Could Obama Hurt Race Relations?

So, Barack Obama is the candidate of choice of the Democratic Party. All during the Democratic primary season, all I could think of was that the choices that the party had were unequivocated Evil (Hillary Clinton) and complete, total Naiveté (Obama). It’s a scary scenario, but what can you expect of a party that foisted the new Narcissus on America sixteen years ago?

Now a note on how I was raised. My father and mother were both Southerners born and bred. They came from a generation that still believed in the dignity, courage and righteousness of the Confederacy, and that believed blacks were a severe problem. Incredibly, though, my parents raised their three offspring that ALL people should be judged by nothing except their actions and character. I never heard them utter a single racist profanity during the time I was in their home, and was frankly surprised (maybe I was just naïve) at some of the actions I saw fellow Whites perform when I went to college.

It excited me to see General Colin Powell, a black man, become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because it showed me that Mom & Dad were right. And it distresses me to no end when we are continually bombarded today when such “firsts” as the recently-installed Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court being a black woman is considered newsworthy by the media. Why should it be? This is America, and the best person for the job should be placed in that job. Why should race be an issue today?

But, that is what has me worried. Barack Obama could very well become President of the United States. Yes, he is half-black (though in our Liberal nation that means he is “really” fully black), and he is considered by the Democrats to be the best person for the position. And that is part and parcel of what I find frightening. Why? you may ask.

Barack Obama is completely unprepared to perform the job. Except for less than one six-year term in the Senate, all his political background is local and populist. He has no military, foreign policy, administrative, or commercial experience of which to speak, except for “bringing home” the troops in Iraq. This does not bode well for a nation that leads the World in all those categories. Like President Jimmy Carter in 1980, he is running on nothing but rhetoric and sound bites. He has yet to elucidate a single sound policy on any issue, except to say that he will change America.

So, the problem? Every politician today touts “change.” And that is quite alright, though I’m pretty sure that “change” really means more of the same. What worries me is that a naïve populist, having not a single solid policy, being a “minority,” could be just as bad as President Carter and truly set back race relations in America twenty-to-thirty years.

A poor presidency by this man and you could have every racist kook and nutcase, egged on by a media who truly cares less about integrity than winning awards that they bestow upon themselves, gain some legitimacy and point to race as a factor. Can you see the next presidential race with a black candidate, regardless of party, being boiled down to what Obama did? That is not what America needs. It's not a good thing for our nation. What America needs is a capable, effective leader, regardless of race, who has vision, policies, moral integrity and the knowledge to do what the nation requires.

And I’m afraid Obama can’t do that today.

Why Is AIDS Not STD?

I’m getting older. We all do every day; it’s a fact of life. When we’re young we question things and we allow ourselves to soak up knowledge and ideas and opinions. These things, of course, form us and eventually help to make up who we are.

When I was young, in my teens, I was lucky. When it came to Sexually Transmitted Diseases, we called it Venereal Disease in those days - “VD.” We were pretty lucky I’ve learned. “The Clap,” the slang term used for all VD, could all be fought with drugs, and there were only a couple or three. I only knew one person who had contracted it by the time I left college at the age of twenty.

Then came Herpes. Now Herpes scared us, because it’s not curable. It wasn’t as bad as the others, but sores all over you when you were trying to impress the opposite sex were not at all helpful. It was a nuisance then, and is now manageable with drugs, but it was a venereal disease. Interestingly, VD was treatable for years much like Herpes is today, though no cure was known until the advent of antibiotics in the name of Penicillin and the like in the 1940’s.

Through it all, though, we had condoms, which many of us used anyway because The Pill wasn’t 100-percent effective. But condoms kept you more-or-less safe from parenthood and likely disease-free.

Then, in 1981, a strange series of ailments began to pop up in the male homosexual population in places like New York and San Francisco. Soon dubbed Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), then soon after Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in an effort to recognize that it could infect heterosexuals, it was quickly recognized as a sexually transmitted disease, or ‘STD.’ In this age of the ‘politically correct,’ which I prefer to call the ‘politically confused,’ STD sounds nicer than VD. But, by any measure, AIDS is “an illness that has a significant probability of transmission by means of sexual contact.” At THAT is and was the definition of VD.

Now, AIDS is a disease of choice and of morality. Except for a very small group, AIDS is transmitted by immoral behavior. And it is because of this that AIDS is NOT VD! That’s right. Gonorrhea, syphillis, and herpes are VD. But AIDS is a disease that affects lifestyle. Mind you, immoral lifestyles can be affected by VD, but most are curable. AIDS to date is not.

AIDS has affected the homosexual community dramatically. Now the homosexual community will never admit that their very choices are what drives the AIDS epidemic, nor would the Free Love Generation of the sixties have done so either, I’m sure. But it IS these choices that have caused the spread of this horrific disease. As an example, one of the small groups noted above, those who suffered from hemophilia, have suffered disproportionately from AIDS. Hemophiliacs have a deficiency in the agent that causes blood to clot, and desperately require infusions of clotting agents. Once known as ‘bleeders,’ these innocent people received clotting agent that was a cocktail extracted from the blood of many, including AIDS-infected homosexuals, many who knew they were sick. But, in many cases these infected people donated plasma for money. As a result, many hemophiliacs were infected and died of AIDS. The homosexual community generally ignored their plight, as did the media. Hemophiliacs are well represented in the media, mind you.

I am continually heart-broken when I see a young heterosexual person on TV, a talking head for HIV/AIDS, explain how they never thought they were in danger. How it was ‘just once,’ or he/she didn’t know their partner was infected, or even worse – I don’t even know his/her name. These poor victims are trotted out by AIDS activist organizations and used to somehow make us all believe that we can catch this horrible disease, just by being heterosexual. They’ve been victimized twice – first by the disease and then by the activists.

I will readily admit that a huge group of heterosexuals in the Third World have contracted AIDS. But, without a doubt, the underlying reason that it has spread there is through prostitution, an inherently immoral act. Throughout the world today, if a married couple is free of AIDS, and stays monogamous, the chance that either will contract the disease are so infinitesimally small as to be unreadable. These are facts.

AIDS is caught almost exclusively but those who are participating in immoral acts, many of which are aberrant or abhorrent. This includes homosexuality, drug use, multiple sexual partners, anonymous sex, and the like. These are simple truths. And until we begin to look at AIDS as what it is, a Venereal Disease, it will continue its toll.

Liberal Ideas (Almost) Never Work

I’ve described myself politically for years as a conservative-leaning independent libertarian (I’ve emphasized the title so as to make clear that none of those words is meant to be capitalized). I have never belonged to a political party, although a number of so-called third parties look better as I grow older – and hopefully wiser.

The reason I bring all this up is probably obvious. This nation is heading into an election, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long number of years. We will have on opposing major party tickets opponents who are not incumbents in the sense that they are from the previous or preceding administrations. The Republican is a “Maverick,” known for his strong personal and moral views on some subjects, but on others he will take a totally unexpected tangent and surprise everyone. The other candidate, though currently presumptive, is a political unknown. His record screams far-left liberal, but he spouts “change.” (That’s weird because the USA has been in the throes of liberalism since about 1932. For true change, the nation would have to move to the hard right or extreme libertarian, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what he means.)

I’m almost fifty. I’ve seen a lot, but nothing close to what others older than I have seen. I sat up late one night in 1969 and watched a human being walk on the moon for the first time in history. I’ve seen a younger generation in the span of ten years nearly tear asunder everything that was built by this nation over the previous 200-plus years. I’ve seen phones go from single rotary-dial appliances in most homes to nearly Star-Trek-sized communicators in the pockets of nearly every man, woman and child in America. Computers now have more power in a single chip than was used in the whole of the Apollo manned moon missions utilizing gigantic rooms full of six-foot tall computer cabinets. It has been truly amazing, and I am awed and excited by all of it.

America is a wealthy nation. We, as barely four percent of the World’s population produce fully twenty-five percent of the World’s wealth. America’s poor are, on average, wealthier than nearly all other people on earth. And it is this wealth that causes liberals (or Progressives as they prefer to be called) to make us believe that we are greedy, or not benevolent, or just too self-centered to see the problems around us. So, they must come up with solutions to make us fix our problems.

Sorry, but I don’t have any problems, except with liberals. Really. I don’t see a single issue out there that liberals and government can fix any better than I or my fellow citizens can. And while I understand that all these programs are based n the best of intentions, I also know to that the Road To Hell is paved with those same intentions. The examples are profuse, but I’ll dwell on but a handful.

In the 1930’s, in the throes of the Great Depression and the dustbowl and drought of the era, the liberal-hero-administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and its Soil Conservation Service and Civilian Conservation Service planted innumerable acres of kudzu, a decorative, Japanese vine, for use as a measure to combat erosion. The result? An incredibly invasive weed that has no natural predators and that can grow as much as one foot per day. They can overgrow whole sections of forest, cutting out sunlight to the engulfed trees, destroying it.

We all know of that Great Society program introduced during the administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson – welfare. To date in America, welfare has been a boon to no one except politicians and government employees and bureaucrats. The original estimate of the cost of the program was well less than $100 Billion dollars. To date it has cost well over ten times that, and the amount of poor in the nation has stayed approximately the same, as a percentage of population. Additionally, the social destruction caused to the American family, especially those it was meant to help, has been catastrophic. Single-parent homes, especially in the minority community, have grown exponentially. This has had an arguably detrimental effect on at least two generations of children, and will likely be the same on many more. The result of this program? No fewer poor and the average American family giving well over one-third of their hard-earned income to the government. On top of that, today a black child is less likely to be raised in a two-parent household than he was during Slavery.

Energy policy in America has been driven by two items in the past two generations: fading memories of the Arab Oil Embargo and the subsequent Energy Crisis of the early 1970’s, and the environmental lobby. Ironically, America has more coal reserves than the Middle East has oil! We also have huge oil reserves. And the environmental laws that have been enacted forbid American companies from using much of the coal available or drilling for and extracting much of the oil that is sitting under US territory. On top of all this, as America expands and needs more energy, environmental laws have made the construction of new, expanded, or upgraded refineries impossible. So, the result of these liberal programs and laws? Nothing less than $4.00-per-gallon gasoline.

And while we’re on the subject of energy and gasoline – in the 1980’s there was a great hoopla over oxygenated fuels for cars. At the time, the mixing of ethanol into gasoline was detrimental to some autos, so an alternative was needed. MTBE, this new alternative, was hailed by the liberal environmental community. It would lower emissions, including ozone, and lead to cleaner-burning engines, and was legislated into the gasoline supply. At the time I was in Colorado and Denver and Colorado Springs embraced the new chemical as the way to help clean the smog in the air! The result of this program? MTBE, short for methyl tertiary butyl ether, has now contaminated innumerable groundwater aquifers. The EPA has concluded that MTBE may cause cancer in high doses. The cost of this well-intended, liberal fiasco will be as much as $30 Billion.

So now, we have Hillary and Obama, both with Liberal and Progressive stamped all over them, wanting to continue in the mold of nearly every American president since Johnson (except for Reagan). Nationalize healthcare! Bush 41 wasn’t any better with a massive expansion of government with Medicare Part D, a liberal program barely started and already grossly over-budget. Welfare as it exists, were it a privately-run charity, and would be on most attorneys’ general Grinch Lists at Christmas. At yet, these people want more.

Outside of Civil Rights, which was too long in coming, I have yet to see a liberal social program that did not eventually become stagnant, old, despotic, and too cumbersome. America doesn’t need new programs, America needs to get rid of many, if not most, of the ones it has.

And the sooner it happens, the better off we will be.

MILITARY CONTRACTORS

Over the past decade a lot of press has been devoted to the contractors supporting war and peacekeeping efforts. Most of this attention has been directed toward the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, or “KBR” as it’s known universally in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the military and contracting. The simple fact of the matter is that despite, or in spite of, the fact that Vice President Richard Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO before becoming the Vice President, KBR is the only company in the world today capable of handling the job that they perform.

There are many logistics, security, and service companies today that drool over the prospect of winning the sort of contracts that KBR have been awarded. Unfortunately for them, KBR got there “the firstest with the mostest.” When the US military of President Bill Clinton was looking for civilian assistance for the International Force (IFOR)/Stabilization Force (SFOR) mission in Bosnia, it was the deep pockets of KBR parent Halliburton that put up the money for then small KBR to perform the mission. And perform they did.

KBR’s business acumen and expertise built a relatively small subsidiary ready to fill the needs of the Clinton Administration’s military requirements into the powerhouse company it is today serving the military of the Bush Administration. Ironic, no? But, no matter the history, what can be said is that little KBR has learned what they needed to learn, built up a base of expertise second to none on this earth, and has performed quite admirably for America’s fighting men and women, and for its stockholders. THAT is how American capitalism works, and how it should.

In fact, the only organization in the world today outside Halliburton that is capable of performing the job they are doing is the US military. And despite what some in Congress and the media may say, outside of the US military only Halliburton’s KBR can ensure the successful performance of the support they perform under one umbrella. KBR trucks move cargo, KBR employees cook and serve the meals, KBR builds the infrastructure. The only thing that they don’t do is provide security.

And there’s the rub.

Contracting in support of the US military clearly has its place. Port-a-john maintenance and service is clearly a non-military profession that can be clearly filled by contractors. There are other jobs that could be filled with civilian personnel, but those jobs are highly specialized – manufacturers’ representatives and the like. But, the wholesale use of contractors is clearly becoming detrimental to the ability of the nation to fight wars.

This is a lesson that has been learned (and unfortunately forgotten) over and over by this nation and others. Rome’s army was essentially a mercenary and contractor army by the end of that empire and, with no loyalty to the command or nation, Rome’s army and navy fought poorly and the nation was lost. All the while Rome’s citizens all felt that serving in the military, and therefore defending the nation, was beneath them. Their job was commerce, and, of course, participating in the public debate of how to defend the nation.

America’s Continental Army utilized contract personnel, a large group being mule skinners and teamsters, early in our War of Independence to transport its equipment and goods. Those same contractors turned and ran when gunfire began. They were concerned that their investment in wagons, horses and mules, and equipment would be lost. Why should they care? The Continental Army was a pack of rebels to the British Crown, and if they lost, the contractors and their equipment could find other work. It wasn’t worth losing their property over. The Continental Army soon formed its own units to handle its cargo and transportation needs. And in a pinch, those Continental Army transporters could be put into the front lines to fight.

In World War II, US marines and sailors at Wake Island were assaulted by Japanese forces immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack. This was a full-scale air and sea attack by elite Imperial Japanese troops, steeled by years of fighting in China and other places in Asia. There were numerous civilian construction contractors on the island who soon found themselves armed and in the front lines with their military employers, totally ill-equipped and ill-trained to fight the battle-hardened invaders. Wake was lost and the tragic loss of those civilian construction contractors and the manner in which they were lost led to the formation of the US Navy’s Seabees.

History has taught that trained warriors are needed to fight wars. As the previous three examples of history demonstrate, contractors have not the training, expertise, or loyalty to properly function in a combat environment. And they can quit at any time. They are not required to have any loyalty to anyone but themselves and their wallets.

In Iraq and Afghanistan only specific contractors (those hired by such entities as the State Department) are allowed to carry weapons. Most contractors – those performing vehicle and aircraft maintenance, cooking and serving food, driving civilian trucks – are unarmed and are REQUIRED to be unarmed in the war zone! They are protected by soldiers and other contractors. In a fight, they are totally useless. And, just in case you didn’t know, there are big fights going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, the largest US base is Logistics Support Activity (LSA) Anaconda, a large former-Iraqi Air Force base about forty miles north of Baghdad close by the Tigris River. Of all the personnel there, about one-in-three is a civilian. This ratio places an undue burden on the military personnel there.

The major reason behind civilian military contracting has been to place the soldier in jobs that the military specifically does well, such as killing the enemy and “blowing things up,” as GIs jokingly say. But at LSA Anaconda, with one-third of the personnel unarmed civilians, the responsibility of securing the perimeter and providing security FOR 100% OF THE PERSONNEL falls on the GI. Nearly all this duty falls on soldiers whose jobs are to perform paperwork, maintenance, transport, and any number of myriad jobs that a soldier may be required to perform in their regular duties.

Soldiers perform guard and security duty twenty-four hours at a time. Once their duty is complete, they are (generally) released from all duty for another twenty-four hours to rest and recuperate. So the unit loses the services of that soldier for two days. Now, normally a unit will have five, ten or fifteen soldiers on details on any given day. That of course means that there are the same number of soldiers resting from duty the day before. In many units this can be as much as ten percent of the unit! These soldiers are not maintaining equipment, repairing parts, performing maintenance, or doing any of the jobs they are regularly required to do. This burden would be reduced by fifty percent at LSA Anaconda if all those civilian contractor positions were filled by soldiers! The WHOLE burden of security falls squarely on the soldier.

There are other issues involved, too. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the rules of war as laid down by the Geneva Convention consider contractors as mercenaries, and as such are not covered by these rules. The military’s jurisdiction is non-existent. In one case in Bosnia, a contractor was found to be running a prostitution ring with some locals and a colleague. He was fired and shipped home. The Bosnians had no clear jurisdiction, nor did the US judiciary. The military could do nothing. A soldier would have been subject to military prosecution.
This is just one example of where the military and the contracting worlds collide.

In Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and elsewhere, soldiers are required to wear their uniform and to wear certain equipment. Additionally, they lug around weapons, ammo and other items as required. Contractors technically are supposed to mimic the requirements of the military, except of course the weapons, but they feel no real need to do so. It aggravates soldiers to no end when in 130 degree heat they are wearing helmets, body armor, full uniform, weapons, ammo, canteens, and whatever else they may need, and then they see a contractor in sorts, a t-shirt and a ball cap with his helmet and body armor slung over his shoulder, “because it’s just too darn hot to be wearing that stuff.” Soldiers are being held to high professional and personal standards, and the very people who they are told are working for them, and who the soldier must protect, flaunts his freedom. It breeds a lot of resentment.

And the single greatest injustice to the soldier is the pay differential. A contractor who never leaves the base and does nothing but maintenance, may make twice-or-three-or-four times the pay of a soldier performing the exact same job. But, that soldier has to perform guard duty on the perimeter.

The bottom line is this. War is the business of the military. Contractors are mercenaries and should not be needed in a nation of citizen soldiers, the standards of which are the highest in the world. Contractors end up reducing the fighting power of the very people they support and are useless to those people if the situation were to spiral into a real fight. We need to keep contractors out of our military operations and get more troops into the military.

Period.