31 January 2014 –    

Still looking for George Washington

After a 30-year career in the Air Force, I found myself in 2009 working for the State Department in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  I monitored U.S.-funded military training contracts in one of the most dysfunctional countries on earth.  My fellow contractors and I tried to teach Congolese soldiers to stop being thugs, rapists, and murderers and to become professional soldiers.  Our ambitious goal was to build a foundation upon which the Congolese people could build a cohesive nation. 

Most of the soldiers were unpaid, former rebels more loyal to their tribes than to the government in the faraway capital of Kinshasa.  They had guns and would routinely take food from stores without paying.  They also stopped cars on the road to shake down the drivers for money.  We were stopped this way many times.  The officers were barely literate and stole their soldiers’ pay.  They also compelled their soldiers to force Congolese villagers to dig for gold and diamonds.  Because everybody in the DR Congo is hungry, we could get soldiers to show up for training by feeding them lunch.  Pretty basic stuff. 

We contractors couldn’t solve the fundamental social and political problems that resulted in the deaths of more than five million people in the Congo between 1998 and 2005.  Nor could we stop the disease and violence, which still prevails.  But the training contracts continued because U.S. strategy was to keep a light presence in the Congo and to stay involved until such time as the situation may allow decisive U.S. action. It was a pragmatic and sensible strategy that cost little money, no lives, and produced little adverse publicity.  I agreed wholeheartedly with it. 

In late 2011, I developed and taught a course to help professionalize senior Congolese officers.  Until then, our courses had focused on lower ranks.  In this fifty-hour course, I showed senior Congolese officers how to lead military forces in such a way that Congolese people could rally around them for support and protection.  This would help change the military from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution in a country full of insurgents. 

It became apparent to me that even a simple strategy such as ours in the DR Congo succeeds only when those on the ground—soldiers, contractors, or foreign service officers—approach their tactical mission with professionalism.  The best we as tactical applicators of the State Department’s overall strategy could realistically hope for was to influence one Congolese soldier at a time.  On the strategic level, we succeeded just by being there.  On the tactical level, we nonetheless did a professional job because we couldn’t do anything less.  My course attempted to achieve something grand, even when the strategy didn’t demand something so ambitious.      

One of the basic tenets of the course that the tradition set over two hundred years ago by military leaders such as George Washington is a good model for how professional, apolitical foundations for a new nation are built.  I told the corrupt colonels and generals that I was looking for a Congolese George Washington who would rise above regional disputes and violent reprisals and be a man around whom a cohesive Congo could grow.  I indeed searched for a Congolese George Washington, knowing how unlikely it was to find one.  I still hope that one of these military students will remember his mission and one day will have the courage to stand up when the moment is right.     

Our nation’s leaders must understand the basic lessons of the DR Congo.  When our leaders craft strategies on the international scene, using the instruments of national power to accomplish them, they must exhibit the same courage, commitment, and willingness to sacrifice that their soldiers, foreign service officers, and contractors show when they implement the strategies.  The President and in his associates have exhibited few of these virtues.  They seem to float from one international calamity to another, resolve nothing, and leave messes for others to clean up.  Despite their abuse of the process, our so-called leaders continue to have – without deserving it -- the loyalty of virtuous Americans who bravely execute their shallow plans.  In reality, these leaders are no more worthy to be called George Washington’s successors than are the corrupt officers in the pest holes of the world.     

No one will think of them when they are gone.

24 January 2014 –

Death by VA Hospital       

Congress has finally passed a spending bill for the rest of 2014.  It approaches what Congress should have been doing for the last five years.  Sadly, our lawmakers’ spending cuts on veterans’ benefits show their ignorance -- or cowardice -- to prioritize spending based on fundamental governmental obligations.  A true story illustrates what I mean: 

My father spent the last years of his life in and out of the Veteran’s Administration hospital at Fort Harrison, Montana.  Drafted into the Army in 1940, he was wounded in the battles for the Aleutian Islands.  Until his death in 1963 at age 40, his body hurt and his mind suffered the effects of the war on top of the normal pressures of life.  The government responded by putting him into a VA hospital.   

I was too young to visit my father on the hospital ward.  When Mom went out to “The Fort,” we kids often went along and stayed in the car.  I remember my father waving to us from his third floor window around back of the hospital.   One time, in late 1962, I was allowed to go inside and sit in the ward’s day room.  The day room was full of young men in their twenties, thirties, and forties, and I shall never forget them, their faces and bodies. They were missing arms, legs, hands, and parts of their faces.  Canes, crutches, and wheel chairs were everywhere.  These men watched television, talked among themselves, played cards, and paid little attention to a small boy in their midst. One man in a thin, light-blue robe and slippers sat looking out the window, living somewhere else than in that day room.  He did not move a muscle the entire time I was there.  The experience was overwhelming.  I looked to a passing orderly for some insight.  He surprised me by saying bluntly that these men were WWII and Korean War veterans waiting to die.

I have never forgotten that moment.  Because of it, and later, after being forced through illness to stay in that same place, I vowed I would never die in a VA hospital.   

Who had the responsibility to ensure that these soldiers were taken care of and rehabilitated?  Like all military members, these men signed an “unlimited liability” contract with the government.  They agreed to risk life, limb, and heart acting as the human part of the nation’s military instrument of national power.  In exchange, the government contracted to pay them while on duty, give them pensions when they qualified, and, most important, take care of their medical needs when they returned less than intact from the battlefield.  This agreement is the most important and sacred contract the US government can make with any of its citizens.  Its fulfillment must take precedence over any entitlement and any benefits to anybody else at any time, in any place. 

This governmental obligation is just as important today as it was in 1962.  The three longest wars the US has ever fought have been prosecuted since then:  Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  The last two were fought with far smaller total forces than any competent planner would recommend.  The length of the wars and the size of the forces available for any theater of war demanded that the finest-trained warriors in the history of the world serve three, four, five, even six combat tours.  Patriots that they are, my fellow soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors have answered the call.      

Few can endure this type of abuse without significant damage to body and soul.  Our political leaders of the last two decades poorly structured and then poorly used our nation’s military instrument of national power.  In so doing, they ground real men and women into the dirt.  Now, these same political leaders are showing signs that they may renege on their fundamental obligation—their promise—to adequately pay and rehabilitate these patriots.  History may indeed show that the greatest waste of our last wars will not be the billions of dollars of equipment left on the battlefield or the failure to effect lasting change on the world scene. It will be the thousands of disabled and struggling warriors who seem to have been forgotten, and whose care and well-being have been ill-funded by a self-serving government.   

Senators, Congressmen, Mr. President: Is that the legacy you want to leave?  You are putting today’s generation of soldier in front of the window in the day room on the third floor of the VA hospital. 

Now, take care of him.  

31 December 2013 –

New Year’s Resolutions 2014

A recent study concluded that when we write down our goals, we are fifty per cent more likely to achieve them.  The same study suggested that if we emulate successful people, the chances for our personal success also will increase greatly.  So, I pondered a bit, and decided I would use the government model as my model for personal success and share my New Year’s resolutions with you.    

I resolve that in this next year, I shall abandon our family budget and spend at least thirty per cent more money than what I earn.  The obligation will accrue as unsecured credit card debt, mounting each month because I’ll show no intent to pay off the principal.  To maintain a decent credit rating, I’ll pay only the minimum amount required on the monthly statement.  When I’ve reached my credit limit, I’ll use another credit card, and then another.  When I reach my debt limits, I’ll ask the credit card companies to raise them, promising that I shall be fiscally restrained from that moment on. 

This fiscal philosophy may allow me to continue deficit spending in the following years as well.  Now I can start to buy what I’m entitled to have, and experience what I’m entitled to experience.  The American dream will be mine.  I’ll finally be freed from the constraints of thrift, personal accountability, and sacrifice for tomorrow’s security.  I can’t wait to get started. 

I’ve also decided that since I’m the head of our family at least through January 2017, I’ll continue relaxing those cumbersome ideas of proper public conduct.  Why shouldn’t I appear youthful and cool during my daily routine of family governance?  I’m sure boring family funerals will pass more quickly if I take more selfies instead of sitting respectfully.

BTW, I like wearing shorts instead of slacks when I play on private golf courses.  The stodgy upper crust should lighten up.  So what if I’m seen in public with my hands in my pockets (“Air Force gloves”, to my old Army compatriots) or chewing gum at official events?  I’m head of the family until I am replaced.  Get over it.

Finally, I learned from the administration’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act how to respond to similar, potential problems on the local level.  For example, how difficult is the following story to believe? 

I resolve that throughout 2014, I won’t stop at the three-way stop light in the center of our subdivision.  The president of the town council pushed the council to approve the installation of stop lights at a wide-open intersection where most homeowners felt they were not needed and where no accidents had occurred.   But, the president contended that stop lights there would enable a minority of home owners in one corner of the subdivision to more easily join the larger community in enjoying the entitlements of society.   

The project has been a disaster.  To start, the president convinced the county tax assessor to enforce the law by levying tax fines on those who run the lights or who insist on using other roads in and out of the subdivision.  Fortunately, enforcement has become a moot point until more pressing problems are solved. 

A delay in design and installation caused contractor costs to double.  City tax increases will certainly follow.  What’s more, the new system will require some drivers to wait long periods, based on “anticipated usage from targeted directions.”  But, the home owners that the stop lights were supposed to benefit rarely use that intersection anyway.  They continue to use another, more convenient route in and out of the subdivision.  When these last two facts became known, the ill-prepared president arbitrarily exempted other home owners in the subdivision from having to use the intersection until the entire system was “working more smoothly.”  The president’s entire plan is falling apart from its own weight and may never be fixed.  In the meantime, I shall ignore it all, stop when I want to stop, and do what benefits me the most.       

So, why did I pick these three resolutions for 2014?  Because my government and its leaders show me that these propositions will require the least amount of personal effort for the most short-term gain.  They will delay payment and equity for instant rewards. 

My goodness, if I achieve my 2014 resolutions, I could use this same message to get elected to public office in 2016.   Another of my great ideas!