eclipse & war
Monday morning: visited HNES including first grade class of all girls whose classroom was my own first grade classroom over seventy-five years ago, OMG the love and joy. Monday afternoon: solar eclipse. Tuesday morning: clear and salty with a constellation in the eastern sky: Orion and Sirius over downtown Panama City.
Monday evening 9/8C. On constitutional grounds, every American citizen is as qualified as the next to agree or not, approve or not, every decision and action, thought, word and deed of our presidents, who despite their exalted office are neither more nor less human and/or qualified than the rest of us. One does not have to be - - fit - - in order to approve or disapprove; even the lunatic fringes qualify. Qualifications don’t count, there’s no qualifying, no poll-taxische qualifying tax, no literacy-testische qualifying test, no drivers-licenseische qualified license. Fitness is not a factor. Nor need one be a television talking head on one politically biased channel or another.
Watching, one couldn’t tell who wrote the Afghanistan strategy speech, couldn’t tell whether the speaker used teleprompters, but organized, collectedly, and sans wandering to exalt self, appeared not to use.
What I approved. a. Apparently the Secretary of Defense was told early on that he has authority to increase troop strength, but told the president that he would not commit more troops until and unless and except it was in accordance with the president’s policy and strategy. Clearly, General Mattis is a professional who understands that defense forces are not the source of but an instrument of foreign policy. Knowing that one, singular, prime principle is basic to understanding the purpose of military strength, forces and power. Foreign policy is not made by military authorities or the Department of Defense but by the president. b. The president condemned micromanaging military operations from Washington and the White House as was done in the past, and pledged to leave management to military commanders on the ground. I know for fact from one who was there and had to suffer it, that any number of times, military operations were carefully scouted out, surveilled, planned, prepared, positioned and ready to strike decisively only to have to request White House permission to proceed and the president either forbade, or procrastinated until it was too late. As a person with somewhat of a military education and orientation, though I totally mistrust the present, I contemned that about the previous administration. c. There will be no more safe haven of fleeing across the Afghan border into Pakistan; this was clear and there were no waffle words about it. So enough; if hot pursuit policy and authority strains relationships with Pakistan, tough &c.
If there is going to be war, I want that foreign policy clear but its war prosecution commanded not by bashful, hesitant, waffling, reluctant civilians but by trained, experienced and qualified generals whose military objective is victory and who know how to achieve it. This in mind, perhaps in another seventeen years young Americans will not still be rotating into and out of and into and out of and into Afghanistan until they die there.
We loved yesterday’s solar eclipse, a success for us solely because of Holy Nativity Episcopal School! On the way home from staff meeting at the church office Monday morning, I stopped by HNES to check the status of a ceiling project, and while there was given two pairs of eyeglasses for watching the eclipse. They made all the difference: without them, Linda and I would not have been able to see a thing, but we stretched out on park benches in the green zone here at Harbour Village and took in the whole once in a lifetime event! Thank you!!!
My first solar eclipse, it would have been 1979, I had a window seat on the left side of an airliner going gokw. Before I started theological seminary, it was the first year of my Navy retirement phase of life and I was chasing American defense business for Australian or Canadian clients under what was known as “Offset Agreements.” With no eclipse eyeglasses, I punched a tiny hole in a card and held it over a sheet of white paper so the sun shone through the hole, and watched the image of the eclipse phases of the crescent sun on the sheet of paper. Not as wonderful as HNES students lying on Williams Field witnessing the eclipse through qualified sunglasses, but then nothing in life matches that, or being with them.
Pics
Top: eclipsing crescent sun reflecting in solar eclipse eyeglass frame
Next: looking eastward down W.Beach.Drive into predawn sky with Sirius and Orion
Next: looking eastward down W.Beach.Drive into predawn sky with Sirius and Orion
Middle: Linda ready to watch eclipse 2017 from park bench in Harbour Village green zone
Bottom: DThos+ holding camera down pointing selfie over shoulder at eclipsing sun, with sun's crescent showing in my HNES eclipse eyeglasses
One more:
One more:
DThos+