Tag Archives: Vietnam War

State news

What a way to go, Mr. President

lbj

STONEWALL, Texas — My wife and I came to this place expecting to be moved in some fashion.

Neither of us expected precisely what we felt when we walked up to this family plot on the sprawling LBJ ranch, which the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the National Park Service have turned into a national historic site.

The cemetery lies under a grove of live oaks. It’s got a few headstones. The tallest two grave markers belong to President Lyndon Baines Johnson and first lady Lady Bird Johnson.

It was the circumstances of the president’s death that struck me the most today as we paid our respects to the late former first couple.

My wife marveled at the peace and serenity of the place. She said — only half-jokingly, I believe — that she “wouldn’t mind” being buried there. It won’t happen, obviously.

But later on our tour of the ranch, we heard from a young guide — who admitted he was born in 1991, 28 years after LBJ’s death — about how the president was able to go out “on his own terms.”

Johnson’s presidency perhaps killed him. I remember how he had aged in the more than five years he served as president. He’d had two heart attacks already, the first one coming in 1955 when he was just 47 years of age.

The Vietnam War raged throughout his presidency — which began, of course, under the enormous weight of international tragedy, the assassination of President Kennedy.

Johnson would win election in the 1964 landslide. Then he would become the target of intense national anger over the conduct of the war he inherited from his predecessor.

He left office in January 1969 and returned to the place along the Pedernales River that formed his character.

The young guide informed us how LBJ — once he settled in back at the ranch — resumed his smoking habits, dragging on Lucky Strike; he drank too much; he ate all the foods he wasn’t supposed to eat, given his history of heart trouble.

Then, just four years and two days after leaving the White House, the fatal heart attack struck him. He phoned his Secret Service garrison the moment he felt it coming on and told them, “Get in here, boys; something bad is happening.”

He died essentially in his bedroom.

President Johnson was just 64 years old when he died. But he was an old 64.

They buried him under the live oaks about 200 yards from where he came into this world in a modest home that’s been reconstructed.

My thought as we left that place today? What a way to go, Mr. President.

 

national news, political news

Trump: Military school was like serving in military

donald-trump-1a64c2eda04ee51d

Do you remember when Donald Trump chided Sen. John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War?

He said that McCain is a “hero” only because he was taken prisoner by North Vietnam. “I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump said.

He did not know what he was talking about.

Now comes a biography about Trump in which he says that his enrollment in a pricey military prep school was just like serving in the military.

Here’s a flash for Trump: No. It’s not.

Trump got deferments throughout the Vietnam War, which in some circles would classify him as a “chicken hawk.” He was sent to New York Military Academy to correct some behavioral issues, according to the book titled “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success.”

Did it work? Well, that might remain an open question.

But to suggest that a military school gives one the same training as the actual military is pure hooey.

Why? Because high school military cadets do not face the prospect of going to war upon completion. Therein lies arguably the difference between what Trump went through as a child and what actual war heroes — such as John McCain — went through upon graduation from one of the nation’s service academies.

It’s at best a stretch to equate one’s military school upbringing to what actual soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines went through.

Actual veterans — notably some of us who actually went to war while Trump sat it out — well might take offense at what they’ll read when “Never Enough” hits the book shelves later this month.

 

 

International news

Powell endorses Iran nuclear deal

colin-powell

In another era, an endorsement of a controversial foreign policy agreement by Colin Powell might carry some weight among other members of Powell’s political party.

It won’t this time. In fact, and you might have to wait for it, you well could hear someone suggest that Powell’s endorsement doesn’t matter at all because he endorsed Barack Obama’s two successful elections as president of the United States.

Does it matter, though, that the former secretary of state remains a loyal Republican? Oh … maybe. Then again, maybe not.

Powell said today on “Meet the Press”: “The great concern from the opposition is that we’re leaving open a lane for Iran to create a nuclear weapon in 10 to 15 years. The reality is that they have been on a super highway for the last 10 years to create a nuclear weapon … with no speed limit.”

He said he’s studied the deal in detail, pored over it thoroughly and has concluded that this agreement is better than what we had before, which was nothing.

The retired four-star U.S. Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calls the agreement brokered by the Obama administration a “pretty good deal.”

It’s not perfect, he said. But he’ll settle gladly for a diplomatic solution over a military one.

Given that he’s endured combat — serving two tours of duty as an infantry officer during the Vietnam War — I’ll accept his endorsement.

national news, political news

One’s own words taste badly

donald-trump

Have you ever noticed that the taste of your own words is, well, quite bitter?

You want to spit them back. But you can’t. You have to ingest them and they sit in the pit of your stomach like the proverbial rock.

I’m having to do some of that these days as I look upon the Republican Party presidential field and wonder: How is it that Donald Trump remains such a commanding figure in that field?

I made a prediction earlier this summer that I am now having to choke down.

  • I said Trump’s campaign had ended effectively after he denigrated John McCain’s Vietnam War service and the heroism he demonstrated while being held as a prisoner of war for more than five years.

“I like people who aren’t captured, OK?” Trump said.

It was tasteless.

What happened then? His poll numbers went up!

  • Then came the GOP joint appearance with nine other candidates. Fox News’s Megyn Kelly asked Trump to react to suggestions that he is anti-woman, that he’s made highly offensive remarks about women, calling them all kinds of unflattering names. “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump said.

After the event, he went after Kelly, demanding she apologize to him. For what?  For asking a perfectly legitimate question?

That would doom his candidacy, or so I thought. Silly me. His poll standing went up even more.

  • He held a rally and started criticizing a close aide of Hillary Clinton and called her husband — former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner — a “perv” and a “world-class sleazebag.” Yes, Weiner — aka “Carlos Danger” — who sent images of his manhood to women other than his wife behaved in a disgusting manner.
  • Then he stumbled over a question from well-regarded conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt about the leader of a terrorist organization. He then accused Hewitt of tossing a “gotcha” question at him and went on TV the next morning to call Hewitt a “third-rate radio announcer.”

At every turn, Trump’s answers to problems have been shallow, callow and hollow. He has presented nothing — not a single thing — of substance.

But his poll numbers? They keep going up.

Yep, this might be the year when conventional wisdom — which usually requires some actual seriousness from candidates for the presidency of the United States is tossed aside.

That means folks like yours truly are going to choke on their own words. I’m tellin’ ya, they don’t go down well … at all.

 

 

 

military news

Recalling a brief, but life-changing episode

ov-1dmo

Forty-five years ago today, I piled into my 1961 Plymouth Valiant — the first car I ever owned — and started the drive down Interstate 5 to my hometown of Portland, Ore.

I said “good bye” to the U.S. Army, where I had served precisely two years.

An Army acquaintance who also lived in Portland asked if he could ride along. I agreed, so we took off together from Fort Lewis, Wash.

The drive lasted only about three hours. It was uneventful. I took him to his house and then proceeded to my parents’ house in suburban east Multnomah County.

It was a heck of a two-year hitch. It was my first time away from home; it provided me with my first visit to the East Coast, where I completed my advanced individual training as an OV-1 Mohawk aircraft mechanic.

Then came a trip across the Pacific Ocean to Vietnam, where I participated for a time in a war.

I returned home and was assigned to an armored cavalry unit in Fort Lewis, where I finished my tour.

Two years … to the day!

Any regrets about any of that? No regrets, per se.

I do, though, rue somewhat a missed opportunity to see what I was really made of. I don’t talk much about it in my wife’s presence, because if I had said “yes” to this chance, our paths wouldn’t have crossed upon my return to college in January 1971.

It involved officers candidate school. Near the end of my basic training at Fort Lewis, four other guys and I received orders to report to the company commander’s office. He then told us we had tested well enough for acceptance into OCS.

He proceeded to tell us about the hell we would go through. “You think this was tough?” he said. “Wait’ll you have to go through OCS. Sixteen weeks of it.”

Well, I was in good physical and emotional condition. I felt at that moment as though I could kick the world in the backside. I was ready for anything. None of that physical stuff bothered me in the least.

Then came the deal-breaker. He told us we would have to commit to two years as a commissioned officer upon completion of our training. I rolled that around. That meant I’d be in the Army another four months longer than I had planned.

I turned to the Old Man and said, “No thank you, sir.”

That was that. Yes, I have wondered about the kind of officer I would have become. I believe I’d have been a good one … but that’s just me.

I finished my time and returned home a good bit different — and a lot better — than I was when I left the house in the wee hours of the morning two years earlier.

Time has flown by ever since and life has been so very good.

 

national news, political news

Trump continues to confound

So help me, I was certain that Donald Trump sank his presidential campaign when he made light of John McCain’s heroic service during the Vietnam War.

It didn’t happen.

I was certain that he would implode during that first Republican joint appearance with nine other “leading” GOP candidates.

That didn’t happen, either.

Then he got into that public feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly over that ghastly remark he made about the source of “the blood.”

Hey, no problem.

Trump said “I’ll build a wall” to keep illegal immigrants from entering the U.S. through its southern border. Yep, he’s going to do all this all by his ownself.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on this stuff.

The latest poll numbers show that Trump is putting some distance between himself and the rest of the GOP field — which comprises some serious, intelligent and accomplished individuals.

What in the world is happening here? Have we become so celebrity conscious that we (meaning the Republican Party’s most faithful voters) place celebrity above actual knowledge of things, such as, say, the limits of the office at stake?

Trump is sounding like someone who wants to take singular control of the federal government. All those first-person singular references to all the action he intends to take suggest he doesn’t understand that the U.S. Constitution inhibits the power of the presidency.

Checks and balances, Donald?

The current president, Barack Obama, has used his own executive authority rationally and in accordance with the law … and yet we keep hearing from GOP leaders about the “lawlessness” they insist pervades the Obama administration.

Just wait’ll they see what a President Trump might try … not that it’ll matter to them.

And yet the man continues to set the pace in a field of highly qualified GOP contenders.

What in the world gives?

 

political news

Trump still in front … but only for now?

Of all the moments worth mentioning from Thursday night’s Republican Party Top 10 debate, one — in my mind — stands out dramatically.

It involves Fox News moderator Chris Wallace and, you guessed it, Donald Trump.

I give Wallace great credit for seeking a specific answer to a specific allegation that Trump has leveled at Mexico’s government, which is that the Mexican government is “sending” illegal immigrants across the border, into the United States, where they are raping and murdering Americans.

Twice last night he sought some specifics from Trump, who early in the morning after the debate remains — I’m betting — the GOP frontrunner.

When he failed to provide specifics to the first question, Wallace gave him another 30 seconds to specify what proof Trump had to back up his allegation.

Trump finally said he’d “been to the border last week” and talked to Border Patrol officers who told him “that’s what is going on down there, whether you like it or not.”

So. There you have it.

Border Patrol agents told him. That means it’s true, yes?

It was an entertaining and edifying exchange between a loudmouth entertainer seeking the presidency of the United States of America and a moderator seeking some detail in one of the more outrageous allegations that has come from a candidate’s mouth.

And yet, this guy somehow is getting away with this stuff?

I’m going to stand by my belief that Trump’s candidacy likely died when he made light of Sen. John McCain’s Vietnam War record. Events such as what we heard when Chris Wallace asked him twice to provide proof of a claim that Mexico’s government is “sending” illegal immigrants into the United States only highlights Trump’s unfitness for public office.

The big question remains: When will the GOP faithful realize it, too?

national news, political news

Cornyn is correct; Cruz is, um, incorrect

John Cornyn knows how the U.S. Senate functions.

He’s been serving there for some time now as a Republican from Texas.

His whipper-snapper colleague, fellow Republican Ted Cruz, doesn’t know how it works quite so well.

Accordingly, Cornyn took Cruz to task for the attack he leveled at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Cruz did so in a speech on the Senate floor in which he called McConnell a liar.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/26/cruz-and-cornyn-engage-senate-floor/

McConnell had allowed a vote on the Export-Import Bank, which Cruz and some other Senate conservatives want to eliminate. McConnell, R-Ky., allegedly had promised that a vote wouldn’t occur. Cruz took him to task for it and then decided to say out loud what he could have said in private, which is that McConnell can’t be trusted to keep his word.

Enter the senior senator from Texas, Cornyn.

“I have listened to the comments of my colleague, the junior senator from Texas, both last week and this week, and I would have to say that he is mistaken,” Cornyn said, adding that McConnell did not deceive any senator with his fancy procedural footwork. According to the Texas Tribune: “If the majority leader had somehow misrepresented to 54 senators what the facts are with regards to the Ex-Im Bank, I would suspect that you would find other voices joining that of the junior senator, but I hear no one else making such a similar accusation.”

“There was no misrepresentation made by the majority leader on the Ex-Im Bank,” Cornyn added.

I continue to believe that Cruz — who’s also running for president — hit the floor of the Senate when he took office aiming to make a name for himself. He’s done so quite nicely and along the way incurred the wrath of his GOP colleagues, not to mention the Democrats with whom he must work.

Remember, during former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing, when Cruz questioned out loud whether Hagel — a former Republican senator from Nebraska and a decorated Vietnam War combatant — was taking money under the table from North Korea? That line of attack drew a sharp rebuke from another noted Vietnam War combatant, Republican Sen. John McCain, who scolded the freshman for impugning Hagel’s patriotism and integrity.

Now the senator who wants to be president has been lectured by his fellow Texan about the rules of the Senate.

You just don’t call another senator — let alone the majority leader — a liar.

media news, national news, political news

Thicken your skin, Donald; it’s going to get worse

Let’s see if I have this right.

Donald Trump enters the Republican Party presidential primary field and immediately rakes Mexican illegal immigrants over the coals and then says Sen. John McCain isn’t a real war hero because, as Trump said, he likes “people who weren’t captured” by the enemy in wartime.

Then the Des Moines Register, Iowa’ leading newspaper, publishes a scathing editorial urging Trump to withdraw from the campaign. He called Trump an embarrassment to the Republican Party.

And then Trump bans the Register from covering a campaign event in Iowa.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-bans-des-moines-register-from-iowa-campaign-event-120615.html

And why? Because the Register was offering an opinion on the state of play in the GOP and Trump’s role in this campaign. That’s part of the paper’s mission, its franchise, its duty to those who read the publication.

Trump, though, just didn’t like the editorial. So, he decided to kick the paper out of his campaign event.

Wow! This is getting really, really fun to watch.

Trump’s got to get some thicker skin. Hey, he says he’s the master of the universe — or words more or less to that effect. Does the Man Who Can Fix Any Problem on Earth really have to react so badly because a newspaper is performing its duty?

I would think one with the clout that Trump proclaims wouldn’t have to worry about what a measly little media outlet would have to say about him.

This campaign is shaping up already as an amazing sideshow of insults, gotchas, payback and political stunt work.

Good grief! Those Iowa caucuses are still months away.

Donald, you need to toughen up. It’s only going to get worse.

media news, national news, political news

Trump is driving the media crazy

Donald Trump is confounding everyone who observes politics for a living … or for a hobby.

The most profound impact might be on the media and how they seek to cover this guy.

The New York Times has published an interesting analysis of the media coverage of this individual’s amazing rise to the top of the political heap.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump%e2%80%99s-wealth-and-poll-numbers-complicate-news-media%e2%80%99s-coverage/ar-AAdtnhP

It notes that his wealth and poll numbers are giving the media fits as they try to make sense of what this person means to the 2016 race for the presidency. Is he for real? Is he a showman who is seeking to elevate his real brand, which is as a reality-TV huckster? Or is this guy really in it for the long haul, seeking to change the course of American history?

Trump recently filed the financial disclosure forms needed to cement his run for the Republican presidential nomination. Some folks — me, included — thought that perhaps he wouldn’t file those forms, and that his campaign would go away after a suitable amount of fanfare and rhetorical fireworks.

So, he’s taken the next step.

Trump is getting a lot of ink and air time. Some pundits on the right think the media hate this guy. I disagree.

I believe the media love him, not because he’s Donald Trump and he’s going to single-handedly “make America great again,” as he proclaims. They love him because he sells newspapers and brings viewers to TV screens.

And yes, there’s a certain entertainment value associated with this Trump’s pronouncements, not to mention the angry response he evokes from his fellow Republican presidential candidates — and from those who’ve run for the office previously; Democratic candidates and “strategists,” of course, are loving every minute of this traveling carnival.

I’m going to keep believing, though, that Trump is a flash in the pan. His comments about Sen. John McCain’s war record, I believe, were too much for many serious Americans and I’ll keep insisting that his statement making light of McCain’s five-year captivity in a North Vietnamese prison cell will become the single event that dooms his candidacy for the White House.

However, until he exits the arena, the media will keep covering him — and will keep struggling with trying to decide just how to do so.

Good luck.