Saturday, April 4, 2026
1949 The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., establishing NATO
1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis; riots broke out in over 100 cities in the United States
1984 Winston Smith in Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" began his secret diary in defiance of the totalitarian government of Oceania
1990 King Baudouin of Belgium, a devout Catholic, stepped down as monarch for 36 hours to avoid signing a bill legalizing abortion
2024 Joe Biden warned Benjamin Netanyahu that the US could shift its policy if Israel did not address humanitarian concerns in Gaza and work towards a ceasefire
2025 China responded to Donald Trump's tariffs with a 34% reciprocal tariff on imports of American goods. Over the past two days, the S&P 500 was down over 10%.
In bed at 9, awake at 3:30, up at 4:20. 148/84/32.115 205.6. 41/34/51/35 Rain, rain, rain. 0.4 in last 24 hrs., 0.2 expected in next 24
Morning meds at 8:15 a.m. Ranolazine at 5:30 a.m. and 6:25 p.m.
Facebook post this morning:
I'm thinkng of Trump and Hegseth seeking a "defense" budget of $1.5 trillion dollars next year, and our war-of-choice in Iran costing us a couple billion dollars a day, and of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Chance for Peace" speech delivered on April 16, 1953, when I was 12 years old. Eisenhower said:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This is the way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
How far our nation has fallen in my lifetime.
I'm doing a lot of thinking about the downed F-15 airman in Iran, and thinking of my college and NROTC friend Jay Forrest Tremblay and my Vietnam friend Bill "Moon" Mullen. Jay was a Navy pilot during the Vietnam war. operating off a carrier and flying a mission over North Vietnam when he strayed into China and was shot down. He was listed as MIA for many years, until his remains were recovered from China and properly identified. "Moon" was a Marine A-4 Skyhawk pilot serving as the G-2 othe Headquarters Squadron of the 1st Marine Air Wing in Danang when I served as a Senior Air Director in the Wing's Tactical Air Control Center, part of G-3. We didn't work directly together during working hours, but we spent many evenings togeths in the Officers' Club. Though his primary job was in the Wing's G-2 section, he continued to fly bombing and close support missions with one of the A-4 squadrons depoloyed to Danang and ChuLai. I learned that he had been had been shot down after I had been transferred from the TACC center to Marine Air Control Squadron 6 in northern Okinawa. It was an infantry training base and a training way-station for Marine infantry units deploying from the U.S. to Vietnam. I devoted a chapter of my memoir to my months on Okinawa, including this about "Moon" Mullen:
Camp Schwab was much like a boot camp with constant activity, intense training and physical conditioning and a lot of troop movement and shouting. There was much less chickenshit than in boot camp but much more focus on life and death stuff: weapons training, tactical maneuvers and communications. The grunts were too busy to pay any attention to us wing wipers who ran the base and we stayed as far away from them as we could. They were a rough bunch. Their intensity and focus and their gung ho attitude were a far remove from the cynicism and jadedness of those of us who had recently returned from Vietnam. We were doing our best to forget what they were anticipating.
At the beginning of May, the war became more personal to those of us who had come to Camp Schwab from the wing headquarters in DaNang. We received news that our friend Bill “Moon” Mullen had been shot down over Laos. The American government refused to admit that we were conducting operations in Laos but we all knew it. The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through Laos and our aircraft regularly bombed it. On April 29th, 1966, Moon flew an A4E to a bombing mission in the most heavily defended area of the trail, the area around the Mia Gia Pass. His plane was the last in the formation. It was hit by anti-aircraft fire as he pulled away from the target. The plane went down, but the other pilots picked up radio beeper signals from the ground where his plane went down. The circling pilots radioed instruction to him, which he complied with, indicating he had ejected safely. Soon, the radio on the ground was still active, but instructions from the air were not being followed. It appeared Moon had died or lost consciousness or had been captured or killed. He was never found. It was never learned whether he had been captured or killed or died from injuries from the anti-aircraft fire or the ejection. The 1973 Paris treaty provided for return of POWs held by the VC and by North Vietnam, but not those held by Laotian communists. In 1994, I ran my fingers over his name on the Vietnam Wall in Washington. He is still listed as among the ‘missing.’
Moon Mullen was well liked and highly respected by all of us in the headquarters squadron in DaNang. He regularly flew missions with his old A4 squadron based in Chu Lai though he was assigned to the Intelligence section of Wing headquarters. Unlike some others, he never looked down his nose on those of us who were not aviators. He was a captain and a few years older than most of us. He had just turned 31 when he was shot down; most of us were first lieutenants in our mid 20s. When we could talk him into it, ‘by popular demand,’ Moon would stand up next to the bar or his table at the officers’ club and sing, always the same song –
Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,
It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,
It’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,—
Oh, Danny boy, O Danny boy, I love you so!
But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Avè there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!
When Moon sang Danny Boy, we all shut up. The juke box would be turned down or unplugged and the Righteous Brothers, Simon and Garfunkle and the Mamas and Papas would give way to Moon Mullen, a capella.
I suspect most, perhaps all of us thought Moon was probably dead; I did. We may have even hoped that he was dead rather than living as a captive in a cave in a mountain in Laos or sick and abused in a jungle prison. I don’t know what we thought because we did not talk about it. We didn’t talk about it, but we all thought about it, about him. We thought of him as we drank each night at the officers’ club. We thought of him as we watched the gung ho grunts go through their training before heading south, some to die, some to lose limbs, some perhaps to be among the missing, most to return alive but messed up in their heads and hearts to one degree or another. I think of Moon every time I hear Danny Boy. For many years, I hated to hear the song. My eyes would start burning when I heard it, especially the lyrics If I am dead, as dead I well may be, Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying . . .” It would take me a while to ‘come back’ after hearing it and I never sang it, though it had been one of my favorites before May, 1966.
I think Moon Mullen was for us emblematic of the ambiguous character of the war itself. He was neither alive nor dead, just ‘missing.’ He went down in a country (of sorts) where our government wouldn’t even admit we were fighting, though every Tom, Dick and Harry knew we were. The terrain he was bombing was not land that we would ever in any sense ‘take’ or ‘capture’ or ‘seize’ or ‘hold.’ It would be used for years as a principal line of communication and logistics between North Vietnam and forces in the south and for years pilots would fly missions trying to slow the flow of men and materials southward and for years pilots would be shot down over that land. Indeed, when Nixon’s so-called ‘peace with honor’ was negotiated in Paris in 1973, there was no written agreement for the identification and repatriation or return of the bodies of pilots shot down over Laos. The treaty only bound “the parties hereof and the signatories hereto,” which did not include the government of Laos which was not ‘officially’ involved in the war. What happened to Moon Mullen and his family, the long, inconclusive waiting, the deceptions, the ultimate loss, was a microcosm of what was happening to American, and to Vietnam. I believe we knew that as we poisoned ourselves at the club each night and as we looked on those infantry Marines so intensely preparing for what awaited them in Vietnam. More Danny Boys, more Moons.
GOING AFTER CACCIATO
Tim O’Brien
They did not know even the simple things: a sense of victory, or satisfaction, or necessary sacrifice. They did not know the feeling of taking a place and keeping it, securing a village and then raising the flag and calling it a victory. No sense of order or momentum. No front, no rear, no trenches laid out in neat parallels. No Patton rushing for the Rhine, no beachheads to storm and win and hold for the duration. They did not have targets. They did not have a cause. They did not know if it was a war of ideology or economics or hegemony or spite. On a given day, they did not know where they were in Quang Ngai, or how being there might influence larger outcomes. They did not know the names of most villages. They did not know what villages were critical. They did not know strategies. They did not know the terms of the war, its architecture, the rules of fair play. When they took prisoners, which was rare, they did not know the questions to ask, whether to release a suspect or beat on him. They did not know how to feel. Whether, when seeing a dead Vietnamese, to be happy or sad or relieved; whether, in times of quiet, to be apprehensive or content; whether to engage the enemy or elude him. They did not know how to feel when they saw villages burning. Revenge? Loss? Peace of mind or anguish? They did not know. They knew the old myths about Quang Ngai – tales passed down from old timer to newcomer – but they did not know which stories to believe. Magic, mystery, ghosts and incense, whispers in the dark, strange tongues and strange smells, uncertainties never articulated in war stories, emotion squandered on ignorance. They did not know good from evil.
Around the time I found out about Moon, I received orders back to the States, to I&I (Inspector-Instructor) duty with a reserve unit near Philadelphia. I would leave Okinawa on June 10, 1966, a little less than a year after I had arrived at Iwakuni. The normal Far East tour was 13 months; I was going home a month early because they needed me at my next duty station. If Moon Mullen had had the same good fortune, he would not have been on his mission over Laos on April 29th. He was shot down only two weeks before the date on which he was to return to the States. I am reminded of John Kennedy’s wisdom:
There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in war and some men are wounded, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It’s very hard in military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.
It's almost painful now to reread Tim O'Brien eloquent words about the profound ambiguity about the Vietnam war and how it was fought and why it was fought. I think of course of our military men and women fighting the Iran War and wonder what they are feeling about its ambiguity. To Pete Hegseth, it is a Holy War, a Crusade against "barbaric savages," using unusually harsh, absolutist, and often religiously charged language. He has vowed to unleash “overwhelming and punishing violence" . . . against those "who deserve no mercy," whom our military forces will "hunt you down and kill you." Although President Trump has said that the Iranian people are "great." he threatens not merely to destroy their life- sustaining infrastructure, but "obliteration like you've never seen before" and "We're going to bomb them back to the Stone Ages where they belong." Most recently, he posted on Truth Social: Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out - 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!" All this while never presenting a clear and prioritized picture of what his main goal is or goals are. What are our troops to make of this? Not only the pilots and crews flying missions over Iran, but the Marines and paratroopers on their way there, to do what? Is this the kind of action they volunteered for? Is this the hill they are really willing to die on? The cause worth sacrificing their lives for? Do they have a greater belief in the rightness of this war than about 2/3rds of the American public, who do not believe in it?
Because of my year as a Casualty Assistance Calls Officer in the Philadelphi area, I think especially of the families of all those servicemen and women, and most especially of the mothers and fathers, and of wives like Barbara Mullen. Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing . . .
From last year's journal on this date:
Republicans are busy blaming China, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries for cheating the United States by producing goods for American consumers. It wasn't these countries who were pounding on Congressional doors to pass NAFTA and other trade agreements so jobs could be shipped overseas; it was American capitalist corporations looking to lower the labor costs of their products. It's been the same since the start of the Industrial Revolution, with management always trying to reduce labor costs and maximize profits. The great Chinese manufacturing behemoth was created not only by the Chinese communists but also by American capitalists. Ditto Vietnam's position as America's 7th largest "trading partner." Ditto Mexico's maquiladoras. They couldn't exist without Western (mainly American) corporate capitalists feeding them. Now Trump and his Republican toadies and cronies accuse the creatures American capitalitst created and nourished of 'cheaing, robbing, looting, pillaging, raping, and plundering" us' poor Americans, 54% tariff on China. The loss of Milwaukee's great manufacturing business shouldn't be blamed on foreign competition but on domestic corporations' eternal quest for cheap labor.
Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday
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