Army makes the right move on headgear

Wait a second? You mean the Army actually sought out what the troops thought about wearing the black beret as head gear, found out how much it was hated, and then opted to go with the patrol cap?  The amazing thing is that they even asked.  But in reality, they didn’t ask about the head gear; no, they asked the troops what was bugging them.

Back in 2001, when someone decided that berets were cool and that all US Army units should wear the headgear that theretofore had been worn only by the Army’s elite troops, no one bothered to see how the troops felt about it then. As a former paratrooper, I can assure you how several thousand active and several million inactive military veterans felt about it. They thought it was bad policy (trying to be a bit diplomatic here).

It sort of makes you wonder about the powers that be. It makes you think that they were thinking, well it worked out well for the Rangers, so maybe we can instill some esprit de corps sort of top down.  The only problem was that the general Army populace was forced to wear the berets. It became the headgear du jour, and as headgear alone it’s not very practical.  And, whether it looks good or not is another matter all together.  Although, I would have to say from experience, there is something about looking at 17,000 paratroopers passing in review all wearing crisp maroon berets that tugs at the heart strings.

The difference here is that wearing the beret was an honor bestowed upon a select group of soldiers who opted to go one step, or many steps, farther than the regular GI.  It was something that was earned by going through jump school, and being assigned to an Airborne unit.  The black beret was an honor bestowed on the Rangers for graduating from Ranger school.  And no one needs to explain the Green beret and the associated dedication to military service.

For decades it was a way for a regular soldier to distinguish himself as one of the elite, a paratrooper, a Ranger, or member of the Special Forces. When the Army opted to remove that mark of accomplishment by making it part of every soldier’s daily wear it was as much a slap in the face of the elite troops as it was a false bravado for other soldiers.  For a very long time in the military the beret meant something special to those who earned the right to wear them.  Now, somehow, all of that seems a bit diminished.

It’s funny that this whole uniform change thing even came about. It started when Gen. Martin Dempsey, the outgoing Army chief of staff, asked the Sergeant Major of the Army to find out what was on the soldiers’ minds.  Of all the possible things that might have come up, the one thing that came up pretty consistently, according to the report from CNN, was the soldiers’ dissatisfaction with the beret. Really? The beret? Not the food; not the way they were being treated; not the extra armor on the Humvee; not the lack of Coppertone in their desert equipment; not nearly anything else under the sun? But the beret, oh and wearing camouflage fatigues as duty dress, which came about after the 9-11 attacks on the Pentagon. And, in reality, isn’t that a little too late.  The horse was already out of the barn.

It’s amazing to see the knee-jerk reaction, if you consider a 10-year “experiment” knee jerk.  Why not just ask the troops up front? I can assure you that no one wanted to wear the black beret as part of the daily uniform, except the Rangers. The Rangers earned the right to wear the beret. It was an honorific. When you saw the Black beret it meant something. Then suddenly it meant nothing. It lost all significance. Part of what made a Ranger a Ranger was gone. You could still tell a paratrooper or a member of Special Forces because their beret color remained maroon and green, respectively.  But the Rangers were lost in the masses of soldiers that made up the rest of the Army.

So what did the rest of the Army have to say about this once proud emblem of the elite Ranger Battalions?

“It does not have a visor and doesn't shield the sun, doesn't absorb sweat well,” one soldier said. And another said, “I hate wearing a wet sock on my head," Chief Warrant Officer Mark Vino, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, told the Army Times. "Plus it makes head/skin break out.”

Maybe they should have made the troopies earn the right to wear the beret?  Maybe that would have instilled some esprit de corps. But how they went about it was wrong, stupid, and short-sighted.  And here we are 10-years later setting things aright. I just hope the Rangers can withstand the humiliation of wearing a wet sock on their heads.

The Power of One

Call it the power of one.  Fifteen years ago when Elouise Cobell brought suit against the US Government concerning mismanagement of Indian funds more than a century ago, few thought she would win the case.  Things were stacked against her, the time for one thing, and the U.S.’s seemingly endless procession of lawyers, appeals, and foot dragging.

It’s common knowledge that the American Indian was treated ruefully over the years, since the very start of the European invasion. Things held dear by many of us today, such as Thanksgiving Day, can be viewed as nails in the demise of the Native American tribes. And even after that land grab, the Native Americans were consistently taken advantage of over the years.

Cobell’s class-action case deals specifically with misappropriated royalties the government was supposed to have paid the American Indian tribes for oil, gas, grazing and other leases.  The billions of dollars systematically disappeared as it was either stolen outright, or squandered by those who held power over it in trust.

The Browning, Montana woman’s suit came in at $3.4 billion, which will be spread out among thousands of deserving people. But part of even that problem was the time it took to get it accomplished.  The courts resolved the case in December of 2009, but it took congress an additional year to approve it, and then it had to wait for U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan’s final approval.

For his part, Hogan said the legitimacy of Cobell’s claims could not be questioned.  Cobell, who recently underwent cancer surgery, is the big winner in the case scoring $2 million, and three other named plaintiffs will receive up to $200,000 apiece.  Cobell said that while the sum did not meet the amount of the loss, it was likely to be the best deal her group could get.  Any additional legal maneuvers would end up costing more money and would not likely bring in enough additional cash to make it worthwhile.

Justice Hogan said the case had gone on long enough.  In any case, it’s about time the US Government had to pay up for treating the American Indian so poorly. No doubt there are hundreds of other examples that we Americans would cringe about if we knew about them, but at least for this once some semblance of justice prevailed.

Interestingly enough, after 15 years, President Barack Obama had the temerity to say that the decision "marks another important step forward in the relationship between the federal government and Indian Country."

Oh really?  This measure took 15 years to extract from the government. The government fought it tooth, nail, and boney arthritic finger.  You would think from Mr. Obama’s statement that this was something we went into full of benevolence and wanting to make up for the bad deeds of those in power in the past. Bah!

We should be humbled to ever have had people in power who were so ruthless.  To think that this took 15 years, even after the presiding judge attested to the legitimacy of the claim is disgusting.  How many might still be alive had they been assisted by this money instead of having to wait for the government to do the right thing?

The government was forced to do the right thing.  It didn’t step up and do what was right. There was a reason behind the 15-year battle, and it doesn’t play well into our government’s desire to be fair and equable.

Still there were other Native Americans who spoke against the settlement.  But they were mostly incensed at the amount of money the lawyers wanted to extract from the settlement.  Say what you want, the lawyers are at least partly responsible for pushing this case to fruition and deserve something for their action.  Certainly, they have done more for the class action members than the Federal Government has.  But Justice Hogan summed it all up best. He called Cobell a true hero.

"She's accomplished more for individual Native Americans than any other individual I can think of in recent history," Hogan said, noting that Cobell put her reputation and her health at risk in "an unprecedented effort I've not seen before in a class-action case."

Dennis Gingold, a Washington lawyer who took the case 15 years ago after Cobell begged him, said the victory belonged to her.  "If it wasn't for Elouise Cobell we would not have done this," he told Hogan.

Where there's smoke, there's Weiner

Back in 1989 when I took over the Chesterfield beat for a local daily newspaper that will go unnamed to protect the innocent, the person I was replacing gave me some good advice.  He explained how, in Chesterfield at least, I should believe most of the people who report things “going on” within the government and that if it’s of a sexual nature treat the gossip as gospel and start digging.

It was sage advice as over the next several years all kinds of rumors floated over, around, and through my office. Some were hard to prove despite having multiple witnesses, because the witnesses were, in one way or another, tainted.  And, try as I might, I could not get the “clean” witness to go on the record because she was fearful of losing her job.  I don’t blame her; she certainly would have been persecuted and even if she hadn’t lost her job, she might not have been able to hold onto it due to her own internal stress.

But along with that incident came several cases of a sexual nature that spanned virtually every facet of local government.  The Sheriff’s office was the first in a series of sexual snafus. It was followed quickly by the Fire Department, Police Department, Judiciary, and the sanctified halls of justice.  No one, it seemed, was immune.

Yes right here in Virginia, the bedrock of Democracy, the Mother of Presidents, decadence was and is rife.  More recently, there was a situation in Colonial Heights that resulted in the removal of a former city employee.  My point here is that you don’t have to go far afield to find plenty of dirty doings right in our own back yard.  So, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find that the same kind of amoral disease lurks in Washington.

Are we to be surprised by the actions of Congressman Anthony Weiner?  Are his actions the result of nurture or nature?  Or is he just acting as human beings act when they think they are beyond reproach?  Certainly, he is not the first person to do something so wantonly stupid.  Even former presidents have acted inappropriately, so why all of a sudden is some of the body politic so concerned over this sexting scandal involving one of congress’ junior members?

One would think that the Brett Favre incident would have served notice on just how stupid taking and sending pictures of body parts can be.  Favre was ridiculed and his body part was copied across the internet.

It’s hard to figure just what about this whole thing is the most alarming.  On one hand you have the massive ego to think that someone would be thrilled to get your own scandalous picture sent by phone message. On the other hand, you have to deal with the extreme stupidity of the person to think that such a thing would not get out to the public.

It’s just amazing.  These are the kinds of people we have holding office and making decisions that directly affect our futures.  What’s even more disconcerting is that there has been no witch hunt to find these people.  They have pretty much gone belly up on their own.  We, the public, don’t have to ferret out the next person to throw on the mound of amoral or immoral miscreants.  Like lemmings, they just seem content to walk to the edge and throw themselves over.

That said what would it be like if we did start to look?  What if we took seriously some of the situations that came to light during the vetting process for people seeking major political office?  I remember back to days of yore when everyone just sort of tossed off the situation, or tried to diminish it by citing all kinds of deeds done by past high-level officials.

Sorry, it doesn’t work for me.  These people should be ashamed of what they have done.  But it doesn’t seem to shame them much; they just go about their business as if nothing ever happened. In Mr. Weiner’s case, it amounts to “getting help” with his problem.  But what help can you give a person who has the moral turpitude of a night crawler?

Strange, I always felt that those in public office should be held to a higher standard than those huddled masses that look to them for guidance.  Truly, they live in the fishbowl. A place where every thought, phrase, and deed is put under a magnifying glass and then flashed across every HD screen in the world showing every mispronunciation or social gaffe.

With all of these sexual peccadilloes rising to the level of big news, we can only hope that the masses don’t start to demand investigations into the other members of congress.  There’s an old saying “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” We are witnessing tons of smoke.

Kevorkian: Hero or Goat?

Hero or goat as fits your perspective, Dr. Jack Kevorkian passed away last Friday.  It brings to a close his battle to bring assisted suicide into the public consciousness.

Kevorkian, for those too young to remember, was a Michigan pathologist who advocated assisted suicide for people whose quality of life was such that they felt life was no longer worth living.  In many instances his victims were in constant pain from disease or age.  It brought to a head the medical ethics question about assisted suicide.  He seemed to be answering the question, at what point in a human being’s life is death preferable to continuing to “hang on” in a state of abject misery.

To Kevorkian it was not a question for debate.  It was a question for action.  To him, it was in some sense an unjust law.  And, philosophically speaking, unjust laws should be broken. And break it he did.  The thing about civil disobedience, which is basically what Kevorkian was doing, is that the person doing so had to be willing to suffer the consequences of his actions.  In other words, when what you are doing contrary to the law becomes enough of an annoyance to the state that it chooses to act, you must take your medicine, literally.

For Kevorkian, after beating several murder charges in the 1990s, taking his medicine happened in 1999, when he was convicted of second-degree murder for a patient suffering from Lou Gherig’s disease.  He was released from prison in 2007, after which he did not help in any assisted suicide cases.

We can argue all day long about whether assisted suicide is right or wrong. Certainly there are many people who don’t seem to need help at all.  But it does raise the right to die question.  In some societies suicide is considered an honorable thing to do.  In Japan’s Aokigahara Forest there is a constant battle to keep people from committing suicide.  Japanese authorities have gone so far as to post signs outside the park, which in addition to a dense forest full of trees provides breathtaking views of Mount Fuji.  The forest is called the Sea of Trees, but is also home to the highest number of suicides in a country that ranks among the world’s top for suicide per capita.

Japan's suicide rate has increased with the recent economic downturn. In January of 2009, Japan recorded 2,645 suicides, a 15 percent increase over January 2008, according to the Japanese government.  Despite efforts by the government to cut the number of suicides by more than 20 percent by 2016, officials fear the toll will rise along with unemployment and bankruptcies, matching suicide spikes in earlier tough economic times.

But that’s different from what Kevorkian was concerned with.  Kevorkian’s concern was for his patients, believe it or not.  He reasoned that some diseases, some afflictions, create more pain and suffering than anyone should have to endure.  The question then becomes one of who, exactly, determines whether a person’s quality of life is so bad that dying would be preferable.  It seems, in Kevorkian’s case, that his “willingness” to provide such a service was in a way self-serving in trying to drive home his message about the right to die.

Despite his tenure in prison, Kevorkian stood by his decisions.  In a recent interview, he was asked if he regretted his decision to help those people.

"No, no. It's your purpose (as a) physician. How can you regret helping a suffering patient?" he said.

It’s ironic to me that we put down animals who are in dire straits.  A horse with a broken leg, a dog who has outlived his years but is still breathing, and we don’t think twice about it.  We call it being humane. But when we press the same value on human beings, then the populace is up in arms, as if just by knowing such things exist it would make them a candidate.  Instead, those people wish to impose a law making it illegal to perform assisted suicide.

In the end, if the people really want to do themselves in, they can and will do it. The courts are rife with such cases and there are far too many to enumerate.

For me personally, I witnessed a family member with advanced emphysema who was kept alive by machines for years.  He eventually passed away, but had dwindled to less than 100 pounds and had spent the last several years of his life in a hospital bed.  All of that because one person would not agree to “pulling the plug” on the machines that kept him living.  Now, you tell me what’s humane?  We all have our own opinions.

The Empire Strikes Back

I guess we all should have figured this was coming.  When you take on the kind of military unit that is capable of taking out the likes of Usama Bin Laden (UBL), you better be careful.  So with Disney trying to nail down a trademark on Seal Team Six, it was only fitting that the Seals themselves might have something to say about it.  And it is just as fitting that Disney would have backed off on its efforts to trademark the name Seal Team Six.

Rumor has it that the derisive tone of certain editorial commentary forced Disney’s lawyers to take another look at their intended escapade.  Seeing the deft argument, the stunning logic, and the irrefutable conclusions, the lawyers suggested that Big D withdraw from seeking the trademarks, as described.

Truthfully, whether it was the sense of the public outrage or how big a beating the corporate image was taking in the news, columns, and from talk show hosts or just the fact that the Navy had applied for the trademarks doesn’t really matter. The fact is, ultimately, that Disney made the right decision in backing off.  Corporations aren’t particularly known for having good taste, but in this case common sense conquered common greed.  Sense wins again.

And yet, I was so looking forward to another chance to slam Disney. It would work out something like this:  In one corner you have Disney and in the other corner the United States Navy, aka the original Seal Team Six.  Somehow, it just doesn’t seem fair now does it?  I mean some critter with a big long nose and huge funky ears, against a cut-throat death merchant.

It’s unfortunate that Disney wasted little time in applying for the trademark.  Had they merely thought through their actions, thought about the American public and how they would feel about the move, they could have save a lot of time and aggravation. On the other hand, I would have had to write a couple of different columns, so while I was not in favor of Disney’s Big Circus, it did provide me with a little column fodder whilst honing my disgust of everything grossly opportunistic.

It’s not that I have anything against Capitalism. I don’t.  I spent my time in the Army supporting this way of life and would do so again if asked. But there is just something about the manner in which Disney moved on this that was distasteful.  Do you not have enough money that you have to embellish your bottom line with the work someone else did? No less capitalizing on the death of a political leader?  Do you think, even for a minute, that seeing the term Seal Team Six would not have evoked the memory of the whole UBL chase?

Not me.

So, while I laud Disney for making the kind of decision they should have made in the first place; I condemn them for even doing so in the first place.  In other words, they have showed their hand. We now know that their main concern is profit uber alles.  The limits of decorum don’t have a place when it comes to making money, apparently.

I am not sure how many columnists, talk show hosts, and comedians attacked Disney over this strategic move. I’m not even sure that it was the public hue and cry as they rendered their disgust. All I know is that somewhere, someone at Disney had sense enough to realize that pushing this bad idea would do even more damage to their corporate image than they could possibly earn by pursuing the trademarks.

At some level, I would like to thank Disney for doing the right thing.  On the other hand, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing again?  What’s going to keep them from trying to take credit for the next strategic action in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya?  Ooops, did I say Libya, Libya that must have been a typo. Just ignore that, we’re only engaged with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria? No, no that’s not right; it’s just Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran?  No, wrong again, it must be Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel.  Wrong again?  Oh well, it’ll be whoever it will be. Just hope that Disney doesn’t find out anytime soon.