Category Archives: Current Affairs

The esteemed military and Bradley – scratch that – Chelsea Manning

Americana, Current Affairs

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While we were in Idaho, admiring the Boise River, Richard Taylor emailed me an article – and article might not be the right word here – from the Pew Research Religion and Public life Project that was titled Public Esteem for Military Still High. The article started with Americans continue to hold the military in high regard, with more than three-quarters of U.S. adults (78%) saying that members of the armed services contribute “a lot” to society’s well-being.

I am astonished that Americans hold the military in such high esteem. Maybe I should say that I am astonished that Americans hold the military in higher esteem than teachers or doctors. I am astonished that twice as many think the military contributes  a lot to society’s well being as feel that way about clergy. My first though was, Obviously, none of the them have been in the military. From my very limited direct experience of three years in the Regular Army – RA, all the way – and my obsessive reading about the same, I feel safe saying  that the only people who are in the military are people who see no other way out of where they are and people with a sort of idealized patriotism.

Some of the people who joined to get out of where they were, do so and move on, some do so and stay. Some of the patriots – for lack of a better word – get disillusioned and get out, some get disillusioned and stay. The military has always been a, slightly to considerably, distorted vision of America writ small (depending on the size of the war or peacetime force).

That writ small part is important, because the resultant inbreeding adds to the distortion. There are some very smart people in the military and even more stupid people, there are some people who contribute a lot to society’s well being and more who don’t contribute much of anything. There are a huge number of people who respect their fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines and a much smaller, but large, number who rape them. With near impunity, apparently.  Last year, there were about 19,000 sexual assaults in the military and only 96 went to court-martial.

db130822And then there is Chelsea Manning. In an idealized world, I like to think he would be treated as a whistle blower and the criminals he exposed would be prosecuted. In the real world, however, exposing your bosses almost always results in the whistle blower getting the punishment, especially in the military and when classified documents are involved. Bradley could have been executed, he could have been locked up for life in the ADX Florence supermax in Colorado. Instead he got a judge that tossed out the Aiding the Enemy charge. He got 35 years with the possibility of parole after twelve years with 4.5 already served. He got the military at its best.

Maybe that is why Americans hold the military in such high esteem, at its best it is very, very good.

 

Nadia Popova R.I.P.

Current Affairs

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Nadia Popova is name you have probably never heard of unless you are Russian, were crazy about WWII airplanes as a kid, or are a woman military pilot (or, maybe, Peter Kuhlman). It is not a name that I remember although I read alot about World War II airplanes as a kid. What I do remember reading about were what the Germans called Nachthexen, or Night Witches. They were a group of Russian women pilots who terrorized the Germans.

We like to think that we won the war against the Germans, but the Russians did the heavy lifting. Three quarters of the German Army was on the Eastern Front, the first time the German Army was stopped was at Stalingrad, and most historians consider that the turning point of WW II in Europe. That was in late 1942. The Soviets had no material to speak of, just people to throw at the Germans – Stalin famously said Quantity has a quality all it’s own –  taking 1,150,000 causalities at Stalingrad alone. They had so few assault rifles, that, in the big push across the Volga, they attacked with two men for each assault rifle, when the guy with the rifle was shot, the other picked it up.

The Night Witches were equipped about as poorly. They flew at night in open, wooden, bi-planes with a top speed of 94 miles per hour against the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe – think about that for a second – in Belorussia, Poland and, finally, Germany. The women didn’t wear parachutes because they were too heavy. In four years, the Night Witches flew over 30,000 missions . The Atlantic points out that They were loathed. And they were feared. Any German pilot who downed a “witch” was automatically awarded an Iron Cross.

They were also amazing.

The most amazing was Nadia Popova. She was a girly-girl who loved to dance and wanted to be a teacher, and she flew 852 missions as a night bomber pilot. (The average crew of a B26, our most used medium bomber during WWII, flew just over 20 missions during their entire career.) After one mission, she returned with 42 bullet holes in her plane. In Poland, she reached her personal record of 18 sorties in one night. That means that she took off – in an open plane, in the dark, often in sub-zero weather – flew over German lines to dropped her bomb load, and returned to her base in the dark. Eighteen times in one night.

After all that, Nadia lived through the war, got married and had kids and grandkids. She died at 91 on July 8th of this year.

(If you are interested, more here and here)

 

1984 Redux

Americana, Current Affairs

 

MRE

It seems we are in perpetual war, just like Oceania and Eastasia, the allies fighting Eurasia in 1984. Without missing a beat, they ended up fighting each other, with Oceania and Eurasia allied against Eastasia. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter  authorized the United States Central Intelligence Agency to conduct Operation Cyclone. That was the code name to arm and finance the mujaheddin so they could fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. These are the same mujaheddin we are fighting now, with the same forces – on our side – that  the Soviets had fighting on their side.

The good news is, I guess, because war promotes innovation on a grand scale – see a 1938 fighter below and a 1948 fighter below that –

P40-W000

 

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our permanent state of war has given us all sorts of great innovations. Two of favorites are MRE’s – Meal, ready to eat – which feature meat infused with caffeine to help keep our combatants awake, and Kevlar underwear to help keep their reproductive parts safe.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if we were willing to spend that kind of money on education.

Happy Mother’s Day

Around home, Current Affairs

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Helené Rambow Stern Parsons 1909-1985

It has been over twenty five years since my mom died. She was not my Ideal Mother. In many ways, she was a very unhappy person and that often made her a difficult person to be around. But, I miss her. I miss her sense of style. I miss her sense of humor and her curiosity.

Mom-0027She was born and grew up in Oakland where she went to school until she was 16. Then her family said something along the lines of You are sixteen now, Goodbye (all the more remarkable because her father, my grandfather, considered himself an intellectual).

Mom-0028She became an adult quickly, was married at 17 and divorced soon after, married and divorced again, and married my dad in 1939. Sometime during that period, my mom worked as a model at Ransohoff’s.

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I don’t think that life was ever easy for my mom but she always had a sense of style. Happy Mother’s Day!

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