I read Howard Freedlander’s piece in The Spy on the “Military Conundrum” created by General Mark Milley’s call to his Chinese counterpart, Gen Li Zuocheng, on 8 January, two days after the insurrectionist assault on our democracy.

Milley was trying to allay Chinese fears of an attack by the United States. Quoting Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, in their book “Peril”, US intel believed “The Chinese thought that Trump in desperation [in having lost the election] would create a crisis, present himself as the savior, and use the gambit to win reelection.”

Shortly before or after General Milley’s call to Gen Li [Woodward and Costa do not make it clear], Speaker Pelosi expressed the same worry in a face-to-face meeting with Milley. She wanted assurance that Trump could not launch a nuclear attack on China by himself. Milley affirmed that there were “procedures” which guaranteed that that could not happen.

I agree with Mr. Freedlander that circumventing President Trump in this manner was a violation of normal chain-of-command protocols, both political and military. I also agree that policy decisions on going to war, or not, belong to civilians in the Congress and Executive branch, not the military.

However, I disagree with Mr. Freedlander’s view that General Milley should have resigned rather than calling General li.

This is not a normal situation we are talking about. Nor is it a normal president we were dealing with. I have voted in fifteen presidential elections, so I have experience with only the last third of our commanders-in-chief. But I have never seen the likes of Donald Trump. Not even Nixon, whom I confess to have supported early on, was as impulsive, self-centered, power-hungry, and ignorant/disdainful of the US Constitution. In the end, Nixon, to avoid impeachment, displayed honor in resigning. I see no honor in the perpetrator of the Big Lie, only child-like selfishness.

From the day he lost the election to inauguration of President Biden on 20 January, I worried that Trump might attack Iran, North Korea, or even China in a “Dr. Strangelove” move in order to stay in power. Am I being too melodramatic? Unrealistic? I don’t think so. I’ve come to expect non-normality with Trump. I heard his niece, Mary Trump, say on the Lawrence O’Donnell show, “This is the first time in his life that he lost something that he couldn’t lie, cheat, or steal his way out of, so his desperation is what General Milley was dealing with.”

I don’t think Milley’s resignation-with-explanation would have been as reassuring to the Chinese as was his person-to-person call. His words would have carried less credibility than that of a sitting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

General Milley is scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 28. I hope and expect it to be televised. He will have a chance to explain why he did what he did. I’ll try to reserve my final opinion until then, but for now, Milley looks to be a hero in the mold of Lt. Col. Vindman, Fiona Hill, and Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Bob Moores retired from Black & Decker/DeWalt in 1999 after 36 years. He was the Director of Cordless Product Development at the time. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Johns Hopkins University

 

 

 

Most adult Americans will never forget the shocking, horrifying images they saw that sunny,.blue-sky September morning, when  two airliners filled with passengers hit the twin towers in New York, another struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C and  a fourth crashed in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania. Some 3,000 people died that day. 

We solemnly honor  them, their families, their friends, the First Responders and two decades later, the toll of the two wars that followed.   

My interest here is how and why after 9/11, previously latent or fringe American feelings and emotions began to became mainstream and politically potent. All human psyches over time can be affected by major crises, group reactions, changing moods and the firm, repeated convictions of their leaders. But, in 2021, the national spirit of the United States is fractured and much weakened.    

First, Americans on 9/11 lost a belief ingrained since birth, that our homeland, the Continental United States (CONUS) ,was invulnerable to the death and destruction of foreign attacks. For 187 years, we had become accustomed to US forces engaging enemies on battlefields in Europe and Asia, not the CONUS.  

Second, 9/11 also introduced a fear of Muslim terrorists, who eventually came to be promoted and accepted by many Americans, as a generic enemy: Arabs/Muslims. 

Ethnic malice wasn’t new to the United States. Much earlier, the US Civil War and its aftermath froze an older, often violent, sense of white racial superiority over Blacks, which persevered into the 21st Century. Racial targeting of African Americans was violently manifested in 2020 (George Floyd and Brianna Taylor murders), but expanded to include Latinos and Asians as well as Arabs/Muslims. Antisemitism also surfaced as a smaller part of the movement against non-Christians and people of color. 

This article addresses the 9/11 attacks and the George W. Bush Administration. A second will discuss the Obama and Trump Administrations and any additional slings and arrows our national spirit  may have received. 

The White House Policy Mood on 9/12/2001

America’s leaders as well as the population at large were traumatized by 9/11. But, “shock and awe” was in the air and swagger seemed called for at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue..

The Cold War had ended over a decade before and the Soviet Union was no more. The US stood astride the world. However, ten years had passed since the US military had last led its Allies in war and  defeated a dictator, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.  However, that conflict ended with a cease-fire agreement not a much tougher, more satisfying surrender ceremony removing Saddam from power.

In fact, President George H. W. Bush was repeatedly criticized for not sending American forces into Baghdad after the Iraqi military withdrew from Kuwait to force Saddam out and achieve a more total victory. The explanation was simple::neither President Bush nor Secretary of State Colin Powell had any interest in occupying another quagmire. 

After 9/11, his son, President G. W. Bush, in office only 8 months, confronted critical choices after 9/11, but in a much more hawkish political environment with a fearful population in need of reassurance. .  

Bush’s dilemma was not easy: should America attack Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan with limited objectives and highly selective targeting, or commit to all out war against them, but what about Iraq?    

Those closest to President Bush immediately following 9/11 were Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.  All were hawks, but Wolfowitz offered a strategic concept for the  entire Middle East. An academic and veteran of earlier Republican administrations, Wolfowitz twenty-five years earlier, had written a paper describing Iraq as a serious threat to the United States, particularly under Saddam Hussein, BUT Iraq also offered a singular advantage. 

Wolfowitz believed the Middle East could be refashioned one country at a time, starting with Iraq. And for several decades he had successfully promoted his paper’s thesis among prominent NeoCons. The President and Rumsfeld and many others, were converts.   

Thus, in an excess of imperial hubris, the President announced the national security policy that would remain actively in place through three administrations: the Global War on Terrorism. Its mission was sufficiently vague to fit Afghanistan, Iraq and almost any other country that might have terrorists. 

The Administrations was so fixated on Iraq, that it made an initial effort, widely reported in the media of the day, to name Saddam as the 9/11 Perp and/or an immediate, deadly threat to the US (WMD, fuel rods, chemical weapons trucks, rumors Saddam and Bin Laden had collaborated etc). None were true, but we invaded Afghanistan in fall, 2001 and Iraq in spring, 2003.  

What the GWOT Wrought:

The military and national security agencies swung into action and quickly developed plans to implement the GWOT.  DOD managed the two invasions while a complex of highly classified programs were approved by the White House to crush/deter terrorism. They included  secret detentions, extraordinary rendition (kidnapping), enhanced interrogation (torture) and delivery of suspects to third countries for questioning that were more inclined to the use of torture. Secret US foreign detention facilities (Black Sites) were also created. 

The underlying objective for all these arrangements was to place these captives and their interrogations and any judicial processes, beyond the reach of the US Constitution, US criminal justice system, the Federal Courts and international law. A similar explanation lay behind the 2002 establishment of a terrorist prison on the US Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.  780 people were imprisoned there of whom 9 died.  Today, only 39 prisoners remain,  

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established on November 25, 2002 to provide the vehicle and the personnel to exert domestic authority in support of  the GWOT and later the Patriot Act. Moreover, through the Border Patrol, it was responsible for preventing illegal foreign entry into the United States. DHS eventually incorporated the US Coast Guard, the Transportation Safety Administration and the authority to decide who entered the country.  

During the violent summer months of 2020, following the May murder of George Floyd, an African American, by a white police officer, outrage erupted in cities across the country. Armed DHS agents, among other Feds,  were deployed to American cities to quell unrest, exacerbated by the intrusion of  armed militias into otherwise peaceful citizen demonstrations. They would play major roles during the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the capitol.  

Only seven months after the invasion of Iraq, the repulsive, sadistic abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American military men and women  began. Photos of the night shifts’ activities between October – December 2002 at the Abu Ghraib Prison surfaced to the disgust of millions and to the moral shame of America.  

And twelve more years were to follow.

Tom Timberman is an Army vet, lawyer, former senior Foreign Service officer, adjunct professor at GWU, and economic development team leader or foreign government advisor in war zones. He is the author of four books, lectures locally and at US and European universities. He and his wife are 24 year residents of Kent County.

 

 

 

I served as a civilian advisor during the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam. As I write this, I am in regular voice/email contact with a young Afghan friend and former colleague hiding in Kabul. After moving his wife and children to safety in India, he returned to join the resistance movement led by the former Afghan vice president, Amrullah Saleh, who describes himself as the “interim president of Afghanistan.” 

I doubt either the resistance or my friend’s participation would be taking place, absent the last 20 years. 

Last Acts: The immediate comparisons between the two helicopter-filled, chaotic, violent evacuations from Saigon and Kabul are understandable. However, the ongoing US airlift out of the Kabul International Airport is on a much larger scale (115,000 flown to safety). It is taking place in a far more dangerous, unsettled environment.  

In Saigon, the North Vietnamese forces occupied the city and did not threaten the evacuation..Forty-six years later, the Taliban are not in complete control of Kabul and are violently challenged by terrorists.   

On August 26, one of these armed groups, ISIS-K, detonated a suicide vest at an airport gate, killing 13 US service members, some 200 Afghan civilians, and wounding many more. That evening, President Biden recommitted the US to continue the escape flights until 8/31/21. 

The Two Wars: Some American and European. Pundits have seized on the similarity of the two evacuation catastrophes to assert more broadly that US military lapses “…snatched defeat from the jaws of victory” in both conflicts. Far too simplistic for me and raises an old question: what does “victory” or “win” mean? For many Americans, it means a  surrender ceremony by the enemy aboard a US battleship (cf  MacArthur, the USS Missouri and 9/02/1945) and nothing less.      

The following paragraphs are based on observations made during my years in South Vietnam and Afghanistan.  I intend to counter the knee-jerk anti-military reaction above by describing two major civilian-based factors that significantly shaped the American outcomes in both wars. I’ll address the first, Domestic American Politics, in this article and the second, Host Country’s Customs, Culture, and Social Development, in a second. The latter is more difficult to grasp because it is deeply embedded in the psyches of the two societies: However, the following is an example of what I’ll take up in the second article.   

Nationality and its Responsibilities: Vietnamese, divided or now united, have always had a strong sense of nationality and its responsibilities. Most Afghans have none because culturally, their principal allegiance is local to the people who share their identifiers, i.e., family, clan, ethnicity, home village, and tribe. Fighting to protect a distant political construct –their country—strikes many Afghan males as unnatural as does swearing allegiance to an inanimate object,  i.e., the US Constitution. 

Domestic US Politics and Insertion/Withdrawal of American Forces: 

Vietnam: (1965 – 75)

Kennedy – The Cold War and its belief World Communism was an active threat to Democracy everywhere was very much present on January 20, 1961, when the JFK Administration began. Less than three months later, Kennedy authorized the disastrous  Bay of Pigs assault, aimed at stopping Soviet Communism’s spread in our hemisphere, i.e., Cuba.

Not long after that, American military advisors began trickling into South Vietnam with a similar mission: strengthen its military forces to deter North Vietnam. Remember the Domino Effect? If Saigon fell to the Communist government in Hanoi, all other Southeast Asian nations would quickly follow. 

Nixon –  Seven years later, domestic politics directly impacted the withdrawal of US Forces from Vietnam. It was 1968, and a significant presidential election was underway. LBJ had chosen not to run for reelection, so his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was the Democratic candidate. Richard Nixon was the Republican.  

Front and center on most Americans’ minds were the Vietnam War, its mounting KIA numbers (total 58,000), and the draft. Tens of thousands of American families  (voters) were burying members or caring for them when they returned seriously wounded. Large, angry demonstrations outside the White House and elsewhere had been occurring regularly. Draftees were escaping to Canada.

And then, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, unleashing violent Black rage across the country and exacerbating the existing unrest. Martial Law was declared in Washington, DC, as riots filled streets and buildings burned.  

A week before the election, LBJ paused bombing in Vietnam, and there were rumors from Paris that the Peace Talks were on the verge of agreement. Humphrey’s polling number rose sharply.  Nixon acted quickly to torpedo the negotiations. He used Anna Chennault as his intermediary to convince South Vietnam’s President Thieu that Republicans would deliver a better deal for him than the Democrats. The Peace Talks stalled, and Nixon won the election.

Six months after Nixon’s 1969 inauguration, he ordered the withdrawal of 35,000 US troops.  Almost four years later, In March 1973, two months after the Paris Peace Accords were signed, the last 7000 left. The Accords were almost immediately broken by Hanoi.  

Ford – The ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) was the world’s 4th largest, was well trained and armed and engaged in combat for years.  But, it and the country suffered from serious top-level political leadership corruption – nepotism- and from similarly motivated, smaller-scale problems among some senior officers. However, it fought on after the American military withdrawal and was able to delay the NVA’s advance on Saigon for two years.  

However, on April 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese tanks breached Saigon’s last defenses, and the now-familiar disaster unfolded at the US Embassy.  

Afghanistan (2001 – 2021):  

G.W. Bush -All adult Americans alive on 9/11/2001 understand clearly why President Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan. His goals were clear: destroy Al Qaeda, capture/kill Bin Laden, and topple the Taliban government.  The Bin Laden project took seven more years, but the other objectives were largely achieved fairly quickly. Notice, building a new, modern democratic Afghanistan wasn’t mentioned.  

However, over a year later, President Bush transferred most US troops there to the Iraq War. They returned, but many Afghans by then had lost their immediate post-invasion excitement, hope, and expectations, while many others just wanted the latest foreign occupier gone.  

Obama – The American voters were losing patience with the US involvement in Afghanistan when President Obama was reelected in 2012.  Polls showed a large plurality favored withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, the issue of withdrawal itself quickly became a partisan political assault weapon, 

Republicans demanded the Obama Administration pursue “victory” and provide the troops to achieve it. President Obama personally favored ending American military involvement and mentioned removal by the end-2014. But, under intense pressure, he ordered a 33,000 surge.   

Trump: President Trump frequently decried the Forever Wars, blaming his predecessors, and embarked on a negotiation with the Taliban to lay the foundation for US military withdrawal.  It excluded the Afghan government, implying Americans, not Afghans, were his only concern. 

The agreement was signed on 2/29/2020.  The US would remove all US Forces, and the Taliban would not target them and would also enter peace negotiations with the Kabul government.  They kept the first but stalled the second until events overtook it.  There was no provision regarding the secure departure of all American and some Afghan civilians. 

Biden – President Biden made withdrawal from Afghanistan a foreign policy priority, supported by many Americans. He announced he would implement the Trump/Taliban agreement, with an end date of 9/11/21, the 20th. Anniversary. The President subsequently advanced the date to 8/31/21.

Kabul: The Denouement

In nine days, the Taliban captured most of Afghanistan and entered Kabul on Sunday, 8/15/21, where they encountered little resistance and found the Ghani Government inert and/or gone. Its president is rumored to have arrived in the UAE with bags of cash. On the same day, the US Embassy lowered the flag and moved its much-reduced staff to the Airport. 

The Taliban leaders, their Pakistani mentors (ISI), and other friends/sympathizers and financiers had used the intervening decades to reconstitute their military forces, carefully plan their resurgence, become more worldly, develop an international network and ensure the Taliban became very computer and social media savvy.  And it did.  

They were, therefore, able to spread their rebranding campaign to millions and even tried to convince Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic and tribal chiefs, and they had become more moderate, more modern, and collaborative. 

On August 17, 2021, the Taliban organized its first and very professional news conference with international journalists warmly welcomed. They took questions,  identified a spokesman, and pressed their new image on all attendees: “We’re just politicians trying to organize a new government.”

First, I know for many today, the notion and for many, many years the practice that American domestic politics ended at its borders seems quaint, even innocent.  However, it was a principle of government behavior accepted by both major political parties. It certainly placed some restraint on the behavior of different presidential administrations, probably until Vietnam and Richard Nixon. 

The short earlier narrative demonstrated, I hope, the effect domestic US politics had on decisions regarding military deployments to South Vietnam and Afghanistan, their retention there, and their eventual withdrawals. Centering these decisions in a by definition, partisan presidential administration virtually assures domestic political considerations will figure into key conclusions regarding combat engagements of US Forces.  

The corrective action can be simply described but is hard to implement. Although, tiny steps have begun in Congress to cancel earlier grants of war powers to the president. 

I’ll let James Madison explain my point:” The Constitution supposes, what the history of all Governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has, with studied care, vested it in the legislature (Art 1, Section 8: Congress has the power to declare war, and Article II, Section 2 names the president as the commander in chief. The former is the decision-maker, and the latter is the implementer.

Maybe the principal framers of the Constitution were thinking about Europe’s 100 years or 30 years wars when they subjected US war-making to the separation of powers principle. Possibly, but more likely, it was their experience with the British monarchy that concentrating power in a single entity could subject the American, like the British, people, to arbitrary and oppressive decisions.   

Congress was given the two principal war powers: (1) to decide the US should enter a war and (2) the sole power to fund it.  If a 21st Century Congress can reclaim its Constitutional powers, then that will ensure that these life and death decisions will be made by the widest possible political consensus.

Tom Timberman is an Army vet, lawyer, former senior Foreign Service officer, adjunct professor at GWU, and economic development team leader or foreign government advisor in war zones. He is the author of four books, lectures locally and at US and European universities. He and his wife are 24 year residents of Kent County.

Is the chaotic departure of Americans from Afghanistan partly the result of a failure of imagination by military and political leaders?

New York Times opinion writer, Tom Friedman, back on May 19, 2002, wrote: “The failure to prevent September 11 was not a failure of intelligence or coordination. It was a failure of imagination.”

Friedman pointed out that there had been so many signs of growing terrorism—in Beirut, East Africa, the truck bomb at the World Trade Center. And yet no one could possibly imagine planes slamming into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon.

And today one has to wonder if the drowning of Afghanistan, its people and institutions, by a tsunami of Taliban fighters was caused, in the final analysis, by a failure to imagine what might happen, and how fast it would happen, when U.S. armed forces were withdrawn from that country.

How could leaders in Washington have not imagined what might occur after President Donald Trump announced that all United States troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 and when President Joe Biden signaled his concurrence but extended the date to September 11, 2021, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

Couple those Trump-Biden withdrawal announcements with the fact that for many years before those commitments, the Taliban knew that so called “peace” negotiations were not aimed at military victory in Afghanistan but a political settlement. Those on again—off again talks dragged on for years. Did no one imagine that the Taliban had no interest in peace but, instead, wanted time to plan for the day when they could rule Afghanistan? Apparently not. And, as a result, the Taliban gained time—precious time–to strengthen their military capabilities and strategies.

Was it not possible to imagine what the Taliban were up to?

Are we at a place where our leaders and workaday problem solvers are failing to apply their creative imaginations to uncover solutions to complex issues?

The American Psychological Association has a definition for creative imagination. It is “the faculty by which new, uncommon ideas emerge, especially when emergence does not seem explicable by the mere combination of existing ideas.”

Over the years some well-known figures have commented on the value of using one’s imagination.

Albert Einstein said “Imagination is more important that knowledge.”

Winston Churchill, during World War II, sought to surround himself with people of great imagination– “corkscrew thinkers,” he called them.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower urged the federal government to employ people who possessed “outstanding leadership abilities, creative imagination and sound judgment.”

And Mark Twain once said “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Sad to say, it appears that in Afghanistan we saw a lot with our eyes but lacked the necessary imagination to focus on what was coming.

Ross Jones is a former vice president and secretary emeritus of The Johns Hopkins University. He joined the University in 1961 as assistant to President Milton S. Eisenhower. A 1953 Johns Hopkins graduate, he later earned a Master’s Degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

To quote a famous movie line, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” That’s Peter Finch as Howard Beale in director Sidney Lumet’s 1976 drama “Network.”

Well, I’m mad as hell, too. But I’ll have to keep on taking it, and so will tens of millions of us who are fully vaccinated, as long as millions more fully eligible fellow Americans refuse to get a COVID shot. 

About 3 percent of us have valid medical reasons–rather than lame excuses (fear of needles?!)–not to get vaccinated. My wife was one with a valid reason. I say “was” because she’s now fully recovered and fully vaccinated and just this morning (Monday as you read this) got her third shot, a booster. Liz’s surgeon advised her not to get a vaccine until three months past her kidney transplant because her immune system was compromised by medication that kept her body from rejecting the alien kidney. Her dosage was lowered by steps to the point where she could again produce antibodies. She was cleared for vaccination and now a booster shot.

During those post-January months when Liz was especially vulnerable to all kinds of infections, I grew increasingly impatient with people who refused to get vaccinated unless they were cancer patients, transplant recipients, or had some other immunological issues. But who knows?

Now, however, I’m really angry about no-excuses public refuseniks–even you, Lamar Jackson. I’ll still root for the Ravens, but you are putting all your teammates and everyone you come in contact with at-risk, having twice tested COVID-positive. When a star athlete doesn’t say whether he’s taken the shot or not, you can be sure he has not.

I’m even angrier at politicians and so-called journalists–especially you, Tucker Carlson–who spread disinformation about COVID. I won’t repeat his their lies because it would only validate them to those of you listening to these vile public figures who apparently don’t care about life and death, as long as they’re not at risk. I’m looking straight at you, Sen. Rand Paul, an even poorer excuse for a doctor than you are as a public servant.

When politicians won’t say whether they’ve gotten the vaccine, you can be sure they have. Even Donald Trump admitted he’s vaccinated. As for Paul, he claims he doesn’t need one because he already contracted COVID. Don’t believe him. He’s an idiot if he thinks that protects him. He’s too conniving for idiocy.

Why am I angrier now than back in the spring when Liz was way less protected? None of us knew as much about the vaccine in February and March, when I got my two shots. But there are no excuses now. If you are still on the fence, get off it NOW. (“Just get the damn shot,” President Biden advises, like it or not.) If you don’t, all you have to lose is your life or that of others, including loved ones. But if you’re just stubbornly refusing because it’s your freedom to do so, you’re an idiot, ignoramus, or idealogue. Probably all three. Or maybe you’re another type of I person, the capitalized kind who only cares about him- or herself. 

At this rate, the now-rampant Delta variant spreading all through unvaccinated America is killing people who almost certainly would NOT DIE if more of you got the shot. The resurgence of this pandemic is YOUR FAULT. Maybe not yours individually, but you are definitely a major part of the problem and zero contributor to the solution. You provide harbors for the virus to mutate.

Many of you complain about school mask mandates, too. Without them, your kids and those of vaccinated friends and relatives are more likely to spend another semester or two learning exclusively online. If that happens, it will be your fault and that of like-minded cohorts. If there’s a widespread mask mandate again, if restaurants and theaters and other indoor activities are shut down again, look in the mirror to see who’s to blame. You may wind up homeschooling your kids. Fine, if that’s your choice. But forget about two incomes in your family. Does that make you an idiot? Maybe not, but don’t project that choice on other families. Many of you tout freedom of choice in the case of school kids wearing masks but are the first to deny it to a pregnant woman making a far more difficult choice you know nothing about. 

In any case, you are not free to infect the rest of us with a cataclysmic virus any more than you’re free to set fire to a school that mandates masks, vaccines, or both. Those of us of a certain age (I’m in my 70s) were required to be vaccinated in order to attend public school, going as far back as the early ’50s when a nurse popped me a sugar cube to prevent polio. At age 5, I had no choice. But I’m grateful to have possibly avoided a crippling disease and an iron lung. Nearly all of us had to get measles shots to go to school. I even had a chickenpox shot. It didn’t matter that I’d already had chickenpox. (Take that, Rand Paul.) 

If you believe what you read on the Internet instead of what scientists and medical professionals tell you, you’re an idiot. Or at least delusional on this subject. Should you choose to believe that the Earth is flat, you can find that, too, on the Internet. Yet even trained nurses say they won’t get the shot because it once took decades to produce one. How many more hundreds of thousands would have died without this vaccine? Techniques improve over time because scientists learn from experience and, yes, mistakes.

If you don’t know what scientists and medical professionals say about the efficacy of COVID vaccines–more than 90 percent of those who die of the Delta variant are unvaccinated–well, then you’re an ignoramus. And if you don’t get the shot or wear a mask because you think Donald Trump or someone emulating him would disapprove (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for one, threatening to dock educators their pay for mandating school masks), you’re an ideologue–likely an idiot and ignoramus, too.

Insulting, perhaps, on my part. But look at what’s at stake. Wear a mask, take a shot. What are you afraid of?

If millions of Americans who are eligible get the vaccine instead of thinking they know best–they clearly do not or selfishly do not care–we can beat this thing together. It doesn’t have to be another deadly autumn and even darker winter. How about holidays without your parents (probably already vaccinated) allowed to see their grandchildren? Again.

It’s up to you. Based on the evidence so far, I’m not optimistic you’ll come through. Prove me wrong. I dare you. I’ll celebrate you if you do. Americans who want to survive and get on with their lives as we remember it will be grateful for your conversion. 

Steve Parks is a retired journalist now living in Easton.

 

Contemplating a crossword puzzle clue “What rhymes with clueless?” a thought passed through my mind (waved “Hi!” and then walked right by without speaking). This happened only once before. I had a thought. It then perished of loneliness.

One can imagine the shock of suddenly having another thought so long after the first.  Decades, even.  Another of these accursed things!  Because thoughts become things.  We are, in fact, surrounded by them. Things.  And thoughts.  Or in my case, just a thought.

And so it was time to see how this thoughtless new arrival of a thought might play out. Thus, the thing itself: how many words could one make using the letters “t-a-l-b-o-t-b-o-y-s.” Think Scrabble. Or an anagram, ala “Rosemary’s Baby.”

Remember, there were two anagram puzzles —  “All of Them Witches,” a book Rosemary receives — and “Roman Castevet,” an anagram for another name.

So I sat down with a dessert (“Try the mousse”) wearing my favorite amulet (to ward off latent lunacy on the lawn of a certain public place) and this is what bubbled up while feverishly scribbling, scared that one would wake from thought-land — and, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, never finish whatever it was Kubla Khan was decreeing in his pleasure dome near “Xanadu.”

I only got so far. Turns out the most letters you can use are seven (like dwarves) or six (like, well, two times a stubborn three).  Here are the six:  abbots; babool; baboos; batboy; blasty; bloats; blotto; blotty; boylas; lottos; lyttas; oblast; slabby; slobby; stably; taboos; talbot; toasty; tootsy; totals; yobbos.

The seven: babools; batboys; bobstay. Hmm.

Sadness. One was hoping to make words like “caring;” “compassion;” “humility;” “courtesy;” “dignity;” “respect.”  “Leadership” was probably a non-starter, but one won’t know until trying different combinations, different solutions, thinking outside the box, right?  Evidently, you can’t make those either.

But — add “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion” into the mix, and the possibilities multiply exponentially.

Well, now Ive run out of letters (although at one point there seemed so many).  Strangely, nearly all out of patience, too.

Puzzles. This  “t-a-l-b-o-t-b-o-y-s” puzzle should be a “no-brainer.”  Wonder how much longer it will take to solve?  Nevermind.  On to the next puzzle, “b-a-l-l-o-t-b-o-x.”

Keith Watts is a speaker, lawyer, author, poet, photographer & mediator.  He lives on a small island off the coast of The Chesapeake. 

Fascinated by the Branson–Bezos space expeditions a few weeks back, I was curious to know whether at other civilians may have tested the limits of high altitude flying in past years.  

I found such a person, a youthful, rugged individualist who became famous for record-setting, long distance flying , speed and high-altitude experimentation. 

His name was Wiley Post and, for a time in the 1920s and 1930s he was the toast of the country for his daring feats. 

Photos from those days show a smiling, curly haired, Clark Gable- like figure with a patch over an eye that he lost while working as a roughneck in Oklahoma’s oil fields. He spent his insurance payment from that accident–$1,800 (about $28,000 today)–to buy his first airplane.

On June 23, 1931, Post and his navigator, Harold Gatty, left Long Island for a round-the-world flight that lasted 8 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes. They were flying in the Winnie Mae, a single engine, high-wing, Lockheed Model 5 C Vega. In 1933, Post, aided by the relatively new radio compass system and an autopilot device, flew around the world in the Winnie Mae again, this time a little faster and alone. 

In 1934 Post designed the world’s first practical “pressure suit.”  It allowed him to make an unofficial assent to 50,000 feet (about 9.5 miles) where he discovered the Jet Stream.  His suit design is directly linked to the full pressure suits used on the X-15 research plane and manned space trips.

Wiley Post, at age 37, met an untimely death when the floatplane he was flying in Alaska crashed on August 15, 1935. His friend and companion, who also died that day, was the great American humorist, Will Rogers.

Ross Jones is a former vice president and secretary emeritus of The Johns Hopkins University. He joined the University in 1961 as assistant to President Milton S. Eisenhower. A 1953 Johns Hopkins graduate, he later earned a Master’s Degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

I am troubled by today’s pervasive entitlement mentality. Students who have college loans feel they are entitled to debt-free carte-blanche forgiveness without paying them off. Sexual harassers who hold powerful positions feel they are entitled to take what they want—simply because they are who they are. Children who have famous parents often exploit their privileged lives because they feel entitled to commit egregious and sometimes illegal acts as though it is their birthright.  

Feeling entitled can lead to dangerous consequences. Let’s consider a few examples.  

Often people who come from humble beginnings attend expensive private colleges and rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars of college debt. Should they be allowed to attend those universities? Of course. But should they also consider the ramifications of paying off that debt and factor in the cost-benefit analysis of private versus public universities with much lower costs? If you buy an expensive house, you must realize that it will result in a huge mortgage. Someone else isn’t going to pay it off unless perhaps a wealthy uncle dies and leaves you a pile of cash. Sure, one can argue that colleges and houses cost too much. Both statements may be true. Still, if you take out a loan, you should expect to pay it back.

Now let’s take the example of powerful men and women who feel entitled to exploit their positions simply because of who they are. I’ve read more articles than I care to admit about Andrew Cuomo in the last few weeks. Clearly, he felt entitled to harass women and bully employees. He assumed he would continue to get away with it because he had for years. He also had enablers who helped discredit his accusers and made their lives a living hell. (I found it particularly rich when Trump declared Cuomo should resign given his own sordid past.) 

During the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, I had the sense that Kavanaugh felt he was entitled to be a Supreme Court justice. He didn’t feel that incidents which showed questionable judgment and poor character in his past should be examined. Yet one could certainly argue that his temperament and outrage during the hearings didn’t exemplify the steady, measured, thoughtful and unwavering qualities worthy of a Supreme Court justice. 

Lately, my friends have been telling me how frustrating it is to work with employees with newly minted college degrees. They claim many of them have a sense of entitlement that is difficult for them to fathom. Demanding better wages, work-life balance, benefits, etc. is not necessarily a bad thing. But assuming they should get promoted within a matter of months; that they should be given highly strategic work before they have even learned the ropes, is something else. 

Many psychologists, therapists, and student counselors believe that part of the reason young people feel so entitled is because their parents never said no to their demands. As a result, they feel entitled to have whatever they want without earning it. I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but there is a grain of truth here.  

They also say that people who have powerful positions for long periods of time often feel a sense of entitlement to do whatever they please—treat people shabbily or take advantage of them because of some misguided sense of almighty power.

So, what is to be done about this entitlement culture?  Experts say the solution involves two things:  gratitude and accountability.  

We need to help children and new employees, be grateful for what they have. Instead of always wanting more, gently remind them of their good fortune and encourage them to share that bounty when they can. 

The second concept is holding people accountable for their actions. If employees don’t meet their goals or perform tasks at a competent level, they shouldn’t expect bonuses or promotions automatically until they have mastered the competencies required for current positions. We must also hold our leaders accountable for their actions. As many have said in recent days, democracy and freedom only work when we do. 

As with all things, there are degrees here. Gratitude and accountability are not learned overnight. One minor mistake should not a cancel culture make. 

Fighting to make America as great as it can be—fighting for racial and gender equality, better bridges, roads, healthcare, clean water, the environment is a good thing. We are entitled to expect the best from our leaders and ourselves. But we must vote, and we must understand that there is a price to pay for these services that “lift all boats”.  And we must hold our leaders and ourselves accountable for doing our best to protect and preserve our democracy and the planet. 

Douglas MacArthur said, “No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.” Holding ourselves accountable to protect and preserve our freedom with a deep sense of gratitude for the privilege of doing so is quite the opposite of entitlement. 

Maria Grant was the principal-in-charge of the Federal human capital practice of an international consulting firm. Today she focuses on writing, reading, piano, travel, gardening and nature.