1/7/24

 Tuesday, January 7, 2025

D+63

1948 Harry Truman raised taxes for the Marshall Plan to assist in rebuilding Europe after WWII 

1953 Harry Truman announced the American development of the hydrogen bomb

1972 Lewis F. Powell Jr. became a US Supreme Court Justice

1980 Jimmy Carter signed legislation to bail out the Chrysler Corporation with a 1.5 billion dollar loan

1999 Bill Clinton's impeachment trial began in the Senate after the House impeached him for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky

2021 Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, became the world's richest person, worth $186 billion, overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos

2022 Three men were convicted of murdering black jogger Ahmaud Arbery and sentenced to life in prison in a Georgia court

In bed at 9:20, awake and up at 4:10, after dreaming of George W. Bush during the night.  14° and 3° wind chill outside. Geri got up at 6:45 and I fell asleep on the recliner until 8:10, dreaming about a Vietnam observance.

Prednisone, day 238, 7.5 mg., day 53.  Prednisone at 5.  Other meds at 9:45. 

Master Sergeant Matthew Livelsberger.  In this journal on January 4th, I wrote

Nota bene.  Special Forces Master Sergeant Matthew Livelsberger, who shot himself as he blew up the Tesla cybertruck he was in in Las Vagas this week, wrote in a note "“Why did I personally do it now? I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”  How much attention will be devoted to his need to "relieve myself of the the burden of the lives I took"?  What lives did he take during his time in the Army?  On his three tours in Afghanistan?  Elsewhere?  How did he take them?  What were the circumstances?  We have to believe that information about his service, including combat deaths he was involved in, is available in his Army records or from interviews of fellow Special Forces soldiers he served with.  Will the Army look into this?  Will anyone in the Mainstream News Media?  Anyone?  

Of all places, yesterday's Wall Street Journal has at least made a start. 

Livelsberger also seemed haunted by what he had witnessed during his deployments, and in the last days of his life sought to call attention to what he said were “war crimes.” He reached out to several veterans with prominent social-media platforms or podcasts, saying he wanted to blow the whistle on a 2019 U.S. strike in Afghanistan that killed at least 30 civilians. 

A U.N. report described the U.S. strike in Nimruz province, which was targeting a drug facility, as unlawful. In his message, Livelsberger said he conducted targeting for over 60 buildings “that killed hundreds of civilians in a single day.” 

“I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost,” he wrote, “and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”

I wonder whether there are many American military men and women,, currently serving or veterans, who feel "the burden of the lives I took."  I wonder when I started to feel the burden.  It came to me later in life.  I didn't feel it while I was in Vietnam, except for the crew of the C-130  refueler shot down after some confusion during a shift change involving my crew at the TACC.  The mission of F-4s that were scheduled to be refueled by the 130 was canceled and the word never got to the 130.  There was no culpability found on anyone's part, but I felt some and remember it now almost 60 years later.  But I don't remember feeling any "burden" from the Vietnamese lives that were taken by our lethal operations in North and South Vietnam.  I moved from the tent I lived in for about 6 months into a corrugated steel Quonset hut, where someone had placed a sign over the entry door: "Better dead than Red."  Did I feel that way?  I had voted for Goldwater in 1964, the year before I went to Vietnam.  Goldwater was a strong supporter of the war and urged a stronger military effort than Johnson and McNamara were making, even the use of nuclear weapons if necessary.  He saw Vietnam as a vital part of the worldwide fight against communism, the Cold War.  Did I feel that way?  On June 8, 1967, one week after I was discharged from the Marine Corps, 400 buses brought over 30,000 protestors from New York City to the White House.  The Johnson family acknowledged that they could hear the protests from inside the White House. The chant, “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” was particularly hard to ignore.  Much of the killing occurred from the air, from missions out of DaNang dropping high explosive bombs, napalm, white phosphorus, and Agent Orange.  Did I feel the burden of all that killing in 1967?  What I remember now is being emotionally numb in those years after I left Vietnam, deep down depressed, withdrawn, right up to April 30, 1975, when the Marine helicopters lifted terrified Vietnamese off rooftops in Saigon.  Did I become more conscious of the burden of my participation in the war when Andy started dating and ultimately married Anh?  When I had Vietnamese in-laws?  Grandchildren?  I felt the burden more intensely when Russia invaded Ukraine, bringing home to me the fact that we invaded Vietnam.  Putin and his people didn't like it that Ukraine was moving closer to the West; the United States powers didn't like it that Vietnam might be moving closer to China and Russia.  Putin invaded in a 'special military operation", LBJ invaded under the pretext of 'helping a small democracy's struggle for freedom.'

    Back to Master Sergeant Livelsberger:  he claimed to have helped in targeting buildings destroyed on May 9, 2019, in Nimruz province.  The buildings, or some of them, were involved in the opium trade.  The US claimed that the Taliban profited from the opium trade, but so did the Afghan government supported by the US.  Opium poppies were a cash crop in Afghanistan, providing a livelihood for a great many Afghans.  Earlier in the war, U.S. troops had realized that they had to leave opium farms alone to gain Afghan farmers' trust.  In any case, quaere whether, in Afghanistan, opium farmers and processors are legitimate military targets because the Taliban derive income from them, as did the Afghan government.  The attack killed an unknown number of men, women, and children, perhaps as many as 89, none of them Taliban combatants.  The buildings that Livelsberger claimed to have helped target were full of people and included residences.  In one of his emails discovered by the FBI addressed to "Dear Fellow Service Members, Veterans, and Citizens," Livelsberger "claims to have been involved in "war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the [administration, Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Administration] and CIA….The [United Nations] basically called these war crimes, but the administration made them disappear."  

    Livelsberger was another casualty of the U.S.'s 20-year folly in Afghanistan.  Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were all American tragic misadventures since America became the world's economic and military hegemon after World War II and then the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The high and mighty, the 'best and the brightest,' get us involved in these wars while guys like Master Sergeant Livelsberger fight them and live with thoughts of "the brothers I've lost" and "the burden of the lives I took."

Trump's Mar-a-Lago Press Conference today was almost beyond belief - almost.  More lies than I could count.  I have thought for awhile that Trump's second presidency will be more damaging to the country than any of us could imagine.  We on the Left and even in the middle have expected it to be terrible in terms of mass deportations, increased inflation, greater income and wealth inequality, greater annual deficits and total national debt,  loss of civil rights, abuse of power, cronyism, conflicts of interest, deregulation in areas needing regulation for public health and safety, where does the list end???  Trump declined to rule out the use of military force to acquire Greenland from Denmark and the Panama Canal from Panama (or, in his view, from China.)   

Panama Canal,; Greenland, Denmark, and NATO.  The initial commentary after the press conference was about the threat to use 'military or economic force' to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, I suspect he would use military force if he doesn't get what he wants from the Panama government.  The big question is what does he want to counter China's de facto power over traffic in the Canal.  Respecting Greenland, what is most stunning is the threat of using military force against a fellow member of NATO, a military ally and a friendly nation.  He is presumably laying the groundwork for at least hard treaty negotiations with Denmark about permanently stationing American military units and facilities in Greenland for control of opening Arctic trade routes and, in his view, preferably to outright purchase Greenland.  All of Greenland has a population of about 56,000 people, about the size of Casper, Wyoming, or 1/10th the population of the city of Milwaukee.  The United States government wants unrestricted control over Greenland at least for military, and national defense purposes and beyond that for access to its natural mineral resources.  Trump and his people have 4 years to make that happen.  One question is what pressure this effort will place on NATO unity, already stressed at least by Hungary and Turkey.  Teddy Roosevelt said "Speak softly and carry a big stick."  Trump believes in the second half of that advice, not the first.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Instagram, Meta.  Zuckerberg announced today that Facebook and Instagram will do away with fact-checkers and that we should expect a lot more harmful material to appear on these social media platforms.  Trump was informed of this during his press conference and was asked whether he thought his threats against these platforms had anything to do with this significant change.  He replied "Probably."  

lAnniversaries thoughts.  First, we have been taught that the Marshall Plan was a great charitable and magnanimous gesture by the victorious, hegemonic United States after WWII.  More than anything, it was designed to forestall the adoption of communism in Western Europe.  We forget, if we ever knew, that the communist parties in France and Italy especially were popular after the war..  Self-interest and the need to preserve capitalism drove the Marshall Plan.

Second, the U.S. led the world in developing, and spurring other nations to develop, weapons of mass destruction.

Third, Lewis Powell made it to the Supreme Court in large measure because of his memo to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, dated August 23, 1971, regarding the defense of American Capitalism.  Excerpt: 

No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.

There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.

But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.

Sources of the Attack

The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.

The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.

Moreover, much of the media — for varying motives and in varying degrees — either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these “attackers,” or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.

. . . 

We in America already have moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism, as the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. In some areas, such regulation and control already have seriously impaired the freedom of both business and labor, and indeed of the public generally. But most of the essential freedoms remain: private ownership, private profit, labor unions, collective bargaining, consumer choice, and a market economy in which competition largely determines price, quality and variety of the goods and services provided the consumer.

In addition to the ideological attack on the system itself (discussed in this memorandum), its essentials also are threatened by inequitable taxation, and — more recently — by an inflation which has seemed uncontrollable. But whatever the causes of diminishing economic freedom may be, the truth is that freedom as a concept is indivisible. As the experience of the socialist and totalitarian states demonstrates, the contraction and denial of economic freedom is followed inevitably by governmental restrictions on other cherished rights. It is this message, above all others, that must be carried home to the American people. 

Lastly,  Ahmaud Arbery was murdered outside of Brunswick, Glynn County, Georgia where I was stationed between January 21 and March 25, 1964, at the Naval Air Technical Training Center, NAS, Glynco, learning air defense control, my primary MOS or military occupational specialty, a skill I never used against enemy aircraft during my Marine Corps career.