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.

Talk Radio IS The Alternative

I consider myself politically to be a conservative-leaning independent libertarian. Yeah, it’s a mouthful, but I believe it best identifies me. And yes, those are all lower-case. I don’t belong to a party. There are things I believe staunchly that you would put into the libertarian column, and others that would throw me into the conservative line. I have voted for independent candidates, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, and one or two other parties. I have NEVER voted for a socialist, Socialist, Communist or National Socialist (Nazi) candidate. I’m independent, not stupid.

I used to be, though. When I was young, I believed that a European form of socialism (i.e. Christian Democracy, Social Democracy, etc.) was the natural state of things and the next logical step for stable nations. That was, of course, before I grew up. Growing up and seeing the world as it really is, and experiencing what it is like to have a family, raise children, service a mortgage, turned me into what I am today.

In other words, I’m a realist.

But, politically, one thing of which I am sure is that America’s media is in-and-of-itself, Liberal - with a capital ‘L.’ No question. I’ve debated this with a lot of people and every time I do, they will concur, even if only grudgingly. And every time –EVERY TIME - they always bring up Fox News as a clarion for Conservatism and the Republican Party.

I always answer with the question, “That’s it? Just Fox?”

I can name almost a dozen major media outlets right here that espouse liberalism and claim that’s it’s ‘mainstream,’ or ‘middle-of-the-road’ or whatever tag or moniker they place upon it. ABC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNN, ETV, Link TV, MSNBC, NBC, NPR (radio), and pretty much every other network out there, except Fox.

You’ll notice that I only mentioned a single radio source. There’s a reason. Right now, today, outside of Fox the only other true conservative news outlet is talk radio. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mike Savage, Mike Reagan, and their ilk, are all financially successful and are doing well. Limbaugh claims, probably quite accurately, the he single-handedly saved AM radio. And the reason? Because, outside the emergence of Fox, this outlet is the ONLY alternative for truly opposing points of view in the media.

And it could be argued that talk radio is the reason that Fox is here today.

The only alternative to conservative talk radio, and a non-television mirror to the broadcast networks, is Air America.

Air America debuted with great fanfare and a lot of cheering from the visual broadcasters. Ah, FINALLY, an alternative to Rush, Glenn, and all those horrible, right-wing, hate-mongers. All we really needed was someone to put up the bank roll (in this case, for a goodly portion of the sum, Al Gore). Well, poor Al is failing just as spectacularly as his presidential bid. Air America is in bankruptcy and has floundered since its first broadcast.

It just proves the point. Air America is not needed. Americans tune to talk radio for an alternative, an opposing view. ABC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNN, ETV, MSNBC, NBC, NPR, and Link TV, etc., all say the same thing. Only Fox and talk radio are different.

And THAT is why they are successful.

AMAZING, BUT TRUE

An amazing thing is happening in America today. Nearly every other nation on earth avoids it so fiercely and completely that an international organization has been formed to perform the act in their stead. This thing occurs in but a handful of nations and it is the United States that has and will likely be the leader in this field for the foreseeable future.

What am I writing about here? War crimes trials. That’s right. Since the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal at the end of the Second World War, the US has been the leader in the prosecution of war crimes BY ITS OWN TROOPS. Really. Outside of Western Europe and North America it’s almost unheard of. But to date, we have or are prosecuting at least a dozen soldiers and marines for war crimes ranging from mistreatment of prisoners, to torture to murder of enemy soldiers and combatants, and even the rape and murder of a teenaged girl and her family, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s an amazing thing in this world. Can you imagine Syria prosecuting a soldier for shooting a handcuffed Israeli prisoner? Or Mexico trying its military personnel for torturing Zapatista rebels? Neither Japan, Germany, the Soviet Union, or Italy ever prosecuted any of their troops during World War II for committing war crimes. Certainly, the Soviets never did for any of the war crimes committed by their troops in Afghanistan, which was an ugly, vicious contest that saw children targeted with booby-trapped toys.

So why do we? I have a hypothesis.

We Americans are immigrants all. Most of us left our homes to escape persecution, poverty, injustice or for the adventure. Almost none of our ancestors were wealthy. Some of us were forced here through indenture or slavery. The wealth of the nation and we as a people was built from hard work and the honesty of a handshake, in many cases. These are facts. So wealthy a nation are we that even our poor are wealthier than most of the rest of the world. We expect to be able to have one’s word and believe in it. We believe that there is justice for all and that most people deserve what it is they get and have.

And so, when we see injustice in the world we cringe. We feel that we must do something to make things right. And so it is in war.

War, by definition, is unjust. Waged flagrantly, it kills all people in its way – men, women, children, the elderly, the young. We have developed weapons in this country that have changed the face of war. We can target specific people, places or things and eliminate them with a minimal chance of hurting others. The US has built a military that is as discriminate as any that is available with current technology. It is all because of the nation’s sense of justice, of what is fair, of what is right and wrong.

So, when we see the people who have volunteered to defend us and the nation do something we believe is wrong, it is we who want justice as much as the people who have been harmed. This is perhaps unique in the world. We see ourselves as moral, kind and helping. And we expect all Americans to be the same.

This, clearly, is a good thing.

My hypothesis is that, “Americans expect all Americans to be as good, moral and honorable as we expect or want ourselves to be.” It’s as simple as that. We have expectations that our children, who inevitably are the young troops that fight the wars, are moral, chivalrous, kind and fearless at the same time. Occasionally, some stumble.

Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq was an incredible stumble by some of these same troops. I know a bit more about it than the average American as I know someone who was there. I’ve asked all the questions everyone would want asked, and the answers are frightening, but somewhat understandable in context.

How many of us have teased the geek or nerd in high school? Or made fun of someone we believed was “beneath” us? How many of us wanted revenge on people who did that to us? And how many have taken their anger out on someone who didn’t deserve it? We all have. And without someone or something there to correct, calm or counteract us, we would continue to do it. That is what crime and punishment is all about.

Those young soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison were undermanned by about half, overworked and forced into positions and responsibilities that they weren’t trained to do. Animal instinct took over. I asked my contact, “So, just what happened in that cell block?” His answer was, “Remember that study years ago where they divided up kindergarten children into blue eyed and brown eyed kids and then told them that blues eyes were better?” Within two days the blue-eyed children had set up a hierarchy of violence and abuse that caused the study to be shut down. “That’s what happened at Abu Ghraib.”

Deprived of proper supervision due to the lack of personnel, they made their own decisions and their own rules. All this despite frequent requests up the chain for more personnel, equipment and materiel to perform their jobs.

The result? One young soldier reported the abuse and now a number of troops directly and indirectly involved have been tried or have been convicted and are serving time for war crimes. This is something that no Middle Eastern nation outside of Israel has ever done to its own troops. Does that really surprise anyone?

The United States, despite its detractors, is STILL the beacon of justice that it has been for 200 years. And we will continue to prosecute and punish our own, because that is what a just and fair nation should do. And we won’t need the U.N. or any other organization to do it for us.

WAS MARILYN MONROE FAT?

Marilyn Monroe has been invariably lauded as the world’s greatest sex symbol, American model, Hollywood icon, cultural icon, and fashion icon – you name it. And she certainly was an incredible woman. Norma Jean Mortensen, as she was christened at birth, came from simple origins – she worked in an aircraft factory during World War II – to become the dream of nearly every American male. She was truly incredible.

And yet today, most would call her fat.

Marilyn Monroe was a size 13. That’s before the sizes were surreptitiously bumped upward by the fashion and apparel industry to fool Americans into believing they weren’t REALLY becoming fat. (When I was in college and much thinner I wore XL. Today I wear Large – but that’s another story.) Think about that. The world’s most amazing sex symbol WAS A SIZE 13.

I prefer the Marilyns of this world. You know the ones. Those awesome, busty, curvy, women with beautiful legs and the occasional blemish. Those that really need a bra to support their cleavage, not just cover it up. This is perfection in my world. It boggles my mind that a woman as beautiful as Alyssa Milano can be skewered by the paparazzi for being ‘fat,’ which incredibly has happened recently. Are these people insane? If she’s fat, I’m the Michelin Man. Okay, I may be a bit overweight, but I’m NOT the Michelin Man. And Alyssa Milano is NOT fat.

We constantly see this tilted view of women today, and thankfully there has been a backlash both socially and even medically. We’ve all seen the horror stories of bulimia and anorexia. These are recent sociological and psychological ailments, brought to us since the 1960’s by a warped view of feminine beauty. But, truly for many women it is too little, too late. And we have yet to address one of the roots of the problem:

Why do we, as a society, allow homosexual men to set the standard for female beauty?

Watch a fashion show. Any fashion show presenting women’s fashions. Every model is overly tall, incredibly thin and has no curves. Black, white, oriental, blonde, brunette, no matter. No cleavage, no hips, no bottom. Nothing. Even when I grew up, in my high school of 750 students, there might have been two or three girls built like that. And I assure you that of those, only one was in any way attractive. So, where do they find all these undernourished models?

Then the men who are hiring these women to act as moving manequins almost invariably are homosexual. Now, their selection probably makes perfect sense to them. What would a homosexual man find attractive? Probably a tall thin man with few features. Or the opposite – a man who’s really incredibly built, with large pecs and muscular, who ripples when he moves. If you’re dealing with a woman though, you’re likely going to have to go with the former rather than the latter when you are dealing with women’s fashions. And that is their idea of feminine beauty. A woman with absolutely none of the physical feature that truly make them a woman. A woman who looks more like a … well … a boy.

So, why do we, as heterosexual men and women, allow this to occur? What is the logic here? I see these rail-thin women on TV, in commercials, on movie screens, and notice the occasional ‘normal’ woman. They, of course, are invariably shown as ugly, or bossy, or bitchy, or ditzy. I revel, though in Alyssa, and even in Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), Tisha Campbell (My Wife & Kids), Delta Burke (Designing Women) and Kirstie Alley (Cheers). Hey, these women are beautiful even if they are large and occasionally fat. They’ve got cleavage. They’ve got legs. They’ve got a butt, and they generally carry it all well. They DO NOT look like boys. They are real women, just as God intended.

A lot like Marilyn Monroe.

PROM NIGHT REGRETS

My son is going to the prom. Unfortunately, I will be in the field with my National Guard unit and will miss the festivities, though I am sure he’ll be quite handsome in a tux, and he and his date will make quite a couple. But, this night caused me to reminisce and think of one of my greatest regrets.

Quite a few years ago, when I was younger, I was always worried about what others thought of me. It bothered me deeply when others made negative comments about me, or thought poorly of me, for whatever reason. It’s no great revelation. At eighteen many of us are worried about our social status and stature. We look around and see those more popular and wish we were as popular as the others, or at least more popular than we are.

And we act based on these perceptions, whether we act rightly or wrongly.

In high school, I was the odd one. Subliminally, I’m sure I was proud of it. But on the surface and a bit deeper, I wanted to not be the odd one. I wanted to be ‘popular.’ I played sports, but was never a part of the ‘in’ crowd. I was shy, naïve, and a bit on the clumsy side. I tried a little too hard and was really nervous around girls.

I did date, and I had quite a few girl friends, if not girlfriends. I went out with an older girl to the Junior-Senior Prom when I was a freshman. That was cool, but she wasn’t ‘in.’ I was harassed about it and felt bad, despite the fact that those doing the harassing were likely at home that night.

So, by the time I was a Senior, football letterman, big-man-on-campus I was a little more confident, but still conscious that I wasn’t THE big man on campus. Teenage angst really does suck. Naivete’ does too.

Amongst all my angst and worry, cruel people lived all ‘round me. I was aware of this. I was forced to deal with some of these people quite often on a daily basis. You know the types – they’re the fodder of many teen movies. Throw in the homely but naïve victim, and you’ve got the plotline of Carrie. And in the case of this true tale, the victim was Darla (not her real name).

Darla was a proud young lady. Three years behind me in school (I was a Senior, she a Freshman), she was a talented member of the band and a devoted Christian. And she was a homely girl – there was no two ways about it. Additionally, like me, she tried to be a member of the ‘in’ crowd, but her looks and fashion kept her from it. So, it was with great excitement that she accepted an invitation from an older boy to attend the Prom late in my senior year.

Her parents bought her a prom dress. When the boy explained he couldn’t get the money for a tux or a corsage, mom and dad bought the arrangement. He explained that he would wear a suit, the same he wore to church. The day of the prom, he explained that his car had broken down. He explained that he had arranged for a get a ride and would meet her there at the arena where all the county’s proms were held. He apologized that he couldn’t pick her up. She said she understood. She was excited and quite happy.

Darla’s parents dropped her out front of the county-owned facility. It was the largest venue in the county, and may still be today. She waited patiently for her date, but the whole arrangement was a charade. It was one big joke on Darla, and all for this boy’s and his friends’ amusement. I don’t know how long it took her to realize the cruel joke of which she was the butt. Still, Darla went inside, sat down at a table next to the dance floor and sat there all night, with great dignity and stoicism. The word soon spread of the great prank that was pulled on her that night. Darla never flinched at her seat and I never saw a tear.

And to this day, I’m ashamed of what I did that night.

I did nothing.

My son will attend a prom this year with his girlfriend – if they don’t break up for some reason between now and then. I know that if it was he in my place all those years ago that he would have done the right thing. He has always done the right thing – even if it was wrong. That is another story, though, one I’ll relate some other time.

I wish I had the guts then to gather all my friends together and gone to Darla. We all needed to ask her to dance, and to get her a cup of punch, and to talk to her. But, instead, I looked on her with pity, and enjoyed my night and time with my date. I had fun. Darla was miserable.

I’m sorry Darla.

This post will be the second in a row concerning issues of the Iraq War. I am not meaning to be a war blogger, but I have found that much of my thinking has be molded by my time in the Middle East. I assure ya'll that I will try to not post another war post the next time. RGB

BRIAN’S E-MAIL

I have a colleague who was with me in Iraq. He was SSgt Brian M. (I’ll keep his last name a secret for his privacy). He’s from a little town in South Carolina. An excellent NCO, a good father and husband, I enjoy working with him, as do nearly all his other colleagues.

He went home on his R&R (Rest and Relaxation) leave from Operation Iraqi Freedom III just before the school year was out. While at home he went to his daughter’s school to have lunch with her. She insisted he wear his uniform, so he did. Fathers do that kind of stuff, you know. He was, for all intents and purposes, mobbed by all his daughter’s classmates who wanted to meet a “real” soldier. He was then invited to give a talk to the class about his time in Iraq. This then led to a talk to his son’s class, too.

When he arrived back in Iraq he received an e-mail from a classmate of his daughter. It lamented the lack of coverage given to the good works we Americans, and people and soldiers from dozens of other nations are doing over in that country, and how the horrors of the Saddam Hussein regime are being downplayed, glossed over, or just ignored by the American media in its (still ongoing) feeding frenzy to destroy the military and the Bush administration. Of course, her words weren’t as condensed as mine, but it was nonetheless the gist of her e-mail.

Those are huge concepts for a little girl just short of middle school, but even she noticed the manner that the news is being delivered. That is an amazing thing. More amazing to me was that when Brian showed me this e-mail about a week after he received it I had already read it.

“Brian, she sent this to you?”

“Yeah, Rupe, why?”

“Man, I got a forwarded copy of this exact same e-mail from a friend of mine two days ago!”

Yes, the world is a wired one and my copy of this e-mail was word-for-word the same as the one he received, except that the names were removed! I am told that this young student also forwarded this message to CNN. I’ll never know if it was ever read in Atlanta.

So, why is this important? For me, it is that you, John & Jane Q. Public, are not being told the whole truth. Like Sarumen in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings who could not alter the scenes in the magic crystal by the regent in Gondor, he could control what images were seen. Selective editing made the leader of Middle Earth’s Gondor believe they were doomed. Likewise, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, NPR, et al, don’t lie, they just simply control the truth you see and hear and can make it all seem to be rosy or catastrophic.

Case in point – I was out of South Carolina when Hurricane Hugo roared through in the Fall of 1989. I got back in early December, less than three months later, timidly wondering how badly my hometown would look. All I had seen were the pictures in the papers and on TV. I couldn’t have been blamed had I thought that Hugo wiped out the whole state and killed every living being here. What surprised me was not so much what was damaged and destroyed, but rather what was not.

The same applies in Iraq. Most of the damage inflicted upon Iraq was mostly done by the Hussein regime well before the invasion. Instead of maintaining roads, oil production, railways, and water and sewer systems, the Ba’athist regime ratcheted up the terror, denied certain areas and industries funds derived from the incredibly corrupt UN Oil-For-Food Program, and took the money to rebuild the army and build numerous incredible palaces and facilities for the military and the government.

The Coalition Forces in Iraq today are fighting the remnants of a mostly-foreign-led insurgency, an ingrained culture of corruption and deceit, and cultural and religious distrust that was cultivated in order to keep Saddam Hussein in power. Throw in a decade-and-a-half of willful neglect for the people and institutions, and you see just what we are up against. And yet, by mid-June 2005, the Coalition announced the completion of the first 1000 infrastructure projects to be performed there. The particular project that was counted as #1000 was a small eight-room school house in a small village that replaced a mud-and-thatch single-room hut that was being used to teach the local children. I feel certain that most of you heard nothing of that milestone, nor most of the other that have followed. Imagine what we’ve done in the past three years since!

That is but one of the myriad projects completed to date. Others include the upgrading of the Baghdad water and sewage systems, the rebuilding and upgrading of numerous electrical plants and lines, the nearly total rebuilding of the Iraqi rail system, the building of soccer fields in neighborhoods, not to mention the numerous efforts to take shoes and clothes, books and school supplies, and medical aid to outlying areas and villages.

And that is why I feel compelled to write this column. You need to know that what you may be seeing is filtered through human eyes and hands. ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is as true today as it was when the term was coined. Moving pictures are even more so. When you see those pictures and hear the words that come to you every day through the television, over the radio, and on the computer, you might ask “is this the whole story.” I can tell you that nearly every time, it isn’t.

The little girl in that classroom in northern South Carolina was “dead-on bullseye” with what she wrote. I see that every day the insurgency becomes more desperate, while becoming more organized. At the same time, I see an Iraqi army building from the ashes of a force of a police state that was used to subjugate, torture and murder tens of thousands of Iraqis, and to wage unjust and inept wars on Iran and Kuwait. It is a slow process, but it is happening. Don’t be fooled.

Iraq, as one of my superiors so aptly stated, “is doable.” He served in Vietnam and served as the First Sergeant of a sister unit that served in Iraq. The only stipulation: The nation must have the political and moral will to finish the job. Despite what you see and hear in the media, all is not all gloom and doom in Iraq. The terrorists and insurgents are being pushed to the limit, the people are willing and able to rebuild Iraq, and we can help them to do it.

Hopefully, the media will listen to a little girl and you’ll begin to hear the whole truth of the struggle in Iraq.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for it, though.

IF YOU DON’T FIGHT YOU LOSE

I originally penned this during the time I was in Iraq (2004-2005 for Operation Iraqi Freedom III), but it is still a valid piece. So I present it here now.

I’ve been reading in the papers both in Iraq and here at home a lot of things about the Iraq war. The one thing that jumps out is the effort to set a hard timetable for withdrawal, or even to simply get out now. Surprisingly, especially when it comes to the politicos taking up this mantle, these people should know better.

Now, I understand that Americans hate war. I hate war. I, my brother and father, my grandfather and his grandfather have all been to war. We all hated war. It is an ugly, nasty, terrible thing. I didn’t want to go and I don’t want to go to another. But, if I am told to do so I will. I do know one thing that is certain in this world – If you don’t fight you lose. And if you lose, the people who beat you TELL you how to live. No, they FORCE you. This really is a bad thing. Just ask the Czechs, Slovakians, Poles, Jews, Gypsies, Dutch, Belgians, French, Danes, Norwegians, Yugoslavians, Albanians, Greeks, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians, and Russians who fell to the might of the Nazi juggernaut in World War II. If it weren’t for an overzealous Japan forcing the American sleeping giant into the war, all of Europe and Asia could quite well be under Fascist control today. It took a destructive sneak attack at Pearl Harbor to bring America to reality.

Then ask the Czechs, Slovakians, Poles, Yugoslavians, Albanians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Ukrainians (again) who felt the weight of Soviet oppression. It took the fear of nuclear attack, a slow economic war, and some hot wars – the Greek Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador and others - to finally destroy the Evil Empire. It will take at least another generation for Russia, the other former Soviet republics, and Eastern Europe to overcome the social, economic and political stagnation and destruction wrought upon them.
I can also tell you that the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein was as much a Fascist regime as any that was bred in Europe. It is said by some that Hussein admired both Hitler and the late Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Like Hitler and Stalin, Hussein attacked his neighbors, murdered ethnic and religious opponents, and systematically murdered thousands of citizens of his own country – even going so far as to gas Kurds much as Hitler gassed Jews.

America’s greatest military and foreign policy problems stem directly from the legacy of the war in Vietnam. A military success for much of the sixties, and a political disaster for much of the war, Vietnam established the American reputation to the world as the greatest world power ever known, and that we, incidentally, will cut and run.

We have a unique opportunity in Iraq. We can place power in the hands of the Iraqi people, and with that show the rest of the Middle East’s people that they can have a say in what happens in their nations. That’s a radical concept everywhere there, except in Israel and perhaps Lebanon. The stabilizing effect of the democratization of Iraq on the region could have long-lasting implications in an area of the planet second only to Africa in the corruption and mismanagement of their governments.

Or, we Americans can do what we have done for the past thirty-five years. Pack up and go home with our metaphorical tails between our legs, leaving the death of every American who has died in Lebanon, Somalia and Haiti, and now here in Iraq, in vain. Nothing, in the eyes of this soldier, is more cruel, destructive, and unjust than sacrificing our troops to a cause that we are unwilling to complete. Today Lebanon is struggling to reestablish a national identity after a long and destructive civil war and Somalia is a basket case. We left before the mission was complete. It is the same in Haiti where we did even worse by turning over the nation and its people to the most corrupt international entity on earth – the United Nations. Haiti is quite arguably worse off today than it was when we ousted the military junta that had overthrown President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

As a soldier, I must ask the nation, “Are you willing to throw away the sacrifices and efforts of brave, dedicated troops who have given their lives for the cause of justice?” Every war that the United States has fought and won in the last seven-plus decades has ended with the stabilization of the country, the rebuilding of its government along democratic lines, and the rebuilding of the nation and its infrastructure. This model has led to the most peaceful periods that Europe and the Far East have ever experienced. This can’t be coincidental and it’s not.

The United States has established a standard for the world from which we cannot back down. The people of the world expect America to rebuild Iraq and leave it better than we found it. Why? Because it is what America does and has done for around a century. We are a stronger and better nation, and so too the world, for our post-war efforts in Japan, Europe, Korea, and even El Salvador and Bosnia. Peace and democracy are flourishing there. Those nations where we allowed our troops to die vainly, failing to follow through - Somalia, Haiti and Lebanon - continue to struggle politically, socially and economically. We and the world continue to spend time, effort and money to fix the problems we sent our men and women to fix too long ago. These problems would very probably have been dealt with had the USA the wherewithal to finish the job we started.

So, again, are we willing to allow the deaths of American troops to be in vain, or will we finish the job that we’ve set out to do? The cause there is just. The Iraqi people are as deserving as any in the world. By what moral compass should we leave this nation to terrorists, thugs and murderers?

America, don’t allow my brothers and sisters - soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and coast guardsmen all - to die in vain. We must finish this task. It is morally, politically, financially and militarily right. And we must prove to these terrorists – and the rest of the world – that we can STILL finish a fight. They won’t believe it unless we do.

AMERICA’S GREATEST EXPORT

I realize that many in America, filmmaker Michael Moore, actress Jane Fonda and politician Dennis Kucinich among them, believe that America is the root of all evil in the world.

Now, those three people above will explain that America is raping the world by using over a quarter of the world's energy and that we are just energy gluttons. They will also argue that our greed is the reason for so much death, destruction and war in the world.

But, by analyzing those very same statistics that they cite, it actually shows that America produces more than we use! Only about two dozen of the 200-or-so nations on this planet can say that. But I can think of no nation on this earth that has done more for peace and justice in the world today than the United States of America. America, with just four-and-half percent (about 300,000,000) of the World's population of around 6,650,000,000, produces over one-fourth of the World's wealth! And we do it with less than a quarter of the world's resource! Most take more than they give back to this earth. That is what productivity is truly about and we lead the world in it! To paraphrase a famous quote - No other nation on earth produces so much for so many with so little!

And on top of that, we have given back nearly every piece of territory we have ever conquered. No empire in the history of the planet has ever allowed a conquered people the luxury of actually peacefully gaining back their nation, or as often as we. We have beaten or conquered nations as diverse as those of North Africa (the Barbary Wars and World War II), Cuba and (twice) the Philippines (the Spanish-American War and World War II), most of Central America (the Banana Wars and the invasion of Panama), Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, nearly all of the Pacific, and Japan and Papua New Guinea (World War II), Korea (the Korean War), Grenada (Grenada Invasion), Kuwait (Operation Desert Storm), Bosnia (the Implementation and Stabilization Forces), and most recently Afghanistan and Iraq. You will note, however, that even with all that territory conquered, we do NOT have eighty-eight or more states. There are still only fifty despite the fact that we have actually, physically, militarily conquered at least thirty-eight other nations.

You may also notice that of those thirty-eight nations, all but two are free and open democracies. Those other two are works-in-progress. Interesting how that works.

My point? Despite what certain people will say, and despite the fact that America's media will not only listen to them on their soap box, they GIVE them the soap box, the United States of American have to date proven to be the single most prolific purveyor of freedom and justice throughout the history of the world. Our conquests in the world do not lead to empire, they lead to freedom. This DESPITE the fact that we are supposedly the world's greediest nation, and we are certainly the world's most powerful! We could easily destroy and conquer most nations on this earth, some with but a single nuclear weapon. And if this was the Middle Ages we probably would. But, we don't. THAT is an amazing record, especially when held up to the prism of World history. Can I be the only the only one who sees the obvious historical inconsistency here?

What this nation exports to the world is not only over one-quarter of the earth's wealth, but also the vast majority of freedom, democracy and justice. Americans are not conquerors, and we don't want what we haven't earned. If we have twenty-six percent of the world's wealth and use twenty-four percent of the world's energy, and have conquered huge chunks of the earth only to give it back to the true owners, then we deserve all we have. No one gave it to us. We have earned it.

And that is the way it should be.