on Wolfie’s Show.

Is she on something?

Just though she looked sorta weird. I don’t watch TV that often anymore. Does she always come across like that?

Sorry, short essayette, but it’s midnight thirty here.

Today, Ken Burns will and PBS will air FUBAR on The War. It will discuss Peleliu.  My Dad was on Peleliu. He always pronounced it Pel-Lee-You.
It was always glossed over in the history books about the war in the Pacific. I would read about Midway. Or Iwo Jima which he missed. Or Tarawa which he also missed, but Peleliu was always kind of a footnote.

As a kid, I had figured that the reason he survived was because not much fighting went on. The War to me was in Europe.

I thought his great accomplishment in the war was guarding a Catholic Cemetery in China after the War. Or meeting a 12 foot cobra on the path on Pavuvu.

But I was wrong.

Peleliu was the scene of the 1000 mile stare. The picture of the young soldier with the hollowed eyes of an old man. You’ve seen it.
My mother told me that that picture was from Peleliu. I’ve seen it in ads for this session. Even Ken Burns said he had nightmares about Peleliu after working on this episode.

I am glad this is finally coming out. Statements like 6 out of 10 men died for a battle that didn’t need to happen had no impact on my 14 year old mind. I couldn’t corroborate them anywhere. The number of injured or dead were rarely posted about Peleliu and were often underreported as I found out later.

Tonite, I can see what my Dad actually did in the War. He told me that he was photographed often and in color….but I only ever saw one picture of him and one picture I thought was of him in Peleliu. In one picture, from an old paperback series about the war, my dad is standing near som wounded soldiers lying on the ground. He is skinny, because they all were and because he was only 17 or 18. He said that that was him and that he had lots of pictures taken of him.

The other I saw at the D-Day Museum but someone else’s name was on the photo. It did look exactly like him and his buddy sitting in their foxhole. He was even holding his BAR. It really stopped me when I saw it and brought back all the memories of his stories which numbered only a few. They were not pleasant….but it took me until an adult to hear them.

On the landing, he was in an LCVP which was powered by an aircraft engine. However, the fumes made the troops sick and many were throwing up. my dad was hunkered near the top so he could breathe and not vomit. The sea seemed bumpy and the Sergeant told him, “Al, look over the side to see what is bumping into us.” So he did and he saw bodies floating everywhere.
It took him a few seconds to realize that those bodies were marines and they were dead.

Another story he told was of he and his buddy in a foxhole toward the rear. There were cans of water everywhere so they gathered them in and put them in the bottom of their foxhole. The water was rusty but it was hot on Peleliu. Being a volcanic, flat island there were no streams or fresh water source as they thought they were lucky because they didn’t have to go in to the base to refill their canteens. One time he did and he remembered standing looking at all the dead and wounded when the picture was taken. An officer called to him and offered him some water. Explaining that there was none on the island and he could only offer him a cup. Embarrassed, my Dad said he refused. When he got back to his foxhole, he and his buddy covered up the cans. He said he was afraid what might be done when it was discovered they had all those cans under them.

He never liked to talk about the war. My Mom would tell me some of the stories when I was a kid. He only spoke about it when he was much older. About the time he was badly burned, about the time he shot a Lieutenant, about the time he almost got blown up by the Army Corps of Engineers, about Okinawa and China.

But now I get to see the famous pictures that were in color. Stuff I knew was out there but never before seen. Too damning because it was so bloody and so  wasteful. It was a mistake to fight it and it was covered up. The Government didn’t want people to know about the real cost…but now it will be out. And I will be looking for my Daddy who has been dead for 8 years. He loved the old war movies, but he may not have loved this one.

If anyone is interested in more, read the Devil’s Anvil; the Assault on Peleliu by James H. Hallas. My Dad is in there 4 times.

Thanks for reading. Watch FUBAR tonight on PBS.

(Excellent Big Picturing bumped @2pmET – promoted by buhdydharma )

Earlier last week, I wrote a diary (What the west means and what roles NATO plays therein) that used a recent Financial Times editorial as a springboard for a discussion on what the “West” was, and what the use of NATO was – questions that  left-of-center Europeans tend to see quite differently from most Americans, including left-of-center ones.

The editorial, by a well-respected British pundit, was insightful and interesting, and led me to conclude what many on the European Tribune have long suspected: that NATO is simply an instrument for Europe to support US strategic priorities, and that the “West” exists only when Europe (and in particular France) aligns itself unconditionally on US positions. The UK, as per that senior British commentator, has as its main role that of disrupting and dividing Europe when it is insufficiently respectful of US interests.

Since I’m French, you may be tempted to conclude that this is just sour grapes by a citizen of a supposedly declining country; however, what I found more interesting in that article was the dominant tone of fear – about the west being under siege, and needing security against various threats – in the form of coordinated military power and little else. It was a narrow, downcast, closed vision of the world, with little about values, progress or hope.

The comment thread is worth reading too, and one of the last comments, by Loefing, pointed me to another article on the same topic, this time by a graduate of the US Naval War College, Tony Corn. The article, (The Revolution in Transatlantic Affairs, has the same dominant tone of fear, but a much more detailed examination of the world. Given the credentials of its author, it is likely to have serious influence on the thinking of the strategists in the Pentagon, and it is thus worth deconstructing.

The return of both China and Islam in world history after a three-century-long eclipse has been the defining feature of the international stage since 1979.

(…)

Throughout the 1990s, this infatuation with globalization and a “time-space compression” in the virtual world led most Westerners to ignore the twofold epochal change taking place in the real world: the transfer of the center of gravity of the world economy from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with “three billion new capitalists” poised to put an end to three centuries of Euro-Atlantic economic primacy; and the rise of a “second nuclear age” in Asia and with it, the concomitant end of three centuries of Western military superiority.

The central theme, again, is that of fear from others – mostly China and Islam, which are described in terrifying terms further in the article – and the incredible naivety of our leaders in the meantime, thinking that ‘the end of history’ had arrived. Think “Clinton is from Venus, real leaders are from Mars” (although Clinton’s name is never mentioned, and the real leaders are wished for, not actually there yet)

At the NATO summit in Riga in November 2006, a little-noticed transatlantic revolution of sorts finally occurred when the Atlantic Alliance acknowledged that it would have to “go global” in order to remain relevant. Divided, America and Europe will fall; united, they can retain the lead.

This is not stated in this particular sentence, but permeates through the whole article, but it is clear that the only way to remain “relevant” is through military force and the accompanying strategic thinking. More obvious in that paragraph is that the only way to be “relevant” is to be in “the lead.” The goal is very obviously and explicitly world dominance.

Tony Corn is the inventor, as far as I can tell, of the concept of the Long War (see his article in policy review in March 2006: World War IV As Fourth-Generation Warfare) – a long, assymetric struggle against insurgent Islam; he additionally sees today a new Great Game with China for the resources of the world, and it is in the context of these twin existential threats that we must think strategically.

The Long War promises to be a thinking man’s war. As a full-fledged Alliance, NATO possesses the kind of staying power that mere ad hoc coalitions cannot deliver; but NATO still has to come to terms with the fact that thinking power will matter more than fighting power.

(…)

Ever since the 1999 intervention in Kosovo, NATO has been eager to prove that it stands for more than “No Action, Talk Only.” But the adoption by the Alliance of the Marge Simpson doctrine (“Are we gonna just stand there like the French, or are we gonna do something?”) has proved to be no substitute for a new strategic concept.

(…)

Europeans (…) have serious difficulties remembering something equally basic that they used to perform with undeniable virtuosity: coercive diplomacy. Be it with Iraq yesterday or Iran today, an astounding percentage of the allegedly sophisticated EU elites have the hardest time grasping what any American redneck knows intuitively: namely, that the collective threat to use force is still the best way to avoid having recourse to actual force.

(…)

Forget the “Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus” mantra that gave the Brussels Eurocracy the vapors in the summer of 2002. (…) The truth is, for the past 15 years, and on both sides of the Atlantic, there have been two major attempts underway to get rid of the strategy problematique altogether.

The contempt for the wimps in Europe permeates much of this article – as it permeates most of the thoughts of the neocons, as well as the common wisdom of Washington (thus the success of Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, which very explicitly stated the notion that Europe was free-riding on America’s dime, pontificating about democracy and rules and diplomacy while the US did the hard work of actually battling threats around the world and protecting the West alone). What is somewhat new is the notion that we are facing new existential threats right now, so the accusation of naivety is extended to a large portion of the Washington establishment as well, which has not yet understood the dire straits we are in.

That critique applies to ‘the past 15 years’, but it’s pretty clear in the rest of the article that it’s during the 90s that the most egregious mistakes were made, thus my reference above to Clinton being from Venus. The dismissive comment about that expression by Corn suggests that those that thought were from Mars back then are too weak for today. And if he sounds like a military pundit looking for a war to put his name on the grand strategic analysis thereof, that might just be because he is…

Of course, the idea that Iraq or even Iran can be used as successful examples of avoiding the recourse to force is so stunning that it might be hard to take anything else in that article seriously. But again, given how such an article can be expected to influence decision-makers in Washington, it is worth continuing to plod through.

Let’s now go into naming names:

In the past hundred years, the instrumentalization of Islam has been a recurrent temptation on the part of every rising power, be it Wilhemine Germany or Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, not to mention America itself. As the latest rising power, China itself would not be immune to that temptation even if it were energy self-sufficient. The fact that China’s energy needs are huge guarantees that the constitution of a Sino-Islamic axis is for Beijing not just a tactical option, but a strategic necessity.

While the pivotal states of this strategy appear to be Pakistan, Iran, and (more recently) Saudi Arabia, the geopolitical situation of Iran puts it in a class by itself, as the most precious proxy in China’s “indirect approach” against American primacy. It is therefore no surprise to learn that China is using Iran as a conduit for the delivery of arms to both Iraqi and Afghan insurgents, and providing Iran itself the kind of small boats needed to conduct attacks against commercial shipping or the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf.

So now it’s not just Iran arming Iraqi insurgents, it’s China using Iran to arm Iraqi insurgents. Beyond trying to turn Iraq into a strategic battlefield in a desperate attempt to justify its invasion somehow, this neatly ties together the two enemies that have been identified, and btings under the same roof the Long War and the Great Game (making it the Great Long WarGame, maybe? – enough stuff there to give work to at least two generations of Pentagon pundits and armchair generals).

And China is using an “artful combination of space power, sea power, and soft power”, but Corn has such a ludicrous interpretation of “soft power” that it is worth quoting in full:

Last but not least, soft power. On the military side, China is focusing on developing security cooperation within the ASEAN Regional Forum framework with the intent of marginalizing America. On the civilian side, China is peddling “Asian values” from Africa to Eurasia and from Latin America to Southeast Asia. For the past six years, China has been promoting autocracy through soft power while America has been promoting democracy through hard power, and the verdict is in: China today has a more positive image worldwide than America.

So, in his mind, soft power is essentially bribery. While it is true that it is a lot more efficient than bombing the shit out of countries to make them cooperative towards you, it is quite a restrictive definition of soft power… No wonder he is so dismissive of the idea of promoting values and democracy – they are a strategic hindrance to building relationships with other countries around the world.

But the lack of understanding of what the soft power of the USA used to be is shocking – the model others aspired to imitate, the successful, rich economy, the great power that, to some extent, restrained itself to gain support from others, and valued convincing others above imposing its rules (or at least the appearance thereof) – all gone and disappeared. This is in line with the fearful, hobbesian vision of the world propagated by the whole article – but it is all the more ironic that a good part of the article is about the need for new clear-headed strategic thinking from the West and NATO, and the notion that the Long War is a “thinking man’s war” – or is it simply that this is the first ‘war’ to be run wholly by armchair warriors?

Regarding what soft power means, there is a revealing sentence much later in the article, where the author writes about the potential geopolitical consequences of climate change on low lying coastal areas, by saying:

As a security organization, NATO’s reasons for caring should be based on a recent report produced by the Center for Naval Analyses entitled “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” describing a number of not exactly rosy scenarios regarding the political-military consequences of rising sea levels in the next 30 years. The hard security consequences of soft-power issues: This is the kind of outside-the-box thinking that NATO should itself promote

Climate change as a “soft power issue.” Basically, soft power is anything not done by military forces – even if it can kill you! The mind boggles.

And yet there are some real nuggest of insight in this article, such as, for instance, a mostly refreshing vision of Russia:

But while the SCO constitutes the core of China’s Islamic strategy, it is for Russia a tactical option to both manage the rise of China in Eurasia and to gain leverage over the West.

(…) In a nutshell: While Yelstin’s choice of an alleged Polish model of transition in 1992 resulted, by 1999, in 38 percent of the population living below the poverty line, Putin’s reorientation toward a Chinese model has since created an annual growth rate of 6 percent for Russia — and a 70 percent approval rating for Putin. Having taken considerable domestic risks by siding with America after 9/11, Putin, for the past 5 years, has received nothing in return — other than a seemingly endless enlargement of NATO in his own backyard.

Now that Russia is rich with oil money and has paid its debts to the West, what Russia wants from the West is respect. Russia’s nuisance capacity should not be underestimated, even though threats to withdraw from the CFE Treaty, or to turn the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) into a “natural gas OPEC,” are intended primarily for domestic consumption and to signal that NATO has enlarged far enough.

Unlike China, Russia is not a rising power. Russian hearts and mind are still up for grabs, though, and there are three reasons why it would be grossly irresponsible to alienate Russia gratuitously. In the short term, Russia’s support is critical to solve (militarily or not) the Iranian question; in the middle-term, Russia has considerable leverage over Europe, with much bigger sticks and carrots than America’s, and the risk of a creeping Finlandization of Europe is real were America to indulge in brinkmanship; in the long term, the West would have nothing to gain were Russia, against its best interest, to upgrade its relations to the SCO from the tactical to the strategic level.

The current demonization of Russia in some American quarters is thus incomprehensible.

While one may disagree with the notion that Russia’s leverage over Europe is one-sided, or with the idea that the Finlandization of Europe would be a bad thing, it is at least refreshing to see a more realistic vision of Russia. Of course, one should remember that, for the author’s America, this is just a tactical consideration in the new grand fight against the enemies of the moment (the Grand Long WarGame), of which Russia is not one, so it is easy to be clear-eyed. But still, a surprising moment of non-zero-sum-game thinking… Or maybe just contempt for the vainquished and weakened former enemy…

Simply put: when all is said and done, there is a difference in kind between totalitarianism and authoritarianism. If Islamist totalitarianism is the main enemy, as the neocons rightly claim, then it follows logically that Russian authoritarianism, however unpalatable to democratic sensibilities, is something we can live with.

But back to the grand visions:

One thing is certain: the Great Game and the Long War will be the two global and generational challenges confronting the West in the next 30 years. While the two challenges at times overlap, they remain analytically distinct. Attempts to conflate the two challenges with a new geopolitical concept like “Greater Middle East” risk confusing the issues. The Great Game? While the West remains fixated on the continental dimension, the East shows more lucidity in giving as much importance to the maritime dimension (more on that later). The Long War? Due to mass migration, the sociopolitical umma no longer coincides with the geopolitical Dar al-Islam.

(…)

In the West itself, the current fixation of America on Central Asia and of Europe on the Middle East — the closest thing to a “Western” geopolitical vision — is based on two flawed premises. To put it crudely: Americans believe that Caspian Sea oil is the key to success in the Great Game; Europeans are convinced that the resolution of the Palestinian question holds the key to victory in the Long War.

The “East”, the “Long War” – pretty big concepts that are taken as givens by the author. He’s promoting them, so I understand him using them and providing an analysis accordingly, but considering that Europeans are on board for the Long War is maybe presuming too much. In so far as they push for a resolution of the Palestinian question (or, more precisely, of the Israeli-Palestinian question…), it is to eliminate one of the most evident – if, of course, instrumentalised in many ways – sources of tension in the region, not to “win a war”. Europeans are, for the most part, trying to avoid the idea that there is war. Saying there is one, just like talking about crusades or about a “clash of civilisations”, is already taking sides. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Creating sides, and labelling enemies.

There’s a long part about navy issues, which is, again, focused on threats (how a terrorist attack on or with tankers or container ships would be both easy and devastating), and on the need to rebuild a strong navy in the face of China’s own build up, but, hey, this is a Naval War College graduate writing after all. I won’t comment other than to note that the article is focused on threats, once more. the irony is that the danger is made ominous by pulling up big numbers, corresponding to potential economic damage from a well placed attack on a major port or on important navigation straits – but these numbers are never compared to the cost year in and year out of the forces that would supposedly be used to prevent them…

So, more fearmongering and request for Military-Industrial Complex work. Pretty unsurprising stuff.
What follows is a lot more unexpected – a criticism of the UN, which sounds banal, given how the institution is hated in many circles in Washington, but is not given the angle of attack:

Once the embodiment of Western ideals, the UN has turned into a lean, mean anti-West machine. Though European publics no longer have any illusion today about a Europe-puissance, they still retain a surprisingly boy-scoutish view of the UN, one that no longer corresponds to reality. European public opinion saw nothing wrong, for instance, in the recent establishment of an International Criminal Court that would give its prosecutor the power of a grand inquisitor, in part because they are not aware of the politicization of the UN (and of the potential use of the ICC as an anti-Western weapon), but also in part because, over the years, they have resigned themselves to the creeping judicial and technocratic imperialism pursued at home by the EU Court of Justice and the EU Commission.

(…)

At the same time that it was becoming a major player in the propaganda game, the UN inside was gradually turning into a “lawfare” machine against the West.

(…)

In this ongoing weaponization of the UN against the West, China has not remained passive: beyond the OIC [Organisation of the Islamic Conference] and NAM [NonAligned Movement] proper, the largest group in the UN happens to be the “G-77 + China,” i.e., 132 countries representing 69 percent of UN members. China’s UN dues may be 2 percent of the UN budget, but Chinese activism in the past decade has spectacularly increased in recent years.36 It is reportedly under Chinese pressure that the US was evicted from the Human Rights Commission in 2001 to make room for Arab dictatorships.

(…)

The Western-inspired international legal order is today under assault at the UN; at the same time, an obsolete Law of Armed Conflict is preventing the West from defending itself on the ground. As a military organization, NATO should today articulate a “Counter-Lawfare” doctrine for the sake of intellectual interoperability. As a security organization, NATO should not wait until it has become a full-fledged UN of Democracies to start elaborating a New Law of Armed Conflict adapted to the realities of post-modern warfare.

This is worth quoting at length, because it brigns up back to the dismissal of soft power mentioned earlier. The new armchair warriors like Corn are going further, and effectively stating that they have lost the “soft war” – thus wanting to bring things exclusively on a military plane, where the US and NATO still rule.

Again, Iraq might be mentioned here as a proof that military strength is not necessarily the best tool for all problems (of course – don’t tell a hammer you’re not a nail, it might piss it off, with nasty consequences for you…). But the casual dismissal of international law – created by Americans, and nurtured for decades by the West, in one of the endeavors that were perhaps most worthy of the grand discourse on values that we are so fond of – is such a fundamental strategic mistake that it must be pounded on.

International law is turning against the USA because it has, in recent times (not starting on 9/11, but accelerating since then) decided that it would not be bound by such common rules, while trying to impose them on others, as was made possible by its global dominance and the lack of enforcement capabilities. The one thing that made it possible for international law to start having any effect was the decision by the USA, for a number of decades, to abide by it, despite its ability not to (thanks to its global power), followed by Europe in that. International laws were boosted precisely because the dominant power of the day decided to be constrained by such rules even when it could have ignored them. That provided legitimacy for demands that others follow the same rules, and created a lot of good will. That was real soft power – and very effective one at that. where that power ebbed is when the USA decided that such rules were becoming too burdensome and started opting out. Before 9/11, it could be argued that it was not a trend, but that some issues were more sensitive than others, and that overall, progress was being made. Since 9/11, the reversal has been complete. Contempt for the Geneva Conventions, for the UN Security Council, and for numbers of other international treaties has been absolute and open, and the double standard of nevertheless still requiring others to follow these rules simply breathtaking. what that signified was that the USA decided to rely solely on raw power, and it should not be surprised that others are doing the same, in a race to the “bottom” which can only be damaging to US pretensions at being the sole military superpower on the globe. Among other things, when you attack countries without nukes and bluster and bluff with countries with nukes, you cannot be surprised that a number of countries get the message that nukes will make them safer. And when you pontificate about human rights while explicitly promoting torture, renditions and unlimited detentions as official policy, you cannot expect not to have the same thrown as you, with Chavez’s diatribes, Ahmedinejad’s taunts and Putin’s jibes – and their ensuing popularity – the inevitable result.

Drop the soft power, lose the soft power. Thus the need to use evil words to describe the adversary one has created:

The return of China alone would be enough to make the West “live in interesting times.” To make things even more interesting, Islam too is back, this time in the form of a totalitarianism which manages to combine an ideological comprehensiveness (Salafism) unseen since Communism and an existential nihilism (jihadism) worthy of Nazism.

It’s Stalin and Hitler combined! And brown and yellow people too!

Of course, this grand strategic vision that claims to replace the blindness of the current Washington deciders has a few blinkers of its own, notably the role of the West in general, and the US in particular, in antagonising the populations of the Arab countries we now seem to fear. For some reason, they associate corruption and authoritarianism with the West, and islam with social progress and democracy (hmm… let’s see … could our support for local regimes in the hope that oil will flow have anything to do with it?). And emergin Asia, which has seen the results of two centuries of industrialization for the sole benefit of the West, is now told that resources are scarce and pollution should be avoided, even at the expense of growth (and industrialisation) for them?

Of course, for me as a European, the saddest thing is to see our own leaders acquiese to this small, fearful, destructive vision of the world, and be willing to go along with such tripe, and to denigrate the EU as an institution that has done its time and should just become a big free trade area, and let NATO become the entity representing Europe – a subversient provider of military subcontracting and cheap legitimacy to the Pentagon.

What a sad, sad world we are living in when these are the thoughts of our foremost strategists.

… unless one keeps in mind the particular conceit of democracies at war that Kennan, following Tocqueville, pointed out long ago: “There is nothing in nature more egocentrical than the embattled democracy. It soon becomes the victim of its own propaganda. It then tends to attach to its own cause an absolute value which distorts its own vision of everything else. . . . People who have got themselves into this frame of mind have little understanding for the issues of any contest other than the one in which they are involved.”

That was also in that article. But not about itself, even though it should have been…

Cross-posted in Orange

Once upon a time…

That’s pretty damn vague.  Re-cue the music.  On September 30, 1992 a teacher told students in 1 pm CDT abstract algebra class that no matter what they heard about their teacher before the next meeting of the class, they should try to concentrate and study for the exam.  The teacher told the students that all Hell was likely to bust loose and there was a good possibility that they would have a new teacher by the next meeting of the class.

But they should try to concentrate and study for the exam. 

Then the teacher dropped her books in her office, walked the carefully prepared letter  down to the office of the Chair, who was not in at the moment, and laid it on his desk.  Then the teacher went to Little Rock for an appointment with a therapist…and the official beginning of hir transition.

It was not lost on her that this was also her deceased father’s birthday.  But he wasn’t using it anymore, so it might as well be hers as well.

[The graphic at the right is entitled Scarlet Letter.]

That shit did hit the fan.  And it continued to do so for nearly 8 years.  For all of that time I patiently tried to teach people what it meant to be transgendered.  My words and my teaching ability were the only defense I had.

Well, except I had tenure.  If I hadn’t had tenure, I would not have gotten it.  That goes without saying.  The University of Central Arkansas didn’t award tenure to anyone they even suspected was GLBT. 

It was touch and go, however, about whether they would invoke the moral turpitude clause to get rid of me.  Then I could sue them.  And they could demand a jury trial.  And the good citizens of Faulkner County, AR could determine whether or not I was a moral person.

They did try to bait me into abandoning my duties.  For the good of the team, you know.

If I hadn’t have had tenure, I would have been fired.  That is a certainty.  That is the fate of most transfolk.

For fifteen years I have spent whatever time I could manage trying to teach people what it means to be someone like me.  The entire point of that effort is that I felt…and still do…that nobody should be treated like I was and, as I said to my boss,

You can’t hire me based solely on my gender.

You can’t fire me based solely on my gender.

What business is my gender to you?

And I have tried to be a voice speaking out in favor of those less fortunate that I, first through PFLAG (my daughter is a lesbian), as a member of the Women’s Project, and as a board member of the Arkansas Gay and Lesbian Task Force.  I have worked incessantly for GLBT rights…and tried to convince people that the T belonged there.

And on Friday, the T was removed from GLBT in the House of Representatives.  Fifteen years of education, of a small army of transpeople walking the halls of Congress to educate our senators and representatives flushed down the toilet without even a vote.  Every promise we were given during those years was violated.  If this is not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

Yet there are gays and lesbians, even some straight people, who have been trying to tell us we are wrong, that we haven’t been betrayed.

Representative Frank:

I believe that it would be a grave error to let this opportunity to pass a sexual orientation nondiscrimination bill go forward, not simply because it is one of the most important advances we’ll have made in securing civil rights for Americans in decades, but because moving forward on this bill now will also better serve the ultimate goal of including people who are transgender than simply accepting total defeat today.

I am a lesbian.  I am not included in coverage by this bill.  Without the gender identity words, neither are you, if you happen to be a gay man who is too nellie or a dyke who is too butch.  Because the bill lets the employer claim he’s not firing you for being gay or lesbian, but because of a reason that is not covered.

Whatever.

I want to focus on that last line.  I want to know how we are eventually going to included.  We have been left behind and left behind and left behind at every step of the process, traded as bargaining chips so that gays and lesbians could gain some rights at every level.  Rights have been gained for gays and lesbians, but not transpeople, in the cities, the counties, the states.  At each step, we were told someone would come back to help us.  It hasn’t happened yet.

When, I ask, has anyone ever come back to help us?  What few rights we have, we’ve won through the courts…without the assistance of gays and lesbians, who have moved on to their own selfish concerns. [Sorry for that…we’ve been accused lately of being selfish for wanting some rights for ourselves.]

But I’ll play the game.  I’ll assume, against all that has happened in the past 15 years, that you really mean it, that after ENDA is the law of the land, you are willing to try to get a law passed that only covers gender identity and that you seriously believe you can make that happen.

How?  I want specifics.  Surely we can ask for that much.  I want to know what each and every one of you is going to do to help us gain that protection.  Especially you gay and lesbian folks who think you know who we are but appear not to have a clue when you open your mouths.  Organization needs to start and it needs to start now.

I don’t have enough years of life left to wait for another generation.

Are you going to educate yourself on this issue?  Are you going to do the work?  Are we going to see an even larger army of gays and lesbians marching those halls to teach ever senator and representative what it means to be transgendered and how come we deserve the same rights you win? 

How about everyone here at Daily Kos sign up for a senator or representative to educate?  They are impressed by numbers.  I suggest about 5 to 10 for each congress-critter.  And you will have to return, time and again, to make sure they stay informed.  Apparently one broadside from the AFA about “men in dresses” is all it takes to destroy a lot of work.

Helpful hint:  While some transfolk are indeed “men in dresses,” these are not people who would do so at work.

If you want information about how it was done, please feel free to ask.  We have done this work that has been undone. 

But now it’s your job.  You need to start with a plan.  We are curious as to what it is going to be.

http://s26.photobuck…

The Legend of the Cherokee Rose.
SOURCE

No better symbol exists of the pain and suffering of the Trail Where They Cried than the Cherokee Rose(pictured at top of page). The mothers of the Cherokee grieved so much that the chiefs prayed for a sign to lift the mother’s spirits and give them strength to care for their children. From that day forward, a beautiful new flower, a rose, grew wherever a mother’s tear fell to the ground. The rose is white, for the mother’s tears. It has a gold center, for the gold taken from the Cherokee lands, and seven leaves on each stem that represent the seven Cherokee clans that made the journey. To this day, the Cherokee Rose prospers along the route of the “Trail of Tears”.

TRAIL OF TEARS MAP

Military forts were already in place when theroads leading to those forts were being made more passable. Yet with no “removal treaty” known to Cherokees, settlers sarcastically made references to the military forts becoming the Cherokee’s new homes. Principle Chief John Ross was so alarmed by the forts, roads, and cruel teasing that he traveled all the way to Washington to express his grave concerns to Andrew Jackson.

Jackson hypocritically told them:

“You shall remain in your ancient land as long as grass grows and water runs.”

Principle Chief John Ross also tried desperately to escape the peril of Treaty of New Echota (the “removal treaty” which no true representative of the Cherokee Nation ever signed) for his people by sending a letter to the U.S. Senate and House, dated September 28, 1836:

Cherokee letter protesting the Treaty of New Etocha  from Chief John Ross, “To the Senate and House of Representatives”


LETTER

By the stipulations of this instrument, we are despoiled of our private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals. We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self-defence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family! We have neither land nor home, nor resting place that can be called our own. And this is effected by the provisions of a compact which assumes the venerated, the sacred appellation of treaty.

The U.S. Senate and House ignored his plea, and when 31 forts with adequate roads were in place to be transformed into prison, concentration, and death camps…the Cherokee received this letter from General Winfield Scott on May 10, 1838:

Address to the Cherokee Nation

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“Cherokees! The President of the United States has sent me with a powerful army, to cause you, in obedience to the treaty of 1835 [the Treaty of New Echota], to join that part of your people who have already established in prosperity on the other side of the Mississippi. Unhappily, the two years which were allowed for the purpose, you have suffered to pass away without following, and without making any preparation to follow; and now, or by the time that this solemn address shall reach your distant settlements, the emigration must be commenced in haste, but I hope without disorder.

Being Forced by the U.S. military to the internment, concentration, or death camps:

http://www.powersour…

During the roundup intimidation and acts of cruelty at the hands of the troops, along with the theft and destruction of property by local residents, further alienated the Cherokees. Finally, Chief Ross appealed to President Van Buren to permit the Cherokees to oversee their own removal. Van Buren consented, and Ross and his brother Lewis administered the effort. The Cherokees were divided into 16 detachments of about 1,000 each.

“I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west….On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure…”

Private John G. Burnett

Captain Abraham McClellan’s Company,

2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry

Cherokee Indian Removal 1838-39

The military forts which were transformed into prison, concentration, and death camps were naturally armed with rifle towers and weaponry.1100 Cherokee were held as prisoners for almost 6 months at

FORT HETZEL with no restroom facilities and little nourishment.

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STARVATIONStarvation is a severe reduction in vitamin, nutrient, and energy intake, and is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation (in excess of 1-2 months) causes permanent organ damage and will eventually result in death.

I would be tempted to say that the soldiers intentionally fed the Cherokee less in order to alleviate sanitation problems, if it weren’t for the facts that several Cherokee died in the internment camps and on the Trail of Tears, due to a murderous philosophy:

Extermination:


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Eugenics is a new term for an old phenomena which asserts that Indian people should be exterminated because they are an inferior race of people. Jefferson’s suggestion to pursue the Indians to extermination fits well into the eugenistic vision. In David Stannard’s study American Holocaust, he writes: “had these same words been enunciated by a German leader in 1939, and directed at European Jews, they would be engraved in modern memory. Since they were uttered by one of America’s founding fathers, however…they conveniently have become lost to most historians in their insistent celebration of Jefferson’s wisdom and humanity.” Roosevelt feared that American upper classes were being replaced by the “unrestricted breeding” of inferior racial stocks, the “utterly shiftless”, and the “worthless.”

The soldiers must have wanted them dead, for transferring dead bodies out of the internment camps and disposing of them must have been more inconvenient, than giving a prisoner a shovel to cover up feces, while they also died of diseases.

Having given Wilma Mankiller’s book away last summer, I think an earlier paragraph from my last diary referred to what occurred at Fort New Echota (at least), because the Cherokee were supposed to have been given corn, I remember:

Fort New Echota (Fort Wool):

General Scott was shocked during a trip to inspect Fort New Echota when he overheard members of The Guard say that they would not be happy until all Cherokee were dead. As a result, he issued meticulous orders on conduct and allowed actions during the action. Troops were to treat tribal members “with kindness and humanity, free from every strain of violence.” Each Cherokee was to receive meat and flour or corn regardless of age. Scott’s orders were disobeyed by most troops that were not directly under his control.NEW ECHOTA

Here was the paragraph:

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The reader needs to understand that the Cherokee are a matriarchal society. Plainly put: the clan mother can trump the chief, women choose HER mate based on HIS cooking skills, and a man knew he was divorced if all his things were outside when he got home. So when the soldiers raped the women in the prison camps and on the Trail of Tears, they raped the tribe’s leaders as well. It was about taking away power. When the soldiers passed the women around like whiskey bottles raping them, it was about taking away power. When the soldiers scalped the women’s genitalia and wore their vaginas on their hats, it was about raping power to the most excruciating degree imaginable. I think it’s common knowledge how soldiers identified “leaders” in concentration camps and killed them, in order to keep the hostages under control. Still, one hundred and fifty-one years later nuns are raped and tortured…

Last of all, what happened in Fort Cumming may be ambiguous, but let us assume the “horrors that occurred inside the walls” were similar and at least equal to the extermination via internment camps and relocation against the Cherokees that occurred at the other forts, if not worse.

Fort Cumming:


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…Strangely missing from detailed physical description of the fort is any mention of the horrors that occurred inside the walls.

The 13 groups of 7 clans left in late August through late September of 1838, arriving January through March of the proceeding year.

http://www.rosecity….

They would lose their land 50 years later with the Land Run of 1889. While 12 groups traveled by wagon on land, Chief John Ross’s group traveled by water by boat.

Strong seasonal rain made the dirt roads too muddy to travel, their horses could not graze enough to be sustained, and hunting was scarce. The U.S. government gave them very little food to take. Even if they had been able to maintain their horses and wagons, they still would have had to walk across the frozen Mississippi or Ohio River, or be trapped in between them.

http://www.rosecity….

Looking across the river today, one can only imagine the suffering that was taking place more than 150 years ago.  Disrespectfully uprooted, homeless, they were embarking on a long journey in worn-out moccasins in the unforgiving dead of winter.  Enduring river crossings, ice floes and relentless winds, they had only a blanket for warmth – if they were lucky.  You imagine huddling around a fire, comforting your mother while she gets weaker and weaker … wondering, as she, when the suffering would end, and whether she would even live to see it.

I forgot that was why they walked with little or no shoes across jagged ice and snow for miles upon miles. You only get that at the museum, because there is a large approximately 6 x 4 picture of the Mississippi River in the winter covered in snow with jagged ice. I don’t know how as many survived as they did; nearly 2000 Cherokee died on the Trail Of Tears. The least number of reported total deaths is 4000, combining the deaths at the internment camps. The greatest estimated number is 8000.

http://www.rosecity….

Two-thirds of the ill-equipped Cherokees were trapped between the ice-bound Ohio and Mississippi Rivers during January. Although suffering from a cold, Quatie Ross, the Chief’s wife, gave her only blanket to a child.

“Long time we travel on way to new land. People feel bad when they leave Old Nation. Women cry and make sad wails, Children cry and many men cry…but they say nothing and just put heads down and keep on go towards West. Many days pass and people die very much.”

Recollections of a survivor

She died of pneumonia at Little Rock. Some drank stagnant water and succumbed to disease. One survivor told how his father got sick and died; then, his mother; then, one by one, his five brothers and sisters. “One each day. Then all are gone.”

The last things I remember about going through the exhibit are the stories constantly being told through audio with representative statues. Voices are heard over each other, yet surrounding voices are soft enough to hear the one you’re currently at with clarity.

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The soldiers forced the Cherokees to abandon their dead at the side of the road.

Amidst the surrounding voices in the museum was the voice of a Cherokee survivor expressing how her grandfather died. Her grandfather had to sneak away for a couple days to hunt for food, so that she and others could live. The few soldiers wouldn’t notice, apparently. She tells how as a little girl, she knelt beside him as he died. What I recall the most was her saying, “Grandfather, Grandfather?” I think a soldier hit him, but I can’t exactly recall. She had to just keep walking.

An elder once told me how some still walk the Trail Of Tears, to remember and honor their ancestors by their graves of stones. “But it takes about 6 months to do it,” he said. I heard another elder tell a group about his family’s forced relocation, “When my relative’s relatives died, they buried them, picked up their pipes, and moved on.”

Now I know why I repeated that to myself over and over again.

Mitakuye Oyasin

(All my relations)

Detailed map:

TRAIL OF TEARS MAP #2Remember that the small groups of Cherokee would forage for food as they proceeded, so the map is only a general representation of the routes.

http://s45.photobuck…

Music to Transition by

Nina Simone: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free

I didn’t actually have a copy of Nina singing that song.  A friend, one of the first 20 people I came out to, made me a tape of two Mary Travers solo albums (Mary and Morning Glory) and that song was included.  It kept me going.

I have a naturally very deep voice.  I used to do a very good impression of Bill Medley singing Old Man River.  I worked on my voice by singing along to the songs of the next artist.

I hope the words of the next song are sufficient to speak for themselves about why they deserve including.

Ferron: Ain’t Life a Brook

Tom Petty: Learning to Fly

Wilson Phillips: Hold On

Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one.  There will be another along in a few hours.