"Rose Covered Glasses" is a serious essay, satire and photo-poetry commentary from a group of US Military Veterans in Minnesota.
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On August 1st, 2007, I was having dinner in a restaurant next to the Highway 61 Bridge in Hastings, Minnesota with a retired businessman, his girlfriend, and a local lawyer and his wife.Glancing up at the TV over the bar, we were witnesses to the news of the 35W Bridge collapse into the Mississippi River.
As we left the restaurant we looked up at the
underside of the Highway 61 Bridge since we had parked on the land side parking
lot beneath it.We noted the general
condition of the structure and wondered if it too was a risky passage, 26 miles
further downstream over the same body of water on which the 35W tragedy had
occurred.
Within months the Minnesota DOT had come to
the conclusion that the bridge was indeed risky. They began making
immediate temporary repairs while planning for a new span.The existing Hastings Bridge had been erected
in 1951. Its planned replacement, scheduled for 2019, was accelerated to commence
in 2010,based on the condition of the
structure and the fact it is one of the busiest bridges in the state,
handling enormous traffic as a major north/ south artery from the Twin Cities.
BRIDGE AT HASTINGS IN 2007
“BRIDGING” FEDERAL, STATE, LOCAL AND CONTRACTING INTERESTS
Planners at the Minnesota DOT are to be
applauded for the manner in which this project has proceeded and the people of
the community, as well as their civic, government and industry leaders should
be congratulated for the businesslike, cooperative and efficient manner in
which this project has been conducted.
Local community meetings solicited input from
the citizens on the design. The options were carefully weighed in terms of
environmental and aesthetic impact.Hastings, Minnesota is an old river town with a preservationist ethic
that spans generations. That fact was not ignored.The Highway 61 corridor has remained open,
eliminating a major detour for commuters.
The state ran a competitive bidding
process.The winning contractor joint
venture was a team of reputable companies who planned to use state of the art
pre-stressed concrete as a design to construct the longest such span on the
North American Continent, costing millions below the state estimate for the
job.
Heavy girders have been manufactured locally
in Minnesota and transported from north of Minneapolis to the Hastings site
with computer steered special transports involving minimal disruption.The large, arch frame for the bridge was
recently floated downstream from a staging area near Lock and Dam 2 on the
Mississippi after having been assembled by skilled union iron workers.
It was lifted in place on 24 September by the
largest heavy lifting equipment company in the world, who traveled from Europe to support the project.
The Coast Guard, Corps of Engineers, State
DOT, Hastings Community and all related support organizations have worked in a
cooperative manner to achieve a demanding schedule.
OUR NEW HORIZON
POLITICIANS
I have yet to hear a politician or agency
official attempt to take credit for this project or pursue some form of
attention-seeking advantage as a result of it.In an election year, considering the nature of politics these days, that
is a highly unusual occurrence.
I am sure there will be events commemorating
the project success, as there should be; but it is my hope those events will
celebrate the true nature of the achievement.
SUMMARY
It was a pleasure observing the Highway
61 bridge replacement over the Mississippi at Hastings. Its planning, execution
and achievement have been exemplary to an old project manager who has witnessed
difficulties with entrenched bureaucracies in industry and government for years.
This has been a shared, community, cooperative
venture, worthy of note when considering models for the future of our country
and the path it must take to overcome many challenges – political, economic and
technological.
Certainly similar projects can be undertaken involving other infrastructure programs such as education using the same form of
cooperative, shared, professional action.
Let’s build bridges like this one in
many other fields of endeavor!
Left to right and top to bottom above: Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Colin Powell , Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter and General Norman Schwarzkopf
"Rose Covered Glasses" By Ken Larson
"The world is crying for great leaders. They are out there, but I believe they are hesitant to step forward. It is worth examining why and what has happened to some recent United States great leaders."
"This author watched for over 40 years in aerospace and defense as the massive machine of government ground up men of integrity who had a true sense of leadership, purpose and service.
Unknown to the average American is the swinging door of military personnel who enter the defense industrial complex and then move on into government civil positions, lobbying activities or enterprises tapping their former service background for gain and greed. Statesmanship and integrity have a difficult time surviving in that environment. The potential for waste, fraud and abuse is tremendous: Star Creep and the Revolving Door
Colin Powell had difficulties in a government role because real integrity fares poorly in the big machine and he made the mistake of trusting the NSA and the CIA, as well as Lockheed Martin, SAIC and CSC on Iraq war policy
Dwight David Eisenhower was one of the last, great, ex-military presidents who led well in government. He warned us at the ink below about the big machine gathering power as he left office: Eisenhower Farewell Address
Harry Truman could not have made the type of hard decisions and "Buck Stops Here" operations in this day in age. The machine would have crippled him.
Jimmy Carter had integrity but did not fare well because the huge gears of government were grinding away by then.
General Schwarzkopf demonstrated true leadership potential in the first Gulf War but very prudently moved away from the government he served as a military officer when he retired. He was a Vietnam vet who knew the machine too well..
I worked in Aerospace through 7 Administrations and all I saw was the machine getting bigger, grinding up leadership principles, young soldiers, creating new enemies and spewing foreign interventions and profits for large corporations.
Our hope for the future is that the massive machine of government will be re-sized small enough so a true leader with statesman qualities will be inclined to take the helm and steer it in a direction away from political stagnation while fostering a resumption of the premiere place the US has had in history.
We found the STRATFOR Article by George Friedman exceptional in its analysis of the limited power of the President and the absolute necessity of anyone holding office to be capable of evolving coalitions effectively in governing domestically and on the world stage: U.S. Presidency Designed to Disappoint
Here are some select extracts:
*** "Congress, the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve Board all circumscribe the president's power over domestic life. This and the authority of the states greatly limit the president's power, just as the country's founders intended. To achieve anything substantial, the president must create a coalition of political interests to shape decision-making in other branches of the government. Yet at the same time — and this is the main paradox of American political culture — the presidency is seen as a decisive institution and the person holding that office is seen as being of overriding importance."
*** "The American presidency is designed to disappoint. Each candidate must promise things that are beyond his power to deliver. No candidate could expect to be elected by emphasizing how little power the office actually has and how voters should therefore expect little from him. So candidates promise great, transformative programs. What the winner actually can deliver depends upon what other institutions, nations and reality will allow him."
*** " The power often ascribed to the U.S. presidency is overblown. But even so, people -- including leaders -- all over the world still take that power very seriously. They want to believe that someone is in control of what is happening. The thought that no one can control something as vast and complex as a country or the world is a frightening thought. Conspiracy theories offer this comfort, too, since they assume that while evil may govern the world, at least the world is governed."
At the bottom line the only true measure of a leader is his or her character. We must decide that factor for ourselves as we enter the voting booth. It is the most independent action as a citizen that we take."
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
Awave
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.”
I often met Gordy Schmidt at Lake Rebecca in Hastings on one of his many long walks. I would fish and he would take in some sun along the trails and at the park.
I learned of his tremendous craftsmanship with wood and also observed his love of gardening.
Together with Doug, his gardening buddy at the Vets home, the two had beautiful showcases every year. Gordy specialized in flowers and Doug was the vegetable expert. I worked with them to get soil samples sent to the U of M and watched their artistry through my window in Building 25 just above the Vermillion River.
Another fond memory is Gordy's keen eye for dangerous tree limbs along the trails and holes in the ground in the parks that could break an ankle. Together we would take photos of the dangerous areas and send an email to my contacts at the city parks department and they would come out to cut the limbs and fill the holes. With 25 miles of trails to maintain, they appreciated Gordy's keen eye.
We miss Gordy and his artistry in several venues.
World War II and Korean War Veteran Bob
I first met Bob on the shore of Lake Rebecca near Hastings, Minnesota in 2006. He was perched on a small stool catching sunfish which I later learned he carefully cleaned on a glass-topped coffee table in his garage. He then cooked them for his lady friend Myra, pictured at the lower left in the above photo with Bob.
I fished with Bob for the next 5 years, until his health became too frail to make it to the lake he had frequented for well over 70 years.
I learned Bob was a decorated combat veteran of WW II and the Korean War, who had been shot down twice over Europe flying B-17's. Bob and I often discussed our combat experiences, he in his era and I in mine. He was a big help in my recovery from PTSD.
After his service abroad, Bob returned to Hastings where he was a fixture at the Hastings Country Club, managing the facility for many years while also establishing a musical instrument retail store and a couple restaurants in the area.
I brought some Veteran friends who were golf enthusiasts by Bob's garage at his invitation, where he would wander down a line of equipment he had accumulated over the years, filling up a bag with clubs, balls and other tools for the links, then hand it to each vet as a gift or for a pittance if the man felt he had to pay.
Bob was a self-effacing man who liked a laugh and a good story; he had many to tell, with his roles in business and social settings as well as foreign travel and wars. I met several local, prominent people through Bob, which contributed to my feel for the community. I admired his easy, friendly demeanor with everyone.
Bob often asked me to accompany he and Myra to the local casino for dinner. I noted he had the same look on his face when he was playing the slots as he did when he was fishing - always waiting for that big one. I met Bob's two adopted daughters, and many of his extended family in the area and in Canada. His daughter, Jean is pictured with Bob at the lower right in the above photo.
Bob Niederkorn was a genuine, generous individual who served his country, his community and his friends from his heart.
There is only one way forward in developing a mutual understanding of our respective values and cultures in lieu of fighting wars. We must learn communicative 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, then 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 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 Capitols and the powerful who run them, we would do well to learn more about those different from us before we fight.
"The training is privately funded, by trade organizations at no cost to the veteran. Training does not cost taxpayers a dime. Union members, along with their signatory contractor partners, invest annually to fund and operate nearly 2,000 apprenticeship training facilities across North America.
"Returning home can be an overall overwhelming experience. With that said, this Veterans Day, I have a challenge for you.
Talk to a veteran, and tell that veteran that once he or she returns to civilian life, there are groups that want to help -- and, more importantly, there are viable pathways to new, fulfilling careerswaiting on them.
I lead an organization that focuses on connecting veterans to career opportunities in the construction industry: Helmets to Hardhats.
Helmets to Hardhats is a national nonprofit designed to support transitioning active-duty military service members. We work every day, in every part of the country, to ensure all service members understand that hope and opportunity await them upon their return home.
While many companies and groups claim to help employ veterans, are those veterans connected to jobs, or are they connected to careers?
There is a big difference.
This is why Helmets to Hardhats introduces transitioning service members to promising career providers and vice versa. Because that is what they deserve: careers.
Veterans must simply create a profile with us to help training directors determine what transferable skills the applicant acquired during his or her military service.
I know the challenges associated with coming home. I served in both the Navy and the Army National Guard.
This is why I am exceptionally proud of the work we do – of the apprenticeship training programs with which we are affiliated. Each of our efforts feeds into a comprehensive approach, creating viable pathways to success for our nation’s heroes.
Helmets to Hardhats has made nearly 30,000 successful career transitions thus far. That means we have helped roughly 30,000 hard-working men and women find a place in the unionized construction industry.
And our work is far from finished.
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the female veteran population and the minority veteran population are both on the rise. Our organization works with all populations, including historically underserved communities and disabled veterans, to be sure all veterans have a fair shot at succeeding.
Here is how it works: Our regional managers hit the pavement each day to get more veterans registered for the federally-approved apprenticeship training of North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU). Along with our boots on the ground, we also use the digital space to ensure all veterans are aware of, not only the apprenticeship training, but also the good-paying careers associated with this training.
And no prior experience is needed. Most successful placements are veterans who begin with little to no experience in his or her chosen field.
Veterans even earn wages and benefits as they work through the earn-while-you-learn training. And, since these apprenticeship training programs are regulated and approved at both the federal and state levels, veterans can supplement their incomes by also utilizing their GI Bill benefits.
That means two checks: one from the contractor and one from the GI Bill.
In today’s hyper-partisan climate, it can be difficult to find programs that truly work, and even tougher to enjoy support from both sides of the aisle. Yet NABTU’s apprenticeship training does just that.
What’s not to like?
If you take away one piece of information after reading this, please know that this is not about finding jobs for veterans. This is about so much more. This is about connecting our brave service members to life-changing, lucrative careers.
By working alongside both labor and management, veterans are empowered to succeed – and there is no greater deed than helping a brother or sister who has served our country. So, even if you tell just one veteran, I challenge you to pass this message along:
Veterans should know that when they get home, Helmets to Hardhats is here. Apprenticeship training is available. Careers are waiting for them."
"Those who served during the invasion and occupation of Iraq or any of the bewildering two decades in Afghanistan will see many parallels of wars sold to the American public based on false information and the minimization of the many strategic failures of senior political and military leaders."
While Butler is known to most Marines for this rare achievement, he is better known outside of the military community for his late-in-life epiphany that during his 33 years of Marine Corps service, he and his men fought, killed, bled, and died more to shore up the profits of Wall Street than to defend the United States from foreign invaders.
“During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket,” Butler later said of his time in the Marine Corps in a book he wrote titled “War Is A Racket.” “I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.”
(Original Caption) Frederick, MD.: Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune, head of the Marine Corps, calls on Gen. Butler in camp at Frederick, Md.
It’s understandable for those of us who were taught in history classes that America is not an imperialist country to be taken aback by the book’s title mentioning empire. I once thought the same. But as Katz travels in the footsteps of Butler, from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Shanghai, China and back, he illuminates how the Corps had been used in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries to make de facto colonies out of the Philippines, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He also does a masterful job detailing our 1914 invasion of Mexico and the 1900 and 1927 occupations of China.
Smedley Butler was the Gen. Jim Mattis of his day – straight-talking, accomplished, and beloved by his troops. He was known nationally by his many nicknames: “The Fighting Hell-Devil Marine,” “Old Gimlet Eye,” “The Leatherneck’s Friend,” and “The Fighting Quaker.”
Unlike what one might glean from official U.S. Marine Corps history classes given at boot camp and Quantico’s officer candidate school, however, Katz provides a sober look at Butler. He describes a young man, who at 16 years of age, lied to join the Corps at the start of the Spanish American War, eager to prove his manliness to his Congressman father and doting mother. He describes a young officer who led his entire battalion straight into an ambush and then returned to base burning Filipino houses along the way home.
(Original Caption) Tientsin, China: Photo shows General Smedley Butler (marked with X), commander of American forces in China, at the edge of the foreign concessions in Tientsin watching the disturbances which marked the exit of the Northern troops and the arrival of Marshall Feng Yu-Msiang’s men. Undated photograph. (Photo by George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)
He tells of how a traveling Japanese tattoo artist gave 2nd Lt. Butler a gigantic Eagle, Globe, and Anchor (the classic Marine Corps signifier) chest tattoo – which immediately got infected, relegating him to 3 days of limited duty – and how soon after, Butler and company found themselves in Northern China attacking the city of Tianjin where Butler got shot in the right thigh. Katz also tells the story of how the Marines looted the city of a lode of silver bullion with an estimated value of $11 million in today’s dollars – which was quickly sold to a J.P. Morgan representative in Shanghai; and how Butler, who turned 19 on that campaign, was promoted to the rank of captain, contracted typhoid fever, and returned to San Francisco as a 98-pound ghost.
Beyond the fascinating and familiar portrait of Butler, Katz also excels at depicting the domestic and international politics of the Banana War era and how the United States government and large corporations worked hand in hand to create a string of U.S. outposts around the world and overthrow indigenous governments for the purposes of seizing land, controlling exports, and enriching shareholders.
From Panama to Honduras, Nicaragua to Haiti, Katz reveals how the Marine Corps was used to provide muscle as Wall Street financial institutions and U.S. corporations imposed their will where they invested – rigging elections, violently stamping out dissent, installing dictators, and training and militarizing police forces to keep them in power. He also details Butler’s navigation as a Northerner and a Quaker through the cultural climate of the Corps, which was led mainly by Southern-born officers inculcated with white supremacist world views.
One of the book’s most interesting aspects is how Katz shows how U.S. policy and our frequent military interventions in the late 1800s and early 1900s created many of the problems still present in Mexico, Central America, and many Caribbean countries.
Katz also captures the evolution of Butler’s thinking as he left active duty, and how he spent his final decade on Earth working to restrain and dial back the same military forces that he had personally helped unleash upon the world. As fascism engulfed Europe, Butler sought to atone for his past transgressions and engaged in anti-war, anti-imperialist, and anti-fascist efforts. Katz covers Butler’s advocacy in 1932 on the behalf of the impoverished World War I veterans of the Bonus Armybefore they were driven from Washington, D.C. with tear gas, by tanks, and at bayonet point by Army troops led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Katz also tells the story of how Butler was recruited in 1934 by agents of Wall Street financiers to lead 500,000 American Legionnaires in a coup to overthrow the Government of the United States and install a fascist dictatorship.
He goes on to detail Butler’s 1935 blistering condemnation of corporate greed and war profiteering in his book War is a Racket fully 26 years before President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. In this sense, Butler was a man way ahead of his time.
Those who served during the invasion and occupation of Iraq or any of thebewildering two decades in Afghanistan will see many parallels of wars sold to the American public based on false information and the minimization of the many strategic failures of senior political and military leaders. Katz’s realism may shock many readers, but they would be well served to join him in pulling back the curtain, tipping over the jugs of institutional Kool-Aid, and taking a long, cold hard look in the proverbial mirror. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, this is a raw historical perspective that will both fascinate and unsettle."
Joe Plenzleris a communication consultant, leadership coach, and backcountry expert. He joined the Marine Corps and became an infantry officer. During that time he attended the Marine Corps̢۪ Mountain Warfare and Jungle Warfare Schools and the NATO Allied Officer Winter Warfare Course in Norway. He also served in Iraq and Afghanistan and finished his military career as the spokesman, press secretary, and staff group director for the 34th, 35th, and 36th Commandants of the Marine Corps.
Joe holds a B.S. in Architecture from The Ohio State University, a M.A. in Mass Communication and Media Studies from San Diego State University, and Certificates in Organizational Consulting & Change Leadership, Facilitation, and Coaching (currently enrolled) from Georgetown University.
"He fought Chinese soldiers in the Korean War, North Vietnamese troops in Vietnam, and he fought a long recovery from the wounds he suffered in Korea. But the Army Ranger said America’s greatest battle is not with a foreign adversary, but with itself.
“We have divided ourselves into tribes,” he told reporters on the press call. “Our enemies outside our country are aiding and abetting the dissension within our ranks. They’re watching with satisfaction as they see us destroying ourselves.”
“While we have many enemies of this country today who want to see us fall, there’s no greater enemy in my opinion than ourselves,” Puckett said during a phone call with reporters on Thursday, the day before he received the Medal of Honor from President Joe Biden.
The award recognized Puckett’s “extraordinary heroism” during a battle near Unsan, Korea, in November 1950. A lieutenant at the time commanding the Eighth Army Ranger Company, which consisted of 51 Army Rangers and nine Korean soldiers, Puckett held off an overwhelming force of Chinese soldiers before eventually being forced to retreat. Having been seriously wounded, he told his soldiers to leave him behind, but was ultimately dragged to safety.
Puckett was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross after the battle and offered a medical discharge, which he refused. Instead, he recovered and went on to receive a second Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars for valor, five Purple Hearts, and two Bronze Star Medals with the “V” device for valor. He fought in Vietnam, retired in 1971, and has since become a living legend and mentor within the Army Ranger community.
“He feared no man, he feared no situation and he feared no enemy,” said retired Army Gen. John Walter Hendrix in the Army’sofficial profile of Puckett. “Clearly a unique, courageous soldier in combat and even more importantly, in my opinion, Col. Puckett was an ultimate infantry leader.”
The 94-year-old Puckett was praised by both President Biden and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in during his award ceremony at the White House where Biden called him “a true American hero.” But the day prior, the Ranger had a warning for his fellow Americans.
Puckett pinned some of the blame on lawmakers in Congress, who he said have “put their self-interest ahead of their sworn oath” to protect democracy.
The former soldier did not point fingers at any politicians he felt were responsible for choosing self-interest over oath. However, earlier in the call, Puckett expressed his and his wife Jeannie’s faith in President Biden.
“She [Jeannie] expresses it best, she expresses exactly the way I felt about the President when he spoke to me,” Puckett said when recalling Biden’s call telling him he would receive the Medal of Honor. “’This is a man that’s leading our country. I think I can depend on him. So could you.’”
During the award ceremony, Biden also highlighted Puckett’s role as a commander in the early years after the military was desegregated in 1948.
“In an Army that had only recently been integrated, his team included Black, Latino, and Asian American members,” Biden said. “As my mother would say, ‘God love you, man.’”
When the military was considering opening all combat positions to women in 2015, Puckett looked forward to seeing women meet the Ranger standards, saying “I want to see them do it,” Biden recalled.
Whether these anecdotes reflect Puckett’s political views is unclear. However, the Ranger was vocal in his endorsement of one President in particular: George Washington, who the Ranger called “his favorite American.” Specifically, Puckett referred to the grim frozen days of Valley Forge, where Washington and his men weathered through the snowy forests to emerge ready to fight the British for American independence in the Revolutionary War.
“He was amazing, he never gave up. When things were the toughest, George Washington was there,” Puckett said. “He gave everything that he had to train and to lead his soldiers and to fight for freedom. George Washington is my favorite hero, because of the man that he was, the true soldier and leader that he was, and all he did for our country.”
But it wasn’t just Washington who rallied in Valley Forge that winter of 1777 to 1778. It was the common farmers-turned-soldiers under him. Those soldiers stuck with the general and with the cause through the snow and disease to fight, playing just as big a role as the famous founding fathers did in creating this country, Puckett said.
Now, we have a responsibility to carry on that tradition. Just as Abraham Lincoln once said “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” so too must we “come together and fight together as a United States of America,” Puckett said.
“Our country was not created to be the States of America, but rather we were named the United States of America,” he said. “It’s my hope that all Americans will come to think about that and adapt that to their own thought process, to their own belief system.
“Our country depends on you, me, what you do every day and how you live,” Puckett added. “Without you, we will not be able to maintain our freedom. It depends on us.”
“The broken veteran narrative, unintentionally fueled by the tone of veteran legislation, certainly contributes to the real difficulties today’s veterans face in transitioning into civilian life.
The unexplored historical relationship between public perception, legislation, and veteran identity suggests that reframing veteran legislation and strengthening civilian identity may be the Joint Action Plan today’s veterans need to thrive after their service.”
“America does have a “veteran problem,” but perhaps not the one we’ve concentrated our popular attention on. Nor is today’s version unique to the 21st century. Throughout U.S. history, war generations have emphasized either the challenge veterans can pose to social stability, or the challenge commercial society can pose to the disabled veteran. Legislative solutions have been framed accordingly: The particular tone of veteran legislation has historically emphasized the disadvantages, if not “brokenness,” of veterans.
In parallel, veterans have developed their own unique sense of identity. “Veteranness” has mutated from a personality trait before the Civil War to a comprehensive sense of selfwith its own marketing brandin the post-9/11 All Volunteer Force age.
In 1944, sociologist Willard Waller was anticipating the re-civilianizing of the nearly 16 million American servicemen of World War II, many of whom would soon be in university classrooms like his at Columbia.
As long as America had had veterans, Waller pointed out in “The Veteran Comes Back,” it has had had some type of “veteran problem.” That stood to some reason:
Our kind of democratic society is probably worse fitted than any other for handling veterans. An autocracy, caring nothing for its human materials, can use up a man and throw him away. A socialistic society that takes from each according to his abilities and gives to each according to his needs can use up a man and then care for him the rest of his life. But a democracy, a competitive democracy like ours, that cares about human values but expects every man to look out for himself, uses up a man and returns him to the competitive process, then belatedly recognizes the injustice of his procedure and makes lavish gestures of atonement in his direction.
The sociologist wasn’t praising nondemocratic forms of rule. He was highlighting how the principles around which the experiment of American democracy was organized — liberty and equality, personal responsibility, private property, and limited government — exist in some legitimate tension with how such a government ought properly to acknowledge and repay individuals who have defended it.
Waller believed the real questions about veterans resuming their civilian way of life were bound up with the psychology of the soldier. Returning the soldier to civilian life in the modern world, he argued, had to start with understanding the veteran’s attitudes against the backdrop of industrial warfare, mass conscription, and a cog-in-the-machine mentality. “We must learn what it is … to be, for a time, expendable, and then to be expendable no more.” What happens, he wondered, when the “expendable one” returns from facing death?
George Washington had puzzled over a similar difficulty. The commander of the Continental Army felt intuitively that veterans needed to maintain a sense of self after military service. In his Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States, Washington recommended that veterans funnel their energies as soon as possible into active pursuits, and “prove themselves not less virtuous and useful as Citizens, than they [were] persevering and victorious as soldiers.”
Washington’s insight was that soldiers cannot simply remain ex-soldiers once their period of service is fulfilled. He knew that soldiers “walk the weird wall at the edge of civilization,” as Reed Robert Bonnadona puts it: The people who have historically been the staunchest defenders of their societies have also sometimes posed the greatest threat to it. From this juxtaposition Washington formed his idea that the citizen-turned-soldier could — and must — turn back into the citizen again.
For Washington, ex-soldiers’ veteran status was only one (temporary) part of their American identity. This was a crucial plank of his argument that the new nation could have a professional army without endangering the liberties of citizens. Alexis de Tocqueville gave the more explicit explanation several decades later, when he showed why the American soldier displays “a faithful image of the nation.” Most democratic citizens would rather reserve their passions and ambitions for civilian life than for martial grandeur, he wrote, because they think of military service as at most a passing obligation, not an identity. “They bow to their military duties, but their souls remain attached to the interests and desires they were filled with in civil life.”
In the era of Washington and Tocqueville, American veterans were not an alien faction different from society at large. Since then, however, the end of each subsequent conflict has spurred the public to think of ex-soldiers as a discrete group with certain special claims on society’s gratitude. The War of 1812 cemented the outcome of the Revolution and gave Americans a renewed sense of their independence. The public’s attention turned to appreciate the role of the Continental Army. The aging of the surviving soldiers and some public romanticizing of their personsas archetypes of national character, led to a public movement in favor of pensions for the neglected “suffering soldier.” The “suffering soldier” became such a powerful public trope that even though the Senate invoked 40 years of accepted republican principle about pension establishments being aristocratic and corruption-prone, President James Monroe signed the Revolutionary War Pension Act in 1818. The legislation fused the idea of a service pension to the concept of public assistance for the aged poor, laying the groundwork for how the system of American military service-related benefits would evolve.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the changing face of industrialized society, technologies of war, and beliefs about the role of government have expanded each generation’s understanding of its debtto soldiers. The early practice of granting only disability pensionsto war veterans grew toinclude professional or vocational training after World War I, to college tuition assistance and low-interest home loansafter World War II. Finally, these benefits were expanded to all who have served in uniform,whether during war or peacetime. At the same time, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs expanded the paradigm of government’s obligations to all citizens. Nevertheless, today, there are those who would extend the above-mentioned benefits even to soldiers with an “Other Than Honorable” discharge — reflecting how much veteran identity has come to be wedded to a legal status premised on the perceived cost of service. The pension/benefits narrative has corralled anyone who has worn a uniform into a unique category of society in the eyes of the public.
The way veterans have responded to their evolving status has both reflected and informed national attitudes. Largely because of the sheer numbers involved in the Civil War and, especially, in World War I, soldiers who had survived these massive conflicts, protracted campaigns, and deadlier weapons began to think of themselves more narrowly — as survivors of epic experiences who would forever have more in common with those who had seen such killing fields than with civilians who had not.John A. Casey charts this transformation in “New Men,” showing that whereas former soldiers and civilians alike once viewed military service more as an episode in a man’s life and a set of acquired skills that all could appreciate, in the post-bellum era both groups began to view service as a transformative experience that produced a new identity, one civilians couldn’t interpret.
Historians and military scholars debate exactly how different the Civil War was from prior conflicts. Casey argues that “it is the changed rhythm of war more than anything that marks it as different.” While more traditional set-piece battles marked the early campaigns of the war, the last two years witnessed nearly continuous fighting. Soldiers had no time to conceptualize what they had lived through or to recuperate. This “changed them in ways they never completely understood. All that was certain was they could not fully return to their antebellum sense of identity … They had been baptized by war and born again as new men.”
For Casey, the Civil War was when veterans and civilians changed their conception of war from an event to a liminal experience transforming the warfighter’s consciousness, analogous to religious conversion. It was Civil War veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes wholikened combat to being “touched by fire,” like the Apostles. The postbellum trail of fiction and nonfiction writings authored by veterans illustrate this mindset. William Tecumseh Sherman’s “Memoirs,” Sam Watkins’s “Company Aytch,” andAmbrose Bierce’s stories all evince a struggle to find coherence in the traumatic events the authors experienced, a struggle to show the “real” war, and a sense of the inadequacy of their portrayal to make the uninitiated civilian reader “get it.”
Civil War veterans such John William De Forest (“Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty”), and Winslow Homer (“The Empty Sleeve at Newport”) also showed this literary and artistic consciousness at work. Lanier’s protagonist, Confederate veteran Phil Sterling, is a number rather than a name, his identity shattered by incarceration in a prisoner-of-war camp. Once released, the love of friends and family enables Sterling to recover his name and identity, but his combat experiences prevent him from feeling “at home.” Spectators of the same war, but not participants in it, Sterling’s loved ones cannot truly understand him.
“War literature” as a unique field of academic study is generally considered to have originated in the wake of the Civil War, Casey writes. These ex-soldiers presented wartime memories as something they alone could discuss, forging the path for how the Ernest Hemingways and other, more familiar “Lost Generation” soldier-poets of World War I wrote about war and the fighting man, establishing a now-defined genre.
It was this newer understanding of the veteran as a psychological identity, earned in the crucible of war, that Waller had in mind in 1944 when he asked what happens when “the expendable one returns.” Like Washington, Waller thought a transition back into the civilian community was both possible and essential, but he believed that post-service education would be key. Education, he argued, would give the soldier the mental tools with which to make sense of his warfighting experience juxtaposed against his perception of the civilian’s perspective.
Although Waller didn’t live to witness the effects of the 1944 GI Bill — the “Serviceman’s Readjustment Act” — the bill supported Waller’s theory and is widely considered to be one of the most successful pieces of legislation in American history (so successful that Great Society programs were patterned off it). Through its education and vocational training assistance and small business loans, the GI Bill helped millions of ex-soldiers bridge their war experience back to the civilian sector, to thenet enrichment of their families and civil society. The absence of a public discussion of a postwar “veteran problem,” in comparison to the post-World War I and Civil War eras, reflects the success of the legislation.
In the decades since World War II, society has moved well past Washington and Waller’s viewpoints about post-service identity. Thanks to the cultural conflicts of the Vietnam era, the rise of identity politics, the medicalization of behavior, and the valorization of victimhood, in the era of the professionalized All-Volunteer Force, veterans are viewed as a “tribe apart.” Their increasingly medicalized imageis linked to the relatively new field of neuropsychiatry. After Vietnam, Hollywood helped promulgate a perception of veterans as “walking time bombs.” This view was reinforced by front-page stories in the New York Times proclaiming veterans to be “psychiatric casualties of war.”
In the late 1970s and 1980s, an extreme version of this diagnosis was crowned with scientific gravitas when a group of activist-psychiatrists led by the prominentRobert Jay Liftontestified that the veteran “returns as a tainted intruder … likely to seek continuing outlets for a pattern of violence to which they have become habituated.” Popular culture painted soldiers as “baby killers.”Within a generation, ex-soldiers in the public consciousness went from needing education to needing to be “rehumaniz[ed],” as Lifton put it.
A second reason for the continued valorization of veterans follows from this last: Americans may have lost the robust sense of citizenship that previous generations relied on to make civilian life vibrant enough for veterans to embrace it. In the All-Volunteer Force era, perhaps it’s the civilian majority with its loose sense of civic connectedness that makes it difficult for veterans to subsume a veteran identity within the generalized civilian one. When Washington argued for former soldiers to think of themselves as fully civilian-citizens with a set of acquired military skills, many Americans felt a sense of patriotism and civic identity that shaped the calendar of their yearly activities.Missouri painter George Caleb Bingham may have over-eulogized this civic engagement in “Stump Speaking” and “County Election;” nevertheless, that strong sense seems to have weakened considerably since the 19th century. Today’s America no longer shares that identity, as suggested by factors from low voter turnout, “Man on the Street”-style public confessions of civic and historical ignorance, disinterest in civic education, to the “bowling alone” culture decried by Harvard’s Robert Putnam. In Putnam’s view, the comparably steep membership losses since the 1960s among trade unions, professional associations, chapter-based voluntary membership federations, and community groups documents “the erosion of America’s social connectedness and community involvement.” This is to say nothing of the 2016 election, whose after-action report notes the role that a hollowed-out sense of citizenship thanks to globalization played in the electoral returns.
To that first generation of Americans, citizenship wasn’t a passive label, but an active way of life. Jefferson relayed the sense of this understanding in his comment that citizenship is composed of the civic knowledge of rights, duties, and how to judge individuals worthy of public office; the practice of sound civic habits; and importantly, an informed attachment to the American regime and principles of the Constitution.
America’s political class today doesn’t exactly articulate this. As that California teacher’s rant shows, angry citizens are present in all layers of society. But we have little corresponding understanding of a robust citizenship animated by an informed attachment to American laws, principles and institutions, and the need for each generation to perpetuate them. It may not be possible — or preferable given the dynamics of today’s professional All-Volunteer Force — to return entirely to Washington’s designation of the veteran as simply the citizen. But it is both possible and pressing to return to that robust sense of citizenship that enabled citizens to be soldiers, and soldiers citizens.”
Rebecca Burgess manages the Program on American Citizenship at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on veterans and their role in civil society and politics. She is the author of “Second Service: Military Veterans and Public Office.”
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