, a vast majority of them are not…instead they are crude attempts by the leaders of various countries to water their political positions with the blood of their citizens and their opponents. We, as Americans, should be very careful to understand what we are getting into when war is presented as the "only" answer and get enough facts from objective sources, to determine if we are embarking on something that at least approaches a Just Cause, or we are doing it Just Cause our elected representatives have an ax to grind, or a political agenda to push.

We should also take a moment on this day to think back to the sacrifices made by the military forces on that day, and respect it. The men and women in the Harbor this day were not fighting to push a political agenda. They were standing up for what they believed was right, and, to preserve the society we have in America – a society where information (good or bad, positive or negative) is available for the citizens to look at and make up their own minds. A society where the people control the fate of the nation, not a small group of elected representatives whose hidden agenda may or may not parallel the wishes of the people.

Pleasant dreams

Bee Man Dave…