Thank you for your service

On this Veteran’s Day, I want to pay tribute to those who serve our nation.

Your tremendous efforts and sacrifices, and those of your families, are hereby noted.

And I instruct my children to respect the military, and to honor those who fight for our country and the greater cause of freedom in the world.

So I offer my most humble, and most sincere, “thank you” to all who serve the United States military, today and in the past. The world is a better place because of it. And I don’t just think about that on Veteran’s Day, I think it every day of every year.

Even Google (!) is showing respect for Veterans today:

 

“Notes left behind”

Wow.

Notes left behind: Six-year-old cancer victim Elena Desserich’s heartbreaking messages of love to her family

These are the heartbreaking notes a six-year-old cancer victim hid for her family to find after she died.

Elena Desserich was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer when she was just five years old.

During her nine-month struggle with the illness, Elena, from Wyoming, hid hundreds of notes between the pages of books, in cupboards, drawers, bags, and clothes stashed away for the winter.

What a sweet little angel. They’re still finding the notes, more than two years later, and have written a book about it called “Notes Left Behind” as a tribute to Elena and to help little sister Gracie remember her.

“Gracie” … a nickname for “Grace”. Sounds like there is a lot of Grace in the Desserich family.

While the Desserichs were forming their own tribute, Elena was secretly writing notes and tucking them away in nooks and crannies in her house and the houses of relatives.

‘She was a child who was wise beyond her years,’ said Mr Desserich. ‘I hate to think she knew she was dying but I think she did.’

‘I think the notes were her way of telling us that everything would be OK,’ added Mrs Desserich.  ‘It feels like a hug from her every time we find one.’

[...]

‘We don’t ever want to find the last note,’ said Mr Desserich. ‘I hope we keep on finding them for years to come.’

In fact, both parents have saved one unopened note from Elena which they carry with them in their briefcases.

‘It’s our way of saving the last note,’ said Mrs Desserich.

Our sincere condolences to them on their loss.

Please go read the whole thing.

 

You can’t really call it “education” if you aren’t teaching enough facts

E. D. Hirsch, who wrote the bestselling book “Cultural Literacy” in the 1980s, seems to have been validated by education reform in Massachusetts over the last 15 years.

His belief—which I completely agree with—is that background facts are an important piece of the educational puzzle, especially as opposed to the popular practice of teaching reading and writing as skills, completely disconnected from the world around us, and from our history.

His Core Knowledge curriculum, for example, specifies:

… in English language arts, all second-graders read poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Dickinson, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as stories by Rudyard Kipling, E. B. White, and Hans Christian Andersen. In history and geography, the children study the world’s great rivers, ancient Rome, and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, among other subjects.

Today’s high school and college students have great difficulty writing effectively, and comprehending what they read (ask any college or high school teacher). I’ll join Mr. Hirsch in blaming that on the fateful decision to abandon in the early school years both the emphasis on facts, and on reading great literature about real people and places from history.

Context matters. History matters. Knowing what came before us matters. And it all matters in very real ways, not just in being good at Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit.

Hirsch on educating the poor:

“Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children,” Hirsch writes, and “the only reliable way of combating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in the same social and educational condition as their parents. That children from poor and illiterate homes tend to remain poor and illiterate is an unacceptable failure of our schools, one which has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty educational theories.”

He’s right, and we know he’s right because we used to educate our children with more practical knowledge, as he advocates, and we didn’t have poor performance in our students that we see today.

But even though his system works, and he can prove it, Education schools have worked hard to discredit him. Hmmm. Whose interests are being served there?

Education schools have been experimenting on our children for decades, and it is not working.

More powerfully than any previous critic, Hirsch showed how destructive these instructional approaches were. The idea that schools could starve children of factual knowledge, yet somehow encourage them to be “critical thinkers” and teach them to “learn how to learn,” defied common sense. But Hirsch also summoned irrefutable evidence from the hard sciences to eviscerate progressive-ed doctrines. Hirsch had spent the better part of the decade since Cultural Literacy mastering the findings of neurobiology, cognitive psychology, and psycholinguistics on which teaching methods best promote student learning. The scientific consensus showed that schools could not raise student achievement by letting students construct their own knowledge. The pedagogy that mainstream scientific research supported, Hirsch showed, was direct instruction by knowledgeable teachers who knew how to transmit their knowledge to students—the very opposite of what the progressives promoted.

Please read the whole thing. I’ve just barely scratched the surface here.

Frankly, it comes down to a debate between what the Founding Fathers wanted, and what today’s Ed schools want. Do we really have to ponder that question for long? I know I don’t.

The future of our children depends, at least in part, on our understanding of (1) why we are failing to educate our children adequately, and (2) how to address it. E.D. Hirsch seems to have a pretty good handle on it. Will he continue to be largely ignored?

Bill Ayers has more legitimacy in Ed schools than a genuine educator like E.D. Hirsch. This tells us a lot. And frankly, it makes me ill.

When Do We Say “Enough is Enough”?

The number of Chicago Public School students murdered this school year? 35

Alex Arellano, 15 years old, was said to be a quiet kid who stayed away from gangs. He was tortured before he was murdered: beaten with baseball bats, hit by a car, shot in the head, and burned beyond recognition.

Thirty. Five. Children. Murdered. In one school year.

I don’t care how big a school system is, you can’t explain away a statistic like that.

It indicates social breakdown on a mass scale.

People keep trying to address education failures in big cities by treating them as education problems. They are not. They are generally social problems, manifested in many ways, just one of which is poor education performance.

Security is the first requirement in a productive society. Unsurprisingly, kids who have to worry about getting killed while going to school don’t focus all that well.

So, some questions.

Who is really in charge in the city of Chicago? Is it the gangs, or the police?

And can the mayor continue to insist that the problems with crime are caused by legal gun owners? After all, that is the only rational basis for arguments in favor of banning handguns. So why isn’t it working?

I’ll just throw this out there. It isn’t working because it can’t work. It is a fatally flawed idea. It isn’t a matter of not enough money, or not enough laws, or not enough police, or just needing a few tweaks to get the “right” kind of weapons off the streets.

The evidence says that concealed-carry laws reduce crime, while handgun bans increase it; a city that truly wants to be a safer place would opt for policies that work, instead of platitudes that don’t.

Peoples lives depend on these policies. It isn’t a parlor game.

Good Morning, North Korea!

North Korea launched a rocket of some kind yesterday, and has been pursuing nuclear weapons research.

A post at Watts Up With That might be worth a read, especially if the term “EMP” means nothing to you: Bzt! Welcome to the dark ages.

Edu-macate yo’ self. And have a nice day!

UPDATE: In light of all this, the President’s idea that the U.S. should unilaterally disarm seems iffy. OK, it’s idiotic, is what it is.

News flash: the world is not full of shiny happy people who want to be our friends. It just isn’t, and it never will be.

Offering Thanks

It isn’t every day that we get to thank God for miracles.  Today is an exception.

My Uncle Bill has kidney disease, and has been on dialysis since August.  He’s only 56 years old, and in excellent health otherwise.  He played football at Wheaton College — just one mile from where I live now — and he looks like he could still suit up and play, right now (he weighs less today than he did then).

His wife Betsy is a genetic match and so they were told she could potentially donate a kidney, and they’d pinned their hopes on that.  Later, they were given the devastating news that a previous health concern with her would prevent her from donating.

But new doctors and hospitals changed that diagnosis.  As it turns out, the previous health concern was trivial, and she was cleared as a donor a couple of weeks ago.

Yesterday they did the transplant surgery, and it was deemed an immediate success, and both are recovering today.

I just want to offer my thanks to God, for a gift of life for my uncle, his wife, and his 3 kids.

One day at a time, and today is a great day!

Hope, Pride, and Change

Steve H. has a very touching post about his Dad called “Christmas Gift”. Please go read it now. Twice.

I can relate, though my own Dad passed away a couple of years ago, so the resolution phase didn’t happen, unfortunately. We were actually closer long ago, but then drifted apart, for various reasons. I know part of that was my fault; I had mistaken for distance what was instead clinical depression, as I found out after he was gone.

He was a very proud man; too proud to rely on anybody, even his only son (and only child, period), for help. But I can understand that, because I’m a lot like him, in a lot of ways. As you can imagine, this is not a comfortable feeling as I approach my 50th birthday this year.

But the larger point I wanted to make here: I’m happy for Steve H. that he has found happiness through religion. Really, really happy. The contrast between his online persona today vs. a few years ago is striking, and its obvious he’s a much happier person today. It comes through on his site, loud and clear.

For those who’ve never read his various sites (I’ve been a fan since early in my blogging days 6 years ago), he is a very talented writer and humorist, but personally, he suffered from some obstacles in relations with his family. I don’t know Steve personally, but he puts it all out there with his writings, and the impression I got was that he was letting those obstacles define his relationships, instead of forgiving, and accepting people for who they are, and realizing that we all have things we should apologize for.

Who among us can’t relate to such feelings of failure as we get older, and our lives turn out to be so much more complicated, messy, and inconvenient than we pictured them as young adults?

Happy Thanksgiving, 2008

In honor of Thanksgiving, which has been one of my favorite holidays for many years now, I’ll re-post something I wrote a couple of years ago called “Little Known Facts, Thanksgiving Edition”.

I’m also getting quite a few search hits for it lately, and when I did a Google search for it the other day, that post was number 4 on the list.  

 

Little Known Facts, Thanksgiving Edition

Taking the ‘Thanks’ Out of Thanksgiving

Clearly, those who founded our country recognized the importance of God in the life of our nation. They also understood the rightness of thanking God for his blessings. For example, it was George Washington who, on October 3, 1789, issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation. In Washington’s words, Americans were to set aside “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God.”

All that, and football games. Three of them this year. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Unfortunately, some of the intellectual lightweights running our school systems are not clear on the concept, where some teachers are told they “… cannot even mention the word “Thanksgiving” this year because ‘the pilgrims offended the Indians’ and ‘Thanksgiving was never intended to be thanks to God.’”

And the most well known example is probably this:

Several years ago, it was reported that Maryland public school students were free to thank anyone they wanted while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving. However, they were not allowed to thank God. Instead, Maryland students read stories about the Pilgrims and Native American Indians, simulated Mayflower voyages, held mock feasts and learned about the famous meal that temporarily allied two very different groups. But teachers did not mention that in addition to thanking the Native Americans for their peaceful three-day indulgence, the Pilgrims repeatedly thanked God.

Look, it’s just historical fact, it isn’t pushing anybody to convert. Learn to distinguish between two unlike things. It’s useful sometimes.

It goes on to make the larger point:

We have allowed ourselves to become controlled by our fears. Rather than risk offending someone, we would sooner toss our rich history and traditions on the pyre of political correctness. But such an approach is destined for failure. Indeed, even if you breathe, you are sure to offend someone. What is the result? We gain nothing. We water down and suck the life out of what once gave meaning and direction to our lives. In the end, our children will be the ones who lose out, left with little clue as to where they came from or where they may be going in life.

We have also lost our sense of reverence. Too many Americans have little, if any, gratitude for the liberty and material comforts we enjoy—both of which were made possible through great sacrifice. Heedless of our many blessings, as a nation, we are tempting fate.

My job as a parent, at least in part, is to fight this anti-American-culture trend. I will educate my kids on the true history of the United States, including the powerful role religion played in guiding the Founding Fathers and the resulting documents that have guided us well for 200+ years, and how the freedoms we enjoy today are unique in the history of mankind, and were earned by leaving the blood of some of our best young people on various battlefields throughout the world.

Because it is true. And we do ourselves a disservice when we ignore it, or purposely pay homage to others instead.

Does that mean I think we are a perfect nation? Of course not. There are lots of things I’d like to see changed here; but just because we aren’t perfect does not imply we aren’t pretty damn good.

We provide the freedoms necessary to any person born in this country, or who legally emigrates here, to do just about anything they like, limited only by their desires and capacities.

For most people, that’s all they really want. But most areas of the world are ruled by corrupt thugs and criminals, who have no interest in providing anything approaching a useful economy or the rule of law or the right to own private property to their subjects.

The least we can do, to honor both those who died to protect us from those horrors, and those who designed the documents that protect us from those horrors, is to frankly and honestly assess their contributions throughout history.

Sign Me Up

Zombietime is tired of waiting for a public declaration of what is blatantly obvious to those of us paying attention to the war in Iraq: we won.

Rufus says “All We Are Saying … Is It’s Over and We Won”:

So Zombietime is declaring November 22, 2008, Victory in Iraq Day. I’ll gladly participate, keeping in mind those who have died to make this happen, and the leadership of President Bush in committing to winning the damn war.

But lots of people don’t like President Bush, so by their tortured logic, that means we didn’t really win, after all. Or if we did, it isn’t very important. After all, he talks funny.

So never-you-mind that today, Iraq is mostly peaceful, due to both the change in strategy and the people of Iraq finally turning against Al-Qaeda in Iraq about two years ago, after realizing that terrorists care about nothing except killing innocent people by the truckload in order to gain power. And give the people of Iraq credit — lots of credit — because they risked their lives (including the lives of innocent women and children) in order to actively start fighting against terrorist scumbags who blow up little kids running for candy and strap bombs to kids with Down syndrome and then detonate them via remote control.

Just don’t expect much comment on this historic victory over the terrorists and the unmitigated evil they represent. Nah, we live in a post-modern bubble here, where such things can be ignored, because they don’t fit the narrative. It’s cool. You just make up the facts you wish to be true, and ignore the true ones, and voila! A new reality is born.

So no front page headlines in 72 point type announcing victory, no victory parades, and no admission from the 20-30% of the country that suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, that they were wrong. That would require intellectual honesty, and in a post-modern world, well … who has time for that silliness?

And they fought so hard, for the other side, these rabid Bush-haters in the media and Congress and various leakers at State and CIA. During wartime, too! How exhausting for the poor dears. Of course, normally, this is borderline treason, but somehow we’ve gotten to a place where it’s “the highest form of patriotism”. Um, sure. OK.

Read the whole thing.

And I’ll be participating, with great pride, in Victory in Iraq Day, November 22, 2008.

Praying for a Miracle, and Getting It

On Monday night, around 8:30, three-year-old Ryan Flake somehow wandered away from his house in Oswego Township.

12 hours later, he was found, alive and unhurt, in the woods about a mile from his house.

Ryan Flake and Dad

What a miracle. The odds of finding a missing child alive go way down the longer they are missing; I don’t remember exactly what they are, but after 12 hours, they can’t be very good. I heard about this story on the news Tuesday morning, when they said he’d been missing 11 hours at that point. I thought, “oh no”. It sounded like this wouldn’t end well. But then this morning, when I went to the Tribune’s website, I saw it had a happy ending, and even though I don’t know the child, or the family, it brought me great joy.

We confront quite enough bad news; I like to hear something good once in a while.

Of course, I can’t imagine the grief and heartache those parents had to endure for all those hours, and the fear in a little three-year-old boy, alone in the woods, all night long. Words fail me. We lost our then-kindergartner at Epcot a few years ago, for 10 minutes or so, and while I try not to freak out about kids getting lost for a few minutes, it was Epcot. Have you seen Epcot? It’s very, very big. Lots and lots of people. Who knows what a little kid is going to do in that situation? But our little boy was so smart, and went up to a uniformed security guard, and said “I can’t find my parents”, and then I saw them walking towards me, and … well, the sense of relief was indescribable.

So for this one story at least, it’s nice to hear everybody is OK.  I like that.

Last year, there was a similar miracle, that I wrote about here.

Happy Father’s Day

I wish my Dad was still here for me to say that to him. But he’s not, and has been gone almost two years now, and so the best I can do is to remember him today.

When I picture him in my mind, I see him smiling and laughing, because he did that more than just about anybody I ever met. It was his defining characteristic, and anybody who ever knew him would probably agree.

I could use some smiling and laughing right about now, for a whole bunch of reasons. I could also use a little more faith, because mine is being tested now in ways I’d never imagined. Today’s sermon at church was about worrying, and what a waste of time and energy it is. And when you really break it down, intellectually and rationally, of course that is so true.

The trouble starts when we see ourselves painted into corners that we don’t fully understand how to get out of. So we worry as a way to exert control over events beyond our control. Worrying causes bad stuff to happen in our bodies; it physically changes your body chemistry for the worse, which adds a whole new layer of stress over whatever was already going on. It is just about the worst thing you could do.

I’m not sure how much time my Dad spent worrying about anything. He was very sensible about a lot of things in life, except for the appetites that ultimately proved his undoing. He always liked the saying “que sera, sera”, which apparently means “whatever will be, will be”. Hard to argue with that.

So if he were here today, I’d tell him that I miss him, and I miss the feeling that he was as close as a phone call away, and that I admired his more “happy go lucky” ways, an attitude that I’m not quite as naturally tuned into, for whatever reason. And that I loved him, despite the distance that developed between us in the latter years. I mistook the side effects of clinical depression for emotional distance, and didn’t stop to think that maybe he needed me sometimes, too. And for that I’m deeply sorry; it is a debt I can never repay to you, Dad.

But I try not to dwell on that. I have three kids of my own, and they need me, at various times and in differing amounts. So the best thing I can do — the only thing I can do, really — is to be the best Dad for them that I possibly can.

So today, I think that’s what I’ll try to do. And tomorrow, it will be time to do that again. And with the help of my wife, and our kids, and our families and friends, and God, and a little luck, and a lot of patience with myself and others, I hope and pray that I can not mangle it up too bad.

Too Bad GWB Didn’t Deliver a Speech Like This Sometime In The Last … Oh … Six Years Or So

Well worth reading: “Why We Went To Iraq” by Fouad Ajami, of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

That is a beautiful piece of writing, about a very serious and profound subject. I read a lot of verbiage about Iraq, and I can honestly say that in my view this is one of the most concise, honest, rational accounts of what the last six years are truly all about.

Even moreso, because the media has done such a shoddy job of presenting an accurate picture of this war, or how history will view it in regards to defeat of Islamic terrorism as a political movement.

And how the drastic, winner-take-all tactics of the Islamic jihadis have produced a backlash even amongst themselves.

And how, ultimately, the war itself may be justified on those grounds alone.

We keep hearing about how unpopular the war is. My contention is that most people are ill-informed about it, due to reliance on a news media that has proven itself incapable of covering wars of any kind over the last 40 years.  And this one is the worst, by far, of all of them, including Vietnam.

There’s a lot of change going on out there.  It would be good if the American people knew about it.

(Edited for content 5 June ‘08)

Ignoring the News – Cheaper Than Prozac, and Fewer Side-Effects

I’ve noticed something lately: the less news I read, the happier I am.

This actual headline from the weekend might help illustrate why that is: “Death Toll Rises to, Like, 12,553,942 in Iraq”.

Although it’s very possible that I’m not remembering it exactly right.

Still, the point remains: the news business thrives on two things: making a crisis out of every storyline, and on creating “narratives” to simplify things for us morons.

More Cool Pics

The U.S. Military in Iraq

It would be really nice if once — just one time — we could see a picture like one of these splashed on the front page of a magazine or newspaper.

Is that too much to ask?

Yes, apparently it is. The bright lights that run our major media organizations have all decided that none of these pictures — or the stories that accompany them — are interesting enough to carry.

Here are the captions for each picture (L to R):

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS
A U.S. Army soldier from 2nd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery Regiment plays rock, paper, scissors with an Iraqi child at a clinic with coalition and Iraqi doctors in Buhrez, Iraq, Jan. 25, 2008. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Sean Mulligan

FRIEND IN NEED
While on a routine “meet and greet,” mission in Iraq, Marines from Regimental Combat Team 5, 23rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Battalion met a family Jan. 22, 2008, who had a two-year-old girl in need of urgent heart surgery. The battalion worked with the Iraqi government, and the U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security, to fly the child to a hospital in Nashville, Tenn., where the surgery will be done at no cost. U.S. Marine Corps Photo by Lance Cpl. Shawn Coolman

AFGHAN CLINIC
Army Spc. Beverly S. McDaniel, a combat medic assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 782nd Brigade Support Battalion, gives a young child medicine at a health clinic in Nawa District, Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, Jan. 13, 2008. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Nathan W. Hutchison | Story | More Photos |

Dave Clark Five Singer, Mike Smith, Dies at 64

Just Two Weeks Before Induction Into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

And not only that, he’d been paralyzed for the last 4+ years, spending most of his time in a hospital. He just came home in December.

I’ve always liked this band: “Glad All Over” and “Catch Us If You Can” rival the best pop music of any era.

It would have been nice if he could have received the richly-deserved accolades coming up at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But one of the great things about making your mark with recorded music is that your legacy lives on every single time each person hears that music, forevermore.

That is one heck of a legacy, when you think about it.

And it’s hard not to smile and shift into a slightly better mood whenever you hear a song like “Glad All Over”, in any case.

Tragedy at NIU

So far, six victims have died, plus the perp, who by killing himself, saved us the trouble and expense of convicting and sentencing and executing him.

Northern Illinois University is my alma mater. I spent over five years there — yes, I changed majors a few times, why do you ask? — and even lived there full time for the last 3 years of that time. I liked my time there; it had started to feel like home. It has been 25 years since I was a student there, but I’ve been back every few years since. It still feels like a former home.

Now it’s known as one of those places where a senseless mass murder took place. It has been changed forever.

My sincere condolences to all the victims and their families.

I’ll compile news links and editorials here (updated 02-18-08):

Chicago Tribune -
Coverage
NIU shooting leaves 7 dead; 4 identified
Map
Making sense of tragedy is a puzzle we cannot solve (excellent column by John Kass, 02-17-08)

Chicago Sun-Times -
7 dead in NIU shooting

Daily Herald -
Coverage
Six people, gunman killed in shooting at NIU lecture hall
NIU’s community never stronger (excellent column by Barry Rozner, 02-17-08)

Northern Star -
Students react to aftermath of shooting
Editorial: NIU has lost members of its family

Photos:
Tribune
Tribune – NIU shooting victims, their stories
Tribune – Northern Illinois University gunman Steven Kazmierczak
Sun-Times
Sun-Times 2

Northern Illinois University has established a memoral page and a scholarship fund.

The victims: Daniel Parmenter, Catalina Garcia, Ryanne Mace, Julianna Gehant, and Gayle Dubowski. Sixteen others injured.

Further thoughts …

• The emerging portrait of the killer, Steven Kazmierczak, is a complicated one. Here’s an article from today’s Tribune. On the one hand, everybody who knew him has nothing but good things to say about him. Smart, personable, caring. On the other hand, his psychiatric history is troubling, especially over the last few months. Very odd. Not many conclusions to be drawn yet, but one thing that strikes me is that even smart, personable, caring people can be mentally troubled.
• I’ve been pretty impressed with the reaction of the University, the police and all emergency personnel, and the student newspaper. A chaotic situation like that presents many opportunities to make bad choices, but everybody seems to have done the right thing at the right time. Very commendable.
• NIU is usually one of those “under the radar” schools, but with a big alumni presence in the Chicago area in particular. There is a fair amount of pride out there; we’re seeing that now. I am reminded now that I don’t have any NIU-wear, and I need to fix that.
• I have to wonder about the potential side-effects of this “mystery medication” Kazmierczak had stopped taking.  We’ve all heard about how anti-depressants can cause some people to become suicidal or violent.  He was both. We need a public airing of this discussion.

Military History is Your Friend: Tet Offensive, 1968

The Lies of Tet -  Arthur Herman, Wall Street Journal Online, Feb. 6, 2008

To sum it up:

• The Tet Offensive was launched because North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were losing, i.e., it was a desperation move.
• It was a complete disaster for them. They lost 100,000 troops (killed and wounded) in a little over a month, and captured not a single province.
• A hoped-for popular uprising never happened.
• Most reporters were based in Saigon, where the fighting was furious, and since most of them had never even seen any real fighting, they basically panicked and reported accordingly. Ernie Pyle, these guys were not.
• Back home, reporters and anchors like Walter Cronkite — “the most trusted man in America” — spun this into defeat for the U.S.
• Hanoi took notice and shifted it’s strategy to play to the media and the anti-war effort — hmm, sound familiar? — and to focus on causing American casualties rather than on winning the war.
• By 1970, the Viet Cong “had ceased to exist as a viable fighting force” and “over 70% of South Vietnam’s population was under government control”.
• In 1972, a peace treaty is signed.
• Quoting from the article: “By August 1972 there were no U.S. combat forces left in Vietnam, precisely because, contrary to the overwhelming mass of press reports, American policy there had been a success.”
• Hanoi ignores the peace treaty, and in 1975, launches a massive invasion. South Vietnam turns to the U.S. for the arms we had promised them in the “peace process”. Congress refuses.
• Saigon falls.
• “The Killing Fields” era begins in Cambodia.

I think it’s safe to say that while the phrase “Tet Offensive” resonates with most Americans, those same Americans have no idea what really happened. Or more accurately, they have no idea that what they think happened is exactly 100% opposite of what really happened.

“The most trusted man in America”? That’s pretty amusing.

This event, really, was the clarion call for the activist journalism that we see everywhere around us today.

R.I.P. Staff Sgt. Robert Miller

Last week, Staff Sgt. Robert Miller, a 2002 graduate of Wheaton North High School, was killed in Barikowt, Afghanistan. He was a Green Beret assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Ft. Bragg, N.C. He was 24.

His gymnastics coach and English teacher from high school, Chad Downie, said that Miller’s favorite quote from sophomore English was “cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” He convinced the coach to put this saying on the team’s practice shirts during the following season.

I feel personally connected in multiple ways to Staff Sgt. Miller. My oldest son went to the same elementary school, and had the same teachers mentioned in the articles below, and was on the same gymnastics team, coached by the same Coach Downie. The online version of the Daily Herald article doesn’t show it, but the newspaper had a picture of the gymnastics team, and the two kids next to Miller were still on the team the next year when my son was a freshman on the team, and he was mentored by these kids. My son graduated from elementary school with one of Miller’s sisters.

Staff Sgt. Robert Miller was an honorable young man who relished a challenge; he took Latin in high school, just for the challenge, and during gymnastics practice, he never wanted to leave the gym. As with most Special Forces troops, he was proficient in 3 languages, French, Pashto, and Spanish. His awards included the Army Commendation Medal for Valor, Army Good Conduct Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, two Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbons, NATO Medal, Parachutist Badge, Ranger Tab and Special Forces Tab.

I’d really hoped that I wouldn’t read yet another story about a local soldier dying half a world away. These stories about local young people, risking their lives to help others and fulfill a sense of purpose. Their adult lives just getting started, but already exceedingly well-lived and filled with honor, commitment, and the pursuit of excellence. Then, suddenly, they’re gone. And all that is left is grief, and loved ones wondering what might have been. It is depressing, and sad beyond words.

I feel a bond with all local kids that join the service. They’re from my community, and they took risks to help the world I live in, and to protect my own kids. It hurts me when they don’t come home. And I didn’t even know them before; I can’t imagine the grief of those who knew them well, or loved them as family or friend.

But as always with the deaths of brave people serving their country, we must focus on the good things they did with their lives while they were here. Actually, this is true for everybody, since we never know when the end is coming, for any of us. When people like Staff Sgt. Miller are driven to serve, they are fulfilling their sense of purpose, and there is a lot of value in that, regardless of risk. As parents, we like to think we can protect our kids forever, but “protection” can easily turn into something more controlling and unfair to a young man or woman that has reached the age of consent.

My sincere condolences to the family of Staff Sgt. Robert Miller, and to his friends, and to all who knew him.

Links:

• Wheaton North grad killed in Afghanistan; 24-year-old soldier killed during combat
• Wheaton native dies in combat; Green Beret remembered for attitude, dedication
• Wheaton North grad killed in war
• Soldier with ties to Oviedo killed in Afghanistan
• Fort Bragg soldier dies in Afghanistan
• Former University of Iowa Student Killed in Afghanistan
• Fallen Green Beret gets battlefield salute

(updated 4 Feb ‘08)

“America’s Secret War”: A Fascinating Book

Buy This Book:

America’s Secret War by George Friedman

For fans of geopolitical intrigue, behind-the-scenes diplomatic arm-twisting, and real analysis explaining why countries and their leaders do the things they do, this is easily one of the most informative, balanced, fascinating, and just plain useful books I’ve ever read.

I’m somewhat plugged into the world of the military, geopolitical conflicts and intrigue, the CIA, “war is politics by other means”, etc. Not an expert, by any means, but I read a fair amount about such things. Some people watch “24″; I read about real spies and geopolitical intrigue. And I learned a lot from this book.

I didn’t know, for example, that during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. hinted very strongly to Saddam Hussein that should he win that war, we would not object to a subsequent invasion of Kuwait.

Tim Blair Recuperating

Tim Blair, who was recently diagnosed with cancer, is recuperating after surgery to remove the (single) malignant tumor from his colon.

His first post-surgery post is entitled “They Saved The Arm”. So that surgeon must be top-notch!

But in all seriousness, we wish him a speedy and complete recovery. If a sense of humor is a great defense, he is well-positioned to defeat the big “C”.

Here is the story of his diagnosis. It takes quite a nice turn at the end. Highly recommended.