Americans Abroad

Nation Building

2010-08-31T12:35:00.007-04:00

In a 31 August article in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks argues that “Nation Building Works”, offering examples from the past seven years of US intervention in Iraq.

The concept of “nation building” originated after World War II, with the Marshall Plan. That US-funded reconstruction of former enemy states is widely viewed by historians as having contributed to the democratization of the German and Japanese societies, and as a foundation of post-WWII peace. But is the Marshall Plan's reconstruction responsible for the re-emergence of Germany and Japan onto today's world stage? Both countries had a well-educated populace and cohesive governments prior to the war, and although US assistance provided the means, both countries already possessed the will to unify and to rebuild.

Compare other US-led “nation-building” activities since WWII. Arguably, South Korea has emerged from its civil war with a strong economy, although personal freedoms in that country are still restricted and two former prime ministers are currently in prison. But what about the many other nations the US has attempted to “build” in the 20th and 21st century. China, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Syria, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Guatemala, Equador, the Congo, Uruguay, Chile, Indonesia, East Timor, Angola, Zaire, Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, the Domenican Republic, Somalia, the Balkans, Iran, Iraq, and most recently, Afghanistan have all enjoyed American military and diplomatic intervention. Which of those nations do you regard as proof of American success at building prosperous, peaceful, democratic societies?

While we have squandered trillions of dollars of national treasure and countless American lives in the pursuit of “nation-building” abroad our own nation is currently at one of the most perilous points in its history, facing massive unemployment, failing infrastructure, massive trade imbalances, record Federal deficits, a declining standard of living, decreasing high school and college graduation rates, and a ruinously expensive health care system (the US ranks #37 overall among the world's countries, behind Chile, Denmark, Domenica and Costa Rica in quality of health care, but #1 by far in its cost). Our military personnel and equipment are so overtaxed by the wars of the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan that our enemies in North Korea and Iran have been emboldened to step up their nuclear and missile programs, knowing we cannot stop them. Personal income in the United States has declined in the past decade for all but the top five percent of wage earners, whose wealth has increased faster than at any time in our nation's history.

Involvement of US forces in continuous overseas wars has become a constant since the 1950's, and has become America's largest industry and our principal export. The service sector now represents the biggest part of our domestic economy, with an increasing number of our youth looking forward to careers selling Chinese merchandise at Wal-Mart or asking “Ya want fries with that?” We need to stop squandering American lives and dollars in building other nations, and use the remainder of our dwindling national treasure to rebuild our own country.

Savannah Trip

2010-08-20T17:25:00.001-04:00

Piccolo Spoleto Concert at Mepkin Abbey

2010-05-31T21:04:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day

2010-05-25T12:43:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day 2007

Night Flight over NYC

2010-05-10T10:16:00.008-04:00

A NY Times article about laser mapping of New York City has wonderful images of the city at night taken from 3500 feet. You can see the photos here

They reminded me of my most memorable flight over the city. While serving as an adviser to the 77th Army Reserve Command from 1975 to 1978, I was frequently privileged to fly in Huey helicopters piloted by reservists who would pick up two or three of us at Fort Totten and take us up the Hudson and over West Point, sending herds of deer running as we crossed over Storm King mountain to land at Stewart airfield. Or sometimes we flew across Manhattan, turned south over the George Washington bridge, and followed the Hudson past Manhattan to New York harbor, over the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to Fort Wainwright, near the Verrazano Narrows bridge.

But my favorite flight was on a clear, cold October night returning from a TDY to Fort Dix, NJ. Four of us arrived at the Dix helipad to meet a Huey from Stewart Field, and were surprised to find there was no copilot. Because I was a captain he asked me to sit in the copilot seat, and we took off for Fort Totten in the autumn sunset. By the time we crossed over the Verrazano Narrows bridge to New York harbor it was after eight o'clock at night, and we followed the East River north below 2000 feet, lower than the aircraft in the Times photos. The skyscrapers of Manhattan were on our left and Brooklyn on our right, and I could see the Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridges and the Queensborough and Williamsburg bridges through the chin bubble under my feet as we passed over them. We turned eastward near the Triboro bridge and flew over Laguardia airport and the Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges before arriving home at Fort Totten's breezy helipad by the East River.

Chris and Catherine's wedding

2010-04-25T19:32:00.001-04:00

Sergeant Earle Spink

2010-02-15T18:07:00.000-05:00

Snow in Summerville

2010-02-13T17:33:00.002-05:00

On Saturday, 13 February 2010 the Charleston, SC area woke up to its first measurable snowfall in ten years:

Mepkin Abbey

2009-12-27T12:45:00.003-05:00

Veteran's Story

2009-12-05T12:43:00.004-05:00

Happy Halloween

2009-10-26T10:07:00.000-04:00

Fort Story Trip

2009-10-18T18:38:00.002-04:00

"Obamacare"

2009-09-06T10:08:00.026-04:00

I received a chain letter email today from a conservative friend opposing “Obamacare” and urging me to help defeat any proposed health care reform by donating to the League of American Voters.

I'm a retired Federal employee with over 41 years of service, and I have one of the many commercial health insurance policies available to every Federal employee, including congressmen. I pay about $250 per month out of my pension for that policy. Before turning 65 this past March and becoming eligible for Medicare (or "socialized medicine", as opponents prefer to call it), I did a lot of research to figure out if I should drop my commercial health insurance and just take Medicare part A and B. (Or to add the new Medicare Part D prescription drug plan recently passed by a Republican president and congress (Bushcare?)). I kept the commercial policy, and subsequent spine surgery and four months of outpatient rehab have convinced me that was a good idea. So I consider myself, and the hundreds of thousands of other retired Federal employees, vets and military retirees who continue to pay premiums for commercial health insurance despite having access to "free" insurance, to be living proof that a so-called "government option" plan will not drive commercial insurers out of business.

There are a lot of legitimate concerns that both liberals and conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Libertarians have with some of the proposed health plans. I too am concerned about the costs of an expanded plan and its influence on our national debt. I think any proposed plan should limit malpractice awards if we want to control medical costs. I'm concerned about protecting my Medicare benefits. But we need to keep the discussion focused on facts, not fiction. The United States does NOT have the world's best health care system. In the rankings of the World Health Organization the US ranks #37 overall among the world's countries, behind Chile, Denmark, Domenica and Costa Rica. We rank #14 in preventable deaths, #24 in life expectancy,
and #46 in infant mortality.

In fact the only area in which the US is ranked number one in health care against every other nation in the world is in the cost per capita, where the US far and away exceeds the cost of any other country.

Let's talk about health care for the more than forty million Americans who do not have any health insurance. I know some of them. A friend's wife has a serious cancer and, unable to work, lost her employer-provided policy. Another good friend's son, who we've known since he was born, was laid off from his job when a local firm lost a government contract, leaving him, his wife and two kids without health insurance. Who do you think is paying for those uninsured folks' health care?

We are.

Let me tell you a story. This spring I fell and had to go to the local hospital with a bleeding cut on my head, which required a stitch. While I was sitting in the crowded emergency room holding a towel to my bloody head I noticed that many of the people waiting were not showing many of the symptoms of emergency. They had a fever, cough, runny nose, back ache, or other things for which you and I would probably visit our family practice physician during his normal office hours. But if you are uninsured in America, no doctor will see you in his private practice and free clinics are few and overcrowded. So every emergency room is loaded with patients who are receiving treatment for which they cannot pay. So how do you think these private hospitals make the profits they do? They simply pass on the treatment costs to those patients who can afford to pay. My one single staple cost over $1000.

So the issue is not whether you and I will pay for health care for the uninsured, it is how we will pay – in the form of taxes or increased healthcare insurance premiums or bigger bills for our own health care. This needs to be a dialog in congress, not a reason for fingerpointing and sloganeering and alarmist emails.

Let's talk about that League of American Voters commercial. First, it cites both Great Britain and Canada as examples of what will happen if the “Obamacare” plan is passed. Notice that in the overall country health care ranking I cited above, the United Kingdom is #18 and Canada is #30. The USA is #37. I have lived in both Germany (#26) and Japan (#10) for ten years each, used the hospitals and doctors in both and found them first-rate.

Second, the League's ad suggests that adding another 40 million uninsured Americans to the rolls of paying patients will overtax the supply of doctors, leaving the rest us inadequately served. Besides the fact that this argument ignores the usual conservative “free market” economic theories which predict that the supply of doctors will increase to meet demand, it also ignores the fact that I discussed in the emergency room example above – that in many cases uninsured people are already receiving emergency medical care, at the expense of paying patients. True, we may need more family practice physicians, and a plan which provides more benefits for preventive medicine rather than the current fee-for-service system, but better prevention is proven to lower overall medical costs. Again, we need a dialog, not slogans.

If you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Jim DeMint or many other Republican spokespersons, the defeat of ANY healthcare reform is considered essential to “get Obama.” The problem with that plan is, by not repairing the many things wrong with healthcare in America, that absence of action will also defeat most Americans, including the many seniors who will find our present Medicare and social security programs bankrupt within fifteen or twenty years, buried under a tide of retiring baby boomers who will outnumber the paying work force, and by medical costs that are increasing at twice the rate of inflation. That's why such “liberal” organizations as AARP support the need for healthcare reform now. If we are diverted from the course of reform by congressional inaction and the concerted efforts of over two thousand of the health care industry's registered lobbyists, we won't have to worry about remaining #38 in the world's healthcare statistics; America's health care situation will get much worse.

Let's quit pointing fingers, screaming and sloganeering at town meetings, and swapping viral videos and email propaganda, and start talking about compromises that will protect our common interests. That's how democracy is supposed to work.

1919 Thousand Islands Film

2009-07-02T10:21:00.002-04:00

Stacy's pictures

2009-02-08T19:39:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving

2008-12-14T16:53:00.001-05:00

Farewell to Templehof Airport

2008-10-30T14:30:00.022-04:00

Berlin's historic Tempelhof airport closed down today forever. The airfield played a pivotal role in Germany's aviation history, including a 1909 flight by Orville Wright and its distinction as West Berlin's only airport during the Berlin airlift in 1948, when the Soviets shut off Allied land access to Berlin and the city was entirely resupplied by air with food and coal. The Berlin Airlift Memorial in front of Templehof bears the names of seventy British and American pilots who lost their lives in that airlift. A duplicate monument stands near the end of the runway at Frankfurt's Rhein Main airport at the other end of the “air bridge” (luftbrucke).

We visited Templehof many times in the early 1980's, when we lived in Bremerhaven and later in Heidelburg. The American duty train provided a free, overnight sleeping car to military families on a space available basis, and the overnight train arrived in West Berlin in the early morning, with passenger and baggage cars from both Bremerhaven and Frankfurt. The two trains would meet and be combined at the East German border checkpoint at Helmstedt and be pulled from there into West Berlin by an East German locomotive. We would depart Bremerhaven about 9 pm, and our kids would peek excitedly out the windows after midnight as the train stopped at the Soviet checkpoint at Helmstedt, where great-coated Russian soldiers with AK-47's stood watch while our documents were examined. Every passenger had to have “flag orders” with the details spelled out in French, English and Russian bearing the flag of the four-power agreement signatory. Then the West German Deutsche Bundesbahn locomotive was uncoupled and a smoky East German Deutsche Reichsbahn diesel engine pulled the cars marked "United States Army" through the night, to arrive at the Lichterfelde West station in West Berlin's American sector about 6am. When my mother and my aunt Mona visited us in Bremerhaven in the early 1980's we took them to Berlin on the duty train. The two sisters shared one of the train's two-person compartments and they giggled and talked until way past the 1 am stop at Helmstedt. It was their first train trip since they were teens.

We would arrive in Berlin early Saturday morning and take a taxi to the Air Force's Columbia House billeting, which was in Templehof airport. It had curving corridors, huge guest rooms, a good breakfast buffet and best of all, served lunch in the old airport's passenger terminal restaurant, overlooking the almost deserted runway. All commercial use of the airport ceased after the Berlin wall went up in 1969, so as we walked along the second-floor gallery that overlooked the deserted terminal we could see the dusty Lufthansa stands, Mon Cherie chocolate signs and newspaper kiosks that awaited a reopening that would not come until 1993, after the wall came down.

One time we were in the lounge near the air terminal when alarms sounded and running men, US Air Police and West German polizei armed with submachine guns sprinted down the corridor and into the terminal. We found out later that a hijacked Polish LOT Airlines plane had landed at the military field. Charles Brady, writing recently for Air and Space Magazine about his experience at Templehof in the 70's and 80's, said "So many skyjacked LOT airliners landed at the airport that the joke around the field was that LOT stood for Land on Tempelhof."

German authorities are considering several alternatives for the former airport, but its buildings, designed by Nazi architect Albert Speer in the shape of the imperial eagle, are likely to be preserved, as will the Spink family's memories of our many stays there.

http://www.euronews.net/en/article/30/10/2008/berlin-bids-goodbye-to-templehof-airport/

Rorie's Retirement

2008-09-25T17:59:00.001-04:00

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Bahamas Cruise

2008-05-27T09:29:00.001-04:00

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Short Stay Rec Area

2008-05-16T15:57:00.000-04:00

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Road Trip

2008-05-10T20:26:00.000-04:00

Click to see album

Easter at Terry's

2008-03-23T17:08:00.001-04:00

click picture to view album

New Yorker Cartoon

2008-02-17T17:54:00.002-05:00

by Roz Chast, 2008

Extreme Ironing has reached Japan

2008-02-16T19:20:00.004-05:00

For info on this extreme sport in Japan go to http://www.exironingjapan.com/photo/index.html

The Oz Effect

2008-02-10T21:01:00.001-05:00

Metro Goldwyn Meyer

Near the end of MGM's “The Wizard of Oz” there's an iconic scene which has left several generations of viewers and voters with an erroneous view of how the US presidency works. In the Emerald City's great hall Dorothy and her three friends are finally granted their audience with the wizard. His giant visage bellows “I am Oz, the great and terrible,” from the end of the great hall as the terrified petitioners tremble. Suddenly Toto pulls back a curtain in the corner to reveal a gray-haired little man in a suit who manipulates levers and knife switches in a booth while talking into a microphone.

That's how a lot of voters (and some political commentators, who ought to know better) view the presidency – as though the man or woman who moves into the Oval Office next January 20th takes over the controls and, after a brief learning period, begins steering the ship of state on its new course. In fact, the new president will move into the oval office already knowing that there won't be a console of government hidden in the corner from which he or she can run the country. Instead, the vast Federal bureaucracy, with its thousands of departments, agencies, bureaus and commissions and its millions of employees is steered by several thousand political appointees, who are selected, screened and assigned to noncompetitive appointments in senior positions. About 20 percent of those positions require senate confirmation; the rest are filled at the discretion of the new president and his cabinet and key staff. The Office of Presidential Personnel receives and staffs applications for senior executive positions in over 100 departments, bureaus, commissions and agencies ranging in size from the Defense Department (655) to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2).

Naturally, preference is given to the party faithful and to significant party donors and to their friends and relatives. When an administration changes hands, every appointee of the previous administration, regardless of party, must either be replaced or reappointed by the next chief executive. This process usually takes many months, and involves the input of major party officials as well as new cabinet appointees and the White House staff. The summary of positions available for noncompetitive appointment is called the “Plum Book”. The book published at the beginning of the 2004 Bush term listed 9051 full and part-time senior positions. The Office of Personnel Management explains the process in this way:

“Every four years, just after the Presidential election, the "United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions" is published. It is commonly known as the Plum Book and is alternately published between the House and Senate.

The Plum Book is a listing of over 9,000 civil service leadership and support positions (filled and vacant) in the Legislative and Executive branches of the Federal Government that may be subject to noncompetitive appointments. These positions include agency heads and their immediate subordinates, policy executives and advisors, and aides who report to these officials. Many positions have duties which support Administration policies and programs. The people holding these positions usually have a close and confidential relationship with the agency head or other key officials.”

So voters, when assessing today's competing presidential candidates, need to consider the impact of each candidate's potential political appointees. Will Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or John McCain attract, recruit and appoint well-qualified executives to oversee the armed forces, the postal service and the US government's permanent work force of 1,800,000 career civil service employees? How strong is each candidate's network, how deep is their bench of qualified, experienced executives who are interested and available for a Federal job which offers a modest salary (see White House staff salaries), background checks and in many cases, Senate hearings and extensive press scrutiny? To be successful, a president must place good wizards in key positions at those thousands of control panels. When you select a candidate, you are also approving the noncompetitive hiring of many of their key state and national campaign workers and contributors.

In order to envision the disastrous potential of this patronage process when it goes awry, just remember the phrase "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.”

Our Travels

2008-02-07T08:42:00.001-05:00

Kyoto, Japan

Hong Kong, China

Florence, Italy

Prague, Czech Republic

Salzburg, Austria

Berlin, Germany

Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Kingston, Canada

Honolulu, HI, USA

Charleston, SC, USA

Tokyo, Japan

Bangkok, Thailand

Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic

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2007-04-04T03:51:00.000-04:00

Alice attended a sensing session during LTG & Mrs. Wilson's visit.
photo by Dottie Vick

Ie Shima

2007-02-19T02:30:00.000-05:00

click to view album

Duk Ling Harbour Cruise

2007-02-08T10:15:00.000-05:00

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Racing at Happy Valley

2007-02-07T21:32:00.000-05:00

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LanTau Island Tour

2007-02-06T05:43:00.000-05:00

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Shopping in Kowloon

2007-02-05T08:27:00.000-05:00

Alice selects wool for pants at Raja Tailor

Street vendor blends veggie smoothies

Craftsman at Yue Hua Chinese Products Co. engraves my chop

My name is engraved in Japanese Katakana

Hong Kong

2007-02-04T18:32:00.000-05:00

At the Star Ferry terminal in Central

Hong Kong

2007-02-03T09:11:00.000-05:00

View from our Salisbury Hotel window

Abby and Maggie

2007-01-28T04:19:00.000-05:00

Abigail & Margaret

2007-01-26T21:38:00.000-05:00

Ghost Cat

1862 illustrated book by Kunisada. Click picture to see album.

Year of the Boar

2007-01-14T18:59:00.000-05:00

Keiko McPherson, Wendy Lundgren and Alice chat with our host, Ward Chief Higa

The Sobe Ward orchestra

Dancers entertained Sobe residents who will turn 60, 72, 84 or 96 this year

Traditional dances and costumes are cherished in Sobe Ward

Fire Department New Years Review

2007-01-05T02:29:00.000-05:00

The Nirai Fire Department stands tall at their New Years review on 5 January

Year of the pig

2007-01-02T03:06:00.000-05:00

Fishing boats in Awase port welcome the new year

Tori Communication Station in the 1950"s

2006-12-25T19:11:00.000-05:00

Photo taken by Jack Garner (1957-58)

Sling load drops off Torii Beach

2006-12-20T23:26:00.000-05:00

Army fire rescue searched for the car on 14 December

Yomitan Fisheries Assn. found it on 15 December
photo by Yomitan Fisheries Assn

Army personnel recovered the wreck on 20 December

Merry Christmas

2006-12-18T00:02:00.000-05:00

ACS Volunteer awards ceremony

2006-12-17T20:02:00.000-05:00

Mr. Spink presents an ACS volunteer award
to Alice Spink at last Thursday's Army Community
Service volunteer recognition day.
(photo by Dottie Vick)

Protest at Torii Station

2006-12-17T19:53:00.000-05:00

A group of Okinawans, including recent
gubernatorial candidate Keiko Itokazu,
conducted a protest at Torii Station's
main gate at noon last Friday to protest
the dropping of a sling-loaded automobile
from a Marine Corps helicopter into the
East China Sea off Torii Beach.
(photo by Keiko McPherson)

2006-12-16T22:05:00.000-05:00

Williams Wedding

2006-11-16T21:21:00.000-05:00

Sugar cane mill

School girls in Okinawan costume

School kids with Shisa Dog statue

Sanshin - the Okinawan banjo

Ryuku Mura

2006-11-16T21:10:00.000-05:00

A 97 year old woman in a rickshaw

The king and queen watch a martial arts dance

Eisa clown and drummers

School kids see water buffalo

Colorado Springs

2006-10-28T22:38:00.000-04:00

View of Pike's Peak from my room at the Antlers Hilton

Protesters at Tengan Pier

2006-10-10T04:03:00.000-04:00

Protesters blocked access to Patriot missiles at Tengan Pier on 9 and 10 October.

A&W Root Beer in Okinawa

2006-10-01T05:35:00.000-04:00

A&W has 22 drive-in's in Okinawa.
This one is at Machinato.

Air Defense Artillery ship arrival

2006-10-01T05:31:00.000-04:00

Equipment of 1-1 ADA Battalion unloads at Naha Port

Yomitan Dragon Boat Races

2006-07-16T01:19:00.000-04:00

Toya Fishing Port in Yomitan Village

The gong sets the stroke as a race starts

Three generations with their Eisa drum

Hamahigajima

2006-07-14T23:24:00.000-04:00

A fisherman mends his boat

Dragon boat oars

Fishing nets drying

Trip to Korea

2006-06-02T03:40:00.000-04:00

Kids at Korean War Museum in Seoul

Cooking in Namdaemun Market

At the Blue Opera Cafe in Songtan

Guard change at Sun Yat Sen memorial

2006-03-06T02:44:00.000-05:00

View of Taipei from our balcony

2006-03-06T02:26:00.000-05:00

The Grand Hotel

2006-02-18T07:59:00.000-05:00

The Grand Hotel
in Taipei, Taiwan

Stories from the Rock

2006-01-27T05:22:00.000-05:00

Stories from the Rock: "http://www.scn.org/~begley"

Stories from the Rock: Okinawa in the late 50's and early 60's

2006-01-27T05:20:00.000-05:00

Stories from the Rock: Okinawa in the late 50's and early 60's

Sobe Ward Hula lessons

2006-01-27T02:56:00.000-05:00

Photo by Chikako Nohara

Alice & Dottie at the wedding brunch

2005-11-24T16:40:00.000-05:00

Alice & Evelyn

2005-11-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

Charlie & J.R.

2005-11-24T16:20:00.000-05:00

David & Stacy

2005-11-24T16:15:00.000-05:00

Catherine, Emmy & Terry at Dorothy's reception

2005-11-24T16:08:00.000-05:00

Market Street, Charleston, SC

2005-11-19T20:17:00.000-05:00

The old house, Black River, NY

2005-11-19T20:11:00.000-05:00

Pearman Bridge bites the dust

2005-11-19T19:56:00.000-05:00

The new house, Summerville, SC

2005-11-19T19:51:00.000-05:00

Army Womens Group art auction

2005-11-01T02:04:00.000-05:00

photo by Kelli Chevalier

Ken at Moskala Training Center dedication

2005-10-30T02:02:00.000-05:00

photo by Keiko McPherson

Stan releases a Torii turtle

2005-10-30T01:36:00.000-05:00

Stan Sokoloski, Pacific Regional director, releases a turtle as CSM Dedria Porterfield watches.

COL Williams cuts the cake on Org Day

2005-10-30T01:48:00.000-04:00

photo by Evelyn Byrd

Okinawan dancing lessons

2005-10-30T01:12:00.000-04:00

photo by Keiko McPherson

COL Williams at org day

2005-10-29T09:26:00.000-04:00

"Nory Croft" at Organization day

2005-10-29T09:24:00.000-04:00

Garrison Organization Day, 7 OCT 2005

2005-10-29T09:22:00.000-04:00

Anime masks for sale at local festival

2005-10-29T09:20:00.000-04:00

Ben and "Dad" at the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk

2005-10-29T09:18:00.000-04:00

Rich Hanusey's memorial at the Punchbowl

2005-10-29T09:15:00.000-04:00

Torii put out the red carpet for our veterans

2005-10-29T09:10:00.000-04:00

Don shares a veterans' day story

2005-10-29T09:07:00.000-04:00