Armistice Day/Veterans Day 2010

OS has a most busy day ahead, and will be brief.

OS has the prospect of this busy day because so many young men and women left everything behind to face down the forces of darkness, especially between 1914 and 1954--let's not forget Korea, on either side of the pond.

OS was a tourist in Cambridge in 2006, and visited as many of the colleges as he could, as were open to outsiders. It was heart-wrenching to see the lists of names on the memorials, in each chapel, to the boys lost in those years. The sheer length of the lists was staggering, given that the colleges are so small, as is the country.

Likewise, to drive through a small Canadian village in the prairie, and see dozens of names on the monument was heartbreaking.

Closer to home, OS's own mother lost two of her best high-school friends, one in North Africa, and one on D-Day. Tom, lost on D-Day, OS suspects, was the love of her young life. She never admits to it, but the mention of his name brings tears of grief even today. She was so very pretty and bright in the 1940's, and the loss killed something inside of her as well. She married a Marine who survived the Marianas Campaign, and was spared Okinawa; and here OS sits, typing away, still attempting to sort out all that history, the tapestry of so many untold stories that shaped him and in many ways bedevil him even today.

My father, now gone these two years, lived a life built around the friendships from his Marine company. He outlived them all, and lived his last few years in profound loneliness. He never would open up and tell his stories, refused the invitations to return to the Marianas with the vets organizations. He could have afforded it, and would have helped him so much.

Alas.

So, onward to a busy day of meetings and the list of small duties and large projects that define this good life.

Thank you, all of you, if you served the cause of freedom for the US or Commonwealth.
OS hopes to repay by living a life worthy of your example.

Christopher Hitchens on North Korea

The transcript of today's interview with Christopher Hitchens, who has been to North Korea and written of the experience in his new book Hitch 22.

A snippet of his comments:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I say in my book that my attempt to describe... I'm one of the few people who's been to North Korea as a reporter - in fact all of the Axis of Evil countries.

My attempt to describe how terrible life is there is one of my greatest failures as a writer because I don't think it's possible to explain to a person living in free society the utter misery and pointlessness and horror and starvation and hell of just one day in the life of a North Korean.

And the reason I'm starting like this is that, for the same reason I don't think it's possible to explain the atmosphere of intense military chauvinism.

There's only one thing that the Kim Jong-il regime has left to offer to its people, who it's now starved to a stunted condition where they're six inches smaller than their South Korean counterparts. Picture how much starvation that takes.

There's only one thing they've got left which is what they call the Army First Policy, a constant drumbeat of aggressive talk and the promise that one day they'll have all the spoils of South Korea too and all the sacrifice will have been worth it.


We haven't been paying attention to North Korea in general, since it's on the other side of the world. Out of sight, out of mind.

Here's hoping there are wise heads who can contain and resolve this quandry. If it comes to a shooting war, Heaven only knows how many would be killed or hurt.

Ballantine Championship: European Tour PGA In South Korea

OS is a golf geek. It's one of those things, and he knows there are therapists out there who can help with this sort of stuff. He just enjoys this vice too much for the moment.

It's Saturday morning in Tennessee, and European Tour Golf is broadcasting from South Korea, actually an island off the southern coast of South Korea. Household names like Gareth Maybin, Ted Oh, Marcus Fraser, and Soren Hanson are near the top of the leaderboard.  The course is beautiful, striking flora and terrain, and these guys really play well, even if there aren't thousands of screaming fans. Not one fist-pumper among them... 

Here on the third cup of coffee, it strikes OS that we live in a remarkable world, that allows that live broadcast from South Korea. Considering events of sixty years ago or so, it's remarkable there is a South Korea to broadcast from, much less one that has developed the kind of wealth and order that would allow the event to take place. Golf clubs don't come cheap, and they certainly aren't life-and-death essentials to any nation's economy. But they are built in places that are orderly, where wealth and literacy have developed. 

Let's consider where the golf courses aren't, beginning with North Korea, which managed to stage a war sixty years ago that killed several millions, spread misery all over East Asia, and accomplished nothing. They still can't feed themselves, but are working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons with which to blackmail the world. No time for golf, or music, or much of anything else.

Somalia--nope. Chad--nope. Iran--definitely no. Don't expect to see the 'Tehran Open' in this lifetime, do we? But, then again, in 1950, who could have imagined this middle-aged guy drinking his third cup of coffee in Tennessee, watching the tournament live from South Korea, writing about it on a laptop, chatting with his wife on a mobile phone as she drives home from her business trip?

Lots of moving parts there...but made possible in great part by brave people like Harry Truman who decided that the West should make a stand against the Marxist plague in Korea, and all the brave people from all parts of the world who sacrificed so much in that cause. And by people who live their lives believing that making money by making things that make life better is a worthy pursuit. You know...capitalists. And that things like a free press and rule of law with the consent of the governed is the best way to live. You know...Western constitutional principles, which have thrived best in places like the US, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. (Funny, that's where a lot of golf courses are located. How did that happen?)

See the connection yet? This generation's totalitarian plague is Islam, actually a repeat performance from previous centuries, but that's another discussion. We can't make it go away entirely, just like Marxism (after all, Harvard, Oxford and Berkley will always be with us...), but we can maintain the will to say: 'No. You don't get to take over. You can't even feed yourselves, and all you produce is murder and mayhem. You are the ones with the intrinsic problem, even if we have flaws. We're not going to apologize for being right, and we don't care if you get your feelings hurt.'

If we stand fast, here at home, and in other places where we have to, who knows? OS's grandson might watch Mickelson's grandson tee off in Tehran...

Here's hoping.