Ukraine

Well, good ol' Vlad is up to it again.  Actually going a little further than he has before, this time around.  Putin is showing his stripes; a product of the bad old days of the Cold War, head of the KGB and all that, too.  And Ukraine was always one of the more important of the 'Soviet Socialist Republics', so I for one am not all that surprised that Putin would take such a drastic step, amounting to a forced annexation. 


But here, back home here in the U.S. of A., what are we going to do about it?  Anything?  We'll send a strongly-worded protest through the United Nations, I'm sure.  And it's not as if we can do much sabre-rattling, seeing as how we no longer have much of a sabre--more like a dagger, given how much we've cut already.  And that big, huge, bloated military budget that the Dems like to harp on?  We'll be lucky to have a paring knife left.


Our once much-vaunted, and by our adversaries, much-feared, military is largely a paper tiger nowadays.  So much of our budget went to fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it stripped our 'conventional' forces to the bone.  And now we want to cut further.


Does anyone remember Desert Storm?  I certainly do--I was there, and two of my brothers also served over there (a third one was just a little too young, but did two tours in Iraq when he was older).  Does anyone remember how many troops the United States had in-theater?  Right around 500,000.  And we got the job done. (Well, in my mind, we left the job half-done, but that's only because the politicians didn't want the job done.  We did exactly what our political masters wanted us to do--liberate Kuwait and eliminate Iraq's military potential.)  AND one must also add in the hundreds of thousands of Allied troops that were there and went in with us, alongside us.


So, in Gulf War II, OIF, or whatever we end up calling the late unpleasantness in Iraq, how many troops did we have?  160,000, with comparatively little Allied support (thanks to W's 'my way or the highway' attitude, and none of his dad's considerable diplomatic acumen).  So we had enough to go in and defeat the Iraqi military, but not enough to actually control the country.  You know, you can argue all sorts of points about how the occupation of Iraq (call it what it actually was) should have been handled, but regardless it would have been a whole lot better had we had 3 times as many troops as we did in country in 2003--like we did in 1991.  But you know what?  We couldn't spare 500,000 troops to go into Southwest Asia not just because of operations in Afghanistan, but because doing so would have required removing all the troops from Europe and Korea and just about every stateside post as well. 


As it was, we ran our troops to the ragged edge.  Anyone with even the most casual, passing familiarity with our troops knows how badly the constant and repeated combat tours strained the troops and their families.  Yeah, we lost 4,486 troops in Iraq, and so far we've lost 2,315 in Afghanistan, but you also have to count those we've lost to suicide.  And the sacrifices go even deeper, even beyond the wounded and the maimed.  There's the divorces, the broken hearts, the wives (and husbands) and the children who have also paid the price.  Things would NOT have been so bad had we had enough troops to do the job right, not just in-country, but also back home in the States, so the combat troops coming home would have had the time to recover and recuperate.  An extra 340,000 troops would have helped tremendously.


And keep that 500,000 troop strength figure in mind here.


Has anyone seen the actual number of troops that DoD wants to cut the Army to?  The plan is to cut the total troop strength of the entire United States Army to around 440,000 troops--total.  With a force structure so small, we couldn't even pull off 'Gulf War Lite', a la 2003 OIF.


And let's not forget who those 160,000 American servicemembers had to fight.  The Iraqi military, having failed utterly to defend their country in Desert Storm (going, as one wag had it, from being the 4th largest army in the world to the 2nd largest in Iraq), and having 12 years of sanctions imposed upon it, was not exactly the most professional military force in the world.  (Not only did they epically fail in Desert Storm, they also singularly failed to prevail against the Iranians for 8 long years . . . )  Militarily, the Iraqi armed forces were a push-over.  They had a hodge-podge of equipment (one thing I remember from Desert Storm was the incredible variety of target silhouettes we had to learn--I was a tank crewman, BTW) which makes for a logistical nightmare, both for parts and for ammunition, and for training, too. 


[Even the Iraqi equipment we faced in Desert Storm was junk, for the most part--I had an up-close and personal view of several captured Iraqi vehicles, and they were just sad.  About the only thing their vehicles were good for was machine-gunning civilians--they certainly couldn't hold up to a full-blown stand-up fight, which is what we gave them . . . but I digress.]


Who knows where or when our servicemembers are going to be called to go into harm's way to protect American national interests?  Who they'll have to face, who will be doing their best to kill our young men and women? 


If you 'support our troops', have one of those little ribbons on your back bumper or tailgate, now, NOW, is the time to actually SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.  Either we maintain an adequate fighting force, of sufficient size, sufficiently equipped, and exquisitely trained, capable of meeting and defeating any potential adversary on any battle field any where in the world, or we need to re-evaluate the United State's role in the world.  'Supporting the troops' means very much more than just waving a flag or thanking a veteran from time to time; SUPPORTING the troops means making sure that they have everything they possibly could need to survive and win anywhere, anytime, and that includes making sure there are more than enough troops to accomplish the jobs that may need to be done.


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Going back to Ukraine, what can we do?   Not a whole lot.  You see, as the former head of the KGB, I'm sure Putin's taken everything into account, and he knows how weak we already are, and I'm sure he looked on our proposed FY2015 military budget with a chuckle.  You see, it's not just the Army--the Navy is very close to the same number of ships afloat as it had before World War I, at 285, and of those, only 189 are actual warships (during the Reagan era the US Navy peaked at 594 and 362, respectively).  The Marine Corps is looking to shrink down to perhaps 150,000 total, from around 202,000 today.


Has anyone else noticed that a number of Third World tin-plate dictators have started talking 'smack' to the United States?  They know how small our military has become, and know that they can get away with 'tweaking' us and generally being a pain in our butts.  Because we can't do anything about it.  Once upon a time the shadow of our 'big stick' was enough to keep these small-fry in line, but they're not scared of it any more.


Weakness in a nation invites problems.  While polite society does not allow individuals to act in this manner, nations do all the time.  It's a fact of life; it's not what things should be, but it is how things are.  And when a formerly strong nation becomes weak, the little previously compliant nations will take cheap shots at the formerly strong, because now they can.  And they do.


Moving back to Ukraine once again, there is one thing that comes to mind, though the ties between the United States and Ukraine are not as strong as the ones in the historical precedent.  Specifically, I refer to the Berlin Airlift.  In 1948, our erstwhile allies, the Soviet Union, in an effort to drive Western powers from Berlin, established a blockade around the city.  There was no road, rail, or water access to Berlin, cutting off around 2.25 million West Germans from food, fuel, and medical supplies.


Some military 'hawks' of the day urged the President to send armored columns to break through the blockade, which almost certainly would have led to war.  But a few other forward-thinking officers had a different idea.


In a matter of a few weeks, the United States and our British allies established what became known as the Berlin Airlift.  Using military transport airplanes, called from all over the world, we managed to supply the needs of the cut-off Germans, only the very basic and very minimum needs at first, but over time, through a masterpiece of planning and organization (and largely still unrecognized to this day), eventually we scaled the operation up to where all of 'free Berlin' had adequate supplies of food, clothing, fuel, medicines--everything a modern city of that size needed.  No troops other than those necessary to control the aircraft coming and going were sent; no weapons were supplied.


And in the course of doing so, we, the United States, proved to the satisfaction of the German people that those Americans, who just three years before were doing everything we could to kill them, were now doing everything we could to help them withstand the Communists and remain a free people.  (We also had the 'Candy Bombers', started completely on his own by 1st Lt. Gail Halvorsen and for wholly philanthropic reasons of his own, who dropped small bundles of candy attached to parachutes fashioned from handkerchiefs to waiting children in West Berlin, which had the added benefit of further enhancing the image of the Americans to the German people.)


It wasn't bloodless, not by a long shot.  A total of 70 Allied airmen lost their lives in crashes and other accidents related to operating in some of the worst weather ever seen in Berlin.  But eventually even the Soviets had to admit defeat, and in May 1949, they lifted the blockade.  We, the United States and Great Britain, and West Germany, had won the first battle of the Cold War without firing a shot.  And so firmly cemented the people of West Germany to the United States and to Great Britain that they became one of our closest allies anywhere in the world.


Which brings us back to the Ukraine.


Could we not undertake something similar today?  Ukraine has wanted to join the European Union for years--and in fact the recent turmoil in that country was brought about by a decision by the then-president to reject that membership in favor of closer ties to Russia.  Were they to join the EU, they'd be on the far most-distant end of that organization.   An effort to bring them more fully into the European sphere of influence would be a good thing, I think, given Russia's more recent aggressiveness.  Add to the fact that four of Ukraine's neighboring countries are now members of NATO, an effort by that organization (which, by the way, grew out of the coalition that started the Berlin Airlift) to very visibly and publicly support the Ukrainian efforts to maintain their freedom and independence from Moscow would help those small, and formerly Soviet, countries as well.


50-plus years ago, President Kennedy committed the United States to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty."  These were fine words, and they established America's place on the world stage.  Do we wish to continue to play that role, to support our friends and oppose our foes, and ensure that freedom's light still shines out upon the world?  The choice, as always, is up to us.

Commonalities between the Good Ol' U. S. of A. and Nazi Germany?

Commonality between US of A and Nazi Germany?


I ran across this blog a few minutes ago, hoping to see if Nazi Germany had the right to recall elections (apparently not . . . ).


In it, the author, Rick Spilsbury, does point out one possible way the Nazis came up with concentration camps--the reservation system forced on Native Americans.  Of course, in typically German fashion they improved upon it--imposed much greater organization and added slave labor to the equation, and sped things up by adding gas chambers.


Remember a few years ago when someone in Congress decided, for whatever reason, it was time to jerk the Turks around a bit and accuse them of ethnic cleansing against the Armenians a hundred years ago or so?  (Not that this wasn't the case, you understand.)  Whatever this was about, I'd have no problem with it whatsoever--once the American government officially admits that WE engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing regarding the Native Americans.


Maybe it's in being from Oklahoma, but here we grow up with these things, these histories of peoples whose ancestors weren't from around here any more than ours were, but were forced here against their wills.


Anyway, check it out if you want.  It also contains a warning for our time, and some good ideas on how to avoid a future that's meaner and nastier than our present is today.

Gun Control, the 2nd Amendment, and Tea Party nuts

It gets old, sometimes, here in Oklahoma, the land of my birth, and the reddest of red states (though perhaps Arizona is trying to give us a run for our money).  The incessantly shrill cries of the anti-Obama types does wear on the nerves.


Oh, don't get me wrong; I'm no Obama supporter--far from it.  I voted for McCain in '08, and didn't vote for either candidate for president in 2012, as I felt that neither of them deserved my vote.  And here in Oklahoma, the Republican Party is apparently so fearful of 'alternative' candidates that they managed to keep every other presidential candidate off our ballots in '12.

(For that matter, we Okies have always had a soft spot for underdogs and lost causes.  But there is perhaps no cause so lost and forlorn as that of the Democratic Party in Oklahoma.  Which really is unfortunate, and such a huge reversal of politics from the Great Depression/Dust Bowl days.  But I digress.)

The Tea Party types and the strict constitutionalists (usually one and the same) insist that the 2nd Amendment gives them the right to keep and bear arms in order to violently oppose a potentially tyrannical government, in much the same way as our 'Founding Fathers' did in the American Revolution.  (Or, as they usually fail to point out, the same way as the Confederate States of America TRIED to do, four score and seven (or so) years later.)


And, in one respect, I will grant that they do have a point.  At the time the 2nd Amendment was written, that was almost certainly the case.  And at that time, a sufficiently organized 'militia' could have, possibly, successfully removed a tyrant's yoke from their necks.


But in case one hasn't been paying attention to military matters over the past 220 years, things have changed.  The flintlock smoothbore musket is no longer the state of the art.  Muzzle-loading horse-drawn cannons have also gone away.  And pretty much no one still uses the long 'pig-sticker' bayonet anymore, nor do they do anywhere near as much drill with the bayonet as armies once did.




And, by the way, there have been certain advances in military technology.  Like the percussion cap.  Like breach-loading rifles firing cartridge ammunition.  Like repeating firearms.  Like belt-fed, crew-served machine guns, and sub-machine guns, and assault rifles. Automatic pistols.  Dedicated sniper weapons.  Rocket-propelled grenades.  Chemical weapons.  Bombers and ground-attack aircraft.  Helicopter gunships.  Guided missiles and laser-guided bombs.  High-altitude bombing. Indirect-fire artillery.  Night-vision devices--not just the old 'starlight' image-intensification types, but the full thermal imaging ones.  Unjammable radios.  Digital data networks.  Radar, including types that map everything on the ground--and can track everything that moves.  Fully autonomous missiles.  And now drones.


OK, let's go all-out, and let's say you have a Barrett .50-BMG sniper rifle.  It's a big, bad, beautiful, heavy-duty, 'reach out and touch someone' rifle, with a muzzle brake and everything.  Massive kick too.  And let's say that you and your buddies are not about to sign up for Obamacare and are gonna go show them gummint men where they can go with their 'mandate'.


Yeah, you might get one or two of them.  If there's a bunch of you that can afford a $4300+ weapon and $3.50/$4.00 a round for ammo, you might get a few more.  But then what?


Assuming you and your buddies are deemed an actual military threat rather than just a bunch of nastier-than-normal criminals (probably a rather large hurdle to overcome), and the United States Army comes after you, what are your plans then?  They can track you and you'll never even know it.  You don't have the manpower, you don't have the technology, you don't have the logistics backup, and you almost certainly don't have the discipline necessary to withstand an army whose last defeat was at Kasserine Pass in 1943 (well, you could make a good argument for Chosin Reservoir in 1950, but US forces did manage to break out of the encirclement and withdrew mostly intact).


Even if--IF--you managed to do enough damage to attract actual military attention, you will not survive.  Your cause will not survive.  Want another example?  Desert Storm, Battle of 73 Easting (look it up).  US tanks engaged Iraqi Republican Guard troops riding into battle in BMP infantry fighting vehicles and knocked them out.  Survivors from those BMPs jumped out of their burning vehicles, and began to charge, on foot, the American tanks--3000 meters distant . . . firing their AKs at the tanks.  Full points for bravery, but none whatsoever for common sense.  The US tank crews didn't know what to make of them at first; clearly these Iraqis weren't in the mood to surrender just yet, but they also didn't pose a threat to them, at least not until they'd run better than 2500 meters.  So they called artillery on them, and wiped them out.


To make it clear, advances in military technology have rendered the 2nd Amendment, as a sort of final check and balance against a tyrannical government, obsolete.  Oh, you can talk about personal protection against criminals, and certainly that's still valid.  Or just as an expression of freedom--just as valid.  But as a check against an 'evil government' led by 'the prince of fools'--you're dangerously self-delusional, and if you ever try it, you'll die a fool's death.


BUT--having said all that, the concept of their needing to be an additional check on government power is just as valid as it was 225 years ago, when the Constitution was first adopted.  It's just that the mechanism for this, provided in the 2nd Amendment, is no longer functional.


This check that the 2nd Amendment USED TO provide is still needed, and always will be needed, as a check on government power.  It's just that we need a new mechanism to provide this essential check. 


Well . . . what could that possibly be?  (And you can keep your 2nd Amendment as-is . . . it's not harmful; it just doesn't work for what it was intended any more.)


I don't know.


But I do know something that would be a good start in that direction, of providing a check on government power.  The right to recall.


Only a few states have the right to recall elected officials, and even in those states, it only applies to state- and local-level officials.  No federal-level right to recall exists.  But it should.


For those who may be a little unfamiliar with the term, here's how Wikipedia defines it:

"A recall election (also called a recall referendum or representative recall) is a procedure by which voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before his or her term has ended. Recalls, which are initiated when sufficient voters sign a petition, have a history dating back to the ancient Athenian democracy and are a feature of several contemporary constitutions."

It gives the people the power to remove an elected official from office WITHOUT HAVING TO ASSASSINATE THEM OR OTHERWISE ENGAGE IN ARMED CONFLICT.  No violence required.


This in and of itself may not provide a sufficiently robust mechanism to replace the inoperative one in the 2nd Amendment; I'm no constitutional theorist.  But it would undoubtedly help.  And, better yet, would help to restore some sanity to political discourse in this country.

A Response to "A Letter To A Christian Nation", by Sam Harris (Part I)

One of the things my now-atheist son asked me to read concerning his new-found beliefs is a small, slim book entitled A Letter To A Christian Nation, by Sam Harris, published in 2006 by Alfred Knopf.

The book came to him from a friend, but clearly it had belonged at one point to the University of Central Oklahoma Library . . . the book itself is rather small, and short, but well-worn.  It has the characteristic curve of having spent considerable time in someone's pocket.

I read it, as my son asked, with a critical eye toward the book and its contents and what it alleges.  (I had done something similar earlier this year with Muscle And A Shovel, a book my grandmother bought for me.  In that book, I found many good concepts, good facts, but the logic was a little shaky here and there; maybe I'll post something about that one sometime soon.)

Before we start, let me say something about my own views.  I am a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), coming from a family background that stretches between the Disciples and the United Church of Christ.  Historically, these two denominations share a common origin, in the American Restoration movement of the early 1800's, and that origin traces back to (primarily) the Presbyterian Church, though they split from them for many reasons.  One of the key characteristics of the Disciples is that we are very limited in our doctrine:  1) that Christ is the Savior of all mankind and salvation comes from faith in Christ, along with baptism by immersion (though if you come to us from another church with a different baptism tradition, that's fine; we'll re-baptize you if you want--generally--but it's not a requirement); 2) the complete sufficiency of the Bible; and 3) the unity of all believers in Christ (i.e., you don't have to believe exactly like we do in order to be saved, and that all churches and denominations ought to work together).  We have a congregational polity, meaning each church owns its own property and each congregation chooses its own minister(s), but we also have higher-level organizations that can suggest things to the individual congregations, but not force anything.  It makes for a very open and accepting (generally) body, though there can be widely differing aspects of worship services and teaching (there's even a neo-Sufist Disciples congregation in Washington state--if it weren't so far I'd like to go participate in their services).  When it comes down to it, Disciples churches expect their members to read the Bible for themselves, and draw their own conclusions; we (generally) won't tell you what you MUST believe (some members may, but the church doesn't).  Oh, and on that, we have an open communion; we serve communion (Eucharist for the more traditional) every Sunday, and all who believe in Christ as the Savior are welcome to partake; no tests or creeds or what have you are required.  And that's my standpoint on all that.

So, here goes:

First off, let me say that I object to the author's insistence of treating all Christians as if they were all alike.  Furthermore, we don't all fit into neat little categories of 'conservative', 'moderate', 'liberal', 'enlightened', 'progressive', or what have you--in many ways, it's like a lot of people's political views.

In his introduction, the author points out that since publication of his earlier work (The End of Faith),
he's found that of the thousands who've written to tell him how wrong he was, the most hostile have come from Christians; "The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ's love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism", he writes.  Well, I can certainly understand his point of view; there are many Christians who are intolerant of those who do not share their beliefs.  In response I can only say that we're not all like that (and that phrase, Not All Like That, has in itself become a rallying cry among some Christians who support LGBT equality, which in and of itself is at odds with the mainstream perception of Christianity in America.)

The author seems to seek to wall off Christians, to define them as narrowly as possible, and in what to me is an unfair manner.  He equates those who believe in intelligent design with those who believe in a strict creationist interpretation of the first parts of Genesis.  In fact, it has always seemed to me that intelligent design is an attempt to distance believers 'in good faith' from a literal word-for-word inerrant interpretation of the creation story as described in Genesis. 

The more one studies Genesis chapter 1 through chapter 11 (up until the start of the story of Abraham), and gets further in depth and studies them critically, the one more can begin to see that what these are, are stories the ancient Hebrews told each other around a campfire for many generations, until someone picked up a quill and some papyrus and wrote them down.  For example, the name 'Adam' means, simply, 'man'; it's just an ordinary word.  It's as if I had named my son, 'Boy', instead of William.

However, does that negate the entire Bible?  I do not believe so, which admittedly puts me at odds with a considerable number of Christians (who are also considerably vocal about those beliefs, sometimes to the point of vitriolically denouncing those who do not agree that the entire Bible must be inerrant).

And furthermore, it is in no way an acceptance, or at least a wholesale acceptance, of evolution.  Intelligent design points out that the possibilities of so many very, very long odds occurrences all coming together to create everything in the universe strains credulity beyond its breaking point.  For example, take the design of your eye.  A collection of very specialized cells that accept and convert incoming light, of various wavelengths but only a very small segment of the electromagnetic spectrum, into electrical impulses which are then re-sorted and resolved into an image inside the brain.  And let us not forget that the various cat species, cephalopods (squids and octopi), insects, and arachnids all have eyes that are different from our own.  How could such an incredible collection of diverse cells all randomly occur and group together in the right place, even given billions of years in which to do so?

Or another example--spiders.  What sort of random mutation resulted in some sort of new gland that secreted some strange new fluid, not in any way a waste product, that when dry would have higher mechanical properties than high-strength steel and also be sticky enough to entrap the spider's prey?  Has any scientist ever observed a random mutation in any species, anywhere, that added some entirely new gland?  Spiderman is a comic book character, nothing more.

We do have evolution; witness the rise of MRSA and other anti-biotic resistant strains of bacteria.  The bacteria are adapting to something new in their environment.  It's that evolution could not possibly be responsible for all of the incredible diversity of life on this planet--at least not without some sort of intelligent designer behind it in some as-yet-unknown way.

Moving on, the author continues with several statistics, among which are that 44% of Americans believe in the Second Coming of Christ, and that will occur within the next 50 years.  I've not verified the accuracy of this (personally, I'd not shed a tear if the Second Coming were tomorrow--I think we've made a perfect mess of the infinitesimal portion of the entire Creation, enough to prove that we are not competent to be stewards of what we've been entrusted with).  But then the author tries to say that these 44% of Americans would "see a silver lining" if New York City were vaporized, based on his Second Coming statistic, presumably because this could be a herald of that Second Coming.  This then supposes a complete and willful disregard for the suffering of our fellow humans (not to mention the Christians in New York City) in favor of some catastrophe that's clearly not what has been foretold as to the events of the Second Coming.

"You believe that the Bible is the word of God, that Jesus is the Son of God, and that only those who place their faith in Jesus will find salvation after death."  Granted.  This is fundamental to Christianity.  "We agree that to be a true Christian is to believe that all other faiths are mistaken, and profoundly so."  Well, many of us do make sort of an exception for Jews, as God's chosen people, even if they do reject the Messiah, due to the promises God made Abraham.  But other than that . . . yes, that's correct.  We may seek common ground, peace and understanding with those of other faiths, but when you come down to it, there is a fundamental difference between Christianity and other faiths.  One can be very blunt to the point of being uncharitable and say that all the rest are wrong and that their believers are condemning themselves to eternal damnation, but most of us chose not to word things so strongly--it can get in the way of evangelism, which demands an open mind as a starting point.

The author next brings up 'religious liberals' or 'religious moderates':  "There are Christians who consider other faiths to be equally valid paths to salvation."  Yes, I've heard of this, and have even heard it taught in Disciples churches, but it is wrong.  Even a passing familiarity with the Gospels confirms this.  John 3:16 is probably the most well-known verse in the Bible, at least in the English-speaking world; "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever shall believeth in Him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life."  If there were other paths to salvation, then Christ's sacrifice on the cross was unnecessary, as those 'other paths' would fit the bill.  If those other paths did lead to salvation, Christ, as the Son of God, would not have needed to come to earth in human form.  But Christ did come to earth, and did die on the cross as the Son of God.  Those other paths, other religions, do not lead to salvation; therefore, Christ's sacrifice was necessary in order to re-unite humanity with God.

"Either the Bible is just an ordinary book, written by mortals, or it isn't.  Either Christ was divine, or He was not.  If the Bible is an ordinary book, and Christ an ordinary man, the basic doctrine of Christianity is false . . . the history of Christian theology is the story of bookish men parsing a collective delusion."  The author here, in his mind, is setting up his argument--that both conditions must be met:  the Bible must be of divine origin, from cover to cover, the literal Word of God, AND Christ must also be divine; in his reasoning one cannot be true by itself.

AND that God's Word must be inerrant, totally beyond reproach in every aspect.  Otherwise the game's over, then and there.

This is an easy argument to 'win', provided both sides agree to this dual requirement (Inerrant Bible/Divine Christ).  And the Bible has a number of noted errors, only some of which the author touches on.  The one I remember most is an error in the listing of the kings of Israel and Judah, in 1st and 2nd Kings, and in 1st and 2nd Chronicles (the two sets cover roughly the same time period in Jewish history).  Another that the author points out is in Matthew 27:9-10, where the apostle talks about the death and burial of Judas Iscariot; it incorrectly points out the origin of the prophecy as in Jeremiah, when in fact it's Zechariah 11:12-13.  The author also goes on to mention errors in mathematics, such as a very poor, inaccurate valuation for pi, in 1 Kings 7:23-26, though this is (as is all too frequently found in the Bible) open to interpretation.

Well, so much for inerrancy, and if you buy into how Harris has chosen to define success, it's all over.

But do those errors change the fundamental nature of what the Bible is?  Not in the slightest.

So what is the Bible?  Well, there's literal definitions, about its having 66 books, written in three languages, on three different continents, and so on and so forth.  I think a better definition is that it is the account of God's actions in the world and His purpose in all creation, at least for Christians; it is all about the fall and the redemption of all mankind.  Does that mean that this account must be completely and utterly true in every aspect?  I do not think so.  It was written by humans, who despite their best efforts are prone to errors.  (For a book that is held to have a completely divine origin for its text, see the Koran or the Book of Mormon.)  Does it need to be completely accurate and trustworthy as to His purpose with the entire creation?  Yes, I think it does, and it is, and that these are two entirely separate requirements.   (This then begs the question:  What is God's purpose with all creation?  But this is a question for another time.)

So we are left, then, with the divine (or not) nature of Christ as the heart of the matter.
 

Updates . . .

OK, OK, I haven't had anything to post in a while.  But it's not as if I had some major following anyway.

It's been over a year (nearly a year and a half) since the last time I posted anything here.  Mostly I've been throwing things out on Facebook, but that's a sort of limited space (there IS a maximum size to posts on Facebook, something like 5,000 or 10,000 characters, which I've run into once or twice).  Here I can be more open and ramble on to my heart's content.

So . . . do I have anything to say?  Well, of course!

For some time now, I've been working with my church, and beyond my church's four walls as well.  And that's something I'll end up posting about.

My son has decided to renounce Christianity . . . and that's another huge topic, too.

Beyond that, there's the never-ending supply of fodder that the government (mostly federal, but also state and some local, too) spews forth, things like the shutdown, sequestration, Obamacare, support for the military, etc.

So I guess I'll get started.

Lt. (j.g.) Joseph H. Patterson, USN

While attending a performance at the Classen School of Advanced Studies (which included one of my son's friends), I noticed that there was a plaque on the wall, across from the main entrance, partially covered with posters advertising the school's yearbook and another proclaiming how much they love their Lady Comets.

Gently lifting back the tape stuck to this plaque, I found it was a memorial to Lt. Joseph Hester Patterson, US Naval Academy Class of 1936, and Classen High School Class of 1930, who was lost in the wreck of the USS Squalus in May 1939.

Ensign (later Lt. (j.g)) Joseph H. Patterson, USN

Now, anyone who knows much of anything about submarines will recognize the name USS Squalus.  At the time it was the newest submarine in the fleet, with all the latest improvements and newest technology of the day.  However, it sank off the coast of Portsmouth, NH, on a routine dive.  26 of the 59 aboard her were lost; the remaining 33 were saved in one of the more amazing feats of undersea rescue ever attempted.

USS Squalus, in happier times

(As for me, I've always been intrigued by submarines.  I can't say why that is, but, back in 1987, had the Navy had college benefits to match the Army, there's a very good chance I would have become a submariner rather than a tank crewman.  I've read quite a bit of the history of US submarines in WWII, and toured the USS Batfish (located here in Oklahoma, near Muskogee) and the USS Drum (in Mobile Bay, AL) and it was fascinating to see the same areas I'd read so much of on other submarines of the same classes.)

Submarines of that era were diesel-electric, meaning that they were powered by diesel engines while on the surface, and by electric motors, powered by batteries, while submerged.  The boats [submarines are always referred to as 'boats' rather than 'ships'--don't ask me why] were optimized to run on the surface, which accounts for the slow submerged speeds typical of that time.  Battery life was limited, and submarines would have to periodically surface to recharge the batteries and refill the compressed air tanks that made it possible for them to resurface.

I've done some searching on the internet, and found quite a bit of information on the Squalus and her sinking.  For unknown reasons, after the submarine had begun her 18th dive, when all aboard was in normal condition, all safety procedures followed and cross-checked, and was already partially submerged with no indication of any problems, one of the main induction valves, which supplied air to the big diesels, opened, and water poured into the aft sections of the boat, causing immediate flooding.  A partial watertight condtion had already been set (which I imagine was part of their standard procedures) which limited the flooding to the aft areas, including both engine rooms, the crew berthing areas, the aft torpedo room, and the battery spaces.

The surviving crewmembers were able to deploy an emergency buoy, and were also able to fire off marker rockets, which led to the Squalus' sister ship, the USS Sculpin, to locate the Squalus about 4 hours later.  The Navy immediately launched rescue efforts, which pioneered a number of new diving methods (including the first operational use of heliox, the mixture of helium and oxygen still used for extremely deep dives).  After 33 hours on the bottom, the last man off the Squalus, the skipper Lt. Oliver Naquin, reached the surface.  (The rescue efforts were headed by then-Lt. Cdr. Charles 'Swede' Momsen, inventor of the Momsen Lung, a rescue device to allow submariners to escape from stricken submarines below the surface, and whose exploits throughout his career are part of US Navy legend.  BTW, his first duty station was aboard USS Oklahoma.)

[Here's a link to an excellent US Navy site about the Squalus and the rescue efforts.  And here's one with the official statement of Lt. W.T. Doyle, a survivor of the sinking of the Squalus, which details all the procedures used in the dive.]

Lt. (j.g.) Joseph H. Patterson is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 9, Site 5969

The Squalus itself was recovered from the bottom (the bodies of the crewmen who lost their lives were not recovered until then) as a full investigation required the examination of the submarine.  As there were similar submarines already in service, and more being built, if there might be a flaw in the design it was critical to find it and correct it.  None was ever found, but as the suggestion was made that a crewman may have inadvertently opened the induction valve, confusing its control with the control for a different valve nearby.  Subsequent redesign of the controls made it practically impossible to confuse the two, even in complete darkness, by changing the shape of the controls.  (Incidentally, this same approach is used in aircraft cockpits to this day, to eliminate any possible confusion between, say, a landing gear handle with a flap control lever.)

As for the Squalus, it was repaired and recommissioned as the USS Sailfish.  USS Sailfish served in the US Pacific Fleet throughout WWII, sinking or damaging 20 Japanese vessels totalling nearly 84,000 tons.  She and her crew also earned 9 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation during the war. She was decommissioned in November 1945, and sold for scrap.  However, her sail and conning tower (that section you typically see people standing on, with the periscopes sticking up, when a submarine is on the surface) was removed and put on display at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, as a memorial to the 26 men who lost their lives aboard the Squalus, and to all their fellow submariners who have died in the line of duty.

The USS Squalus Memorial at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

The memorial in Portsmouth, another at the gravesite of another crewman aboard Squalus, Torpedoman's Mate 1st Class Robert Gibbs, a model of the Squalus created by a long-time dock worker at the Portsmouth Naval Yard, which now resides in the Tuck Memorial Museum, and the plaque at Classen SAS are the only memorials (other than some fine websites) that I have found.

Now, I cannot know why the Classen High Class of 1950 chose to have a plaque made and installed for a classmate who graduated from their school two years before they were born.  The plaque states that he was a hero in death as much as he was a friend in life.  And I cannot dispute the fact that, for whatever reason, the Class of 1950 felt strongly enough to honor Lt. Patterson in such a manner.  That reason must have been sufficient in their eyes to pass on the legacy of Joseph Patterson to future students in perpetuity; that his life, and the manner of his death, should be something worthy to inspire and motivate future graduates of that fine institution.

But here today, almost 73 years after his death, his plaque is covered by mundane posters, obscuring its message.  To be honest, the plaque is in need of cleaning; some sort of pink residue besmirches the lower parts of the plaque, and there's other accumulated dust and grime in the depths of the lettering.

In a larger sense, is this the ultimate fate of all memorials?  I doubt one student in a thousand there at Classen SAS can tell you the story of Lt. Patterson as well as I have above; at best they might remember him as 'that guy whose name is on that thing at the front of the school'.  But how many years will it take before the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial is held in so little regard?  We Oklahomans have, to me, an enraging tendency to disregard our history, tearing down memorials to make way for more 'useful'--meaning commercial--purposes.  Or, as in this case, we simply have so little respect for them that we cover them up and pretend they're not even there.

And so, given the way things are, how long before the Bombing Memorial falls into disrepair and we fill it in for a more 'appropriate' commercial purpose?  Perhaps some new business tower, or more parking?  How long before our descendants purposefully forget about us, and what happened to us, and the reasons why we felt it important to memorialize the things we have created, built, and installed to remind us--and them--of who we are, and who we were?

On a practical standpoint, perhaps not every one and everything deserves to be memorialized; if all memorials were maintained indefinitely, eventually the landscape would be littered with memorials everywhere, some stacked on top of others.  Perhaps we need to be very careful about who and what we memorialize.  But we also need to respect the judgment of those who have gone before in who and what they chose to memorialize, and to keep those memorials well-maintained and presentable.  To do otherwise demeans us as a people.

Warriors of the Cold War

Ran across a story this morning, the day after Christmas, from Danbury, Connecticut. It's about a mysterious building, fairly large (270,000 sq ft) with no windows except in its cafeteria, where a large portion of the town's population worked. Everything that happened within was classified until very recently.

This building was where the KH-9 spy satellite's cameras, optics, and film handling systems were built. For many years during the Cold War, the KH-9 was one of America's premier spy satellites. Unlike later satellites, the KH-9s used film, and would load that film into special canisters that would then re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, and would be caught, dangling from a parachute, by a specially-equipped C-130 as it floated down in mid-air.

So finally all the former workers there could finally tell their families what it was they did, the reason for all the long hours over the years, the missed ball games or birthday parties. Their work was vital to the defense of the United States and our allies.

While it may take a completely different type of courage and dedication to serve a tour (or multiple tours) in Vietnam, Iraq, of Afghanistan, still these folks displayed their own type of courage and dedication. Yeah, they never got shot at. Yeah, they got to go home to their wives and kids at the end of the day, eat real food, take showers, sleep in a real bed. But to have the dedication and tenacity necessary to preserve national security takes more than what a lot of people are capable of. And make no mistake; the Soviets were our enemy. Where do you think all the ammo, rockets, missiles, and other ordinance fired at Americans in Vietnam came from? Time may dull the perception, but it was nevertheless the truth at the time. And regardless of what others may say, these men and women who worked here and kept the secrets here lived lives of true significance and service to our nation and free people everywhere.

But it's also interesting to note in the comments to the article the number of people insisting how the Cold War was all a big waste of money, that it was all useless, just a big propaganda ploy.

I suppose if one needed an example of how badly history education in our public schools has sank, here then is a perfect example.

I too was a cold warrior; I served in the Army in one of the 'border cavalry' units in Germany back in the olden days, patrolling the East German border. And I was there for the fall of the Berlin Wall; the most momentous historical event I have ever been a part of (admittedly a nearly infinitesimal part, but a part nonetheless). I have seen the other side; I have heard the stories firsthand of what things were like over there. And me and my fellow soldiers were prepared to use deadly force, under our rules of engagement, to protect West German citizens if the need ever arose (it didn't). But we still manned the observation posts, walked the border trails, called in our sitreps, and gave up time with our families in order to serve the greater good.

And what do you think would have happened if the United States had chosen not to 'fight' the Cold War? What if we just went back to our pre-WWII isolationism and abandoned Europe and East Asia to whatever fate would befall them, with an expansionist Soviet Union--led by Stalin no less!!--looking to gobble up still more land and subjects? England would still have ol' Winston Churchill there to glower at them and keep his people motivated; probably Great Britain would have withstood the Soviets. But all the rest of Europe probably would have fallen under Soviet domination. What if the United States had not led the United Nations in opposition to the invasion of South Korea? Japan, for its part, had been so devastated by American conventional and fire bombing--far outside the areas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--that it could put up no real resistance to the Soviet T-34 tanks that would have been landed on Japanese beaches and rolling down from the north.

No one would have had the ability to deal with a minor distraction like the creation of a Jewish state . . . far too many major issues to allow something like that, in 1947. And even if it had been founded, how long would Israel have lasted without massive military assistance from Europe and America? Not much past 1956, that's for sure. And who thinks that the Arabs would have been merciful to the Israelis after they'd defeated them?

There would have been no France to even attempt to stop the Viet Minh; no Battle of Dien Bien Phu; the North Vietnamese would simply have been able to proceed with the invasion and take-over of Laos unimpeded. And so there would be no American involvement in Vietnam.

The nationalist Chinese would have had no hope. Even if they did make it to Taiwan, who would have been there to help defend them?

Soviet/communist expansion would have been unchecked in Africa and in Latin America as well.

And no one would have ever gone into space, much less to the moon.

True, we would have had LOTS OF MONEY!! Untold trillions that had been spent on defense and the CIA over those decades! And really, doesn't that really represent what America is all about? We're all about the MONEY! (Witness the bailouts of corporations 'too big to fail' while the ranks of the American homeless grows by leaps and bounds, and tens of millions of Americans fall into poverty--but it's all THEIR fault!! They just need to work harder--just listen to Herman Cain! But I digress.)

And we wouldn't have lost all those American lives in Korea and in Vietnam, and elsewhere throughout the rest of the Cold War. And there's nothing over there that's worth a single American life . . .

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

This was once one of our highest ideals, our highest beliefs, that we are all created equal. Therefore, how can we, if we truly believe this to be true, value an American life more than, say, a Somali life? Or a French life, or a Japanese life? If we are all equal, then we all have equal value.

And then other truths kick in. "An injustice to one is an injustice to all", according to Martin Luther King. "Silence before an injustice is yet another injustice", according to Ghandi. If we are to be true to the ideals handed down to us from our ancestors, from the founders of this great nation, then these impose certain responsibilities upon us, certain duties that we must fulfill. And among those, in the words of yet another great American, is the duty to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to ensure the survival and success of liberty."

Therefore we HAD to hold the line against the Soviets. We HAD to aid our allies, including our erstwhile enemies, West Germany and Japan. We HAD to stop the North Koreans and the Chinese in Korea. We HAD to try to hold back the North Vietnamese, even though we were ultimately unsuccessful (though we won every battle of the war, our politicians still lost the war, due in large part because our enemies understood something we did not, and attacked not just our forces in the field but the American political 'center of mass' here at home, and, to a sufficiently-large degree, twisted American public opinion against the war--but again I digress).

We HAD to have the Reagan-era military buildup, because there was a vulnerability with the Soviets. We engaged in the biggest peacetime military buildup, daring the Soviets to keep pace. But at home the Soviet people were weary of sacrificing everything for security; they wanted a little something for themselves, some sort of improvement in their lives. The Soviets tried to supply both, but could not, Eventually the 'whole rotten edifice' came crumbling down, not with a bang but with a whimper, in a nearly bloodless ending that no one could have conceived even 2 years before.

Which in turn meant an end to nearly 50 years of 'Mutually Assured Destruction', of the world merrily going about its business only 30 minutes away from the potential end of life on earth. That's how we lived, young 'uns. Didn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's how geopolitical conflicts between nations and ideologies intruded into all human life, even in a small town in east central Oklahoma on the shores of our biggest lake.

But that's all gone now. If the 'Greatest Generation', the generation who grew up in the Great Depression, and went on to win The War (WWII), and build America in to the world's biggest and truest superpower, then this is what my generation was able to do--remove the spectre of worldwide nuclear annihilation from all our lives, and also to bring freedom, not always clean and tidy, but frequently messy and sometimes painful, to untold millions around the world. And we did it in the same way as our forefathers did since The War--holding the line, guarding the Frontiers of Freedom, in the Cold War. And in our ranks I will most emphatically include those workers who built spy satellites in Danbury, Connecticut.