Category: HISTORY

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The First Space Man

      Fifty years ago today something new, brave, and wonderful  occurred in the golden fields of Kazakhstan.  Only 58 years after Orville and Wilbur Wright proved man could achieve controlled flight and resist the confining bonds of gravity in their 1903 achievement at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a Russian hero proved forever that man could break those very gravitational bonds, and escape the confines of earth and find heaven.  Despite the political overtones of the time, it is an achievement unsullied in its magnificence.  Yuri Gagarin, a Russian test pilot, was propelled in a staged rocket into orbital flight, and became the first man to see the earth from beyond the blanketing atmosphere. The reality of manned light into space, long the stuff of science fiction and fantasy, became the very zenith of man’s capacity for greatness, and for a time made the then Soviet Union the center of science and technology in the civilized world.

     The glorious achievement was the crowning accomplishment of a brilliant aerospace engineer named Sergei Korolyov, a man who had tasted the dark side of Stalinist Russia, when in experimenting with rocket flight, he was imprisoned for six years for “wasting” state funds in unsuccessful rocket experiments.  With the German rocket success of World War II, Korolyov’s skill set proved too valuable for further abuse by the state and he was released at the end of the war to investigate German rocket technology and incorporate what he could into a Russian program.  The Americans managed the coup of rounding up the majority of Germany’s most successful rocket scientists including the young genius Werner Von Braun, and the initial lead in the concept of intercontinental rocket technology. Korolyov rapidly caught up and by the late 1950’s determined means of achieving multiple rocket engines harmonically delivering thrust in a single rocket, dramatically increasing payload lift capacity.  In 1958, he stunned the world by sending a satellite into stable earth orbit with the launch of Sputnik, igniting a dramatic US effort to close the gap.  The United States continued to formulate multiple options for rocket design, from the Atlas to the Vanguard and , finally the Jupiter, which would eventually be the successful and reproducible design.   This continued multi-directed formulation resulted in occasional launch embarrassments and dead ends, resulting in a hesitation to take the leap to projecting man into space. The game was on, however, as the Russians placed a dog in space, the Americans a chimpanzee, and progressively more aggressive satellite weights were thrown into space.   Korolyov saved what he knew would be overwhelming spectacle in leapfrogging these sub-orbital efforts with animals and went for broke, proposing man flight into space, having the man complete an orbit, and safely delivering him back to Earth.  The gaps in what was known were huge – how would man tolerate weightlessness, could he be counted on to tolerate the enormous gravitational forces, could he live through the fiery atmospheric re-entry? Korolyov left little to chance regarding the knowns he could control and determined to preconfigure the mission and have the space traveler be a passive voyager, with the flight controlled by preset radio signals from home.  He determined he would need a man for the job that would be brave but compliant, look and act the part of a hero, and he found his man in Gagarin.

      Yuri Gagarin was only 27 years old in 1961, but already a celebrated military pilot of the class of the Russian airforce the MIG-15, attentive, mathematically accomplished, and at only 5 feet 2 inches tall, perfect for the tight confines of the space capsule that would be his home in space.  He was a member of the Sochi Six, an elite group of russian pilots selected to be the first to engage the cosmos, and on the fortnight before the flight, he was finally selected in a last second discision over Gherman Titov for the epic flight.  Given the political circumstances of beating the Americans to the punch, the Vostok rocket was fitted for the manned flight after only two previous unmanned flights, and Gagarin was fully aware of the enormous risks involved.  On the morning of flight he was withdrawn and contemplative, and the weight of a potential dark outcome certainly weighed in his thoughts.  In the best tradition of great pilots, he took his place without hesitation, and at about 0600 am at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Vostok rocket with a payload of 10,420 lbs and a solitary man was lifted into space.  The capsule was projected into space into an oblong orbit that reached an ultimate height of 203 miles off the earth’s surface and in a little over 108 minutes, completed an earth orbit, and Gagarin became the first man to send a radio message from space, the first man to see the earth night fall from space, and the first man to experience a space emergency when a portion of his mechanized craft failed to separate from the re-entry vehicle, causing the craft to initially tumble wildly.  The craft luckily separated from its undesired companion, and achieved stability just prior to re-entry. In a falsification propagated by the Soviets, Gagarin was reported to have landed with his craft, but Korolyov secretly had him eject from the craft at 23,000 feet and land by separate parachute, to attempt to assure a safe delivery of the human cargo on the very first manned flight.  Gagarin and the Vostok 1 capsule landed separately, and safely, and the Soviet Union had a huge technological achievement and propaganda triumph.  Gagarin was instantaneously a world hero, and his accomplishment significantly dulled the American response three weeks later, when Alan Shepard rode the Mercury space craft into a meager sub-earth trajectory and a brief 15 minute flight.  Gagarin, through the brilliance of Sergei Korolyov, achieved what it would take the Americans another year to accomplish, true orbital space flight and safe return, a spectacular achievement that has not been dimmed one bit by the years of the subsequent American spectaculars.

     Yuri Gagarin was a hero for the rest of his short life, and a profound influence on his time.  He never was asked to pilot another spacecraft, considered too valuable to risk loss, yet ironically died in a MIG 15 plane crash in 1968 at the young age of 34.  In that brief, shining moment fifty years ago today, he became the first space man, and turned the heavens and stars from the stuff made of dreams, into the reality of what man can do, when he puts his mind to it, and has the will to risk it all.

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Descent into the Maelstrom

       April 12, 2011, is the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Civil War initiated by an artillery barrage by South Carolina Militia Lieutenant Henry Farley at 4:30 am into the United States  military base at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.  The good lieutenant had an resolutely clear concept how this war would start, but like everyone else caught up in the maelstrom of state’s sovereignty, issues of slavery, union domain, southern versus northern cultures, and wounded honor, absolutely no idea how it would turn out.  It would turn out,  a perfect hell on earth.  In four unimaginable years of pain and loss , inconceivable to the aggressors of that early morning, the Civil War would span the continent, take hundreds of thousands of lives, destroy entire swaths of country, and change forever the relationship of a people to each other, and their relation to the constitutional basis of this country.  No one firing those early mortars had any idea that the world they knew was to be extinguished with the very first mortar flash.

     Fort Sumter was perfectly positioned to be the martyr in this American Iliad.  The fort lay in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, home to the most rabid of the secessionist strain infecting the southern culture, the first state to declare secession from the United States in December 1860, and spiritual home to the former Senator and Vice President of the United States, John C. Calhoun, who first argued a states rights theory of the nullification that suggested states could consider”null” federal laws they considered unconstitutional.  The most odious “law” of all to the south considered for nullification was the federal pressure to restrict the borders of slavery “ratified” by the election to US President of a staunch opponent of the propagation of slavery to developing United States territories contemplating statehood, Abraham Lincoln.  Slavery had proved so controversial to the founders of the country that they tip-toed through its very existence in the founding documents of the land, in hopes of not undermining a collective will for a unified people.  The interwoven nature of slavery to the culture and economy of the south was bound so tightly, that its inherent contradiction of existence among a people willing to fight to the death for their own rights while subjugating others, established no momentary indecision or hesitation.  The pressured momentum of eight decades of “kicking” the problem down the road had finally come to fruition with a citizen of the United States firing a mortar at another citizen of the United States in a bracing smack down of all who believed the forces of compromise would win out forever.

     The commander of Fort Sumter, U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson, had long ago acknowledged his strategically weak position in the center of the Charleston Harbor surrounded by hostile batteries but was equally aware of his critical position in the tragic play that was to commence.  He initially looked to hold out long enough for re-inforcements to reach him, but recognized soon that a massive southern force had no intention of releasing the trap and after 34 continuous hours of fire, with  injuries and little residual ammunition and food for his men , Major Anderson ordered the fort abandoned to the rebel troops.  The new President had studied the realities of the Fort Sumter position for some time.  He had made many momentous conclusions.  Fort Sumter was a United States institution on United States soil and would not be “given up” to those who felt the fort was manned by a “foreign” oppressor.  The war to determine the existence of the union was inevitable and had to be initiated by those who would seek its destruction.  The nation would best rise up in indignation and commitment to the difficult task if the aggressor was clear.  The President was right on all counts.  The loss of the fort led President Lincoln to call for the mobilization of 75,000 troops to put down the insurrection, and the northern states in this initial phase enthusiastically responded with a bounty of volunteers.  The nation had taken the President earlier words to heart :

 A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

      The battle for Fort Sumter, brief as it was, was the harbinger of an expansive and cruelly extended conflict that would test Lincoln’s words on the ultimate field of debate, the battlefield.  Brother against brother,  father against son, state against state, and will against will.  In the perfect maelstrom, the circular forces of fate led to the conclusion of the argument almost to the day four years later.  Fort Sumter will on the 12th of April , the 150th anniversary of the lighting of the powder keg, be remembered in ceremonies attended by thousands of people, and memorialized for its historic triggering of the ultimate national argument.  It will be celebrated , however, by no one, for its horrid role in the birth of a national cataclysm.

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Wilmer McLean’s House

     On April 9th, 1965, a crowd developed in the front parlor of Wilmer McLean’s house in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. In no small irony, the final vestiges of the great storm transcontinentally roaring across the American land expanse over four strife filled years found itself guests in the house of the gentleman whose previous residence had received artillery damage in the first battle of the war at Manassas, Virginia. McLean, a sugar merchant, after narrowly escaping with his family from the destructive artillery of the first battle of Bull Run at Manassas, determined to pick a peaceful spot in Virginia he felt far from any strategic value and therefore safe for his family in a backwater known as Appomattox Junction in 1863. Despite his best efforts, the war that started in his front lawn was destined to end in his front parlor, for the collection of uniformed gentlemen sitting down in his house on April 9th, were the commanding officers of the Confederate and Union forces of the epic tragedy known as the Civil War.

     There was certainly nothing civil about the Civil War. A harsh and uncompromising four year series of massive battles and countless skirmishes, the war took the lives of over 600,000 Americans and the limbs of countless others. No home was spared the tragedy of a family member or a relative falling to the vicious battles or oppressive health conditions that killed so many more. Despite the appearance of inevitable triumph that seemed to harken out of the Union Army’s simultaneous victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg on July 4th, 1863, the nation had in reality only begun to suffer, with spectacular losses of men and materiel over the battles of the next two years, as Union commanders sought to split and finally sinter the Confederate army. The overwhelming economic power of the union north and its seemingly endless supplies of men and material, however, slowly but progressively overwhelmed the southern confederates apparent advantage in strategic command and fighting spirit related to defending their “homeland”. After the final collapse of Confederate defense at the many month siege of Petersburg, Virginia in late March , the remnants of General Robert Lee’s proud fighting army struggled to escape a vise devised by General Ulysses Grant and sprung by General Phillip Sheridan’s cavalry, and retreat westward towards interior lines of southern defense and hoped for re-grouping. This time however, the Union forces were not going to relent, and Lee found himself in the impossible position of defending both front and rear lines with no possibility of re-enforcement. The old tiger was caged, and he knew it.

      At Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9th, 1865, in Wilmer McLean’s front parlor, the two great warriors sized each other up, as one prepared to deliver, and the other accept, the harshest wound suffered by any warrior, the acceptance of surrender. General Grant, with little training in the art of politics, proved to be a natural master, creating a surrender document that preserved the loser’s dignity, but not his capability, and Lee was impressed. Lee signed the articles of surrender, and at 400 pm the guns at Appomattox fell still, and a nation’s crisis of identity had come to a conclusion.

     General Grant, so persistent in attack and resilient despite incredible pressure resulting form the massive loss of lives his army had incurred in the twenty some months of his command, proved the perfect opponent to Lee’s flashy and flexible style. He had simply crushed the life-force out of the southern confederacy through his plan to divide and subdivide, helped with the spectacular victories of his southern panzer attack across the deep south by General Sherman, and dominant calvary led by General Sheridan, and finally the bulldozer like capacity of the Grand Army of the Republic. He had great respect for what Lee had accomplished but not what he had fought for. Grant put it eloquently in his memoirs:

” I felt anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and so valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought.”

     Lee left Wilmer McLean’s house and got on his steed Traveller, and rode to his troops to tell them of the surrender, where he was surrounded by thousands of his troops fighting tears upon word of the end, tears for their loss and particularly tears for the burden absorbed by their beloved commander.  Grant, in his unique fashion, went back to his command tent to contemplate alone what had happened, and wrestle with another of his never ending migraines.  The nation would celebrate, and suffer, in its own way, with the spontaneous celebrations of enormous and overpowering relief, and the cataclysmic grief of the loss of so many her sons and just a few days later a martyred president.

     The many lessons of principled stands run amok filter down to us to this very day.  We have become harsher in our discourse, and more radical in our beliefs, to the point where every contest or debate, however miniscule, becomes painted with political overtones.   It paralyzes us to achieve any studied and  consistent resolutions to pressing problems, and like 15o years ago, could become a flood that exceeds its banks, leading to real turmoil.  General Grant understood the need for getting past the concept of winners and losers and on to cooperative success.  When hearing the celebrating cannon of the union army announcing the surrender, he ordered them immediately stopped.  He announced to his troops, ” The celebration is unfitting. The war is over. The rebels are our countrymen again.”  We would do well to heed the words of our great general, who recognized that what separates us has no place in comparison to all that bind us together. Perhaps Wilmer McLean could lend his house to one more meeting of what it takes to find common ground as Americans.

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Can Our Democracy Survive Without A Legislative Branch?

     The recent upheavals in Madison, Wisconsin have focused attention on the progressive inattention of citizens to the carefully thought out structure that drives this nation’s democratic republic. Although dramatically exemplified by the attempt of a county district judge to suspend the lawful process of a bicameral legislature, it is more profoundly about the national neglect that has permeated the democratic process and the depth of understanding of its value for some time. The identifiable underpinnings of this decline have presented themselves in a progressive reduction of participants in the democratic process, the reduction of standards of virtue in preservation of the sanctity of the voting process through lax standards, loss of confidentiality, and intimidation, and the lack of civics instruction. This has most profoundly affected the most democratically sensitive of the three branches of government, the legislature, and its progressive impotence in the difficult problems of our times threatens this nation’s democratic existence.

     The founders put the most profound domestic powers in the hands of the legislature, the powers to enact laws and the powers to fund them, and accordingly put the most democratic constraints upon the legislature, with frequent elections to modulate their actions.  The legislative branch, connected so profoundly to the will of the people, was assumed to be most responsive to that will.  Owning the power of the purse through taxation, it was assumed that governmental representatives would be responsive to the  electoral process that positioned them to be the spenders of the nation’s treasure.  This bond between the people and those elected to serve the people was expected to be paramount. The founders were not foolish idealists, and certainly understood the potentially corrupting influences of human nature, thereby identifying the need for checks and balances.  James Madison in Federalist Paper 51 put it succinctly:

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?  If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. “

     The pattern of checks and balances assured the separation of powers as well.  The legislative branch had primary force to enact laws, the executive branch to execute them, and the judicial branch to review their faithfulness to the constitution.  Madison, again in Federalist #51,  however recognized there was no device by which to make the branches co-equal, and still effective:

” It is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.”

     Madison recognized the legislative process as coming closest to mirroring the will of the people.  As designed, representatives would review and vet the merits of the law in committee, debate and adjust it, assess its effects on the general good and its expenses to the general treasure, then representatively vote, so that a record would be available to the voting population to assure compliance with the will of the people in the next election, or adjust the legilature accordingly.  The entire process commands that the people have a will, and that the will of the people is respected.  Legislative branch has suffered most under the modern corruptions of lack of civics understanding, money of special interests, and general disinterest in the common good and importance of governmental restraint.  In the past few decades, laws have achieved epic status, thousands of pages in depth, so that no serious vetting of theire effect is feasible.  Committees have given themselves up to poor attendance and lobbyist influence with legislators forming their opinion before reviewing a law’s consequences.  The massive influx of money has made legislators progressively immune to the ballot box, and more willing to do the bidding of the interest that is supplying them with their re-election funding than for the voter citizen.  The citizen has become ignorant of the importance of informed voting,  and has accepted lax standards as to the sanctity of the vote, the propagation of numerous “democratic” votes to preserve non-democratic and self serving governmental mechanisms, and dis-interest in the outcome regardless of its effect on the society that has protected his rights for over 234 years.

     The weakness in the legislative branch has led to a dangerous instability in the carefully crafted balance between branches of government. Executives at both state and federal level now usurp the vested powers of the legislature . State governors, have line item veto power that allows them to completely change the essence of an enacted law.   Federal executives  name unelected “czars” that deflect laws and rework apportioned money to achieve their political agendas, as well as initiate wars that defy  the legislative power to declare them.  Activist judges go profoundly beyond the constraints of the Constitution to declare laws unacceptable on the basis of  effect, not lawful standing, dangerously injecting themselves into the legislative process. The legislative branch’s unwillingness to assert its constitutional responsibilities progressively leads to the paralysis we see today to deal with profound questions of individual rights, freedoms, and economic sanity.

     It is no small irony that the coalescence of all these dangerous trends are coming together in the capitol of a state named for one of the framers of one of the most carefully thought out means of a people to rule themselves.  We have seen the unholy storm of vulnerabilities injected into the Wisconsin process that is a microcosm of our national vulnerability – a duly elected legislature attempts to enact law in the face of threats of violence and intimidation, lawmakers who flee their representative responsibilities under the demand of the interests that economically supply their elective position, the infection of federal executive influence on an issue of state’s rights, the national corruption of special interest money, the interference of the judiciary in a matter of legislative process, and the self absorption of a citizenry that can not see the trampling of the protections that maintain their influence over those that govern them through the process of free and fair election intervals, not reactionary recall processes.

     Our founders were not, despite appearances, ancient powdered wig reactionaries, but rather visionaries with incredible foresight into what has made one of the most successful self governed visions of a people in recorded history.  Try as we might to destroy their vision, the wisdom shines through over the centuries.  Maybe its time again for less yelling, and more reflection on why our processes were put in place, so that we can have at least a  tinker’s chance of fixing the mess we have allowed to develop.

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Where Have The Experts Gone?

     As the world seems to be battered by one “surprise” after another and current leaders seem clueless to fashion a logical and committed strategy to begin to tackle any of these problems, the question arises, where have the experts gone?  The can do spirit of the twentieth century to conquer some of the most overwhelming challenges ever devised to man’s  humanity and security has disappeared in a blizzard of shoddy historical interpretation, pseudo-science, and junk economics.  The harsh juxtaposition of examples abound.  The rigorous objective mental genius without the availability of computer exhibited by the brilliance of scientists such as Ernest Rutherford, Neils Bohr, Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg who in the space of fifty years went from discovery of the atom to unlocking its power reigns supreme over the religious machinations of  the current dominance of climate scientists who in order to prove their philosophy of man as the source of the planet’s ills, hide and bend data to fit their vision.  The western tradition of economic thought elegantly put forth by Adam Smith over 250 years ago that built the greatest expansion of individual economic freedom and security in the history of the world is under assault by so called progressives who ignore measured outcomes in performance, rigorous rules of economic standards in banking, budgeting and commerce to blithely spend away a nation’s future.  And acutely,  the fundamental ignorance of history in interpretation of current events that make the present day leaders seem disorganized, contradictory, and reactionary with every event that transpires that does not fit their poorly conceived vision of how the world should be.   Where are the experts a nation used to tap that provided  a bottomless well of  thought that guided the ship of state through perilous waters?

      My own theory is that death of objective thought is self inflicted by our society’s pathetic neglect of our educational process.  We have allowed a primary and secondary school system to completely run off the rails on its primary objective of  providing an education to the nation’s youth,  and the tools needed to comprehend, assess, and conquer the obstacles to individual achievement.  The modern conversation centers on whether the dominant and monopolistic teacher’s union and its strangulating bureaucracy is appropriately re-imbursed and protected, rather than focusing upon the absolute collapse of  student reading, mathematical, and interpretative skills that have soared in the last thirty years.  Our advanced education process has become an over bearing financial behemoth rapidly tumbling out of financial reach of most families and individuals, that through political correctness has filled its campuses with rigid thought, the demise of platonic reasoning and socratic debate, and clogged the educational  pallet with self absorbed study of victimhood and forehead thumping at the expense of a two thousand five hundred year tradition of analytic thought, objective debate, and scientific hypothesis and proof process.  Out of such a primordial ooze, few are the experts that can be expected to evolve.

    What does objective thought process sound like?  Lets appreciate a brief video of one of our “old dinosaur” experts, 88 year old Henry Kissinger, who in five minutes extemporaneously manages to touch base on all necessary considerations that should attend the use of force in Libya:

     Agree or disagree with Kissinger’s argument, no one would disagree that a rational argument has taken place, with historical underpinnings and rational review of outcomes. I defy anyone to point out a rational discussion with logical underpinnings put forth today on any of the major challenges of the day regarding energy policy, economic concepts, or political science, by those currently in power. Is there no one left who is willing to read a book with positions opposed to their own and rationally debate an argument to rebut and persuade?

     I am afraid that would require someone who actually is willing to open a book, and if you ask most of today’s youth, books are yesterday’s news. Its enough to make western civilization’s grand old philosopher to role over in his grave.

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The Tip Of The Spear

     I had occasion on a recent trip to place myself into history.  In San Diego, California, the USS Midway, an American aircraft carrier is docked as a permanent museum and provides a wonderful window into the  forward most arm of America’s military capacity in this dangerous world in which we live.  Aircraft carriers in World War II became the means of projecting power across the globe, proven first by Japan in her spectacular raid on Pearl Harbor, and magnified by the catastrophic vulnerability of the traditional king of the seas, the battleship,  with the Japanese airborne destruction of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse off Singapore all in December, 1941.  By the end of the war, the United States had over 50 aircraft carriers roaming the seas and dominated all the sea lanes in a fashion not seen since the height of the British Imperial Navy of Lord Nelson’s time. 

     The USS Midway, commissioned at the end of the war, was the supreme example of the art of carrier building in her time.  She was larger, more maneuverable ship than her Essex style counterparts of the era, and with her like designed compatriots, the USS Franklin D Roosevelt and the USS Coral Sea, were the last craft designed for propeller craft take off and landing.  She was nearly 1000 feet long, capable of launching over 100 aircraft, sailing at 33 knots, and home to over 4000 sailors – a true floating city of power.  The Midway ended up serving for the next 40 years through both the Vietnam conflict and Desert Storm before being decommissioned in 1992.  Though the United States eventually went to a nuclear class carrier design even larger than the Midway, the ship proved versatile enough to head a carrier group in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm launching hundreds of F-18 sorties over Kuwait and Iraq that contributed to the overwhelming victory.

     The museun allows a very intimate look at almost all aspects of the ship.  Despite the enormous size of the ship, the multiple bulkheads and millions of yards of exposed wires and cable give the vistor a claustrophobic sense when traversing the inner decks.  This feeling is immediately relieved by entering the enormous hanger deck where the aircraft are stored and serviced.  The planes are transitioned by elevator to the even more spacious flight deck, where the dangerous ballet of launching craft was practiced by thousands of highly trained flight teams over the years.  The reality of taking a craft from 0 to 200 miles an hour over several hundred feet to launch and the converse, from 200 miles an hour to a standing stop over the same distance with scores of fully armed fully fueled planes and scores of scurrying flight personnel  is a awe inspiring and palpably dangerous concept.

      From  the aircraft decks one travels to the intellectual center of the plane, the so called “Island”, where the communications,  mission planning, deck activity coordination, and the captain’s bridge inhabit.  The space is particularly confined to make room for the critical space of the flight deck activities, and is rested to the side of the carrier.  The Air Boss on the Midway was flight deck level, always a squadron leader who understood all the capacities  and limitations of the flight team, and had full control of the launch process.  The ship’s navigation, steering, and direction emanate from the bridge which stands several stories over the deck with full view of the deck and the sea beyond.  Just beyond the bridge is the communications and mission projection rooms, where, coordination of the complicated actions of this massive sea enterprise is coordinated with the multiple naval craft in the group through radar and radio communication, and nowadays, computer and GPS.

     The final image and all encompassing sense of the enormous sea power projected by a ship like this comes down to standing on the deck with the planes that are the multiple arrows of the carrier quiver.  What does it take in the process to steel one’s nerves to land a plane on a pitching deck at night in high seas is not for me comprehensible, but somehow this nation continues to find such people who time and time again volunteer and perform beyond all expectation this difficult task.  The practice and precision required is the highest expression of military training and the United States with eleven super-carrier groups manning all shipborne seas is the master performer of this art.

     We can argue amongst ourselves always as to whether the investment and sacrifice necessary to create this magnificent floating warrior ship is ultimately worth it, but if you get the chance to see it in person, I think you will realize that if it is to be done, this nation has achieved the ultimate in this particular expression of modern power.

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The Virginian

     In our more cynical, superficial age we find it hard to imagine the set of circumstances that would lead a man to risk all that he had, and give up the greater portion of his life, to an idea.   279 years ago today, such a man was born in the colony of Virginia, and his indomitable life quest almost single-handedly made possible the American Experiment.  There was no expectation in early life of his sacrificial nature, borne to a prominent Virginia family,  and he could have settled in to a life of plantation farming and land acquisition that was his family’s mantra.  Something restless and animal was part of his makeup , however, and his early journeys into the wilderness to survey land created a unique need not seen in other family members.  This man, George Washington, was tuned into a special stereophonic muse that was characterized both by the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Possibility.  His forays into the vast American continent began to coalesce for him that this particular land was special, and the capacity of each individual man special, within it.  He began to seek positions that would both make possible the maximization of who he was, and steadily, the risks he would need to face to achieve fulfillment.

     The young adult Washington showed a warrior instinct.  He was named the military leader of an attachment that was to derive the position of the competing French in the Ohio country coveted by both the British and French superpowers, and managed in a short time time get himself involved in both a massacre of French soldiers near present day Pittsburgh, and later a complementary catastrophic massacre of British soldiers in the ill fated Braddock expedition to eject the French.  The sequence of events showed Washington to be aggressive, impetuous, and in a trait glorified later in life, unconscionably brave and seemingly immune to battle chaos or bullets.  The controversies of these events left the British and the American politicians with different impressions of the Virginian Washington.  The British saw him as inferior to the British officer ideal with his Americanized instincts for cagey warfare over stand and shoot soldiering.  The Americans saw him as an example of individual creativity and persistence.  Both concepts were of Washington, but did not completely describe him, to those who later felt they knew how  the “true” Washington in battle would respond.

     A leap forward in time to 1775, and the continental congress is desirous of a leader that holds both warrior skills and revolutionary ideals in his make-up. There was frankly little “in-house” experience to chose from, but Washington recognized before anyone that the warrior leader would have to a special hybrid. He would need to be able to commune with the common man who would ultimately provide a volunteer force that would need to be willing to sacrifice and  die for abstract ideas, and would have to project a consistent warrior bearing and confidence that would assure all that taking on the most powerful military on earth and winning was not the ludicrous proposition it seemed.  He played these two roles to perfection, and retrospectively, was the unique persona for the impossible task.

     The revolutionary war years of 1775 to 1783 were epitomized by the crushing reality of the sacrifices necessary by men like Washington to achieve the miracle of independence.  The challenges were overwhelming.  He was required to fight the greatest military force in the world with a rag tag army of citizen soldiers with little military training and limited resources.  He was challenged  time and time again to rebuild this volunteer army as deferments ran out, or men simply gave up on the intolerable nature of it all.  He was expected to maintain a continental strategy with troops who were thinking that their home to defend was their own state and not necessarily the “foreign” state to which they were forced to defend.  He was forced to defend his actions in defeat after painful defeat against individual politicians who thought they knew better and refused to monetarily support the cause or mandate the troops.  He did this all continuously for eight years with a price on his head, away from his home, under atrocious conditions, and with the foreknowledge that defeat meant for him certain death and loss of all that he had.   He faced all these enormous obstacles – and he won.

     When it came time years later to select a chief executive that would form the initial government of the United States, the selection again turned to one man, the Virginian, Washington.  He was selected not for any impassioned rhetorical brilliance or acknowledged philosophical depth, but again, because he was the single individual every competing interest group felt they could trust.  He was selected for his acknowledged ownership of the American Ideal through the worst of times, and his willingness as a man, to give up power when it was his to take.  As the first President of these United States he set for all time the standard that the office, not the man, the Constitution, not the trappings, were the key ingredients of the American Experiment.

     On his birthday, at a time when mediocrity of character and lack of in-depth understanding of what makes this American Experiment work frequently desires to inhabit the office of President, our first president, the Virginian, stands forever, like a colossus.

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Sic Semper Tyrannus?

     In December, 1989, with almost inconceivable suddenness, the dictator who had ruled Romania with an iron fist for 34 years, Nicolae Ceausescu, in the space of one week fell from emperor king to the wrong end of a firing squad. His was the last thugocracy government to collapse in the spectacular year of Revolution that was 1989. Despite the domino like collapse of other authoritarian governments in Eastern Europe that year, Ceausescu confidently left the country for a trip to Iran, not recognizing the match for revolution that was struck in the city of Timisoara on December 18th over the simple act of attempted eviction of a Hungarian priest by the government for “inciting” ethnic divisions. Quickly joined by Romanian students, a brutal effort to violently  crush the demonstrations had exactly the opposite effect and within only two days had spiraled out of the government’s control. Ceausescu returned to find on December 21st a country he couldn’t possibly recognize, in full revolt and to his shock completely unafraid of him. His meager efforts to rally government support collapsed in hours and he was forced to flee, only to be turned over by police to a thrown together military tribunal that declared him an enemy of the people and executed him on December 25th, 1989.  One week,  from complete control, to complete collapse.

     So it appears the latin phrase, Sic Semper Tyrannus, “thus always to Tyrants” has come to roost again in the year of Revolution  2011 in Libya.  Following a similar pattern to Romania, the spark of revolution appears to have been the relatively innocuous event of the government preventing people from inhabiting a long promised but unfinished housing development, but the flame was clearly fired from the spectacular revolutionary forces that are shaking northern Africa and the Middle East, with despots in Tunisia in January and Egypt in February rapidly driven from power, and the governments of Bahrain and Iran shaken by unrest.  Libya’s Ceausescu is Mu’ammar Quadaffi, a four decade dictator who has maintained rigid control over the oil rich country and has been a long standing supporter of radical Islamic groups and terrorists in other lands. In similar fashion to Ceausescu, Quadaffi seems to have completely misread recent events and his own vulnerable position, and by violently striking out against demonstrators, managed in a single week to explode his country and implode his dictatorial control.  Reports suggest that he has had to flee Libya to avoid his own capture and that his sons are struggling to hold a losing position in the capital of Tripoli. If true, the historical evidence that dictatorial control, no matter how imperial, is a mile wide and an inch deep, and only needs the right push to force collapse, must have the governments of Syria, North Korea, and Iran nervously scanning their horizons for similar signs of trouble.

     The year 2011 is proving to be a year of revolution on the epic level of  1989, but its outcome is considerably more murky in the advance of freedom.  The dark forces of a different kind of totalitarianism, those of islamofasciist extremism, lay in waiting like foxes at the hen house, to these newly freed countries with little complementary institutional structure for individual rights.  The Eastern European countries of 1989 succeeded at getting the tender sprouts of freedom to flower, but initially, it was quite unclear what would come out of the foment at that time.  The difference was the example of a United States and Europe that was comfortable in the promotion of democracy for the sake of the formation of republican government and positively intervened to  help determine the outcome.  A much more unsure United States and Europe exists today, and it is unclear if an determined leadership is available that is able to recognize the opportunity for the promotion of individual human rights for the Arab world, and assure that the fragile flame for this beleaguered part of the world is not rapidly extinguished.

     President Obama could take heed from a President that now appears visionary in his understanding of the forces of freedom at work in the Mid-East and beyond:

 

George W. Bush  United Nations Speech September 21, 2004

“For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability.  Oppression became common, but stability never arrived.  We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful ,democratic nations.”

” The advance of liberty is the path to both a safer and better world”

“The desire for freedom resides in every human heart. And that desire can not be contained forever by prison walls, or martial laws, or secret police. Over time, and across the world, freedom will find a way.”

“We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace. We know that oppressive governments support terror, while free governments fight the terror in their midst. We know that free people embrace progress and life, instead of becoming recruits for murderous ideologies”

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Who’s Next – Maybe Turkey?

     The events in Egypt continue to evolve at a breathtaking pace.  The most recent news is the dissolution of the puppet parliament and the government’s associated agencies with the role of comptroller in the hand’s of Egypt’ military.  The military insists it is positioning itself to moderate a transition to representative government with elections to occur in September.  History as always allows for lessons to reflect upon.  The Egyptian military overthrew the monarchist government in  1952 with a council of officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, in a so called “Association of Free Officers” dedicating themselves to be “guardians of the people’s interests“, named a  President, General Muhammed Najuib, with backing from disparate groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Communist Party.  Sound familiar?  In a short time, however,  the council reformed itself into the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council, tensions rose between the civilian government and the Council , and Nasser in January of 1953, declared a one party state, with progressive attainment of the machinery of power until after the Suez conflict in 1956, he assumed direct control.  He did not abdicate his power, promoting a belligerent form of pan-Arab nationalism until his death in 1970.  His fellow officer and long time confidant, Anwar Sadat, took over, and following Sadat’s assassination in 1981, was succeeded by Hosni Mubarak.  Egypt’s current “guardians’, the Egyptian military,  own a direct ancestral connection to this history. 

      The position of the military as a force of the people in Arab lands are perhaps linked to the only time it seems to have at least attempted to participate in institutionalising an Islamic country’s attempt at democracy.  The Turkish hero of World War I, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who successfully resisted the British at Gallipoli in one of the British Empire’s most painful defeats, additionally resisted the victorious allies’ attempts to subjugate post war Turkey.  He refused to accepted a divided stump of a country proposed, declared himself Kemal Ataturk, “father of the Turks”, and successfully fought a small war of independence, resulting in the formation of the modern Turkey we know. Through his entire reign, he sought to modernize Turkey along secular, democratic lines, assuring the Turkish Republic would not dissolve in fractional tribal chaos that plague so many lands of the former Ottoman Empire.  Though he was a strong proponent of western democracy, he always saw the Turkish military as the ultimate protectors of the republic against unstable interests and felt no qualms about occasionally “righting the ship of state” with military oversight and intervention when needed.

     The past few years in Turkey have seen the creeping expansion of an Islamist government in Turkey led by democratically elected Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, and the military has been slowly but progressively marginalized.  Erdogan has worked tirelessly to remove secular generals from the army and replace them with those who have less issue with an islamist shade to Turkish society and law, similar to the progressive role of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran removing the secular voices of the Iranian army in the early 1980’s.  Ataturk would have been appalled and would have “cleansed” the government of this tendency toward religious governance, believing it anathema to a modern society. European governments have been vehement in their warnings to the Turkish military to remove any desire on the military’s part to “control” events, further emboldening Erdogan.  Now it appears that the cauldron that has simmering beneath the surface in Turkey, driven by the recent events in Egypt are about to boil over.  Erdogan has determined to take the final step in emasculating the military’s independence by essentially accusing them of treason and plottage of an overthrow of Turkey’s government, and seeking the arrest of many officers.  This unreported event may prove to be a more dangerous and unstable event than anything happening in Egypt, and bears very close watching.  The current American government’s stunning ineptitude regarding Egypt, has absolutely no room for error in Turkey, a NATO ally astride the gates of Europe. 

     Like the mythical box of Pandora, the lid has been removed to a multi-century suppression of Middle Eastern forces that will play out in a way we can only guess. It is hard to know if there is another Mustafa Kemal Ataturk out there.  One thing is for sure, The Obama Administration is ill equipped to recognize such a leader, and sadly unwilling to be principled enough to be a steady force for good, in a unstable time crying out for American leadership. 

     Fasten your seatbelts. Its going to be a very, very bumpy night.

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The Great One

     February 12, 1809, 202 years ago, lost in the wild frontier of Kentucky in a log cabin placed at the side of a creek called Nolan, outside the settlement of Hogdenville, a miracle of history occurred. An illiterate tenant farmer named Thomas Lincoln and his wife Nancy Hanks brought into the world an epic soul. From such humble roots, one of the great thinkers and unquestionably one of the world’s most gifted leaders came into being to a nearly untouched natural world. He was Abraham Lincoln, and in his relatively brief life of 56 years shook the very foundations of his nation and changed it forever.

     It is the ultimate test of nature versus nurture when one examines the life production of Abraham Lincoln. He certainly had no significant identifiable schooling, and his upbringing provided nearly no stimulants for learning beyond the skills needed to survive in a very rough and occasionally brutal wilderness. His step-mother Sarah Johnson, coming into the family after the untimely death of Lincoln’s mother at age 11, found a melancholic and wild boy, but inured in him an uncommon devotion due to her unstinting love for him.  Though illiterate herself, she saw in him something nobody else saw, and pushed him to learn to read and write. In the Indiana wilderness the family moved to, Lincoln proved a voracious self taught student in writing skills, grammar, and the few books available to him. The entire scope of his training was frankly his will to learn, and the interpretations of his learning all his own. From wilderness wild cat to eventual local learned man, the philosophic world view devised by Lincoln was entirely unique and his own creation.

     David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln biography is in my mind the most passionately human biography of Lincoln and a must read for any who wishes to understand Lincoln the man who became Lincoln the colossal historical figure. The specific chapters reflecting the years of Lincoln as a young circuit lawyer in Illinois are essentially perfectly written. Lincoln was a mental sponge, forgetting no personal interaction, no lesson to be learned, no overarching theme to the simplest disputes and events. He built on his friendships, his experiences, and his battles to develop an uncommon awareness of the unique qualities of the American Experience and the vital role of the common man in framing it. With no apparent template for a guide, he created a strong and complex capacity to understand, and importantly, elucidate that understanding to others, in clear and precise language. It was a skill that was natural, his own, and absolutely, genius.

     Lincoln wrote and spoke on so many topics of importance to his time that an entire career studying the many moments of brilliance have consumed academicians since his life ended.  The more amazing reality is how often he spoke in a way that evoked universal themes that crossed multiple generations that speak to us today.  The speeches written by Lincoln resonate for our time; the House Divided speech, the Lincoln Douglas debates, the first and second Inaugurals, and the jewel in the crown, the Gettysburg Address.  He was additionally at his greatest in the simple letter responses to friends, and the letters of consolation to the war’s bereaved, showing each his ability to understand their prism of understanding, their own special role and their personal sorrow.   This President in saintly fashion absorbed every arrow, every pain, every loss, every need as his own, and it showed stunningly in his rapid aging in photos over the five year period of the Civil War.  The mind , though, did not age, and his brilliance revealed in the final weeks of his life showed eternal strength of character and a bottomless desire to take on monstrous social complexities and provide the leadership to solve them.
    

Everyone’s favorite Lincoln is their special Lincoln – Lincoln the Western Railsplitter, Lincoln the Writer, Lincoln the Philosopher, Lincoln the War Leader, Lincoln the Speech Maker.  Any one of these Lincoln’s would be worthy of a birthday treatise.  Lincoln the Miracle Man is my favorite today – the perfect Product from nothing, out of nothing, through the strength of his own will and the freedom offered by his society to have an equal chance as any other, to excel, and flourish at a miracle level, to the benefit of us all.  He is the man, who at his First Inaugural, looking into the dark chasm of the impending cataclysm of the Civil War, forgave us our sinful stubbornness and projected the way  to our eventual salvation by relying on our inherent goodness and the saving grace of our humanity:

” I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies….The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and headstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell  the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”