Apocalypse Now??

Last night I talked with my best friend from the Army back in the 70s. We were talking about the future and he was more depressed than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. He said we can't pay off the debt--"we" meaning all of us Americans--and he started to bring up all the troubles around us. I hadn't thought of this before but I am in the middle of reading the Gulag Archipelago:  a book of almost 1400 pages about Russian labor camps and the politics of the Soviet era in the Soviet Union.

I asked my friend, "If you lived in Hamburg Germany in 1943 and looked around you at the firebombing and and the black cars that came in the middle of the night to take people away who never came back and you knew Jews and others were being slaughtered by the tens of thousands per month what would you think then? What would the future look like? Would you think the German economy would be one of the strongest in the world and that Germany would be one of of the freest and most peaceful nations on earth within 20 or 30 years? No you what you would think the Apocalypse is coming and it's got a come soon just like you hear from misguided preachers and from TV and talk radio.

"And what if you lived in Japan in 1945. Your country has a completely wrecked economy and two smoldering nuclear waste sites with more than a hundred thousand dead in each one. What would you think that with that economy come back to be the third strongest in the world with that country have better health in general than most countries on earth?"

No there is no way you would think that.  

But it is true.

And here we are with the most abundant food the best healthcare and still one of the strongest economies on earth ever in his history and some people can do nothing but BITCH.  

You might think because I read about Soviet gulags that I would be as depressed and worried about the apocalypse as Survivalists in Idaho. But it's the reverse.  Reading about the horrors of the Soviet Union--the horrors it visited on its own citizens--and reading about the slaughter that was World War II and how little any of the armies, even ours, cared about its soldiers that I am so thankful I live in America RIGHT NOW.

it's true about people in every country in the world at every time in history that those who have the best circumstances bitch the most. Who files the most lawsuits? Rich people. I've served in both the Air Force and the Army. In my experience airmen bitch way more than soldiers. And I'm sure Marines bitch less than either the Air Force or the Army. So it just makes sense that the bitchiest country on the planet would have the most food the best healthcare and and still think the world is coming to an end.

If you still believe that you are stuck in the worst place in the history of the world in the hopeless situation please shut off your television and turn off talk radio and ignore Facebook for a while. Read what life was like in Moscow in 1937 or in Berlin in 1945 or in Beijing in 1970 or in Nagasaki in 1945.  Those people could have been hopeless.  They weren't.  They rebuilt their shattered world.  

Each one those places is 1000 times better than it was at its worst.  And if you are a Believer, how much worse that you profess eternal Hope and can't be as optimistic as non-believers in in the rubble of World War II.

We live in a great country and those who think otherwise should find something else to fill their fantasy life.

Protestant Palm Sunday Service at Aviation Armory

The Chaplain from the 628th Aviation Support Battalion, Captain De Vaughn-Goodwin, Conducted the Protestan Service.  SGG Mike Pavasco player Guitar.

Catholic Palm Sunday Service at Aviation Armory

The 2-104th Chaplain is Capt. Raymond LaVoie, a Catholic Chaplain.

Learning to Drive an Army Truck

Here are some shots from my last drill weekend of soldiers learning to drive the LMTV--the Army utility truck that replaced the legendary Deuce and a Half.

Drones as Anti-Terror Weapons

At dusk as I circled Ali Air Base, Iraq, on my bicycle I would first hear the model-airplane buzz and then see a Predator drone wobbling its spindly wings and landing gear as it descended slowly to the airfield.  Predators are completely unimpressive aircraft on an airstrip taking off and landing C-17 and C-130 cargo ships and every helicopter in the Army.

Buzzing slowly at take-off and landing they do not look like the best anti-terror weapon, but they are.

Cruising at 84mph with a top speed of 135mph they barely seem to move as they hover over a target area, scanning with cameras and waiting to launch a HellFire missile.  It is just that slow moving scan and precise targeting that makes Predator attacks the opposite of terror strikes.

Terrorists choose a target that will get attention, not caring who is killed.  American terrorist Timothy McVeigh killed babies in a nursery in order to strike back in his demented way against the government.  Arab terrorists wipe out markets full of women and children--Arab women and children.

Against this indiscriminate horror, the Predator waits to find and identify the cowards who send kids to blow themselves up.  The leaders of Al-Qaeda and other terror groups get targeted where they live.  When the terrorist gets into a car the Predator is cruising in the air, the pilot (far away on the ground) waiting for his target to move away from other people to give him a clear shot.

When the target is clear of other people, the pilot launches a HellFire missile.  The HellFire travels at Mach 1.3, faster than the speed of sound.  The target never hears the missile as it flies into his Toyota Land Cruiser at nearly 1000mph.  Everyone for miles around the target heard the missile break the sound barrier as it flew on its one-way mission.  The terrorist and his entourage are dead.  Everyone in the area knows who got killed and why.

The man who killed randomly is killed precisely.  The man willing to kill innocent people and hide among other innocent people is killed precisely and instantly.  I have heard ill-informed drone critics say HellFire missiles "Rain down" on a target.  They don't.  The missiles don't rain down, they strike like Zeus hurling a thunderbolt--precise and deadly.


Our government is responsible for where and when drones are used and I trust our government to use them wisely.  And when I hear that one of our enemies is killed by a drone, I think immediately of how many American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen could have risked their lives to do the same job.

You Go Drones!!!!

Making a New Friend in a Locker Room

When I got home last night I said exactly that to my wife:  "I made a new friend in the YMCA locker room tonight."

After many years of listening to my jokes, she was waiting for a punch line.  But it was not a joke.

And she thought I made this friend in a "Very Neil" way.

I stopped at the YMCA to swim after driving back from Philadelphia.  The pool is not very crowded after 9 pm, so I swam my exhausting 300 yards--my next post will be how hard it is to learn how to swim at 60 years old.

After swimming I went to the locker room to change.  There was no one in my section of the locker room, but across the row of lockers another guy was changing and playing Rap music on his iPhone.  In three months of going to the Y I never heard anyone play music in the locker room.  I didn't want to hear his music and I had my iPhone, so I started listening to my current audiobook:  The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  It is read by a guy with a British accent.

A couple of minutes later, another swimmer opened a locker near mine to get changed.  I shut off the audiobook.  He asked "Was that a British recording?"  I told him what it was.  He said he went to high school with a girl who married Solzhenitsyn's son.  I asked if it was the son who plays the piano.  He said yes and as we got dressed to leave we started talking about Russian lit, Medieval lit. and science education.

We kept talking outside.  It was a lot of fun to meet a guy half my age who has read Tolstoy and wants to read Dante.

It was a great way to end an evening--thanks in part to Rap music.

Not Going to Afghanistan

As some of you know, I had some hope of deploying one more time with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

That will not be happening.

As you may have heard in the State of the Union message, the number of troops in Afghanistan is being cut more rapidly than the original plan.  The unit I was going to go with is not going.  And at my very advanced age even the most hawkish in Congress could not start a war fast enough for me to deploy again--at least let's all hope so.

But it is not like I will be bored. Yesterday I heard from Xavier on Facebook. Xavier is the 14-year-old from Haiti we hope to adopt. The paperwork on the adoption is stuck in the bottomless morass of Haitian government bureaucracy. Haiti combines Carribean urgency with French bureaucratic efficiency. He can only get on facebook occasionally, but it was nice to chat with him.

If you pray, please pray for Xavier and his orphanage.