Retirement – Personal Invention and Re-Invention

If one aspires to simply maintain one’s material life style, retain responsibility for those close to us and relax as objectives, that is one form of retirement – call it maintenance.

Many cannot undertake a maintenance retirement due to challenges such as the economic events of recent years, family responsibilities involving their children, or aging parents. They must continue to generate an income but must adjust to advancing age and find new ways to generate revenue.

I hear from many individuals who seek to go into business for themselves on-line or in the home as a way to supplement their retirement.

Given reasonably good health and a responsibility-free environment, most find retirement rather boring after a time and seek continued professional growth. In fact it has been espoused that such a lethargic existence can be hazardous to our health.

Balance is the key – Balancing age with wisdom, lifestyle with responsibility and available means; a new professional endeavor, volunteer work, recreation, the arts, – that which gives meaning to continued existence.

If the need to generate revenue is a prominent factor, care must be taken in assessing risk to health and fortune by investing too much in effort or treasure. That is where the balance comes in.

We have heard 40 is the new 30, but yet I think “old” seems to always stay the same distance for me. At 25 I thought 50 was old, at 35 I thought 60 was old, now that I am approaching 80 years of age, 95 is old.

I know true age is more a matter of mind. I took a fall on the ice in front of the Middle School and 2 dozen 5th graders. The fall didn’t hurt nearly as much as the laughter and the subsequent whispers this year, “There goes that old guy again, do you think he might fall?”

I took a nap out in the wildlife refuge in a beautiful stand of aromatic pines. When I awoke I found two huge turkey buzzards staring at me intently from their perch nearby. I had known I was getting older but had not realized I had reached the carrion stage.

I reported a pollution spill in the Vermilion River and the Minneapolis paper picked up the story. A reader commented on the web site that the Minnesota pollution control program had now been relegated to an “Old Guy” in the vets home.

I feel fine about getting old. It’s how I am perceived by others that bothers me.

We will all retire in some form. We have no choice. What we invent or re-invent along the way to make the most of it is our personal challenge.

Ken Larson

She Kills People From 7,850 Miles Away - High Tech Warfare Today

 

"THE DAILY BEAST" By Kevin Maurer  

"Anne, ["SPARKLE"] an Air Force staff sergeant, a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) sensor operator or “sensor.”

“When you hit a truck full of people, there are limbs and legs everywhere,” Sparkle said. “I watched a guy crawl away from the wreckage after one shot with no lower body. He slowly died. You have to watch that. You don’t get to turn away."

________________________________________________________________________________

"Anne crawled out of bed in her North Las Vegas house around 10 p.m. and started to get ready for her shift.

She pulled her chestnut hair into a bun and slipped on her olive green flight suit. In the kitchen, she packed fruit to snack on during her shift and stuffed her schoolwork into her backpack-sized lunchbox just in case it’s a boring night. Most nights she doesn’t have a chance to open a book.

Giving her dog, a tan Sher-Pei/pit bull mix, one last pat, she left her house and joined thousands of other workers leaving for the midnight shift. While most people were heading to hotels and casinos in town, Hubbard was on her way to Creech Air Force Base and a war.

At Creech, she is assigned to a reconnaissance squadron flying missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. Few weapons in the American arsenal are more relentless than the RPA fleet, often called drones. For more than a decade, the United States has flown RPAs over Afghanistan and Iraq, providing forces on the ground with an eye in the sky to spot terrorists and insurgents, and in most cases the firepower to destroy them.

As she rode to work, Anne—or “Sparkle” as she’s known to her fellow drone operators—wasn’t focused on the desert outside her window. It was 2009 and President Obama was sending troops in a surge to Afghanistan. Sparkle’s mind was on a desert 7,000 miles away. Over the next 24 hours she would track an insurgent, watch as he was killed by a Hellfire missile, and spy on his funeral before ending her night with a breakfast beer and a trip to the dog park.

The RPA has become the symbol of America’s ongoing wars, from Afghanistan to Somalia to Syria. And, 14 years after a U.S. “drone” first fired a missile at an al Qaeda operative, the morality and legality of remote strikes remains a matter of intense controversy. Earlier this year, the U.S. government revealed it accidentallykilled one of its own citizens with a drone—a hostage held by al Qaeda—triggering another round of debate about when the U.S. is justified in using the remotely piloted planes to attack.

The Intercept published a cache of new documents about RPA missions in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. The documents paint a damning picture of the RPA, including an internal U.S. military study that found a “critical shortfall” in how targets are identified. The government's reliance on cellphones has led to the wrong target being killed. The new documents also call into question the accuracy of the RPA. The Intercept reports more than 200 people were killed – only 35 were actual targets - in Afghanistan between January 2012 and February 2013.

This outrageous explosion of watchlisting—of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers…  assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield—it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source of the documents told the Intercept. “We’re allowing this to happen. And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.

But for all the attention paid to RPAs, the men and women who operate the 21st century’s most divisive weapons system remain largely hidden from public view—except for reports about strikes, especially when a missile kills civilians."

She Kills People From 7,850 Miles Away - High Tech Warfare Today

Kevin Maurer is the co-author of Hunter Killer: Inside America’s Unmanned Air War.

The Vietnam War Echos In Warfare And Politics Today

 By Ken Larson

My comrades and I who served in the Vietnam War were reminded of that period when reading the words of our leaders in the Washington Post Freedom of Information Act victory in the courts.  Washington Post Afghanistan Investigative FOIA Government Disclosures

We remember clearly the friends, innocence, physical and mental health lost in battle. We see the continuing implications of similar conflicts in which our country has since been involved.

Our conclusion is that war has become a racket and the capitalistic gains motive within the massive Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that Eisenhower warned us about as he left office has materialized.  

As the STRAFOR article below conveys, similar geopolitical conditions to today existed 50 years ago. 

Yet we have continued to approve this catastrophic money burner and debt creator https://www.usdebtclock.org/ in the interest of National Security making defense companies rich. It cannot continue.

“STRATFOR WORLDVIEW – Weighing the Geopolitics of the Vietnam” War

SUMMARY

“South Vietnam’s capital city, Saigon, fell to invading North Vietnamese troops on April 30, 1975. The image of an overloaded Huey helicopter on top of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, frantically loading refugees, was forever seared into the American mind. It was the ignominious end of more than a decade of involvement by the United States in Vietnam.

Ultimately, Washington’s failure to win the war in Vietnam resulted from factors beyond the conflict zone. The United States was heavily constrained by its global commitments — principally its need to secure Western Europe against Warsaw Pact invasion. Washington could not align military capabilities with realistic political goals to justify bringing the full might of U.S. armed forces to bear to defend its peripheral interests in Vietnam. Unable to comprehend North Vietnamese resolve and incapable of bringing about a swift victory, the United States’ will to continue the war crumbled as the human cost mounted. Today, the dominant narrative among the American public is that Vietnam was a crushing American defeat. Forty years after the fall of Saigon, however, it is apparent that Vietnam had only a limited impact on the overall U.S. position within the broader context of the Cold War.

The United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War resulted from the evolution of U.S. grand strategy in the wake of World War II. As part of the overall containment structure that Washington hoped to set in place around the Soviet Union — and eventually China as well — a network of allied countries became necessary to block the spread of communism. Many allies found themselves in direct proximity to the communist states America wanted to contain. This meant that any future war between the West and the Soviet Bloc would not be fought in the NATO heartland, but on the far-flung fringes of the two camps’ spheres of influence.

At the root of Washington’s alliance structure was the promise of U.S. support, hardened by what was supposed to be seen as a clear guarantee of assistance should the worst happen. In a divided Europe, for example, an attack on West Germany would be treated as an attack on the United States. Washington had given its word to assist, but by doing so, it put its credibility on the line. Despite written obligations, it was a constant struggle to fully convince the NATO allies that the United States, an ocean away, would truly risk nuclear war to defend West German soil in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasio

A wave of helicopters from the 1st Air Cavalry Division fly over an isolated landing zone during Operation Pershing, in the region of the Bong Son Plain and An Lao Valley of South Vietnam, Jan. 3, 1967.

This ambiguity was not lost on Moscow, and Russia continued to probe and pick at the perceived fault-lines in the American grand plan. By manufacturing crises, the Soviets hoped to generate a crippling uncertainty in America’s allies while emboldening their own clients. The Soviet insinuation was that, at a critical moment, the United States would not make good on its promises. So, when the United States found itself more and more involved in Vietnam, Washington was less interested in what Saigon was thinking or doing, or its virtues as a government, and more concerned with how its other allies, especially those in Europe, perceived the seriousness of the U.S. commitment to check the spread of communism within an allied country. When it came due for the United States to live up to its word, it was the international community and not Saigon that Washington looked toward. 

A Small Part of a Big Standoff

Vietnam was one small piece of a much bigger security challenge for Washington, with little intrinsic geopolitical value of its own. The real battles of the period — political and otherwise — were in Central Europe. Europe had to be prioritized, for if its resources and industrial capacity fell to the Warsaw Pact, the United States and its remaining allies would be unable to compete on either an economic or a military basis. For North Vietnam, however, the commitment to national unification was absolute. It pursued its own fundamental geopolitical interests and would give everything to achieve a victory — a single-minded devotion reflected in the horrendous casualties it suffered and the decades of conflict it endured. In the spectrum of conflict, the North Vietnamese were willing to embrace totality. This resolve was backed up with the support of powerful benefactors, namely the Soviets and the Chinese. From the United States’ perspective, committing the resources of the entire country against the North Vietnamese flew in the face of rational wisdom. Washington just had too many other interests. The conflict was ultimately decided by this imbalance of resolve.

U.S. Air Force F-100 bombs a military target near Saigon on Feb. 8, 1965.

The argument remains that the United States could have beaten North Vietnam by committing more forces. While this may be accurate, the United States, burdened by its greater contest with the Soviet Union, could not afford to trade the security of its global commitments for a localized victory in Vietnam. The fact of the matter remains that the defense of Indochina was only worth a certain amount of blood and treasure. The U.S. military was saddled with self-imposed constraints and only allocated limited resources to the campaign that, ultimately, proved insufficient for an extended nation-building effort. The United States had to think about strategic balance elsewhere and was limited in what it could realistically commit. Securing the resources required to defeat a massive foreign-sponsored insurgency in the dense Vietnamese jungle had little chance of finding political backing. The fact that the American public deeply opposed the war — a direct result of Vietnam’s murky strategic significance — further eroded the tenuous support for U.S. operations in Vietnam.

Provisional Revolutionary Government fighters seize control of the presidential palace in Saigon after the fall of the city. May 3, 1975.

Once troops were committed, the rationale of Washington’s grand strategy maneuvered the United States into a damning position. U.S. leaders believed that by circumventing the conflict, and showing that the United States was willing to welch on its promises, irreparable fissures could have weakened the alliance structure Washington had fought so hard to construct. Conversely, being unable and unwilling to fully commit to a conflict over a peripheral interest, a clear victory could not be assured, especially against a dedicated and well-supported enemy. 

Limited Geopolitical Impact

The United States did not retreat from the world in the wake of Vietnam. Still determined to contest Soviet influence but eager to avoid overcommitting itself again in the developing world, Washington became more judicious in its use of military force. Instead of relying on direct interventions, Washington shifted the burden of fighting to its clients across the world, providing less direct assistance when necessary. These shadowy operations were well suited for areas of peripheral importance. When they failed, their costs were relatively small; when they succeeded, they often had an outsize impact. This was demonstrated during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when the Soviet Union found that it was not prepared to pay the costs of a long counterinsurgency against U.S.-backed mujahideen.

A line of captured South Vietnamese soldiers walk through the streets of Saigon on April 30, 1975, escorted by communist troops.

The Vietnam War is popularly remembered as a U.S. defeat at the hands of an enemy a fraction of its size but, from a broader geopolitical perspective, it is hard to say what the United States really lost. The human cost of the war was certainly tremendous. Some 58,000 U.S. soldiers gave their lives in the conflict, and the war exacerbated huge social rifts in American society. Millions of Vietnamese perished on both sides — along with hundreds of thousands of people in Laos and Cambodia. Both victor and vanquished inherited a country broken by decades of war.

For the United States, the war was over in 1975. For the people of former Indochina, war would continue until 1979, consuming untold millions of lives. Yet, Washington’s worst fears did not materialize with the fall of Saigon. The United States retained its overall combat power and U.S. allies did not break from NATO en masse. The Soviets did not cross the Fulda Gap into West Germany, emboldened by a supposedly conspicuous collapse of U.S. resolve. Perhaps the U.S. refusal to empty its garrisons in Western Europe was far more meaningful a sign for America’s allies and adversaries than an iron commitment to Vietnam. Ultimately, for the United States, the geopolitical cost of the war was greatly overestimated.”

The Ultimate Form Of Planet Environmental Degradation

There is only one way forward in developing a mutual understanding of our respective values and cultures in lieu of fighting wars. Getting on with both environment and peace objectives have a common thread – communicative, learned negotiation.

The ultimate form of planet environmental degradation is warfare. While we reduce our fossil fuel emissions, we had best negotiate our differences.

What I have learned in two combat tours and 36 years in the weapons systems business is that someone different than I may not have the same value system as I possess, but by learning from them I will be able to make distinctions between my values and theirs. It permits me to consider accepting the differences between us without prejudice, communicate with them and move forward on common objectives.

When governments and weapons makers treasure the economic windfalls in collective military industrial technology and refuse to negotiate, political and military values on both sides of a world conflict collide. Soldiers and civilians then die.

All wars eventually result in negotiated settlements. Avoiding them by learning and negotiation in the first place is the most effective war weapon and by far the least costly in materials, debt and lives.A look over our shoulders at our recent warfare is useful when viewing our future while making prudent decisions regarding our financial and defense security. Every U.S. citizen from the individual voter to the politician must consider them.

Effective negotiation must involve learning the other party’s values, not simply the perceived threat they represent to us because we do not know them.

From the neighborhood to the boardroom, from the Statehouse to the Congress and the White House, we would do well to learn more about those different from us before we fight. 

Communicative Negotiation

DoD Faces Mounting Pressure To Pass A First Ever Clean Audit

 

"MILITARY TIMES" By Ellen Ioanes

"House lawmakers and government watchdogs express skepticism about the Defense Department’s ability to produce a clean financial audit by a Dec. 31, 2028, statutory deadline."

_________________________________________________________________________________

"The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the DoD years-long struggle to produce a clean financial audit despite claiming around half of the government’s discretionary spending.

Congress passed a measure as part of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that requires the DoD to produce a clean audit by Dec. 31, 2028. “Clean” means a clear enough accounting of the military’s assets, what was budgeted and spent, along with evidence and documentation, so that the Government Accountability Office can make an accurate assessment of the entire federal government’s finances.

The Marine Corps has been the only service to pass an audit since 2018, when it was first mandated to conduct a full audit. To date, the DoD has never passed a full, clean audit, according to the GAO.

Over the course of Wednesday’s hearing, both the members of the subcommittee on government operations and some of the witnesses had some concern about the department’s ability to pull it off.

“That’s a standard that every other large [government] agency is able to meet, and meet regularly,” Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., said in his opening remarks.

Knowing that the Pentagon has failed to deliver on that, Mfume said he could not vote for the proposed massive increase to DoD’s budget — from around $901 billion for fiscal 2026 to $1.5 trillion for fiscal 2027.

In 2024, the committee instituted a new system for the DoD’s auditing process, which follows a rubric or scorecard. Since that strategy was implemented, committee chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said, “Progress was made but not enough to ensure full financial transparency and accountability. Financial transparency and accountability are core principles of good government.”

The underlying problems, as both Sessions and Asif Khan, director of the GAO, pointed out, are the internal accounting, budget and expenditure mechanisms across the DoD.

This is not a new issue; in fact, it has been going on for 30 years, according to Khan’s pre-hearing witness testimony.

“In 1995, GAO designated DoD financial management as a high-risk area because of pervasive weaknesses in its financial management systems, business processes, internal controls, corrective action plans, acquisition management and financial monitoring and reporting,” the testimony reads. “In 2025, we expanded DoD’s financial management high-risk area to include fraud risk management.”

That potential for fraud rises with a budget increase like the one proposed, one witness said.

“Any time there is an influx of cash or funds into any organization, the likelihood of increased risk of fraud, waste, and abuse coincides with that,” Brett Mansfield, deputy inspector general for audit in DoD’s Office of the Inspector General.

“I’m not sure if it’s a one-for-one [but] there is definitely a positive relationship between an influx of funds and the increased risks,” he added."

DoD faces mounting pressure to pass clean audit for the first time

Memorial Day 2026– Lives Lost, Monstrous Debt And Citizen Angst - Driving Factors On A Path To Change

CLICK IMAGE ABOVE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Weapons makers treasure threat-driven economic windfalls. Geopolitical values collide, without negotiation. Soldiers and civilians die in dramatic numbers.

We must recognize the major factors driving warfare today while learning more about each other on a path to change.

_________________________________________________________________

From Vietnam to the Balkans, from Iraq to Afghanistan – and now in Ukraine, coupled with continued Middle East bedlam; we are paying high prices in lives, dollars and citizen angst. We must learn from the past and about those who are different from us before we go to war or support a war.

Our near term future involves weighty decisions regarding fiscal and national security.  There are trade offs during government war-making decisions and incremental funding authorizations. 

The U.S. will soon exceed a National Debt of $35 Trillion with a downgraded fiscal credit rating while carrying the financial burden of ongoing support for NATO and the Ukraine war, the Middle East Gaza conflict, as well as domestic program needs.  

A look over our shoulder at two driving factors of our recent warfare is useful as we consider history when viewing our future while making prudent decisions on the principal contributors to our national debt and security.  

DRIVING FACTOR 1 – GOVERNMENT CONTRACTOR  MOTIVES:

The motives of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and The US Agency for International Development (USAID) contractors have fostered continuing wars.  Ongoing warfare nets billions in sales of weapons plus massive construction and redevelopment dollars for international companies. They often operate fraudulently, fostering waste, fraud and abuse.   

It is common knowledge that many of these corporations have spent more each year in lobbying costs than they have paid in taxes while passing exorbitant overhead and executive pay costs on to the tax payer, thus financing the riches of their operating personnel while remaining marginally profitable to stockholders.

I watched this from the inside of many of these companies for 36 years. You can read my dissertation on the subject at:

Odyssey of Armaments | Ken Larson – Academia.edu

Here is an example of how the lobbying and behind the scenes string pulling worked during the run up and the conduct of the war incursion into Iraq: 

CorpWatch : US: Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

DRIVING FACTOR 2 – LACK OF CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

There has been a complete lack of cultural understanding between U.S./Western decision makers and the middle east culture they have tried to “Assist” by nation building. 

The only real cultural understanding that existed during the period was in the person of General Schwarzkopf who spent much of his youth in the Middle East with his father, an ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He was fascinated by the Arab culture, commanded their respect and, like Eisenhower, led a successful coalition during the first Gulf War to free Kuwait.  

He astutely recommended no occupation of Iraq, went home and stayed out of government. Norman, like General Eisenhower, knew the power of the MIC. 

Eisenhower’s Departing Speech

U.S Tax payers funded billions in USAID and construction projects in Iraq. The money was wasted due to a lack of cultural understanding, waste,  fraud and abuse. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has documented that aspect of the Iraq war history, as well as similar motives and abuses in Afghanistan. 

POGO on Iraq

CONCLUSION AND A HOPE FOR OUR FORTHCOMING DECISIONS:

History has been repeating itself here – much like Vietnam and Iraq, the above two factors are deeply at play with a lack of astute learning in our government as we look back over our shoulder.

We must come to the understanding, like a highly respected war veteran and West Point Instructor has, that military victory is dead.

“MODERN WAR INSTITUTE AT WEST POINT”

“Victory’s been defeated; it’s time we recognized that and moved on to what we actually can accomplish.”

Military Victory is Dead

Frank Spinney, a foremost expert on the MIC, spent the same time I did on the inside of the Pentagon while I worked in Industry. You may find his interviews informative.

Inside the Pentagon: 30-Year Insider Chuck Spinney

I have hope these historical factors are useful in considering our future financial and defense security and that every U.S. citizen from the individual voter to the politician will consider them in their decision-making. 

What Can We Learn From People Who Are Different From US

Vietnam’s Struggle to Overcome the Legacy of US Bombs

 

“GEOPOLITICAL MONITOR”

“In an eight-year aerial campaign between 1965-1973, US warplanes dropped around 800,000 tonnes of munitions, striking at least 55 of Vietnam’s 63 provinces and cities in an attempt to turn the tide of the war between the US-backed south and the communist-controlled North.

A significant proportion of bombs failed to detonate on impact, and remain buried just beneath the surface in the countryside."

_________________________________________________________________________

“The Hanoi summit attended by US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un thrust Vietnam into the global spotlight; a rare moment of publicity in the modern era for a country which dominated the world’s attention through the unfolding horrors of war in the 1960s and 1970s.

Yet the hosts were left disappointed when the summit collapsed, after failed talks on de-nuclearization prompted the US delegation to depart early for Washington. Five decades earlier the US had been in no rush to leave despite a similar sense of impending mission failure, instead sending thousands more troops and sticking around to bomb Vietnam for eight years from 1965-1973. While the summit leaves no lasting impression, the legacy of unexploded bombs and toxic contamination from the war remains.

Just days after dialogue faltered in Hanoi, a huge 350kg US-made war-era bomb was unearthed 400km further south in the central province of Quang Binh, as a family dug foundations for their new house. The live air-dropped bomb, discovered close to the busy national highway 1A, was one of the largest found in recent years. The area was evacuated and the bomb later safely defused by demining experts. While deaths or injuries were avoided, the find is a stark reminder of the lingering risk from US bombs.

The effects of Agent Orange also persist in central areas of Vietnam, where soil and waterways remain contaminated after toxic defoliants were sprayed by the US to deny forest cover to Viet Cong troops.

With Vietnam back out of the media glare after the Hanoi summit, and with global attention fixed on new conflict hot-spots in the Middle East, there is concern over the future will of foreign governments and international donors to clear unexploded ordnance from former battle zones in Indochina. Given Trump’s isolationist ‘America First’ foreign policy and desire to cut funding overseas, there are also doubts over whether the US commitment to help Vietnam heal from the war is set for the long-term.

The lasting impact of US bombing raids on Vietnam

Since hostilities ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, accidents involving unexploded ordnance (UXO) have claimed more than 105,000 victims across the country, killing at least 38,900 and leaving 66,000 injured. Meanwhile 7% of Vietnamese citizens, or 6.2 million people, have a disability, while 13% live in households with at least one disabled occupant. UXO explosions are a major contributory factor to Vietnam’s high disability rate, in many cases leaving victims with crippling conditions such as lost limbs and blindness. Agent Orange has also been blamed for an unusually high rate of severe birth defects.

Farmers and scrap metal collectors most often fall victim to UXO blasts after coming into contact with ordnance in rural areas. Children are also disproportionately affected, with thousands having suffered injuries after mistaking spherical-shaped cluster bomblets for toys. Since the mid-1990s, a number of organizations have run risk education classes to help educate local communities of the hidden danger.

Added to the immediate physical effects on those caught up in accidents, UXO contamination has had a wider socio-economic impact. Tens of thousands of victims require long-term physical rehabilitation and psychological support, placing a strain on Vietnam’s healthcare system. In microeconomic terms, UXO can have a devastating effect, removing the earning capacity of the main breadwinner in families and placing a double burden on relatives in the form of providing care and making-up for lost income. The prevailing threat of UXO also restricts agriculture and development in rural areas near the former demilitarized zone in central Vietnam, where fighting was most intense. Quang Tri province, along the old dividing line, is worst-hit: up to 84% of land here is contaminated, compared to 15% nationwide.

Local and international demining efforts since the 1990s

For more than 20 years since the mid-1990s, a collection of experienced international NGOs has been working to rid Vietnam of UXO alongside local state-run agencies and the Vietnamese armed forces. In recent years, Danish Demining Group (DDG), Mines Advisory Group (MAG), and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) have been among those operating in central areas to clear land and provide risk education.

The Vietnamese government has also been working to improve national-level infrastructure in recent years to better co-ordinate and oversee the demining effort. In 2013, a military-run Vietnam National Mine Action Centre (VNMAC) was established, while last year Hanoi formed Steering Committee 701 on the Settlement of Post-War Unexploded Ordnance and Toxic Chemical Consequences, to propose new solutions and mobilize civil society actors both at home and abroad to confront war legacy issues.

The government is hoping to make greater inroads into combatting the harmful legacy of UXO in the coming years, and aims to clear 800,000 hectares of bomb-contaminated land by 2025. However, this only represents a small percentage of the affected area, which totals at least 6.1 million hectares. The true figure may turn out to be even higher once a full survey has been completed. It is estimated that the removal of all UXO items in Vietnam will take up to a century and cost an eye-watering US$10bn.

Speaking at a global mine awareness conference last year, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said UXO was still holding the country back four decades after the guns fell silent. ‘‘Although the war has been over, the severe consequences of landmines, UXO and toxic chemicals still exist, affecting human health and living environments. Many people have lost their lives or suffered the loss of a part of their body, or lost their loved ones’’. Phuc added the presence of UXO still limits socio-economic progress.

Concerns over future US and global demining support

In the past year, new funding has been announced from the UK, Norway, and South Korea to continue demining activities in the worst-affected provinces. In mid-2018, South Korea committed US$20m for survey and clearance in Binh Dinh and Quang Binh, while a deal was signed with the NPA to fund work in Quang Tri until 2022. Late last year, funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) was announced to support the work of MAG in Quang Tri. Yet the US remains the main source of external funding, providing over 90% of total foreign assistance for UXO projects in Vietnam in 2017.

Between 1993-2017, the US has invested at least US$119.3m for UXO-related programmes in Vietnam. For two decades, the network of in-country demining operators has relied primarily on US finance to expand their vital work. There are now concerns that under the more isolationist and inward-looking administration of President Trump – intent on cost-cutting on projects abroad which are not deemed in the national interest – sustained US help for the UXO clean-up in Vietnam appears more uncertain. And with the Vietnam War fading into distant memory, other foreign funding sources are also fragile.

Will war legacy issues remain central in US-Vietnam ties?

Does the US have a moral obligation to help Vietnam recover from a conflict which is now condemned widely in the West and increasingly viewed as an aggressive act of Cold War-era misadventure? Former president Obama appeared to hold that view, stating his belief on a 2016 visit to Laos that the US had a duty to help Vietnam’s neighbour ‘heal’ from the pain caused by past US actions in the region. It is unclear whether the President Trump, and future US presidents, will share such sentiment. There are positive signs: the US recently completed an operation to remove Agent Orange toxins from land near Da Nang airport, and is due to start decontaminating a larger site at Bien Hoa air base later this year.

In the four decades since the war ended, geopolitical realities have shifted and the rapid rise of China has pushed Vietnam and the US closer together faster than anticipated. Since restoring diplomatic ties in 1995, relations between the two former enemies have blossomed, most ironically in the field of defence. The Hanoi-Washington security relationship has been evidenced since Trump came to power by a rising frequency of high-level visits. Trump has visited twice, while State Secretary Mike Pompeo and former Defence Secretary James Mattis have also made trips to take part in high-level exchanges.

The US has focused mainly on improving Vietnam’s maritime security capabilities in the context of the South China Sea disputes. Vietnam is a major claimant state and is opposed to China’s expansive claim. Last year, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson aircraft carrier docked at Da Nang port for four days, marking the first visit by a US carrier since the war. The US has also transferred a refurbished US Coast Guard cutter to the Vietnamese navy, funded the acquisition of 24 45-ft patrol boats – 12 of which have already been delivered – and granted Vietnam US$26.25m to boost its maritime security capacity during 2017-2018. Once an enemy, Vietnam is now one of the US’ most dependable security partners in Southeast Asia.

In this context, a long-term US commitment to fund UXO clearance in the coming decades would not only be in the interests of Vietnam’s prosperity and continued economic development, cementing its recovery from the war. It would also be in the US’ national interest, helping to cement its growing ties with Hanoi as it aims to refocus on the Indo-Pacific, while signalling its recognition of the harm caused in Vietnam. Only when the last bomb is cleared, can the shared horrors of the war be fully lain to rest.”

Vietnam’s Struggle to Overcome the Legacy of US Bombs

The Future Is American - China Does Not Have What We Have

 

WALL STREET JOURNAL" - Red Scare By Matthew Hennessey

"You can’t steal your way to greatness. And you can’t bluff your way to hegemony.
Communism is a self-defeating ideology—impoverished, weak and ugly. So don’t worry too much about the future. It’s got America written all over it."

______________________________________________________________________________________

"President Trump’s visit to China has prompted Americans to reflect, as we periodically do, on the state of our superpower. Some say the future is Chinese. Don’t worry. It isn’t.

The U.S. is rich, powerful and attractive. We are perhaps the richest, most powerful and most attractive country that’s ever been. Had we been blessed with only one of those attributes, we’d still be a formidable player on the global stage. In the event, we’re 3-for-3. We are crushing it.

 
Run down the list. Almost all the world’s top companies are American. The reason is simple: Ours is an open economy governed by the rule of law. Anyone can start a company and grow it. You don’t need an uncle in the Politburo.

 
The U.S. has Nvidia. We have Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Tesla. We have the big, healthy and transparent financial institutions. We have Walmart. Our ability to project both hard and soft power is unrivaled. We have the NBA. We have the Northrop B-2 Spirit. We have Sydney Sweeney.

 
When you look at it that way, it’s laughable to say we are in a competition for the future with China. What do they have? What have they done? TikTok. That’s pretty much it.

 
Name a Chinese movie star with global box-office appeal. Name a top Chinese athlete playing in an elite sports league. Name a Chinese musician who could pack stadiums around the world like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. Name a Chinese writer or thinker whose ideas have infiltrated the intellectual discourse. Name a clothing brand or style originating in China that has conquered the world. Name a Chinese product that you can’t live without.

 
You got nothing. Be honest.

Now name a recent military engagement that the Chinese have fought and won. Their soldiers are untested. Their navy plays sharks and minnows with Filipino fishing boats. Their supply chains run on the principles of corruption and inefficiency that are the communist hallmark.

 
There is precedent for our fear of Chinese power. In the 1970s conventional wisdom held that the Soviet Union commanded a lethal modern military machine. They had the firepower and manpower to overwhelm us in a direct confrontation. Then Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan and the world saw how limp the threat was. The Russians hadn’t built a war machine. They’d centrally planned a paper tiger.

 
No one should want war between the U.S. and China. But if it comes to that, I know which side I’d rather be on. The team that took Fallujah—twice. The team that neutralized Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. The team that snatched Maduro.

 
Americans have a reputation as yokels and navel-gazers. That’s not reality. We are actually quite cosmopolitan. We can be open-minded and self-critical. We read our own reviews—even the bad ones. We know what people think of us. Most of it is motivated by envy.

 
The reality is, the world is with us. If they could, they would be us. Nobody wants to be China.

 
No one in Albania or Botswana dreams of living in a low-income, censorship-and-surveillance state. They want to live in a modern, prosperous society with free and fair elections. People risk everything to come here, to build new and hopeful lives in the unsexy parts of our country—midsize cities, inner-ring suburbs, rundown areas.

 
Everywhere you go in the U.S. you find immigrants from around the world, raising families, building businesses, investing in their futures. That is a vote of confidence, a revealed preference. It doesn’t happen in China.

 
Tune out the partisan noise and the communist propaganda. China’s per-capita GDP is in the neighborhood of Mexico’s. Its economy is dominated by state-owned enterprises—phony businesses, in other words. They don’t engage in real competition in open markets. They don’t report real numbers. Everything is a mirage intended to give the illusion of strength.

 
You can’t steal your way to greatness. And you can’t bluff your way to hegemony.

 
Communism is a self-defeating ideology—impoverished, weak and ugly. So don’t worry too much about the future. It’s got America written all over it."

The Future Is Not Chinese  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Matthew Hennessey is deputy editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal and former managing editor of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.From 2007–2009 he was assistant editor of Carnegie Council's Policy Innovations online magazine and the Council's staff writer.

Commentary On Getting Old

PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

A Q&A web site posted the following question pertaining to getting old. Below is my response:

"QUESTION:

What is old age to you?

We have heard 40 is the new 30, but yet I think "old" seems to always stay the same distance for me. At 25 I thought 50 was old, at 35 I now think that 60 is old.  I know true age is more a matter of mind, but I would love to know how old you are and at what age you think you will be old."

MY ANSWER:

I took a fall on the ice a few winters ago in front of the Middle School and 2 dozen 5th graders. The fall didn't hurt nearly as much as the laughter and the subsequent whispers later that year, "There goes that old guy again, do you think he might fall?"   He looked just like a helicopter!

I took a nap out in the wildlife refuge in a beautiful stand of aromatic pines. When I awoke I found two huge turkey buzzards staring at me intently from their perch nearby. I had known I was getting older but had not realized I had reached the carrion stage.

I reported a pollution spill in the Vermilion River and the Minneapolis paper picked up the story. A reader commented on the web site that the Minnesota pollution control program had now been relegated to an "Old Guy" in a vets home. 

I feel fine about getting old. It's how I am perceived by others that bothers me.

To All The Mothers In Our Beautiful Natural World

 

Mothers Day Woodland Greeting

Vermillion River Valley - Hastings, Minnesota

VA Health Records System Yet To Deliver Quality Care for Veterans After Continuing Long Term Development Spanning Years And Over $16 Billion

 

"DEFENSE OPINION" By Frank Larkin

"At issue is the as-yet-incomplete adoption by the Department of Veterans Affairs of a new electronic health records (EHR) system for the 170 VA medical centers and 1,193 outpatient sites across the nation that serve approximately nine million veterans"

__________________________________________________________________________________

"Roll out of the new EHR system has lagged, both due to the ripple effects of developmental problems that have since been corrected, and inadequate training of VA staff and related issues, the Government Accountability Office found in 2023. As a result, only five of VA’s 170 medical centers currently are using the software since Trump launched the effort back in 2017.

The VA system is designed to connect with the new records system in the U.S. military services. The idea is that a servicemember can transition from active duty to civilian life, along with all of his or her medical records – and not get lost in, or forgotten by, what can be an unforgiving bureaucracy. A seamless hand off is the goal, one that is well within reach.

“For veterans, this will result in improved standardization of health care delivery, patient care quality and safety,” the VA said in a statement.

New records keeping system a big step forward

The advent of a new medical records-keeping system for veterans might sound like a minor, logistical turn of the screw. Far from it.

According to Dr. Neil Evans, who leads the VA’s health record modernization office, electronic records “profoundly impact operations.” They help steer “how instructions for care… are transmitted and received within the hospital, how highly complex care is organized in our intensive care units, how surgeries are successfully planned and completed, how  prescriptions are ordered and delivered,” he told a House panel.

At the level of the individual veteran, the new EHR system, under development by Oracle Health, will change lives. Veterans no longer will need to repeat tests or repeat basic info, such as drug allergies, to each provider. Their health risks will be better tracked by clinicians and identified earlier –before spiraling out of control. They will benefit from improved strategies to address suicide risk, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries. If they move from one state or region to another, their records will follow.

A tool to combat isolation and suicide

From the perspective of my organization, dedicated to preventing isolation and curtailing suicide among veterans, modern record keeping will provide continuity of care, which is essential for keeping veterans connected to the VA. One of the main issues I hear from veterans is that the legacy records system is clunky and clumsy, that veterans regularly and repeatedly are having to provide their health histories to different clinicians, particularly if they use multiple VA medical centers and that they get disenfranchised by bureaucracy.

This matters especially for those standing on the edge of the abyss. By some estimates, two-thirds of vets who die by suicide have had no contact with the VA. Modernized records keeping sends a strong signal to the individual patient that “they are listening to me because I don’t have to cover the same old ground.” It keeps them connected to the VA and support networks. And if they are connected, they are far less likely to harm themselves.

The next major deployment of the new EHR system unfortunately isn’t scheduled until 2026, when four VA facilities in Michigan will get the overhaul.

But in the meantime, veterans are stuck with the VA’s antiquated health records system, which the GAO described as “technically complex, costly to maintain, and does not fully support the need to exchange health data with other organizations.” And also in the meantime, veteran suicide trends remain a national crisis and veteran health outcomes far worse than for civilians."

With New Health Records System, Administration has Opportunity to Deliver Quality Care for Veterans

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Larkin is a former Navy SEAL, 40th U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms and father of a Navy SEAL son who died by suicide. Larkin is chief operating officer of Troops First Foundation and chairman of Warrior Call.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

EDITOR'S NOTE: For further recent details of the VA EHR System Development effort, please see: ‘Connecting The Dots’ In the Military And Veterans Health Care Systems Maze