Tag Archives: military

national news

Highway memorials: What are their stories?

TULSA, Okla. — As my wife and I have trekked across the western half of the United States I am struck by something I have seen all along the way.

Many sections of interstate and intrastate highways have signs honoring individuals’ memories. They usually are police officers or state troopers or are military men and women.

We settled into this city for a couple of nights after traveling along a stretch of U.S. 169 that contained in the span of about five or six miles four signs identifying four individuals after whom the highway is named.

I see the signs and wonder: What are the stories behind these people? Why do states or local governments choose to honor them? What did they do to earn this eternal memorial?

Hey, I am just a curious American motorist who wants to know things such as this.

This country has turned an important corner over the past two or three decades in honoring the men and women who serve in our nation’s military, as well as those who suit up to protect and serve as members of our law enforcement network.

Why not erect historical plaques near the signs identifying these individuals that would explain to motorists who would be interested to stop and read them just why the highway carries an individual’s name?

Texas does a wonderful job of placing historical markers along its tens of thousands of miles of highway. It doesn’t explain to motorists why some stretches of highways carry signs honoring the memories of law enforcement and military personnel.

Our nation was built by heroes. I suspect all the individuals whose names are on those signs have committed acts of heroism that cost them their lives.

I would like to know their stories.

military news

Transgender ban: lesson in bald-faced bigotry

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Donald John Trump sought ways to avoid serving in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. He succeeded through a series of deferments that prevented Uncle Sam from drafting him into the service.

So now, decades later, the president wants to deny a group of Americans who seek to volunteer to serve their country and possibly die in that service the ability to perform their patriotic duty.

This is an exercise in bigotry against transgender Americans.

The president has issued a blanket ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military. He now wants the U.S. Supreme Court to fast-track the issue to a hearing before the court. He expects the court will rule in his favor and uphold the ban.

Donald Trump is pandering to his base. Period. That is precisely what is happening here. The Trump base of voters want to deny transgender individuals the opportunity to serve their country. Whatever the base wants, Trump wants.

The rest of us, those who believe that the transgender ban is discriminatory on its face do not matter one bit to this president.

Trump maintains some bogus notion that the medical costs of allowing transgender personnel to serve is too much for the Pentagon to bear. He ignores the reality that the Pentagon spends more on men’s erectile dysfunction than it would spend on those who are undergoing changes in their gender.

I don’t know what the Supreme Court will do. Just maybe, even with its conservative majority, the high court can rule that the transgender ban deprives the United States military of individuals who already have served with distinction . . . and will do so far into the future.

The ban is discriminatory on its face.

military news, national news, political news

So many Trump insult targets … where to begin?

trump-military

Donald J. Trump’s insult-fueled rise to the Republican Party’s presidential nomination makes observers like me torn as to which one of the insults causes the most disgust.

I’ll comment today on the invective he has hurled at our military establishment.

Trump continually calls our military a “disaster.” He laments what he calls a failed foreign policy and the allegation that “we don’t win anymore.”

Two points need attention.

One of them is that Trump has no military service in his record. He doesn’t have any real understanding of military life, of military chain of command, of the stresses associated with serving during a time of war, let alone in a war zone.

To be fair, Barack Obama has no military experience, either. Nor does Hillary Rodham Clinton, the current Democratic Party presidential nominee. Then again, they have nothing but high praise for the men and women who serve in our military.

That this kind of criticism would fly out of the mouth of someone who sought multiple deferments during the Vietnam War disgusts me in the extreme.

The second point of contention is that I have several members of my family  who’ve served in the military during the past two decades. A young cousin served in the Navy; another first cousin of mine is currently serving in the Army — and has gone through several deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan; a young nephew of mine saw heavy combat during one of his two tours in Iraq while he served with an Army armored unit that breached the Iraqi frontier at the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003; and another nephew is currently serving in the U.S. Air Force.

They all have served — right along with their fellow servicemen and women — with honor.

I resent highly any inference from a presidential candidate that their service has been a “disaster.”

And yet this clown’s insults fly over the heads of supporters who hear him utter them, and which — in my view — defame the very men and women he seeks to lead as their commander in chief.

Go figure.