PERSIAN GULF WAR

by William H. Benson

February 25, 1999 

     Operation Desert Storm’s aerial campaign began in mid-January 1991 and was immediately a success.  Wave after wave of Allied bombers and missiles pounded Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, and other key targets during those first days of the Persian Gulf War.  The ground offensive then began on February 24, 1991, and one hundred hours later on the 27th, President Bush appeared on nationwide television to announce “Kuwait is liberated.  Iraq’s army is defeated.”

      But before leaving Kuwait, Iraqi troops deliberately set fire to Kuwait’s oil wells.  The smoke darkened the sky ugly.  And now eight years later the United Nations, still trying to bring Saddam Hussein to his knees, is caught somewhere between threats and actual bombing.

      Recently, I read General H. Norman Schwartzkopf’s autobiography, It Doesn’t Take a Hero.  He mentions that in addition to overseeing the military operation, he also had to play the role of a diplomat to the Saudi’s on whose sandy soil he and his forces stood.  At 10:00 pm. most evenings he wandered over to discuss certain matters with Prince Khalid.  He wrote, “To my consternation . . . what loomed largest for them was the cultural crisis triggered by the sudden flood of Americans into their kingdom. . . . The touchiest issues almost always involved religion.”

     For example, American women soldiers were seen working in T-shirts and were accused of disrobing in public;  Saudi women never show their arms.  Prince Khalid demanded that Schwartzkopf stop such brazen behavior.  Then, Christmas in 1990 presented a problem, but there was no way that even he, a General, could halt services from being held.  Christmas trees appeared, but Schwartkopf warned his staff that “even the very sight of a cross is very offensive to them. . . . We have to be sensitive to their desires.”

      A report of a wild party involving women dancing and alcohol being served was verified when CNN broadcasted a clip of it.  That evening a bewildered Schwartzkopf had to assure the distraught and excited Prince Khalid that he would investigate this matter and put a stop to it.

      James Michener in almost a kind of naive innocence once wrote, “I have been studying Islam for many years, and I cannot see any valid reason why this religion and Christianity cannot cooperate.” 

      The historian Will Durant had a different viewpoint.  “Nothing, save bread, is so precious to mankind as its religious beliefs; for man lives not by bread alone, but also by the faith that lets him hope.  Therefore, his deepest hatred greets those who challenge his sustenance or his creed.” 

     The rival religions and civilizations, Christianity and Islam, have clashed for centuries, beginning almost from their birth, continuing through the crusades, and into the modern era.  A third faith, Jewish, was then caught between the main combatants and cut by both swords.  The crusades of a millennium ago were in part the European Christians’ attempt to free Palestine, the Holy Land, from the Muslims.  After several centuries, the exhausted Europeans gave up, and a curtain dropped between the West and the East.

     The Persian Gulf War was another crusade and yet, different.  Although the liberation of Kuwait, rather than Palestine (Israel), was the primary objective, Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles were sometimes aimed at Israel.  Schwartkopf, the Christian, and Prince Khalid, the Muslim, hammered out agreements in which the Islamic culture was not polluted but remained pure.  Together, they learned to work together to fight and defeat a wildly aggressive Muslim brother, Saddam Hussein.  That curtain dividing East and West had opened but only for a brief moment.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

by William H. Benson

February 11, 1999 

     We now celebrate Presidents’ Day rather than individually honoring either Abraham Lincoln’s or George Washington’s birthdays, and yet, what they each achieved is sufficient reason for pausing for at least a day and reflecting.  Lincoln, the giant among the Presidents, casts a long shadow which still falls across the land called America and upon all Americans.  His birthday, February 12, 1809, is tomorrow.  We pause, and we reflect.

      Lincoln’s law partner in Springfield, Illinois, Billy Herndon, who knew him best, said, “Mr. Lincoln always told enough of his plans and purposes to induce the belief that he had communicated all, but he reserved enough to have actually communicated nothing. . . . Mr. Lincoln read less and thought more than any man in his sphere in America.”

      Lincoln believed in human rights, in individual dignity, in person liberty, and in civil justice.  His political ideas he derived straight from the Declaration of Independence, from which he often quoted.  A liberal democrat, his genius was in stating familiar ideas in striking and symbolic form.

      But the essential Lincoln cannot be understood apart from his stance toward slavery.  That institution tempered his soul and gave direction to his life.  It was the overriding reality of his time.  There was no escaping it.  It was the American national tragedy, a gigantic anomaly.  It mocked the Declaration of Independence.  Lincoln hated the idea of one man owning another.

      He spoke of the time he took a boat down the Mississippi River into the South.  “There were on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons.  That sight was a continual torment to me, . . . a thing which has the power of making me miserable.”  The cruelties of slavery bruised Lincoln’s tender soul.

      Decades before, Thomas Jefferson, a slaveowner himself, wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; his justice cannot sleep forever.”

      Lincoln forced himself to think through the harsh realities of the slavery problem, and by his relentless logic, he arrived at two fundamental ideas.  First, he concluded that slavery threatened American democracy.  Unless it was eradicated, it would end by wrecking freedom all together. “Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.”  A worm in a beautiful apple will eventually rot from within the entire apple.

      Second, he wanted a solution to ending slavery that would not lead to the destruction of the nation.  But, alas, in part because he was elected President in 1860, the Southern states in a fit of passion and frenzy withdrew from the nation and created their own, the Confederacy.  The resulting Civil War, North against South, brother against brother, family against family, gathered up everything ugly and hideous that war can muster up and dumped it squarely upon the American continent.  Lincoln’s nightmare erupted into a reality he was forced to live through.

      But there in the midst of the vicious contest on January 1, 1863, he issued a proclamation.  “Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln . . . , do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States . . . are, and henceforward shall be free.”  He and the federal government declared that slavery was illegal, and he said, “If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”

     “I want every man to have a chance,” he said repeatedly.  The American system of government, he believed, was set up for that very purpose.

      Lincoln’s words and ideas are worth saying again and again.  We pause, and we reflect.

THREE ATHLETES

by William H. Benson

January 28, 1999 

     Three people figured prominently in the news this month: Michael Jordan, John Elway, and, of course, President Bill Clinton.

      About Michael Jordan one radio commentator said, “Arguably he is the greatest basketball player ever.”  But another countered, saying that we should drop the word “arguably”.  “Jordan is the greatest player to ever put on basketball shoes.”  Jordan’s six NBA championship rings eclipses Magic Johnson’s five.  In the final seconds of a close game, everyone knew that the ball would invariably end in Jordan’s hands, and his last second jump shot would win the important, must-win games.  Competitive to the utmost, he was.

      John Elway unofficially played his final game at Mile High Stadium two weeks ago in the AFC championship game, and will probably announce his retirement sometime after the season ends this Sunday.  On that afternoon he and his Broncos will appear in yet another Super Bowl, his fifth, to play the Atlanta Falcons coached by none other than Elway’s nemesis, Dan Reeves.  Starting at the one yard line in the final minutes of a game and then driving 99 yards to win is Elway’s specialty.  Absolutely competitive he is.

     As a political player Bill Clinton has endured constant turnovers, fumbles, interceptions and fouls.  The referees are continually throwing flags, and yet, he is still in the Oval Office and in the White House, delivering a “knockout” State of the Union speech to Congress two weeks ago.  Despite his enemies’ repeated attempts to have him ejected from the game, he has written and added entire new chapters into the playbook of political suvival.  His coaches standing on the sideline have dreamed up and sketched out more plays to gain yardage and score points than even Mike Shanahan.

      What is most amazing is how each side in the impeachment proceedings have grabbed for the rule book, the Constitution, quoting the intentions and thoughts of its writers: James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton.  It is hoped that these people, dead for almost two centuries, and their ideas, still alive, will lead us, the living, through this ugly contest to victory.  Each side appeals to the framers.

       Months ago when a reporter asked President Clinton if he would ever consider resigning, he instantly replied, “No, never.”  His competitive drive approaches that of Jordan and Elway. 

      Talent is a disposition or aptitude of mind or body which “qualifies a person for a certain kind of action.”  No one is born to be great, to break to the top.  Extraordinary mental/physical prowess is not necessarily strong enough to push a person upwards.  What is needed is a start, an opportunity to deepen one’s knowledge.  Michael Jordan was handed a basketball.  John Elway was given a football.  At age 17 Bill Clinton strode onto the White House grounds and shook hands with President Kennedy.

       That “certain kind of action” is denied to many people who have the apptitude;  they were never allowed to play the game.  Forced by either economic, social, or political reasons to do something else, they become disgruntled, discouraged, and end in failure.  To end up at the top where Jordan, Elway, and Clinton reside is the happy result of a combination of many circumstances, an infinite capacity for taking pains.

        Two forecasts I offer: Denver will win by a touchdown in the Super Bowl, and the Senate will not have the needed 2/3’s vote to eject President Clinton.

THE MILLENNIUM

by William H. Benson

January 14, 1999 

     Because the Roman numeral system lacked a zero, Dionysius Exiguus, the sixth century monk who devised our B.C./A.D. division of time, failed to include the year O A.D. in his chronology.  He actually started with year 1 A. D.  As a result, if we insist that all decades must have 10 years and all centuries 100 years and all millennium 1000 years, then 2000 A.D. remains in the second millennium and not the beginning of the third.  According to pure logic, the new century and the new millennium will not begin until January 1, 2001.  Common sensibility dictates otherwise.

     But the same clamor arises every 100 years, and so, who is right?  George Washington died on December 31, 1799.  Did he miss the 19th century by a few hours or 365 days?  Did Arthur C. Clarke get it right with “2001: A Space Odyssey”?  Samuel Sewall, one of the infamous judges at the Salem Witch Trials, hired four trumpeters to herald the “entrance of the 18th century” by sounding a blast on Boston Common right at daybreak on January 1, 1701 and not 1700.

      One hundred years ago a letter to a newspaper editor commented, ” I defy the most bigoted precisian to work up any enthusiasm over the year 1901, when we will already have had twelve months experience of the 1900’s.”  But, the passing of the twentieth century really counts this time around because this is the blockbuster, the passing of the second millennium into the third.

      “The focus on 2000 is basically a fascination with the triple zero and the flipping of the cosmic odometer,” said Jay Gary, an editor of an online newsletter.  “In popular cultrue around the world, 2000 has eclipsed 2001 as a date of significance with the help of modern communications in the media, which have zeroed in on the former.” 

      Someone suggested to Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Paleontology at Harvard, that we should begin the new millennium on January 1, 2000.  Let us assume that “the first decade had only nine years,” he wrote, adding that he considers this to be an elegant solution.  Perhaps.

      He further writes, “Many of our most intense debates, however, are not resolvable by information of any kind, but arise from conflicts in values. . . . Ultimately trivial, but capable of provoking great agitation, and thus the most frustrating of all, they have no answers because they are about words, rather than things, and therefore phenomena of nature have no bearing upon potential solutions.  The century debate lies within this vexatious category.”

      The Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time equates time with space, calling it “space-time”, implying that they are one in the same.  An equally good corelation is between time and life, for time is the valuable thing, that which measures the beginning, ending, and length of our lives.

      In the introduction to Hawking’s book, Carl Sagan wrote, “We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.  We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend.  Except for children, few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is.”

      A seventh century monk named Dionysius Exiguus applied a faulty number system to that aspect of physical nature called “time”, and thirteen centuries later we, the living, have a problem.

 My New Year’s Resolution–to devote very little of my time worrying more about that problem.

NICOLAE CEAUSESCU

by William H. Benson

December 31, 1998 

      On December 15, 1989 the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu ordered his police to arrest a clergyman, Rev. Laszlo Toekes, in the city of Timisoara in western Romania.  Toekes’s only crime was that he was a prominent and vocal spokesman in promoting the rights of the 2 million ethnic Hungarians who resided inside of Romania.  Not a smart move was it for Ceausescu to arrest this clergyman during Advent, just before Christmas, for the people in Timisoara responded to this most brutal blow with street demonstrations demanding freedom and economic reform.

      During the next two days Ceausescu’s police fired upon the demonstrators killing hundreds if not thousands and burying them in mass graves, but the people stubbornly refused to give up.  The revolt spread to Bucharest, the capital, and finally the armed forces, tired of the killing and of the dictatorship, sided with the protestors.  Ceausescu and his wife Elena were immediately arrested, and charged with genocide and plundering the national treasury.  The secret trial was held on Christmas Day and both, defiant to the very end, were summarily executed by firing squad that same day.

     By New Years Day the truth about this sorrowful dictatorship had filled the world’s newspapers.  Prohibiting birth control in his nation for years, Ceausescu had flooded this poor nation with unwanted children who were then warehoused in orphanages across Romania, a sad result of one man’s control of the national policies.

      Jeanne Kirpatrick wrote, “The socialist view that individual rights should be subordinated to the state, I believe, is wrong and that all the apologists for tyranny who argue that people must forgo freedom while they concentrate on bread are utterly mistaken.  Those who enjoy freedom also have bread.  Those without freedom are, alas, all too often also hungry, cold, and lacking basic necessities.”

      Liberty is not a word used often these days, except when referring to the Statue of, for liberty is the anomoly, the rare gem among peoples of this century and of all the previous centuries.  For, there will always be someone who possesses the great desire to compel others and simultaneously possesses the ability to gain and keep control of power.  Inevitably such a state is exploitive, because the ruler possesses the power to take and to steal from the governed without retaliation. Because power corrupts, liberty resides only in an atmosphere permeated with “laws”.

      In the United States President Bill Clinton answers to a House of Representatives, to a Senate, to the voters, and ultimately to the law.  Within Iraq, Saddam Hussein answers to no one and to no thing and vows never to back down.  Why should he?  There is no law to control him.

     No person has to experience life in a totalitarian state under a ruling dictator to know that it is an ugly and a horrible place in which to live, to work, and to raise children.  Testimony of the Russians, the Cubans, the Romanians, and of others are enough to discourage even the most open-minded of thinkers.  It is life without hope, without progress, without advancement, and without food and clothing.  It is an unbearable and never-ending heartache.

     Christmas is a day for family, for food, for gift-giving, and for the Romanians of 1989 it was their day to execute away a selfish, insecure, grasping, and murdering dictator who had had the temerity to arrest a town’s minister during Advent.  Four centuries ago William Shakespeare described a similar situation this way, “Man, proud man, dressed up in a little brief authority plays such fantastic tricks that even the angels in heaven weep.”

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS

by William H. Benson

December 17, 1998

     Their father was a bishop in the United Brethern Church, and they owned a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio.  They were Orville and Wilbur Wright, and they dreamed of flying.  Told that the winds along the Atlantic coast were consistent, perfect for testing wings, they devoted a half dozen seasons on the sandy beaches at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  And there, finally, on December 17, 1903 their Wright Flyer flew four times.  A camera snapped the picture of Orville lying prone on the wing, face forward, and Wilbur running alonside on the sand.

      What the Wright Brothers did where so many others had failed was to master the three essentials of flight.  First, they designed wings with sufficient lifting power to sustain their machine in the air.  Next, they built themselves a power plant consisting of engine and propeller capable of moving the craft through the air fast enough so that air rushing over the wings generated enough lift to keep the machine airbore.  Finally, they developed a system of controlling the movement of their machine so that one it was off the ground, they could keep it off the ground and direct its movement.

      Each of those steps were painstakingly taken in that order.  Designing the wing came first.  At Kitty Hawk atop those sandy hills, they glided the wing to the bottom, and by trial and error they came upon the warped-wing design.  Then, they fashioned and mounted a lightweight engine on the wing, hacked out two wooden propellers, and with bicycle chains connected the engine to the propellers.  They came upon control by designing ailerons, and a tail assembly equipped with rudder and elevators.

     The resemblance between the Wright Flyer and today’s sleek modern aircraft is somewhat vague and indistince, but resemblance is real enough;  for the underlying principles of flight discovered by the Wrights and applied to the design of their aircraft are the same immutable principles that apply today.

     Technological advances have appeared so frequent and at such a dizzy pace during the 20th century that their wonder becomes dimmed.  Once the breakthrough in knowledge has occurred, it becomes “achievement” which yields to “accomplishment”, and finally it is added to humankind’s wealth of ideas simply as new “technology”.  Somewhere in the process the inspiring awe and the eye-popping amazement at witnessing a human miracle is lost.  For example, the computer has become ho-hum, another office and household tool.

      For eons of ages humankind lived without three crucial elements of civilization: the alphabet, the wheel, and the base ten number system, which even school children today can understand and use.  Today we take them for granted, and yet someone (or some people) in the distant past thought of them when no else had.  No one in the Western Hemisphere prior to 1492 A.D. had thought of them, and there was no shortage of intelligent people here.  But, lacking the alphabet, the wheel, and the base ten number system had seriously undermined the progress and advancement of the major cultures in the Western Hemisphere such as the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Incas.  They were tools sorely needed and yet, never thought of.

     It makes me wonder what technological tools are we still missing today that happen to lie just beyond our knowledge horizon waiting to be found by people a lot like Orville and Wilbur Wright.