The United States: A Nation of Prayer and Hope

Adapted from essays written by John Carey and published in The Washington Times

We Americans don’t discuss hope much. Hope, it seems, is for sissies. Americans like action: like John Wayne kicking in the bad guy’s door, six-shooter in hand.

And some people shy away from discussing hope because the concept of hope puts one on the road to prayer and this, WE KNOW, is taboo to a segment of the world’s population.

But there is a day, every four years, when Americans celebrate hope. And that day is Inauguration Day.

And we listen to our elected president’s words. We judge our president-elect by these, his first words, as our commander in chief.

In history, there are many themes that seem to resonate through the inaugural addresses. Education, poverty, crime, war, and peace all appear over and over in inauguration day speeches. But the importance of God’s guidance and the wonderful goodness of hope permeates many of the great American inaugural addresses.

We should not be surprised that many presidents invoke the name of God, maybe even offer a prayer themselves for the success of the nation (and their presidency?), and offer us hope at the inauguration. Their task is looming large; their support sometimes fleeting. One might wonder at the overconfident man in such a difficult situation. Normal men ask for God’s help and offer us all a hopeful vision of the future.

On January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy said, “Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” He asked us to answer a “call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’ –a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

On another January 20, in 1969, Richard M. Nixon reminded us, “Forces now are converging that make possible, for the first time, the hope that many of man’s deepest aspirations can at last be realized.” He also said, “We see the hope of tomorrow in the youth of today.”

President Lincoln, in his second inaugural, looked with hope at the end of the Civil War. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and for his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Lincoln delivered these words on March 4, 1865. Just one month and 10 days after he delivered this speech, on April 14, Lincoln was assassinated.

President Eisenhower evoked hope. On January 20, 1953, he reminded the nation that “we view our Nation’s strength and security as a trust upon which rests the hope of free men everywhere.”

President James A. Garfield suggested a halt in the march of mankind, just for a moment, to reflect upon the importance of hope. In his March 4, 1881 inaugural, he said, “Before continuing the onward march let us pause on this height for a moment to strengthen our faith and renew our hope by a glance at the pathway along which our people have traveled.”

Inauguration day is a day of hope and prayer. No other day in American life is so steeped in prayer. No other day in the American calendar so often reverberates with the theme of hope.

Oh, many moments in American life begin with prayer: including the opening of House and Senate sessions in the capitol. But at our inaugurations, one can feel the sincerity of men thrust into the maelstrom. Greater Washington seems to become a great cathedral of hope and prayer: before it immediately returns to a nation that separates church and state.

What, exactly, is hope? You can’t buy anything with it and nobody can prove that it helps you in life. So what is hope?

Hope is an amputee veteran of the war in Iraq who wants to learn to ski. Hope is the cancer victim who won’t give in. Hope keeps the terminally ill calm and the pinned- down platoon together. Hope is the antithesis of despair, the enemy of our darkest fears.

Hope and prayer drive my friend in South Carolina to fight his multiple sclerosis.

Hope is one of those emotions unique to mankind. It sometimes defies reason and fights off evil thoughts of surrender.

Prayer goes hand-in-hand with hope; and America was founded by men deeply governed by their hope and prayer and belief in God.

The Founding Fathers established the United States, wrote the Declaration of Independence; the Bill of Rights and the Constitution; and created a nation firmly rooted in the belief in God and freedom of religion protected by the separation of church and state.

Many of the Founders and their forefathers fled Europe to escape religious prosecution. They wanted this new nation to allow them freedom of religion and thus the very nation is rooted in a belief in God.

The Declaration of Independence starts this way: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

After signing the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams, who was called “the firebrand of the American Revolution,” affirmed his obedience to God by stating, “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient. From the rising to the setting of the sun, may His kingdom come.”

James Madison, the fourth president, made the following statement, “We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

Madison is often referred to as “The Father of Our Constitution.”

When historians at the University of Houston conducted a 10-year study of the ideas that shaped our republic, they found 94 percent of the Founding Fathers’ quotes in 15,000 documents were based on the Bible.”God created all men equal,” one of the most fundamental and important acclamations of our government, became an underlying reason for the Civil War, a fundamental reason for the Emancipation Proclamation and a keynote of equality ever since.

Every president of the United States is sworn into office, by reciting an oath while he has one hand on the Bible. The oath ends, “So help me God.”

Every session of Congress since 1777 commenced with a prayer by a minister paid by the taxpayers.Every military service of the United States pays uniformed religious ministers for the officers and men in service. These ministers are from all faiths that recognize the importance of God in human life. Nearly every base has a chapel.

The Ten Commandments are carved into the doors of the Supreme Court and appear prominently in the court’s chambers.

Every piece of U.S. currency bears the words “In God We Trust.”

In America, you are even free to start your own religion. Nobody (except possibly the Internal Revenue Service) will interfere, so long as you don’t do anything outside the normal bounds of decent behavior.

So, as we all celebrate the blessings of American freedom, justice and government every day, perhaps we should reflect upon the roots and tenets of our democracy. We are not a Godless people. Or are we?

Yes, our democracy is evolving and we are open and accepting to that evolution. But let us not allow the evolution to turn into a careless revolution or even an unintended erosion of the principles by which we live and we are governed.

I am one of those historians that thinks the Founders were pretty smart. Their belief in God, hope and prayer encourages me every day.

And inauguration day is America’s unique day of hope. Whatever the speech, whoever the president-elect: a key player in every inauguration day is bound to be the Almighty and his right hand man: Hope.

O.K., Which Is It? The Many Takes on the Pentagon’s Assessment of China’s Military Build-Up

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
May 27, 2007

The U.S. Congress requires the Department of Defense to annually assess and report on the status of China’s military.

Each year this report garners more than its share of discussion and controversy. This year, however, more than most, the news reports surrounding the Pentagon’s report on China’s military make one wonder, “What really is ground truth?”

Officially it is the “Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2007.”  One of the first media reports on the document came from Bill Gertz of The Washington Times.

I have known Bill Gertz for perhaps 15 years. He is a true professional at evaluating Pentagon documents, meanings and intentions. Pentagon insiders frequently take him into their confidence. It is not entirely unknown for Gertz to practically quote from secret Pentagon documents.

Under the headline “Pentagon details China’s new military strategies,” on May 25, 2007, Mr. Gertz wrote, “China’s military buildup is moving beyond countering Taiwan to global operations from the Middle East through Southeast Asia, according to the Pentagon’s annual assessment of Chinese military power.”

This article continued with, “The statement, released yesterday, contradicts assessments of some pro-China analysts and intelligence officials who have said the nation’s military buildup is relatively benign and limited to resolving the sovereignty issue of Taiwan, which was separated from China in 1949 during a civil war.”

The next day (May 26) Mr. Gertz wrote under the headline “Pentagon tracks global buildup in China’s military.”

In the two articles Mr. Gertz documented several areas of Chinese activity of concern to the Pentagon. These included China’s recent destruction of a satellite in space with anti-satellite (ASAT) capability and China’s aggressive hacking and intrusion attempts into U.S. military computer systems.

In stark contrast to Mr. Gertz’s reports, Foster Klug of the Associated Press took practically the opposite approach under the headline “U.S.: China lacks power for Taiwan fight.” Mr. Klug wrote, “The Pentagon is warning China in blunt language that despite Beijing’s massive military buildup, it lacks the power for a successful attack against rival Taiwan.”

Meanwhile, China’s state controlled People’s Daily editorial staff writer Xi Laiwang said “China maintains a certain level of military strength out of an objective need for self defense, which is proper in order to safeguard its national security and territorial integrity and does not pose a threat to any country.”

So which is it? Is China an emerging global super power or an ineffective military power unable to overcome its neighbor Taiwan? Or is China, as Xi Laiwang says, merely maintaining a force sufficient for self defense?

Only one thing is agreed by most analysts. As Mr. Klug wrote, China is engaged in a “massive military buildup.” The question is, for what purpose and how effective can it quickly influence world events?

Pentagon details China’s new military strategies

Pentagon tracks global buildup in China’s military

U.S.: China lacks power for Taiwan fight

China: U.S. exaggerating military threat

Read:
“Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2007″
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/070523-China-Military-Power-final.pdf

Economic situation:

World Economies: China comes into view around almost every corner

Chinese-made Hongqi-2 missile on display at the Military Museum in Beijing. (AFP/File/Frederic J Brown)

UnAmerican ACLU: Aggression against military memorials

By Paul A. Morin
The Washington Times
May 27, 2007

If you think the American Civil Liberties Union’s interest in removing memorial markers from military cemeteries and other treasured locations is simply a matter of clarifying church-state jurisdictions … you’re gravely mistaken.
    
On Mount Soledad, overlooking San Diego, crosses of one kind or another have stood since 1913. The current edition, erected in 1954, was designed as a memorial to Korean War veterans. For more than 75 years, no one complained, and the cross became a treasured landmark to most of the San Diego community.
    
Then, in 1989, one atheist decided the cross on the hill offended him, and the ACLU hurried to his aid, waving the so-called “separation of church and state” doctrine.
    
Almost 20 years later — despite the outspoken wishes of the great majority of San Diego citizens and the deliberate protections of the U.S. Congress, the ACLU doggedly persists in its efforts to tear down this landmark.
    
Meanwhile, a similar showdown has been going on out in the Mojave Desert, where a 70-year-old memorial cross honors those who died in World War I. Across those seven decades, not one citizen ever filed a single complaint against the memorial. But some ACLU attorneys got wind of it, anyway, and a judge listened.
    
When Congress tried to move the cross to private property, the judge nullified the legislators’ order. Then, to add petty insult to legal injury — he has had the cross covered with a box, pending a resolution to this still-ongoing case.
    
Understand, there is big money involved here, as well as points of law. ACLU attorneys can haul down some fat fee awards when they win cases. And anyone going up against them faces a legal juggernaut of virtually limitless resources. Government officials sued by the ACLU know what’s coming, and far too often, that fear alone is enough to let the ACLU “win” another one.
    
That gives ACLU attorneys a wonderful incentive for tearing down these markers, and local citizens very little reason to oppose them.
    
Well, the American Legion is opposing them, anyway. With the strong legal assistance of the Alliance Defense Fund and Liberty Legal Institute, it has managed to keep both of these historic markers standing and saved taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
    
We believe the efforts of the ACLU are misdirected and contrary to the will of the American people and the spirit of our Constitution. Therefore, the American Legion will continue to fight for the right of all Americans to publicly display any symbol that reaffirms that we are, indeed, “one nation under God.” 
     
Paul A. Morin of Chicopee, Mass., is national commander of the 2.7 million-member American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans organization.
    

Gates Gets Going: SecDef Addresses Naval Academy Grads

 By Brian Witte
Associated Press
Saturday, May 26, 2007

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates encouraged the U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 2007 yesterday “to remember the importance of two pillars of our freedom under the Constitution: the Congress and the press.”

“Both surely try our patience from time to time, but they are the surest guarantees of the liberty of the American people,” Gates told 1,028 graduates during a sunny ceremony at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis.

Gates told the freshly minted Navy and Marine officers that they will have the responsibility to inform people below them that the military “must be nonpolitical” and to recognize the obligation to truthfully report to Congress, “especially when it involves admitting mistakes or problems.”

“The same is true with the press, in my view a critically important guarantor of our freedom,” Gates said.

Gates cited news reports of poor outpatient treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as an example of the role of the press.

“When it identifies a problem, as at Walter Reed, the response of senior leaders should be to find out if the allegations are true, as they were at Walter Reed, and, if so, say so,” Gates said. “And then act to remedy the problem. If untrue, then be able to document that fact.”

Gates said the Founding Fathers wisely understood that Congress, a free press and a nonpolitical military are needed in a free country.

“The press is not the enemy, and to treat it as such is self-defeating,” Gates said.

Gates commended the graduates for beginning their military service in a time of great necessity, and he pointed out that their class motto, “liberty through sacrifice,” was appropriate.

“Today, we ask you to make the extraordinary expected,” Gates said.

An estimated 27,000 people attended the academy’s 157th traditional ceremony. This year’s graduates number 862 men and 166 women.

Rebecca Phelps, who will be a weapons officer aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf this summer, said it was the “best feeling in the world” to make it through four years of rigorous academy life and become an officer.

“I really feel like I’m ready to meet the challenge,” said Phelps, of Santa Cruz, Calif. “This is what I signed up for. I’m ready to jump in and do it.”

She also recalled recent academy graduates from her company who have come back from the war missing limbs.

“That makes it really hit home,” she said. “It’s so real. I mean, I recognize the fact that it’s a dangerous place, and I may not come back in one piece or alive.”

P.J. Riester, a fourth-generation academy graduate from Valley Lee, said he felt “total elation” holding his diploma, having admired his father’s since he was a child. He was eager to get started in Pensacola, Fla., where he will attend school to be a Naval flight officer.

“I can’t wait to get out of Annapolis,” Riester said.

Democrats back reform – unless it hits their wallets

USAToday
Commentary
May 22, 2007 

When Bob Livingston, designated to become the next House speaker, quit Congress in 1998 amid allegations of an extramarital affair, the Louisiana Republican didn’t have to worry about subsisting on unemployment checks.

Livingston followed a well-worn, well-paid path into private life: He became a lobbyist. He started his own firm and pulled down nearly $6 million in the first two years of selling influence and access.

Cashing in on public service is one of the Capitol’s most insidious problems. The more easily lawmakers slip from representing the public to representing private interests, the more likely they’ll blur that distinction while still in office.

A few decades ago, most lawmakers returned to their home districts when their time on Capitol Hill was finished. Lobbying was regarded as somewhat disreputable. Today, congressional service is increasingly seen as a stepping stone to Washington’s lucrative K Street lobbying corridor. In the seven years starting in 1998, 43% of the lawmakers who left office for private life became lobbyists, according to a study by Public Citizen, a non-profit advocacy group that favors ethics reform.

If Democrats – who wrested control of Congress from Republicans last November – were as serious about cleaning up Capitol Hill as they claimed during last fall’s campaign, they’d slow the quick transition from the Capitol to K Street. Instead, the House Democratic leadership caved in to opponents of new restrictions.

Their inaction makes senators look like ethics champions. As part of its reform package in January, the Senate placed meaningful restrictions on lawmakers and senior aides leaving the public payroll to become lobbyists. For example, ex-senators would have to wait two years, rather than the current one year, before lobbying their former colleagues. The measure also closed a loophole that allows ex-lawmakers to do everything but lobby during that cooling-off year, including setting strategy and advising other lobbyists.

In the House, however, the thought of having to wait another year before making big bucks on K Street was apparently too much to bear. House leaders stripped their ethics reform measure, scheduled for a vote this week, of the two-year waiting period and didn’t even consider closing the “advising” loophole.

The only thing that could be called progress in this area is a requirement that members and senior staff tell the House ethics committee when they are negotiating an outside lobbying job while still in office – and not participate in legislation affecting their potential employer. That’s designed to prevent a repeat of the scandalous situation in which former representative Billy Tauzin, R-La., led the panel that wrote a new drug benefit law while negotiating a job as the pharmaceutical industry’s chief lobbyist.

During last year’s campaign, Democrats railed about the Republicans’ “culture of corruption”, and the voters listened. Since taking control of Congress, the new leadership has made some welcome changes – banning gifts, meals and swanky trips paid for by special interests.

The latest House measure would require lobbyists to report their activities faster and in more detail. That’s all for the good. But when faced with doing something to limit their ability to parlay public service into private gain, representatives shamefully balked.

Response to Robert Chapman at opednews.com

Robert Chapman made some very fine points in response to our essay “China Complicates U.S. Foreign Policy” at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_john_car_
070409_china_complicates_u_.htm

Since I have lived in China and it is my “beat” just now I thought I would color in between his lines.

The opednews.com website did not allow this long reply. So thank you for visiting us here.

A few places where I thought we might add to Robert’s view (keyed to his own comments):

a.  China has raised 400,000,000 people out of poverty;
Maybe.  Poverty has declined in China but the people are paying another price. The communist leadership in China stays in power by staying on the backs of the people. Young communists students are routinely used to build houses and swimming pools and the like for the communist bosses.

b. The Chinese have begun major campaigns to liberalize in the lights of their culture;
In my experience, China is only “liberalizing” when under pressure from the U.N., the U.S. and Europe. Take for example some new rules on media: the Chinese themselves have said they are accepting more openness because of the impending Olympics inBeijing. They know they would be humiliated on the world stage if the western media climbs aroundChina without restrictions during the Olympics.

We saw the same process of “phoney reform” from Vietnam.  Vietnam wanted to join the World Trade Organozation, they wanted Permanent Normal Trade relations from the U.S., and they wanted to bask in the glow of all important world leaders in Hanoi last November.  They got a “trifected.”  As soon as President Bush was back in the U.S., the communist government in Vietnam started a harsh crack-down on freedom loving people and ethnic minorities that continues to this day.
Vietnam: State Department Urged for More Aggressive Approach
and:
US to raise human rights when Vietnam president visits
and:
Vietnam’s Ugly Crackdown
and:
Human Rights Issues In Asia: Red Alert

As in Vietnam, the communist leadership in China stays in power by staying on the backs of the people. Young communists students are routinely used to build houses and swimming pools and the like for the communist bosses.

In China, we know that internet traffic and readership is monitored, and many sites in the west are not available.  My own newspaper, The Washington Times, cannot be accessed from within China.

China has tens of thousands of people that read email and listen to phone conversations.

China currently has several reporters in jail for publishing pro democracy material.

All this is mirrored in communist Vietnam.

The good news that China has very few (living) separatists.
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2007/04/chinas-answer-to-islamic-separatists.html

b. have begun major campaigns to liberalize in the lights of their culture;
In my experience, China is only “liberalizing” when under pressure from the U.N., the U.S. andEurope. Take for example some new rules on media: the Chinese themselves have said they are accepting more openness because of the impending Olympics inBeijing. They know they would be humiliated on the world stage if the western media climbs aroundChina without restrictions during the Olympics.

Even “Google” has been intimidated and controlled by China.
Google censors China criticism in U.S.

China is also one of the largest abusers of intellectual property rights.  Books that would cost me over $100 in New York or London are available for maybe $6.00.  That is because the book sale sends no money back to the author, publisher, editor, etc.  American movies, music CDs, computer programs and everthing else are pirated routinely by the Chinese.  It is a way of life and deeply a part of the culture.  Paying top dollar for anything is the only real sin in China.

c. China only spends a small amount on national defense, maybe a sum as low as $46 billion;
The problem is NOBODY KNOWS what the Chinese spend but it IS WAY MORE THAN YOU THINK. U.S. intelligence experts just tally up what China buys every year for their military and it is more than $46 Billion.

Military Expenditure(Actual Excahge rate Base)
2005 China $ 65bil…Russia $55bil…Japan $43bil…US $430bil
2006 China $ 90bil…Russia N.A……Japan $42bil
2007 China $120bil…Russia N.A……Japan $43bil

A Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) study also comes to the conclusion that the military spending of the People’s Republic of China is higher than the official budget, but its estimate is lower than that of the RAND study. Of the major powers, the military spending of the People’s Republic of China surpasses only that of Japan in relative terms and Russia in absolute terms.

What is most troubling is that China’s defense budget goes up like 17% EVERY YEAR.

What is even more worrysome is that China is flush with cash and can buy just about whatever it wants.  China’s foreign reserves, already the world’s largest, have risen past $1.2 trillion. 

Figures released this week showed China’s trade surplus for the first three months of the year doubled from the same period of 2006, reaching $46 billion.

China just built one of the words finest seaports in Pakistan. Things like this are not in the militry budget but thay might well be.
http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/04/china-opens-strategic-seaport-in-pakistan/

d. The Chinese are major donors to the impoverished countries in east africa (sic).
DONOR? Hardly: China never “gives” anything away.  In fact, I greatly respect the Chinese as shrewd business people.  They usually get the best end of the deal.  China’s goal in Africa is to harness inexpensive labor with no strings attached (no medical care, no retirement, meager pay, horrible living conditions, etc.) and sucking resources out of Africa and into China.

When President Hu Jintao recently visited in Sudan, he violated the intent of the U.N and EU to isolate Sudan because of Drafur. President Hu never mentioned Darfur publicly (he’s building a refinery in Sudan among other projects).China finally sent a team to at least look at Darfur LAST WEEKEND.
http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/chinese-delegation-visits-darfur/
also see:
http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/03/17/china-russia-seek-to-block-un-report-on-darfur/
and:
http://www.nowpublic.com/china_s_world_
view_genocide_in_darfur_is_o_k_and_nuclear_iran_too
and:
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2007/02/china-to-increase-imports-from-africa.html

Chinese President Hu Jintao presides over a China more aware than ever that without access to vast amounts of natural resources including petroleum, copper, zinc and other elements China’s booming economic dynamo could be slowed and even forced into disarray if not chaos.

Consequently President Hu was in Africa striking deals (almost every one for natural resources) in January and February.  It was his third trip to Africa.  He’s been to the U.S. once.  
Eyes On China: Natural Resources Vacuumed Up; President Hu in Africa

Billions of dollars of Chinese investment, particularly in the oil sector, have provided crucial support to President Omar al-Bashir’s regime in Sudan, enabling it to join the ranks of oil exporters and improve decaying infrastructure.

I would like to see the Chinese expand their concept of civil liberties and further liberalize their society, too.
–That sounds like cocaine talking….China has no civil society, no NGOs, virtually no freedom of press, religion and speech. I am ashamed and disappointed that Robert is so poorly informed. I expected more of him.

I disagree with Mr. Carey’s apparent thesis that the US is somehow ordained for global leadership and that China’s accretion of power is a “complicating” factor for us.
–Our national policy on Human Rights and Democracy is to be a leader.
See:
http://www.nowpublic.com/report_to_congress_supporting_human_
rights_and_democracy_the_u_s_record_2006

The ordaining comes from the U.S. Congress, Robert, to the Executive Branch where the U.S. Department of State manages the account as we say……

we should engage them constructively and seek mutual solutions to the many problems besetting our respective countries.
–We do just that. In fact the Pacific Command Commander plays a major role in our relationship with China. Admiral Fox Fallon spent a great deal of his tenure in China or working ways to improve the relationship. Now Admiral Gary Roughead is working with China and just recently returned from a visit there.

The head of China’s Navy was in the U.S. last week….See:
http://www.nowpublic.com/china_s_top_admiral_
visits_u_s_issues_abound

And of course President Bush hosted President Hu Jintao at the White House last year, met him again at Hanoi in November at the APEC Summit and plans to go to China before the end of his term.

That’s engagement!

When I used the word “Complicates” for China vis a vis American foreign policy I was being restrained and kind. China has opposed every U.S. initiative in the United Nations on Iran, Darfur and Iraq. China only agreed to become actively involved in restraining North Korea after that renegade state demonstrated a nuclear blast.

Some of the brightest minds thinking about China in the United States believe we have to make many huge changes in our military and policy actions to face them. See:
http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/us-military-buildup-urged-to-counter-china/

Finally, as I am writing this, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is in Sudan to discuss Darfur.

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/negroponte-seeks-sudanese-action-on-darfur-peacekeeping/

A Top Honor For Soaring Achievements

Tuskegee Airmen to Receive Congressional Gold Medal

By Michael E. Ruane and Avis Thomas-LesterWashington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 29, 2007; Page A01

When Charles E. McGee slid his P-51 fighter, “Kitten,” onto the tail of the fleeing German FW-190 in the skies over Austria in 1944, he fired his six big machine guns and struck a blow for civil rights back home.

Walter L. McCreary did the same a few months later, when his P-51 was hit by flak on a strafing run over Hungary and the cockpit floor began to slosh with what he thought was leaking gasoline.

And so did Woodrow W. Crockett’s ground crews a few months after that, when they stopped a supply train and commandeered special gas tanks so their pilots could fly without running out of fuel.

Today, members of the famed black World War II aviation cadre now called the Tuskegee Airmen will be honored in the Capitol Rotunda for their history-making feats.

In a ceremony at 1 p.m., the airmen, including McGee, McCreary and Crockett, will receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor that Congress can give to civilians. President Bush is scheduled to speak, along with Colin L. Powell, former secretary of state, who received the medal in 1991.

The achievement of men such as McGee, McCreary and Crockett was simple: They were bold in battle and capable in command — at a time when many in the military thought blacks could be neither.

“What we accomplished hasn’t always been recognized for, really, what it meant to the country,” McGee said this week. “There was meaning there, you might say, in a civil rights area that preceded what we know as the civil rights movement.”

From 1942 through 1946, 994 black fighter and bomber pilots were trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, according to the group’s Web site. More than 400 served in combat overseas, flying patrol and strafing missions and serving as bomber escorts from bases in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.

Ground and support crews were trained at Tuskegee and elsewhere, and all were assigned to exclusively black aviation units that went overseas. Once in combat, they excelled.

“It really was the first time that a large group of blacks were involved in a technical area successfully,” McGee said. “It really set the background that dispelled the myths, the biases — in some cases, outright racism — that had been a part of Army policy.”

And it helped to change the country, he said.

McGee, 87, of Bethesda, was an engineering student at the University of Illinois as World War II approached.

Sensing that the air corps might be good duty, he applied for the fledgling black aviators’ outfit that would blossom at Tuskegee. His flight training began in an open cockpit biplane and progressed to the war’s early fighters.

He was shipped overseas and wound up outside Naples, Italy, in January 1944. At first, he flew patrols in a P-39, an oddball aircraft with an engine in the middle and a door that opened like a car’s. But he soon graduated to the powerful P-51C.

He and others in the all-black 332d Fighter Group had the tails of their planes painted the distinctive red that would make them the famous Red Tails.

McGee also had the word “Kitten” painted in big, red letters on the nose of his plane in honor of his wife, Frances, whose nickname was Kitten, and to salute his crew chief, who kept his aircraft’s engine purring.

With the P-51, McGee said his job was bomber escort, and he was instructed to stay with the bombers unless ordered to attack marauding German fighters.

One day, McGee said, he was so ordered, and during a dogfight managed to get behind a German fighter, the FW-190, and shoot it down. “The pilot did not get out,” he said. It was his only kill.

McGee went on to fly 136 missions in World War II — he said white fighter pilots usually flew about 50. He flew 100 missions during the Korean War and 173 in Vietnam. The reason: Although the military was by then happy to have black pilots, he said, “the airlines weren’t ready.”

Walter L. McCreary, 89, of Burke, the son of a railroad worker, was raised in San Antonio and had graduated from Tuskegee University in 1940 when he got a draft notice. He already had a civilian pilot’s license and signed up for the Tuskegee Army Air Corps program, becoming one of the first pilots of the all-black 100th Fighter Squadron.

He was also shipped overseas in January 1944 and, like McGee, was based outside Naples. He flew 88 missions in the P-39, the P-47 and the P-51. He said he learned firsthand that strafing was the most hazardous.

During a strafing run Oct. 12, 1944, on his 89th mission, he was hit by enemy flak.

“I was on a mission to the Danube to shoot anything floating in the river,” he said Tuesday. Unbeknown to him, he said, there was an enemy antiaircraft school on the ground in the area — and the gunners started practicing on him.

One shell exploded just in front of him, he said. A second blew up a little closer, and, as he pulled up the nose of his plane, a third went off right under the belly.

The P-51 is liquid-cooled,” he said. The flak “tore the radiator out, so the plane didn’t fly very well.” A liquid he at first thought was gasoline began leaking onto the cockpit floor. When it didn’t ignite, he realized it was probably coolant, but he also knew that it was time to bail out.

On the ground, he was turned over to German soldiers and transported to a German prison camp in what is now Poland.

He was there for eight months and did not try to escape. He is sometimes asked why. “Escape, and pass for what?” he said he responded. “I mean, if I was a Caucasian, maybe I could blend in. No way could I blend in.”

McCreary said he was not racially harassed or mistreated by his German captors or fellow prisoners. He said that a solidarity developed among POWs that seemed to span racial lines.

“From the time that I was captured until the time I arrived [back home] in the United States, I didn’t know who I was, racially,” he said. “No one ever mentioned it.”

He said he did not encounter racism again until he and other former POWs had been freed and, on their way home, were taken to eat in a segregated cafeteria in St. Louis. The staff objected to McCreary. A fellow POW, a rangy, white Texan, summoned the manager, took him by the collar and said: “We just got through fighting one war, and we will start another one right now,” McCreary related.

“That was . . . the bonding that existed,” he said.

McCreary said he has mixed emotions about today’s accolade, which required broad support from Congress.

“It was earned under the most difficult terms,” he said, during a time when many in Congress “identified us as being ignorant, didn’t have the intelligence, didn’t have the coordination and didn’t have the leadership to become military.”

“I’m not one who carries hate,” he said. “When we were flying at 30,000 feet above the bombers” and their white crews, he said, he and his comrades would chuckle and remark that the white aviators had no idea that they were under the watchful eyes of supposedly inept black fighter pilots.

But it is the pilots who always get the glory, Crockett said. There were thousands of dedicated Tuskegee Airmen who were not pilots, and yesterday, during a gathering at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, Crockett, 88, of Annandale, told one of his favorite stories about the unsung ground crews.

It happened March 23, 1945, the day before a big raid on Berlin, and has come down in Tuskegee lore as “the great train robbery.”

Crockett, a pilot and operations officer from rural Arkansas, was based in Italy and learned that the long mission would require his P-51s to carry more gas than their two 70-gallon drop tanks could hold. Base officials “came to me and asked me how many planes we had with 110-gallon tanks,” he recalled. “I said only three. We knew we needed some more larger fuel tanks.”

The men searched in vain for the bigger tanks. With less than 24 hours before the mission, word came that an Allied supply train carrying the larger tanks was en route. The crews hatched a plan to secure the tanks, Crockett said.

“They went and held up the train and took the larger tanks,” he said. “Then they worked all night to put them on the P-51s. It took a lot of work, because they had to first drain, then take off, the 70-gallon tanks, put the 110s on and then fuel them. They worked all night to get the planes ready, but by 5 or 6 in the morning, we were ready to go.”

Yesterday, as he pondered today’s Capitol Hill honor, Crockett said he was happy that Tuskegee’s aviators are getting their due.

But deep inside, he feels a little of the sting he felt when he returned from Europe to find that he was still not afforded the privileges he fought for.

“It’s more then 60 years later,” he said. “Sixty years is a long time — a very long time.”

Tuskegee Airmen to be Hailed by Congress Today

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Six decades after completing their World War II mission and coming home to a country that discriminated against them because they were black, the Tuskegee Airmen are getting high honors from Congress.

That gratitude will be expressed Thursday when the legendary black aviators will receive a Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. The award is the most prestigious Congress can offer.

“It’s never too late for your country to say that you’ve done a great job for us,” Ret. Col. Elmer D. Jones, 89, of Arlington, Va., said in an interview. Jones was a maintenance officer during the war. President Bush, members of Congress and other dignitaries are expected to join some 300 airmen, widows and relatives.

Ret. Lt. Col. Walter L. McCreary, who was shot from the sky during a mission in October 1994 and held prisoner for nine months in Germany, said it hurt that the group had not been honored for its accomplishments.

“We took it in stride. It’s a recognition long overdue,” said McCreary, also 89, of Burke, Va.

The Tuskegee Airmen were recruited into an Army Air Corps program that trained blacks to fly and maintain combat aircraft. President Roosevelt had overruled his top generals and ordered that such a program be created.

But even after they were admitted, many commanders continued to believe the Tuskegee Airmen didn’t have the smarts, courage and patriotism to do what was being asked of them.

Nearly 1,000 fighter pilots trained as a segregated unit at a Tuskegee, Ala., air base. Not allowed to practice or fight with their white counterparts, the Tuskegee Airmen distinguished themselves from the rest by painting the tails of their airplanes red, which led to them becoming known as the “Red Tails.”

Hundreds saw combat throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa, escorting bomber aircraft on missions and protecting them from the enemy. Dozens died in the fighting; others were held prisoners of war.

It long had been thought that the Tuskegee Airmen had amassed a perfect record of losing no bombers to the enemy during World War II. But new research has cast doubt on that theory.

Two historians recently said Air Force records and other documents show that at least a few bombers escorted by the Tuskegee pilots were downed by enemy planes. A former World War II bomber pilot said last year that his plane was shot down while escorted by the unit.

Congress has awarded gold medals to more than 300 individuals and groups since giving the first one to George Washington in 1776. Originally, they went only to military leaders, but Congress broadened the scope to include authors, entertainers, notables in science and medicine, athletes, humanitarians, public servants and foreign officials.

Other black recipients include singer Marian Anderson, athletes Joe Louis, Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson, civil rights activists Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, the Little Rock Nine, Rosa Parks and Dorothy Height, and statesmen Nelson Mandela of South Africa and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The actual medal for the airmen, made possible through legislation by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., will go to the  Smithsonian Institution for display. Individual airmen will receive bronze replicas.

Iran and America

By James A. Lyons Jr.
The Washington Times
March 29, 2007

The Iranian-staged capture of 15 British service members who were clearly in Iraqi waters needs to be seen as another blatant “act of war” against the United States. This time, the mullahs’ target was the United Kingdom, America’s closest ally in the war against terrorism. This was a calculated act by Iran either in response to the United Nations Security Council’s sanctions against Iran for its failure to comply with the call to cease its nuclear enrichment program or more likely in retaliation for the five Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds personnel captured in Iraq distributing munitions and other support to the insurgents.
    
This is the same tactic Hezbollah and Hamas, acting under the guidance of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, have used against Israel for years to obtain the release of terrorists. The question is: What are we going to do about it?
    
I am sure that part of the calculus that went into the Ayatollah and his hard-line council of advisers decision to capture the British military personnel was the nonsupport shown by our Congress for our troops and the president; thereby, leading them to believe we would be incapable of responding to their aggression.
    
The same can be said for the British Parliament with regard to its nonsupport of their Prime Minister, Tony Blair. We cannot turn the other cheek again and look weak and embarrassed in the eyes of the world. We must stand firmly with our ally on this blatant act of war. Our credibility as well as our honor is on the line. Further, our response or lack thereof will have a major impact on whether we can achieve our objectives in Iraq.
    
In November 1979, when our embassy was sacked and our diplomats were taken hostage, I recommended to the then-acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Tom Hayward, that our only good option really was to capture Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil export depot. If we did this, we could negotiate from a position of strength for the immediate return of our embassy and our diplomats.
    
Unfortunately, the Carter administration rejected any offensive operations as a means of responding to this blatant act of war against the United States. We were humiliated and seemed to the world to lack the courage to defend our honor. Thankfully, we were not faced with a Falklands Island situation because we did not have a Margaret Thatcher but surely needed one.
    
There is no time to waste. Immediate diplomatic and military pressure must be brought to bear to obtain the immediate release of the British sailors and marines. While our State Department and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office work to obtain U.N. and allied condemnation of Iran’s illegal act, the Joint Chiefs of Staff need to develop or refine a series of military options that can be immediately carried out when directed by the commander in chief, President Bush after coordination with Prime Minister Tony Blair.
    
One such option should be the capture of Kharg Island. That could be viewed as part of a larger economic sanction that the U.N. Security Council has already endorsed. It is not an attack against the Iranian people. In fact, it could further encourage the popular antigovernment movement against the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s corrupt and already shaky regime. The economic cost to Iran would be catastrophic at minimum.
    
Most of all, such a move would end almost 30 years of our Iranian appeasement policy, demonstrating to Tehran we finally mean business. If Iran fails to respond to this measured action, we must be prepared to execute more forceful options. The choice would be Iran’s to make.
    
    James A. Lyons Jr., U.S. Navy retired admiral, is a former commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations. As deputy chief of naval operations, he was principal adviser on Joint Chiefs of Staff matters.

Bush mocks pork in war funding

By Joseph Curl
The Washington Times
March 29, 2007

President Bush yesterday ridiculed House and Senate lawmakers for pork-laden Iraq war funding bills that set 2008 deadlines for full U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, vowing to veto what he called “arbitrary” limits on U.S. military commanders.
    
Addressing a group of raucous ranchers at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in Washington, the president drew laughter and applause as he lampooned the competing bills now working their ways through Congress.
    
On the Senate bill, Mr. Bush noted that “there’s $3.5 million for visitors to tour the Capitol and see for themselves how Congress works.” To loud laughter from the cattlemen, he added: “I’m not kidding you.”
    
“The bill includes $74 million for peanut storage, $25 million for spinach growers,” he said to laughter. “There’s $6.4 million for the House of Representatives’ salaries and expense accounts. I don’t know what that is, but it is not related to the war and protecting the United States of America,” he said to more laughter and applause.
    
The president urged lawmakers to deliver a bill he can sign.
    
“Here’s the bottom line: The House and Senate bills have too much pork, too many conditions on our commanders, and an artificial timetable for withdrawal,” Mr. Bush said. “And I have made it clear for weeks, if either version comes to my desk, I’m going to veto it.
    
“It is also clear from the strong opposition in both houses that my veto would be sustained. Yet Congress continues to pursue these bills, and as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field,” he said.
    
Democrats, however, accused the president of stubbornly sticking with a failed Iraq policy and demanded that Mr. Bush listen to the American people.
    
“Now that congressional Democrats have voted to give the troops the resources they need in combat, including a strategy to change course and get them out of a civil war, it’s up to the president to drop his stubborn veto threat so there is no delay in funding for our troops,” said Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

“He should also stop ignoring the will of the American people, put partisanship aside and work with Congress to fix his failed policies in Iraq.”
    
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada agreed.
    
“Why doesn’t he get real with what’s going on with the world?” he said after Mr. Bush’s speech. “We’re not holding up funding in Iraq, and he knows that. Why doesn’t he deal with the real issues facing the American people?”
    
But the president said that the Democratic strategy will not force him to negotiate and said the “consequences of imposing such a specific and random date of withdrawal would be disastrous.”

“Our enemies in Iraq would simply have to mark their calendars. They’d spend the months ahead plotting how to use their new safe haven once we were to leave. It makes no sense for politicians in Washington, D.C., to be dictating arbitrary timelines for our military commanders in a war zone 6,000 miles away,” Mr. Bush said.
    
“If we cannot muster the resolve to defeat this evil in Iraq, America will have lost its moral purpose in the world and we will endanger our citizens,” the president said. “If we leave Iraq before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here.”
    
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Democrats won’t back down.
    
“This Congress will hold him accountable for the conduct of this war, and we will have legislation that will give him every dollar he asks for for our troops and more, but with accountability,” she said.
    
The Senate yesterday continued debate on a bill that provides $96 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and about $20 billion for domestic spending. The bill would require Mr. Bush to begin bringing home some combat troops right away with a nonbinding goal of ending combat missions by March 31, 2008.
    
The House last week passed a similar bill by a 218-212 vote. That bill orders combat troops out by Aug. 31, 2008 guaranteeing the final spending measure negotiated with the Senate will include some sort of timetable on the war.