Harsh History

Despite the best of intentions ... history is harsh.

It doesn't matter to those who died how good our intentions might have been. It doesn't matter to those left behind how we explained the decisions. When innocents die by our hand, the cost cannot be adequately justified.

There's defense of family, of community, of nation. Then there's war for empire, for ideology, for oil, for control of influence in a region.  National policy can blur ethical boundaries and drag both soldiers and citizens down into the pit.  

Whether you've been on the front line or the back line, whether you've been for or against national decisions, there's a price. Some things that touch your soul inevitably leave a wound.  For some of us, visiting the Vietnam Memorial is a blinding horror, a wound that reopens with each reminder of our brothers who served.  Even if your personal issues have been resolved, the national heart has not, and it weighs heavily on many. National recognition and acknowledgement of wrongdoing remain unaddressed.

Those who served did so nobly and deserve our respect.  Those who sent them, sometimes not so much.  Only a few people remember, Ho Chi Minh was our ally during the war in the Pacific. After the war, he asked America for help many times.  Many times.  The public wasn't told.

The French had abandoned their colony and handed it over to the Japanese early in WWII. After the war, we could have helped, but we chose to back the French colonial return to the region. We ignored the Vietnamese people and their desire to be free of colonial rule. They had declared their independence, deliberately following our example and offering to join us and the other democracies. We should have been friends and supporters. There was no public discussion, just propaganda.. More than two million Vietnamese died in the war that followed, but they needn't have.  

The following are collected at a single site, ordered by timeline.

Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, September 2, 1945

Letter to President Harry Truman, October 17, 1945 

Letter to U.S. Secretary of State, October 18, 1945 

Letter to U.S. Secretary of State, October 22, 1945 

Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 1, 1945 

Letter to President Truman, November 8, 1945 

Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 23, 1945 

Telegram to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 26, 1945 

Letter to U.S. President Truman, January 18, 1946 

Letter to President Harry Truman, February 16, 1946 

To the Governments of China, United States Of America, Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and Great-Britain. February 18, 1946 

Telegram to President Truman, February 28, 1946 

Memorandum of Discussion with Ho Chi Minh, September 12, 1946

Message to the American People, December 23, 1966

Exchange of Letters with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson

Exchange of Letters with U.S. President Richard Nixon

Or do your own research at the U.S. National Archive

Remember the draft?  Our young men were required by law to register and serve.  You could have strong convictions against the war in Vietnam, but you could be sent there to kill and die anyway.  If, like most of us back then, you couldn't escape the draft, there were a few opportunities to choose where and how you might serve, but you had to obligate yourself for years and take your chances.

I was adamantly opposed to the war, enlisted to stay ahead of the draft, and I managed to pursue a military career that didn't take me to Vietnam. My willingness to serve was derived from the Cold War, and when the Berlin Wall came down, in my heart I was released.  I'd done my part for my country and satisfied my conscience, however imperfectly.  The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened in 1982, and even though I live just an hour away, it took me 30 years to gather the strength to visit there. There are 58,195 names on that wall, but fifty times that number died in the war.

We are still engaged in foreign conflict; civilians and soldiers still die. The greater war effort today is economic, however. Military strength is tied to national economic strength, and power in the world is tied to power in the marketplace. While not openly discussed in the public forum, competition for wealth from other countries has become the goal of national economic policy.  Is this the freedom and justice for which our fathers fought?

Memorial Day is a remembrance, not a celebration.  We remember.  As always, there are deep issues to acknowledge; issues of life and loss, of justice, and of responsibility before God for our actions as a nation.  As veterans from the Vietnam War era tell us, we each bear the burden.

At some point ...

INEQUALITY is growing.  The GAP is increasing - between the rich and poor in every country and between countries.  Some say that inequality doesn’t matter as long as markets are working well.  Others argue that inequality hinders growth, or that only so much is ethically acceptable.

At some point, the death and deprivation must be attributed to more than chance.  Justice calls clearly across the years, echoed by each child denied a life of meaning, by each father unable to provide for his own family, and by each grandfather who weeps as his children's children endure the same poverty into which he was himself born.

They neither choose nor deserve the abuse they endure.  Persistent poverty is done to them.

You can change things; you really can.

Did you know that one child in five lives in poverty in the U.S.?

Did you know that an undernourished child will have health issues for the rest of their life?

Under height for age and under weight for height, signs of an inadequate diet scare the hell out of parents who are doing their best to just keep their family alive.

Change takes time and effort.  It means the whole community needs help and change, investment and assistance.  And leadership.  It means more than just sponsoring a kid for $25 a month.  :)  Do the research and get involved, get your family involved.  World Vision tops my list for effective work in communities both internationally and in the U.S.

Or you could (1) go (2) see (3) for yourself!

Persistent poverty - reference (1) (2) (3) (4)

The American Dream

So how might we have arrived at this difficult juncture?  Note the change over time.

For generations, we've worked to make a place for everyone and to provide a way forward for every family to rise up and achieve the American Dream.  We've talked about it a lot.  What happened?

So when I was a kid, there was a class of folks that didn't really have a place in an otherwise viable culture.  For regular folks, the way forward and up was just a matter of hard work and time.  Savings and equity, skills and promotions, all those built up over time; slow but sure.  For some there at the bottom of the economic ladder, however, the door was closed from the start, and it has become progressively more difficult to escape over the years.

Today, inequality has returned to the horrific levels we last saw almost a century ago.

Is it racial?  Our early awareness of immobility and inequality was racially focused.  Blacks were paid less, hired less, offered less, promoted less, welcomed less.  Despite decades of simplistic explanation, there has always been more to the problem.  "It takes money to make money," we were told, and it turned out to be surprisingly true; if you aren't rich, you aren't welcome.

For the lower economic third of Americans, the collapse of marriage, the rise of divorce, the prevalence of single parenthood, and the increases in child poverty and deprivation, all point to a larger context,  and racial categorization is just one aspect of discrimination.  Disappointing news.  We thought we were fair minded and culturally noble.

The issue is dramatically less pronounced in Sweden, in Australia, even in Canada and Japan.  So what of the American Dream?  It is less accessible, a farther horizon than it used to be, and denied to many for no legitimate reason.  The dissatisfaction expressed by those of the bottom 90% is not acknowledged by the wealthy.  Those top 10% of wealthy Americans, by the way; they're living comfortably in isolation from the real world.  They spend none of their time or energy on things which 99.96% of humanity deal with all day, every day, for a lifetime.  And, they don't understand what they've become.





Time for change, perhaps.

NSA Scandal: Update -- Obama administration issues unaddressed

Why did Snowden go public?  Why didn't he follow the available whistleblower channels up to the Inspector General's office?  Isn't that the path any reasonable employee would have taken?

“Name one whistleblower from the intelligence community whose disclosures led to real change – overturning laws, ending policies – who didn’t face retaliation as a result. The protections just aren’t there,” Snowden told the Guardian this week (22MAY16). 


"The sad reality is that going to the inspector general with evidence of truly serious wrongdoing is often a mistake." -- Edward Snowden

If you want to know why Snowden did it, you have to know the stories of two other men.

The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did. Drake was a high-ranking NSA official, and he followed the whistleblower rules.  Forwarding his concerns through official channels, he got crushed.

Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington. His warnings were valid but were largely ignored.

“The government spent many years trying to break me, and the more I resisted, the nastier they got,” Drake says of the ordeal.

Drake’s story has since been told – and it had an impact on Snowden.  He told an interviewer in 2015, “It’s fair to say that if there hadn’t been a Thomas Drake, there wouldn’t have been an Edward Snowden.”

Next is John Crane, a senior official in the Department of Defense who fought to provide fair treatment for whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake – until Crane himself was forced out of his job and became a whistleblower as well.

Crane's testimony reveals a chapter in the Snowden story – and Crane’s failed battle to protect earlier whistleblowers makes it clear that Snowden had good reasons to go public.

During dozens of hours of interviews, Crane narrated how senior Defense Department officials repeatedly broke the law to persecute Drake. First, he alleged, they revealed Drake’s identity to the Justice Department; then they withheld (and perhaps destroyed) evidence after Drake was indicted; finally, they lied about all this to a federal judge.

Snowden was unaware of the machinations inside the Pentagon, but Drake’s arrest, indictment and persecution promised trouble for any whistleblower.

“Name one whistleblower from the intelligence community whose disclosures led to real change – overturning laws, ending policies – who didn’t face retaliation as a result. The protections just aren’t there,” Snowden told the Guardian this week. “The sad reality of today’s policies is that going to the inspector general with evidence of truly serious wrongdoing is often a mistake. Going to the press involves serious risks, but at least you’ve got a chance.”

According to Thomas Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), was that he practised “civil disobedience” rather than “lawful” whistleblowing. (GAP, a non-profit group in Washington, DC, that defends whistleblowers, has represented Snowden, Drake and Crane.)

“None of the lawful whistleblowers who tried to expose the government’s warrantless surveillance – and Drake was far from the only one who tried – had any success,” Devine says. “They came forward and made their charges, but the government just said, ‘They’re lying, they’re paranoid, we’re not doing those things.’ And the whistleblowers couldn’t prove their case because the government had classified all the evidence. Snowden took the evidence with him, so when the government issued its usual denials, he produced document after document showing that they were lying.

The story of Snowden is much more complex and perhaps not worth too much attention, but the critical issue is the unlawful and unwarranted government surveillance of citizens.

The illegal activity continues generally unabated despite the administration's promise to establish oversight and appropriate constraints.

Who did this?

Census.gov (1)(2)

So things have become more difficult. Not for everyone, but certainly for those at the margin of economic viability.  Between 2006 and 2010, another ten million Americans dropped below the poverty line.  Who did this?

2014 Income

• Household income over the past seven years is 6.5 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the nation entered the most recent economic recession. (ref)

Among those affected the worst, none chose to lose their jobs or to have their hours reduced.  None chose to have their job exported overseas.  None chose to have their cost of living raised while wages remained stagnant. It was done to them, and the question on the table ... who did this?

The Great Recession was the result of twenty years or so of regulatory reform purchased by big business.  The triggers were corrupt practices by the finance industry and Wall Street.  Predatory lending, fraudulent securities, and failed government oversight, all on top of Greenspan's assurances that no one would lose so much as one dollar.  Crooked from start to finish, from Congress and the Fed, to S&P, to AIG and JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, and the revolving door at the SEC, all crooked, and the cost worldwide in human lives has been devastating.


Workers have 30% less buying power today than in 1968. If the minimum wage had kept up with employee productivity, it would be $16.54 per hour instead of $7.25.

Conditions for workers have gotten worse since the recession. While 21 percent of job losses since 2008 were considered low-wage positions, 58 percent of jobs added during the recovery were considered low-wage.

The U.S. is the world's wealthiest country yet one in five of our children live in poverty.  Thirty-one OECD countries have less child poverty than we do, and we're 35th down the list for total population poverty. There are so many things about that that are just wrong.  Morally, ethically, logically wrong.

As we make our way toward yet another presidential election and the cascade of lesser political positions that ride in on the attached coattails, it would be interesting if the public debate had something helpful to say on the subject.  Only Bernie Sanders has made the attempt so far.  The rest of the candidates have passed over the issues rather pointedly.

Despite minor improvements since the 1960s, America's poverty-fighting efforts remain an international embarrassment.

Other developed countries do far more to reduce deprivation in absolute and relative terms, while coincidentally enjoying far greater family stability.

Our current national economy is the product of conservative constraints. We resist government involvement and regulation in business, we oppose taxation on business transactions, and we support the free market determination of trade practices. All are rationally defensible, and the results are impressive if only for the wealthiest ten percent.  The last half-century has in fact left the bottom 90% behind in virtually every category of benefit, and the GAP has become deadly.  So how might we mitigate the harm we've done with such freedoms?

“The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking enough,” the president said. “But the idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care, or a community that views her future as their own, that should offend all of us.” 

The Measurement of Success

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and its nearly identical twin, GNP (Gross National Product)

They're irrelevant when the discussion is about the health of our nation.

"Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm, nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."  ~Robert F. Kennedy

GDP, or the money that businesses transact, has for years been the measure of how good or bad things might be. It's the yardstick used in describing how well we've done, how good our lives might be, and how we're doing in the world of marketplace competition.  It has little to do with the well-being of the citizenry, however, and will be unchanged by social crisis and injustice or during social advancement.

The US is the world's wealthiest country, but not perhaps
the best when it comes to empowering its citizens.
  How might that be?

An alternative measurement called Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) has been constructed in an attempt to more directly address the questions of progress in quality of life, stability, etc.

Tracking changes in a long list of factors, the proposed 'progress' index gives us a broader view that's perhaps more relevant.

Trends for educational attainment, income inequality, and employment levels are relevant as are environment concerns like water and air pollution. Adding social factors like crime and accident rates adds breadth to the index.

The result is perhaps surprising.  For most countries, both progress and wages have been flat since the 70's.  While the US fits the common world trends for lack of progress, some countries do stand out.  The common analysis, however, is that the process of globalization and world-wide competition has provided little improvement for the bottom 90%.

In our efforts to make a better world, we'll need a better yardstick than GDP to gauge our progress.

"I’m heartened to see the many efforts under way to develop alternatives to the GDP that take into account the health of our lives, the strength of our communities, and the sustainability of the environment. And yet it is no simple task to develop a monetized system that can measure the real determinants of happiness and well-being and do justice to the vast complexities of modern economic life. It may be that no single alternative index will emerge to entirely replace the GDP, and we will come to rely on a variety of indexes, each with its own perspectives, to provide us with as complete a picture as possible of the real state of our economic affairs and our societal well-being. And then perhaps we will be able to develop policies that lead to our ultimate goal—a sustainable prosperity shared by all." ~John Robbins

As we've noted elsewhere, the GDP rise in recent decades benefited the wealthy exclusively.
What would a thoughtful Christian consider important to the discussion of progress?