Cain and Lucifer

Hello everyone!  Just writing to post the first part of my new sort of "webnovel", Cain and Lucifer.  I'm hoping to be able to post a chapter or so a week, give or take, and you at home get to follow along as it's written.  Don't you feel special!  Anyway, I won't give any spoilers or anything away right now, just read and I hope you enjoy the mystery as it unfolds!

New Site

Hey everyone, just letting you all know that I've just launched a second site, "The Mind of Kleinnak" which is a bit of a change of pace than here.  It's a compilation of my fictional works (short stories, etc), instead of my more topical posts here.  Though I suppose if you strongly disagree enough with the posts I've had here you'd say there's probably not much difference!  Anyway, please check it out, give the first story, "Snapshots" a read and hopefully you'll enjoy.  All the best.

What is Obama's credit for the death of bin Laden?

One of the most irksome things I have seen from the recent events concerning the death of Osama bin Laden has been the odd outcry of people saying that Obama doesn't deserve any credit for what happened.  In response to this, I have penned this piece.  I admit it was first posted on my uncle's Facebook wall where a small debate of this topic was going on, but I decided to post it here as well.

Does he deserve all the credit? No. But as Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces, it was on his watch, and it was his call. The intelligence community was briefing him, he was aware of what was going on, he gave the order, and he watched it go down. That much has been stated over and over again. The US Armed Forces were not going to just go and carry out a mission of this magnitude without keeping the President constantly briefed, even from the days we were merely suspicious of his location. By that same logic we can't have called it Bush's credit had bin Laden been killed on his watch.

In fact it happened completely and utterly not on Bush's watch and people are actually trying to say Bush deserves the credit for it. To think that in this day and age of nearly instantaneous communication that the Commander-in-Chief, the head honcho, the go-to-guy, the big button-pusher, is just sitting on the sidelines on military affairs is frankly just ludicrous. In fact it's been argued that the Office of the President has been TOO involved in military matters since the Korean War. After all, who is the one to make the final decision to launch America's nuclear arsenal? Not the head of the CIA. Not the Secretary of Defense. The President. The Commander-in-Chief. So really, I think it's probably completely 180° opposite, he didn't have nothing to do with it, he probably had a huge amount to do with it.

Not giving Obama his due as Commander-in-Chief and the one who ordered the mission is the start of a slippery slope... where do you stop? Not giving Obama credit for giving the go ahead and issuing the commands to carry out the mission would essentially start to discredit all past presidents and leaders in times of crisis. Roosevelt and Truman weren't physically dropping bombs or firing rifles and machine guns, nor were Churchill or Stalin, but they all get credit for being the leaders who ended WWII and defeated Hitler and Japan. They gave the orders for those things to happen though. Lincoln didn't grab up an officer's sword and march in with his boys to take care of ol' Johnny Reb, but we credit him with being the President who won the Civil War. He won it by being a leader and making decisions that needed to be made. That is what happened in the morning of May 1 in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

In the end, you can't give credit to some for an action and deny others the credit for essentially that same action. That's hypocrisy, plain and simple. Obama made a decision. A very difficult decision. History and precedent say he gets some kudos for this. Just because, sorry, you [the person on the other half of the debate] obviously don't like him, just because many don't want him to have the credit, doesn't mean he shouldn't get credit. I cast no aspersions as to why you don't like him, just that's what I'm going on as you rather explicitly stated that. But for comparison, I never liked Bush, but I give him credit for his accomplishments. Saddam Hussein was deposed and indeed dispatched on his watch. He handled receiving the word of the Sept. 11 attacks in that classroom extremely well (upside down book aside... I really dare anyone to receive word that a massive terrorist attack had just taken place in a classroom of schoolchildren and really care what way the book is facing...). Yet Bush did not haul Saddam out of that hideout himself. He did not lead our forces across Afghanistan and Iraq. But he made decisions and he has to be given credit for them and the consequences of them. And so does Obama.

Thoughts on the Death of Bin Laden

Earlier today, I made a Facebook post in which I expressed disgust with the American and world publics over some reactions I've seen concerning the death of Osama Bin Laden.  I admit that post was unfair of me... I know that there are certainly many more who fully appreciate what actually went on in the late hours of Sunday/early hours of Monday in Pakistan than there are those who don't, the images of the people cheering in the streets of Washington, DC and NYC are evidence of that... but to read comments like I have on articles and other things related to the death of Bin Laden... it is a little demoralizing.  Seriously, when did critical thinking become such a luxury item, and common sense become such a rarity?  Apply even a little bit of those to these events and the reasons things were done the way they were is very apparent.  What follows are some of the main questions I’ve seen in regards to what has happened, with my own personal answers, that I came to after thinking long and hard about much of what has happened.

Q.) Why did it take since August when the first bits of intelligence started coming in for them to go ahead and carry out the attack?

A.) Bin Laden, let’s face it, has been really good at hiding.  There's just no denying it.  He's had many supporters in many places that have been perfectly willing to help conceal him for over a decade (I say over a decade because we've been hunting him much longer than Sept. 11, 2001).  Even the most zealous proponent of killing him would have to admit that going in with your gun half-cocked when you only had a suspicion of where he was could have been disastrous.  It could have greatly increased anti-American sentiments in Pakistan and in the Middle-East in general if US forces went shooting people up or dropping missiles in a major metropolitan area in the event he wasn't actually there at the time, or there at all.  With something of this magnitude you want to be absolutely and utterly 100% sure that the target is there before you act.  If we'd squandered that, we could have lost the chance forever because he would learn from the mistakes.

Q.) Why didn't we use a drone to kill him?

A.) Recent events (or at least the past decade) have proven that drones and bombs/missiles are an extremely unreliable way to carry out something like this.  Plus going in with Special Forces allowed us the chance to capture him as well if it had been possible.  He could have very easily survived such a missile strike and escaped.  Or we could have turned him into vapor with such an explosion and we would just never know.  And then where would we be?  No, we had a real chance, we knew with absolute certainty he was there, and we finally acted.  In a way that allowed us to verify we had his body and that he was dead and to dispose of him: plain and simple.

Q.) How did we verify it was him?

A.) With DNA from the brain of his sister who died in Boston a few years ago.  Not going to elaborate on this one, it's not necessary.

Q.) Why did we so quickly bury him at sea?

A.) Yes... one has to admit that this does give conspiracy theorists some fodder (no, not admit it's suspicious, but admit that some would find it suspicious because that’s just what they live to do, find things suspicious), but I think the good done in going about it this way is much greater than the harm done in feeding conspiracy theorists.  After all, these people are so obsessed with trying to catch the US lying that the SEALs could have taken them all along when carrying out the raid and they still wouldn't believe it was real. However, Bin Laden has been the symbol of anti-American terrorism for nearly two decades, on both sides.  Imagine the spectacle that would have been made of having his body make it to the US and have pictures and videos of the body make it out to the public.  It would have been another Mussolini, but worse, much worse.  Instead of a joke, he would have been turned into an even bigger martyr than he is now.  If he'd been buried his grave would have undoubtedly been turned into a shrine.  Now only those who pushed him over the side have any idea where he was laid to rest.  And even images of his dead body would have been turned into rallying symbols for his followers.  After all, isn't the primary image of Christian martyrdom the image of Jesus hanging on the cross?  Giving them a symbol of that magnitude, of the man who "died for his cause" could have been disastrous.  Now we have left them with doubt, without a leader and without a symbol.  Now all they know is that instead of in a cave in the middle of nowhere, working out a measly living for his cause, he was killed in a veritable mansion fortress surrounded by guards and barbed wire.  That is very damaging for his image, I think, in the long run.  So, let’s agree to leave martyr symbols to those who died trying to do some actual good in the world, not mass murderers, agreed?

Q.) Does Obama deserve credit?

A.) Of course he does.  But yes, our forces do deserve more of it, as they always do in conflict.  However, they could not act without his say so.  From all I've seen, Obama and his advisors handled this situation exactly the way they should have.  And that's not being an Obama fan-boy, that's just thinking about the situation critically.  Obama said, "We will kill Bin Laden", and on his watch, it happened, and with his go ahead.  Of course much of it had to be kept secret because this was too big an opportunity to let go to waste or, again, screw up by going in without complete intelligence.  But Obama got the information, got the confirmation, and gave the go ahead.  Even then, after he received word the attack was successful, even making the announcement was delayed until they were 100% sure of the information they had that Bin Laden really had been killed and we really had his body.  Obama could have waited longer and missed the chance.  He could have acted too soon and missed the chance.  He could have spoken on it too soon and been wrong.  Caution is not a sin.  But now Bin Laden is dead, and Obama was the man who said "go".  We praise Roosevelt and Truman as being the presidents who won the Second World War.  Why do they deserve more credit than Obama when really they did the same as him?  They didn't go over there and fight the Germans/Japanese themselves, but they definitely made most of the decisions and gave the go ahead to carry out campaigns.  I don’t recall any tales of Lincoln marching off to battle with his soldiers to put down the Confederate uprising.  To praise others for one thing and denounce someone else for the same action speaks of a prejudice.  Exactly what prejudice can only be speculated, but it is evidence that one exists.  Be careful of that.  Especially when some are claiming the credit should go to the last president, George W. Bush, who had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what just happened.  This all certainly speaks of a lack of critical understanding and critical thinking and common sense of a situation.  Critical thinking and common sense break down when thoughts and ideas become “beliefs”.  Those are perhaps the most dangerous things of all.  September 11, 2001 was proof enough of that.

No matter how much some people don't want to give Obama any credit for anything, he did it.  He did what Bush didn't in nearly two terms of office.  Maybe it was just luck, but that doesn't change the significance at all.  Some of the greatest and most significant events in history have been the product of luck.  Reality and history really do not care whatsoever about what you want to have happened.  And pissing and moaning about it when you should be celebrating with the rest of the world that a man who acted out horrible genocide and plotted more genocide, and worked to inspire countless others to plot and carry out more genocide has gotten what he had coming to him... is just counter-productive.  Join us, and smile that a symbol of hatred and death is gone.  This is not a time for partisanship and mistrust and more hatred and prejudice; this is not even just at time to be Americans.  This is a time for the world to come together and realize that those who plot great death and murder get what's theirs in the end.  We can all at least unite under that banner I'm sure, can't we?

The case against political attack ads

This is from a recent comment I made on Anderson Cooper's Facebook page, concerning his post on the nastiness of modern political campaigns.

It is unfortunately the very history of political campaigns have long stood as a defense to why they continue to run this way.  "Well it's how we've always done it before, so what was good enough then is good enough now."  This is a falsehood; it stands in the way of progress.  Instead it undermines all political and intellectual discussion.  It creates distrust of all politicians and public figures from the constituents they serve, both from those who buy the poisonous rhetoric, and those intelligent enough to recognize it for what it is. It eliminates any true debate and stumbles the pursuit of truth and a better world for all.  And as for the dissolution of progress, Dr. John Kotter has recently released a book outlining how thinking in such terms as "always been done before" hinders progress and also gives good advice on how to counter it effectively.

These thoughts are little more than playing to mob-rule, destroying human intelligence in the pursuit of power.  A very sad fact.  America right now is rife with this frame of mind, it exists everywhere from political campaigns to how we raise our children.  As a student of history, politics, and from my time spent in classrooms in the secondary and primary levels, I have seen it everywhere.  It drives our political, social, and economic policy.  We allow the slander and libel of other citizens in political campaigns because it's how we always did it.  We allow our children to make racist comments and bully each other in school over sexuality under the guilty pale of remembering that we ourselves were that way in our youths.  We refuse to recognize the times when our economic system can no longer sustain itself under the very same guise.  This cannot stand, something that was wrong then, is just as wrong now.  Tradition and history do not make them right.  It is only by intellectually standing against such things that we can have any hope to remove them.  They are difficult to face, even 100 years after the end of the Civil War and the destruction of slavery in the United States we still did not have equality between African Americans and Caucasian Americans, and even after the Civil Rights movements of that time all these years later it still does not exist.  These are not overnight victories, but worthwhile pursuits nonetheless.

Another defense of these ads is that they weren't as bad as they were when politics in America was just starting.  Read some of the old ads from back when Jefferson was running for president, and they were truly malicious and even absurd, but while they might not be "as bad" today, I think we are returning to those ways.  Listen to Limbaugh spouting off about how pictures of Obama look "demonic", and now there are those making veiled threats of revolution should they not get their way; we are hardly that much better.  All we can do as informed citizens is work to further knowledge and understand that history, is history, and never a justification. 

The faces of "the Few"

I know everyone has their demons that hinder and slow us down and make our lives weary... however I simply cannot help but look at this picture and feel that my life is hardly all that difficult. Pictured here is newly promoted Squadron Leader Brian John Edward Lane, Officer Commanding of No. 19 Squadron of the Royal Air Force. Take a good look at this picture and try to guess how old he is.

He is photographed during the height of the Battle of Britain, September of 1940 at the helm of the aforementioned historic No. 19 Squadron, having received his post following the death of the previous squadron leader. At this point in the battle, Lane had fought in the Battle of France that May and June, helping protect embattled British and French soldiers during the harrowing evacuation of Dunkirk. The Allies lost the Battle of France. By this point to many, including the still neutral USA, it looked like they were going to lose the Battle of Britain as well. I on the other hand, look at this face and I don't see defeat. I see strain, I see hardship etched into every line of his prematurely aged face, but I don't see defeat. Instead I see determination, I see grit, and I see sadness.

There are no smiles here. Men just returned from another hard fight, almost always with less planes coming back than went out. That was the reality these men lived in for almost a year, from the late spring of 1940 through spring of 1941. The enemy they faced, the German Luftwaffe, outmanned them, outgunned them, and had a years' worth of combat experience under its belt. This was the great test in that moment of history; after Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Norway and France had all fallen, and Italy being part of the Axis and Spain under control of a Fascist regime every bit as ruthless as Germany's, all eyes were on Britain. The war for the soul of Europe for that one year rested solely on their shoulders. We here in the USA offered little help. We sent no planes, we sent no pilots, we sent no ships, and we sent no soldiers. Britain was seemingly a force alone.

Forget fanciful images from films like "Pearl Harbor", of American volunteers risking criminal prosecution and lost citizenship back at home to gallantly help the beleaguered Great Britain to victory, the total amount of US airmen who flew during the actual Battle of Britain was between seven and ten. Our sole contribution to the actual fighting. Almost 150 Polish airmen fought in the battle however, even after England failed utterly to live up to its promise to assist Poland in the event of a German invasion. One in every eight pilots in the RAF during the battle was Polish.

We in the US, however, were neutral and would remain so for nearly another year and a half. The first full squadron of volunteer US pilots in RAF uniforms didn't become active until February of 1941, well after the majority of the fighting of the battle had wound down as the Germans prepared to invade the Soviet Union instead. The squadron itself was formed and being trained in September 1940, at the time this picture was taken. We have no right to take any pride from Allied victory in the Battle of Britain, or even pretend we do. But really, Britain was not alone. Apart from the Poles, scores of Czech, French, Norwegian, Belgian, Danish, and other pilots had all escaped to Britain. In fact the highest scoring RAF unit of the conflict was No. 303 (Polish) Squadron, which only entered combat on the final day of August 1940. On top of that many pilots from around the Commonwealth, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, all flocked to the homeland in its hour of need.

It would be over another year from when this photograph was taken before the US signed the Lend-Lease Act and started sending aid to Great Britain in earnest in exchange for Caribbean naval bases. It would be another year and a half almost from this photograph until we actually entered the war, and almost another two years from this photograph before we started sending our army air force in earnest to England to carry out the bombing campaign against occupied France and Germany. And even then, we were woefully unprepared to carry our weight. We talk of American victories and American military might when without Great Britain it never would have happened. They gave us staging areas, they taught us tactics and took us under their proverbial and even literal wings.

This was a different conflict, a different time. These were desperate and dedicated young men. Our soldiers on the ground today do not face the same struggles that Lane and his comrades did. No one but those who were there and then in that shining moment can have any idea what it possibly felt like; those of us alive today can only taste it. Fighting to keep anything resembling morale as your airfields, factories, and finally cities are all bombed mercilessly for months on end and no matter how many times you go up and how fewer and fewer of you return every time the enemy never seems to break or lessen their assault. Yet they held, they held strong and they kept fighting. And in the end that determination paid off in victory that I think won the war in Europe. Without a British victory in the Battle of Britain there would have been no launching point for a Normandy invasion, nowhere for the streams of Allied strategic and tactical bombers to break down the German war machine and fighting spirit bit by bit. This moment and these young men were the ones who beat Germany; they kept the light going and the door open for the future.

Let’s go back to the picture now. This was the face of that battle; very weary, very young, but very determined young men. Whatever your guess was at his age from the beginning, he was only twenty three at the time of this picture. He's not photogenic. The lower half of his face is markedly paler than the upper half from being covered by a flight mask after spending much of every day flying. The frown-lines between his eyebrows are very pronounced, he even appears to have bit of a wandering left eye if you look close enough, and you can. But he looks back at the camera, right back at you, and he's unwavering, isn't he? This is the face of Brian John Edward Lane, and this is the face of the Battle of Britain. Lane was not the highest scorer of the battle, not by a long shot. In fact he just barely made 'ace', which is to say he shot down 5 or more enemy aircraft, with a final score of 6. The man to his left, our right, George Unwin, downed over twice as many as Lane. And unlike Lane, Unwin survived the war. Lane on the other hand finally met his fate in combat over the North Sea in December of 1942. Yet it is Lane who we remember today. Because Lane didn't have a low score because of lack of ability, he had leadership thrust on him at a young age and carried his torch well. He dedicated himself to leading his men and the success of the unit over personal glory. The photo shows Lane as he was; a hard-working, no nonsense leader who wanted to win.

Look hard at this photograph. This is the face of a hero. Of a common man who fought a grand fight. And even if it claimed his life, he has in fact survived until today, hasn't he? Even knowing that he only lived two years beyond this photograph, maybe it's just me but I don't see death in Lane's face... do you? I see someone determined to keep going, even if it does kill him. That's a powerful thing, a force of will we all should have, don't you think? It's decidedly missing in today's world, the drive, the desire to win and keep going no matter how long the odds. I know some may argue that our enemies have it today, blowing themselves to smithereens in desperate attempts to kill us, but that's not the same thing, not by a long shot. Fighting to defeat your enemy even if it kills you will always win over killing yourself to kill your enemy. It didn't work for the Japanese in World War II and it won't work now. We should all learn something from this picture, learn something from this small moment in history and move forward with our lives, and keep fighting, even if it kills us, but with a hope for a future all the same. In that way we can all be heroes can't we? We can help keep the spirit of the "Few" alive. We can make sure that the sacrifices of those like Lane don’t go forgotten, or those who're putting their own lives on the line today. The very soul of our modern times depends on it.

(credit to image from militaryimages.net, photograph by Stanley Devon, September 1940)

A Perspective(from FB note 4/1/2010)

It is an interesting thing today to look at the world around me. A world of machismo and self righteous auras of blamelessness that permeate our society about as thoroughly as a skunk smell infests everything in the general area when one's flattened on the highway. It bugs the living hell out of me, to say the least. But that's not really why I'm writing this now. I'm writing this because of how points of view relate to this. It gives us a very, from my point of view, false point of view on the nature of what these ideals mean and the calling I think this age is giving to us. What do they mean to us? Strength. Power.

But this is wrong, utterly. Instead it is the opposite, it is weakness, pure and simple. The strong is not the person who shrugs off others, who seems to stand unassailable by blame, who pushes their point of view across at the expense of all others, because they're not. They are not immune to blame, they are instead just dodging it. It is weakness to be unable to help shoulder the feelings of others and feel their pain, let it pierce them as powerfully as it stabbed the person who's hurting. It is weakness to close your mind to that which you should let in to broaden your understanding of the rest of our world and society. The strong is the one who stands arm and arm with another when they feel pain and pulls them back up to their feet, the strong is the one who stands with their head held high and says "i was wrong". It is the strong who puts their own ego aside to take a minute and just sit and listen to what the other side has to say. The people who do these things, who shoulder others' pains, who listen and who take blame as well are strong because these people carry many burdens. They are strong because they do it believing no more than it is the right thing to do, and they do it for relatively nothing in return but the satisfaction of having done the right thing.

Why else do I say it is weakness to be self-righteous and avoid feelings and emotion? Because doing such things are products of fear, of course. It is because those who prescribe to this are afraid to accept it, to accept the pains of others and the humiliation of blame. Afraid to accept the possibility we are in fact wrong, or in the wrong. This may perhaps make us the weakest society on the face of the earth. No wonder we're declining. Really, we're little more than a decadent, festering former power so wrapped up in ourselves we can hardly acknowledge anything outside our own minds anymore. Most of us no longer have our own principles, we adopt them from another to ease our own minds and then if it's wrong you still have someone else to blame. I am not this, and proud to be. Instead I question, everything. I question the motivations of my government in all things, as much as I question those who oppose it. But I question not out of suspicion, but out of a desire to know, to know why all sides are doing what they do. I am there for any who ask my help, and I give it gladly knowing I am a good person for it. I always leave room for the fact I may be wrong, and can do wrong, for I am human and thus fallible. I have made many mistakes, and fully admit them, and have no reason to believe I'll stop making them.

That is my message to you all. Be strong; stand with one another and share their pains. Think outside yourself and express tenderness for another human being in a way that goes beyond your own self interests. We are only as strong as we are together. Enough of this petty infighting that divides us and weakens us. Enough of this pulling into ourselves and denial of the very emotions that make us human and strong. Those who believe such things are desirable qualities are are not to be revered or respected... but pitied. Pity those who cannot or refuse to feel such things as another's emotions. Pity those who live wrapped in their own self righteousness afraid of failure and their own humanity. Read these words here and question yourself, what kind of a person am I? Am I strong, or am I afraid? From my point of view, I am strong. Who's with me, and for those who aren't, who'll join me?