My Summer Vacation will be on This Blog!

On June 7 I fly to Europe. By the 9th I will begin a bicycle trip from Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia that will cover more than a dozen countries and end in St. Petersburg, Russia. Along the way I will be visiting Holocaust Memorial sites and the sites of some of the fiercest battles in world history as the Nazi Army was pushed from defeat in Stalingrad all the way back to Berlin.

I was going to make a separate bicycle trip blog, but every place I go on this trip was overrun by the Nazi Army then liberated by an Allied Army. In addition to the World War II connection, is my own service in the Cold War.  If all goes as planned my last stop in Europe will be at Land of Kanaan in Darmstadt, Germany, where my friend Bruder Timotheus is a Franciscan Brother. Before he was Bruder Timotheus, Senior Airman Cliff Almes was my roommate for several months in 1978 when we were both stationed in Wiesbaden, West Germany.

After Darmstadt, I fly to Israel then  return home.  I have the bike. I have the plane tickets. Now I start working on the route.

Another thing I will be working on is getting visas from countries that did not require them until January 20. Now they do. Five countries on my route in easter Europe require Americans to get visas this year, because America is denying visa reciprocity to them.

Russia and America: Destined to Conflict, Religion

Russia and America cooperated in World War II because both were threatened by a common enemy. But like our alliances with other wretched dictatorships, it was an alliance of purpose, not based on any fundamental agreement. The Cold War immediately following World War II is proof enough that the Soviet Russian empire and America had little in common but a mutual desire to beat the Nazis, then to beat each other at every turn.

Now influential people in our government, led by Steve Bannon, dream of a white empire that will stand against the Muslim world. They assume that being a white Christian means some sort of common political goal and heritage.  Even in the West you would be wrong to say this. From the late Roman Empire until the 19th Century, Christianity was a state religion in much of the west and in direct conflict with religious freedom for nearly all of that time. The Reformation and the subsequent wars of religion all the way to the terrorism in Ireland in the 20th Century show that unity is not Christian political virtue.

And Russia throughout its history has very little in common with the west except a Christian label. Even the way that Russia became a Christian nation is utterly different than in the West.  In Rome, Christianity was accepted over time after waves of persecution.  The sheer number of Christians eventually led the government to accept the followers of Jesus. The Christian label on the Roman Empire came as that Empire collapsed.

In Russia, Vladimir the Great interviewed representatives of the leading religions in the world around the year 988: Islam, Western Christianity, Judaism and Eastern Christianity all made a presentation. Vladimir picked Eastern Christianity because the head of the Church was the head of the state. The monarch and the head of the Church were the same person for nearly half a millennia, but even after the prelate was separated from the monarchy, the Church was an organ of the Russian state.

In Russia, half the population was effectively in slavery until 1863. Russia never had an Enlightenment. It never had a Reformation.  From 1863 until 1917, Russia had a Jim Crow sort of freedom for its serfs, but then the Communist Revolution enslaved most of Russia more deeply than the Tsars. The state Church was abolished, but Anti-Religion became as much required as the former state religion.  Now under Putin, religion is fashionable again, but it is state religion, with rising repression of other faiths.

The Founding Fathers of America were unified in their commitment to Enlightenment principles and in their disdain for state religion. America has stood for religious freedom since well before it became a nation.  The idea that we are natural allies with a repressive regime with a state religion because it is white and has a Christian label is ludicrous.

Russia is in a slow, grinding process of becoming a fully authoritarian state with a state Church. America is still the favored destination in the world for people who want to practice their religion freely, or to be free to not practice religion at all.

In World War II America and Russia made an alliance to stop the Nazis, but were in a global fight for dominance as soon as that war ended.  The white supremacist dream of a global white alliance is simply a sick vision that will turn into a nightmare, especially for those who treasure freedom.

Ten Years Ago: The Decision to Re-Enlist

Over the next few months I will be writing about why I re-enlisted at 54 years old after more than 23 years as a civilian. Ten years ago next month is when I actually began the process, but for several months before I was thinking about re-enlisting. Congress raised the enlistment age to 42 at the end of 2006. That gave me a window to re-enlist before my 55th birthday.

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Ten years ago this month, I had a good job, four kids at home, an amazing beautiful wife, a nice home, a nice life and I had just about convinced myself to call a recruiter and re-enlist.

At the time, in my mind, I wanted to do something for an undefined greater good.  Joining the Army National Guard seemed like something I could do for the state, the nation and I might even like it.

In half-dozen years preceding my re-enlistment I had tried volunteering for organizations that help the community. My wife was a hospice volunteer, a kidney donor, and a dozen other great things.  I raced my bike and rode 10,000 miles a year.

When I volunteered, the main difficulty was my fellow volunteers.  They were so nice. They wanted to be sure was happy volunteering. They agonized over the best way to do everything. And they drove me nuts.

The Army would not care how I felt, not care if I had scheduling conflicts and not care if I was happy. That sounded wonderful.

In retrospect, all this sounds crazy. But at the time, I really was on the way to convincing myself I was doing a good thing by re-enlisting at 54 years old.

Israel and Singapore: Best Small Armies Surrounded by Muslims

In the late 90s through 2002 I made a dozen trips to Asia with Singapore as the destination or one of the stops on the way from Europe to Australia or Hong Kong.  I always brought my bicycle. I rode at odd hours of the day or night.  Singapore is the farthest point in the world in the Northern Hemisphere from the the Northeastern U.S. so I was always dealing with jet lag.

Singapore is so well lit everywhere on the main island that I seldom bothered with bike lights.  I would ride out to the airport before dawn or in the evening.  Sometimes I would see a sight like the one above: a Royal Singapore Air Force jet fighter screaming into the air on full afterburners. At the time I was visiting, their main fighter was the F-5, now it is F-15s and F-16s.

Singapore has one of the best equipped, best trained militaries in the world.  It boasts the largest air force in Southeast Asia with more than 100 fixed wing fighters, plus helicopters including Apache Longbow attack helicopters and transport aircraft. The Singapore navy has new submarines and destroyers. This small, rich nation spends 20% of its annual budget on the military. The $12 billion annual expenditure is about the same as neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia combined, though they have nearly 300 million people.

Singapore shares a lot in common with Israel:

Singapore has a population of six million and a land area about 2/3rds of New York City.

Israel has a population of 8 million and the area of New Jersey.

Both countries have the same motivation for their armies: they surrounded by nearly 300 million Muslims.

This summer I will be visiting Israel for the first time. I might see fighters scramble there if I am riding a bicycle at dawn or dusk.

These two small countries are young, surrounded and have the two best armies for their size in the world.

The Jefferson Library and the Fall of Rome

Inside the Library of Congress is the Jefferson Library--the 4,929 books Thomas Jefferson owned and read during his long life. His library includes books in English, French, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew that I saw.

As I scanned the titles, I thought of the brave and brilliant men who founded America: Jefferson was a Colonel in the Virginia Militia and served in the Revolutionary Army. George Washington was the Commander in Chief of the colonial armies and our first President.

The greatest leaders of the Rome were also brilliant and brave men, notably Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus and the philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius, maybe the greatest of all.

Many historians place the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. when the last Roman emperor, Romulus, disappears from the historical record.  But parts of the empire held together for another century under the rule of illiterate barbarians. The empire that was once ruled by Marcus Aurelius who wrote philosophy during his campaigns on the frontiers of the Roman Empire, was finally ruled by men who could not read.

The thousand-year Roman empire existed for another century under the barbarian emperors. In just over two centuries America has descended from a man of letters to a man of twitter.

I hope we last another century.

Courage and Fear: Weapons for Wives

Five years ago I was eating lunch in the Aviation Armory at Fort Indiantown Gap.  I sat with a Blackhawk helicopter pilot and a Chinook helicopter flight engineer.  Both are Iraq veterans who flew many combat missions. Both are tall, strong men who regularly scored the maximum on the physical fitness test and were very good at their respective jobs.

They both live in rural Central Pennsylvania. The topic of conversation when I sat down was rapid opening cases for automatic pistols.  They were discussing the relative merits of biometric locks versus RFID locks. They were talking about the relative merits of the gun case each had put in their bedroom for themselves and also for their wives while they are away from home.

Both men own more than 20 guns which they keep locked in elaborate gun safes.  But the pistol case was for immediate access in case of a home invasion.  Neither man wanted his young children to have any access to the guns, but did want to be ready to defend their homes and for their wives to have access to the gun in a moment.

 So I asked, "Have you or your family ever been threatened or your home robbed?"

Both answered No.

They kept talking about gun cases and their wives proficiency with weapons. Neither of the wives seemed very interested from what I could gather.

Courage in one area does not displace fear in another.  Both of these men happily went to war.  One of them deployed twice, the other at least three times to both Iraq and Afghanistan.  But they genuinely believe their isolated, rural homes west of the Susquehanna in the middle of Pennsylvania must be defended with high-tech weaponry.  By their own admission, they are defending themselves and their homes from a threat that they have never seen or experienced in their lives.

Courage and Fear: My Father on Fist Fights and Doctors

The ideal of the courageous person is one who can and will face any threat and pain in any situation with equal grace. That ideal person could go to war, find out they have cancer, or get a root canal with equal and undisturbed equanimity. Senator John Glenn and Major Richard Winters seem the closest to the ideal of hero who is brave in every circumstance.

But most real people don't work that way.

My father was a professional boxer.  Every time he stepped into the ring, he knew he was going to be hurt.  But he climbed between the ropes, raised his hands and got punched by another guy who could hit--hard.  The courage that got him in the ring led him to enlist in the Army and serve through and after World War II.

But he was afraid of doctors and hospitals.  His fear was partly inherited from his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. For a Jew to enter a Russian hospital in the 19th Century meant they had the most dire illness.

Dad lost that fear of doctors in the last decade of his life when doctors and hospitals became a regular and familiar part of his world. He had a brain tumor removed when he was 66. During the next decade he had colon cancer and related problems, then the kidney cancer that finally took his life at 77. In that last decade of his life he faced surgery and recovery again and again.

On the other hand, there are certainly people who are afraid of nearly everything. Some people are hypochondriac, agoraphobic or so swallowed by fear that they can barely function.  The characters Woody Allen plays are close to the inverse of John Glenn and Dick Winters.

To re-cast a nerd joke:  Courage is non-linear, so is fear.