The Military

I have been very critical of this president. Across the board, I often find myself in 180-degree disagreement with him and his administration's policies. Among those disappointments have been his handling of Iraq and the sheer demagoguery he displayed regarding the war on terror, beginning with Iraq and certainly including issues such as Guantanamo Bay.

But I have to admit, he gets credit on his handling of one area specifically — the use of the military's special forces.

Listening to Texas Rep. Ron Paul talk to his supporters last night in New Hampshire brought back powerful memories of an earlier New Hampshire primary. In 1968, Lyndon Baines Johnson, running as a sitting president, won that primary, but Eugene McCarthy, a political outsider and intellectual provocateur, came in second. He was viewed widely as a winner, as have subsequent candidates who came in second in New Hampshire primaries. His doing so pushed LBJ to decide NOT to run and Robert F. Kennedy TO run, and the world changed. The Vietnam War was the overriding issue.

I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, on CNN. Ron Paul just blasted Newt Gingrich for being a "chicken hawk,” i.e., a pseudo-warrior who avoided military service when his time came, but favors sending young people to risk their lives in wars he does not have to fight.

History was made at the White House on Monday, Dec. 12.

Standing side by side in the South Court Auditorium of the Old Executive Office Building, President Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki proclaimed the end of the war in Iraq.

Only 6,000 American combat troops remain in Iraq, down from a peak of 170,000. Those remaining 6,000 will be out before Dec. 31. And the long, bloody, unnecessary war will be over at last.

Recently, two groups that really help families and vets held fundraisers, and I attended parts of both.

The Bob Woodruff Foundation featured Jon Stewart as emcee; they vet and fund a growing network of nonprofits that help out directly.

The Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America advocates and provides lots of support for vets. (I'm on their board.)

Here we see Stephen Colbert accepting a civilian work award for his support for vets.

We often do not observe Veterans Day as it should be. It's a day where we actively remember our ancestors, our neighbors, our friends, our loved ones and our family members who have served for the betterment of this great nation.

The thing to remember about war is that there are very few moments of individual gallantry. The individual combatant rarely dwarfs his surroundings. No John Waynes to ride through a hail of enemy fire to save the day.

In fact, those one-dimensional embodiments of masculine striving are usually the first to die. Moments of war rarely allow for clarity.

On the heels of the death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, and President Obama's announcement late last week that U.S. forces will soon be pulling out of Iraq, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is accusing the president of making military and national-security decisions based on politics. "I would argue Iraq and Afghanistan is being run out of Chicago, not Washington, in terms of decisions," Graham said on Fox News Sunday.

No surprise there — we knew President Obama can't get credit from Republicans for his foreign-policy and defense successes, no matter how many he piles up. But the real news from Graham's comments is his concern that GOP presidential candidates may be giving the president a free pass. "To the Republican Party: National security matters; step up on it," said Graham. "We've got a jobs problem. We've got a national-security problem that is growing by the day."

Under the headline “Why We Need a Third Party,” Washington Post columnist Matt Miller condemns both the Democratic and Republican parties for being “prisoner to interest groups” whose chief aim is “to win elections, not solve problems.”

Some deep thinking there. Miller goes on to list unemployment, the budget, healthcare and education as problems “we need to truly fix,” then quotes the late Sen. Pat Moynihan saying, “If issues can’t be discussed, they can never be advanced.”

What’s needed to bring about “a new politics of problem-solving,” writes Miller, is a third party that would offer “candidates with the vision and nerve to fill today’s void.”

Not that I've ever been so inclined, but if I ever had the dark drive to run for office, especially president, I would want to do two things: Go to college and do military service. The first is least important, although a Jeffersonian with a natural pride of place might do undergraduate work at her or his state school: U. Tennessee, like my surgeon friend in Tennessee (and his father and grandfather before him), U Mass., Texas A&M, etc. Military service more important, as it has a ritual quality: You go before your rational function is fully developed, so you enter the moral ambiguity of war on a leap of faith: faith in the collective you will enter as a full adult. Common honor, which common people once strived for. But today only Prince Harry, doing combat training in California, sees it as a duty.

I'm a big fan of DonorsChoose.org, helping teachers get the job done. A teacher can post a project there, and anyone can help out by giving a few dollars until the project gets funded. A project could be as simple as getting enough pens and paper to last the school year, which is a real problem in many schools. There're a lot of underfunded school districts out there, and it's really unfair for teachers to fund stuff from their own (inadequate) salaries.