Bittersweet Memories of Catholic School

In my latest column, I take a nostalgic look back at Holy Spirit School and Sister Norberta.  The title is a link to the web version of the column.  --EFP

Wars without goals breed atrocities

The title is a link to my latest column.  --EFP

Beyond Coincidence, Our Lives Were Enriched

My latest column is as close to a profession of faith as I am likely to get.  But, more than that, it is also a heartfelt eulogy.  (The title is a link to the column.)  --EFP

Palm on Guns--A Dove in Hawk's Clothing

I'm indulging in another true confession this week.  (The title is a link to my column.) What can I say?  I guess I've always been a dove in hawk's clothing.  --EFP

The Way We Were--Collins Park, 1959

This time around, I thought I would indulge in some true confessions.  The original article was posted on September 18, 2009.  
        For those who are interested, below I have added the rest of the story.  --EFP

            I remember that my mother and stepfather couldn’t resist driving by on the morning after the second bombing.  Much to my surprise, they allowed me to come along.  The left stucco sidewall was bowed out, like a giant abscess.  There was a jagged crack running from the ground to the roof.  That image haunts me still.  All the windows were blown out.  The lawn was littered with glass shards.  Even mother seemed to be taken aback by the sight.  I’m sure she never expected things to go that far.  My stepfather seemed relieved that it was finally over.  He, too, was a racist, but he and my mother had had bitter arguments over her activism.  He had mother’s number.  He knew she was enjoying the attention, and he feared that she was needlessly putting all three of us at risk.

            A local contractor, who just happened to live in Collins Park, and who had access to dynamite, was soon arrested and later convicted.  He went to prison.  His wife went door-to-door trying to collect money for her husband’s legal expenses.  I still remember when she came to our door.  My mother refused to contribute. She claimed to have been broke and behind in her bills, neither of which was true. 

Orwellian Newtspeak

In today's column, I couldn't resist having a little fun with Gingrich's Orwellian Newtspeak.  The title above is a link to my column.  --EFP

The Latest Military Scandal

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was right to call the video of Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan “utterly deplorable.”  I agree.  There are certain values we cannot let go of, even in extremis, and remain human.  But I am not surprised that it happened.  Anyone wondering why should perhaps turn back to my column of Nov. 10:  Reality and Reflections on Veterans Day

      The one factor in mitigation I would point to is the nature of the enemy today’s Marines are now facing.

      I always felt that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army didn’t hate us.  It was just a war; it wasn’t personal.  They didn’t despise everything we stood for.  They didn’t behead American prisoners of war.  They only wanted us and our influence out of their country. 

     To the Taliban and al-Qaeda, however, we’re “infidels.”  Not just our presence, but our very existence threatens the theocratic paradise they envision.  Our troops certainly feel and understand that, making this a much more bitter war than mine was.  --EFP

Mixed Feelings About Veterans Courts

Kitsap County's plan to institute a veterans court seems to have inspired a surprising amount of push-back.

       Personally, I’m fully in favor of instituting a veterans court, but the principle of equal justice under the law would seem to be a difficult one to negotiate. 

        The law, of course, is all about precedent, and there is a precedent we can point to:  drug court.  Drug courts, as I understand them, are grounded in a twofold premise:  (1) that drug addiction is an illness in need of intervention and treatment rather than incarceration and (2) that we don’t need to keep overcrowding our prisons with non-violent offenders. 

         Are veterans courts grounded in essentially the same presumption—that non-violent veteran offenders are likely to be suffering from some degree of PTSD in need of intervention and treatment rather than incarceration?  If so, we should make that argument, pointing to the drug-court precedent.

          As a Vietnam veteran myself, however, I do see a downside to pressing for veterans courts. I recall how Vietnam veterans were widely portrayed in the media as dangerously deranged.  I would hate to think that our good intentions may contribute to stereotyping our current generation of veterans as walking time bombs, ready to explode at any minute, or even as unhinged and helpless. --EFP       

The Latest Palm Leaves

I've been remiss.  Here are the links to my latest Kitsap sun columns:
Memories of Two Christmases Past
Diversity and Assimilation Are Not Mutually Exclusive
The World Is Too Much With Us

Mere Palm Loosed Again on Kitsap County

I now write a column for the Kitsap Sun.   My last column came out on November 10, the Marine Corps Birthday and the eve of Veterans Day.  In honor of the occasion, I shared a couple war stories:  Reality and Reflections on Veterans Day

Balancing the Budget on the Backs of the Military

According to Tom Philpott's latest "Military Update" (published today in our local paper), the Obama administration's budget balancing plan includes annual TRICARE fees, substantial increases in pharmacy co-payments, and a civilianized military retirement system.   Under the White House plan, according to Philpott, servicemen and women "are expected to share in the fiscal sacrifices to be asked of millions of Americans drawing federal entitlements."
        Let me get this straight:  following 9/11, our Armed Forces went to war while the rest of America was told to go shopping.  No sacrifices were asked of the American public at large. Now, after ten years of fighting two wars, our small All-Volunteer Force is being told that "their benefits are just too generous and must be brought nearer to what civilians receive."
       As a former enlisted Marine and a retired Marine officer, I would be okay with that as long as "millions of Americans" start sharing in the same sacrifices and hardships currently being endured by the less than one percent of our population currently shouldering the burden of national defense.
        Yes, America reveres and supports its troops!  Think of how Curly, of Three Stooges fame, used to pronounce "certainly," followed by "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!"   --EFP     

"Les Is More" Revisited: A DADT Story

Today marking the official end of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, I thought I would dust off two essays I previously published on the issue.  The title to this post is a link to one of the essays.  I've copied the other one below.  --EFP
....................................
"Les Is More:  A Don't Ask, Don't Tell Story"

 [The following appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on 17 Dec. 2007.]

"Lighten up on 'don't ask, don't tell"
EDWARD F. PALM
GUEST COLUMNIST

Call me "Les."

My real name is "Ed," but I was always Les to the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division when I was a major serving on his staff in the late '80s.
     The recent news reports about 28 retired admirals and generals calling for an end to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy have led me to reflect on how I came to be Les. Personally, I think it is long past time for the Department of Defense to lighten up on this issue, as I learned to do in the 1st Marine Division.
     The entire time I was on active duty as a Marine officer, there was only other officer named Palm, and he was always at least three ranks ahead of me. His name is Les Palm.
     Now, the Marine Corps, compared with the other services, is a small place. Senior officers tend to know one another -- by reputation, if not personally. Les Palm enjoyed a superb reputation throughout the Corps. Ed Palm -- "not so much." This was mainly because of my own career choice. As an enlisted man, I had served in Vietnam as a rifleman and patrol leader with the Combined Action Program. But later in life, as an officer, I became an "adjutant," a professional administrator.
     The general clearly had me confused with Les Palm. Whenever I would brief him, he would close the briefing with "Thank you, Les." Or, when I would encounter him in the hall or in the club, he would say "Hi, Les."
     For the most part, I was content to be "Les." But one day I did ask the division adjutant, an ironic young captain, if he thought I should set the general straight.
     "Hell no, sir!" my young friend replied. "Les Palm is a heterosexual -- an artillery officer. You're just an adjutant," he reminded me.  "The confusion can only do you good!"
     I retired -- still a major -- in 1993 and went on to an academic career. Les Palm would go on to become a lieutenant general. We never actually met. But my young friend was right; the confusion did do me a lot of good. It prompted me to think seriously about whether having gays serving openly would really be a detriment to good order and discipline.
     Later, in interviewing for academic jobs, when people would ask me where I stood on the gay ban, I knew just what to say. I told them that I had seen far more boy-girl problems than problems caused by gay Marines.
     I told them that, gay or straight, we have an obligation to keep our sex lives private and separate from our professional lives. And I told them that, should the Department of Defense change the policy and allow gays to serve openly, not only would we adjust but we would lead the way, just as the Armed Forces had done with racial integration in the '50s.
     I still believe that. I also still wonder if anyone anywhere has ever confused Les Palm with Ed Palm the adjutant turned academic.

Dragonflies, Clear Creek Trail, Silverdale, WA (9-20-11)

Dragonflies are nature's helicopters.  They can hover, fly backwards, and pivot on their own axis.  I love the challenge of trying to photograph them in flight.  Click on each photo for a better view.  --EFP

 

 

 

Deficit Be Damned--for Now at Least!

Today's "This Week, with Christiane Amanpour" featured an interview with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, one of the few large American companies still hiring.  We keep hearing that businesses are sitting on large surpluses because they are afraid to hire.  The right wing, of course, attributed that fear to strangling government regulation and the socialistic designs of the Obama administration.  Schmidt doesn't see it that way.  The problem is simply a matter of supply and demand. People are not buying.  Hence, demand is down.
       Businesses are not going to hire people to meet a non-existent demand for more goods and services.  Schmidt recommends that the government put people back to work on infrastructure programs.  That would stimulate the demand that businesses need to see before they will hire more people.
      It makes sense to me.  I don't see how the Republican/Tea Party solution of "getting government off the backs of businesses" could get our economy growing again.  That alone will not create the additional demand for goods and services that would require businesses to hire more people.
      The irony is that Schmidt is not the first business mogul I've heard advancing this solution.  It would seem that conservative ideologues are quick to speak for the business community but not to listen to it. --EFP

The Superannuated All-Volunteer Force Revisited

This morning, during the "In Memoriam" segment of ABC's This Week, I noted that a 40-year-old Army PFC was killed in Afghanistan.  This is just wrong.  I said as much back in 2005 on NPR.  The title to this post is a link to that commentary.  --EFP

The Mantra of the Far Right

An opponent of a proposed veterans’ services levy here in Kitsap County has been quoted as saying this:  "We do not need continued government support to do what we need to do in our lives. . . .What we need is for government to get the hell out of our way." 

            I’m getting really tired of hearing variations on the Reaganesque mantra that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”  It was more rhetorical than real--just a clever sound bite--when Reagan first uttered it, and it is less than helpful today.  To be sure, we need to root out fraud, waste, and abuse at all levels of government.  But the fact remains that there are some needs that only government can meet.  There are other needs that government has a moral obligation to meet.  Given that we have relegated the burden of national defense to less than one percent of our population, the obligation is undeniable, and only government has the mechanisms to ensure a  consistent, widespread approach to meeting the need. I support the levy.   

            And as for our country at large, clever sound bites—especially the mantras of ideologues—are not the solution to our problems.  --EFP       

Blackberry Season at Chez Palm

Our blackberries are finally ripe, and just as he did last summer, "Phineas" is helping himself.  Be sure to click on each photo for a better view.  --EFP

The More Things Change . . .

The August 29 issue of The New Yorker features an interesting article that makes Charles Dickens appear to have been prescient.  In 1842, in the midst of a trip to America, Dickens recorded the following reactions:

This is not the Republic of my imagination. . . Look at the exhausted Treasury; the paralyzed   government; the unworthy representatives of a free people; the desperate contests between the North and the South; the iron curb and brazen muzzle fastened upon every man who speaks his mind, even in that Republican Hall, to which Republican men are sent by a Republican people to speak Republican Truths—the stabbings, and shootings, and coarse and brutal threatenings exchanged between Senators and under the very Senate’s roof—the intrusion of the most pitiful, mean, malicious, creeping, crawling, sneaking party spirit into all transactions of life.   

Except for the “desperate contests between the North and the South,” this could have been written about the American government today.  Dickens truly found America to be “exceptional,” but not in the idealized sense that the Tea-Party-types and other neoconservatives are currently promoting.

            I can relate.  An America in which honest disagreements are characterized as treason and demagoguery has replaced reasoned discourse is not the “Republic of my imagination” either.   --EFP

Red Dragonflies

Phineas and I had a good day photographing red dragonflies on the Clear Creek Train in Silverdale, Washington.  The only problem was that we both got muddy--really muddy!  Be sure to click on the photos for a better view.  --EFP

Palm on the Twenty-Year Military Retirement

"Major Palm, whatever possessed you to . . .?"
          I couldn't resist weighing in on the Defense Business Board's proposal to replace the military's longstanding twenty-year retirement option with a civilian-style 401-K-type plan that would require service-member contributions and which would not kick in until age 62 or 65.  The title above is a link to a shorter version that appeared in today's (August 21) Kitsap Sun.  --EFP

Recently, I have been reminded of an ugly exchange my stepmother “Betty”--an Air Force “dependent,” as we used to call a military family member—once had with a civilian wife.  This woman was bitterly complaining about the rising cost of living.  Betty tried to commisserate, but the woman was having none of it.  “How would you know? “ she demanded.  “You get everything for free!” 

            Something of that same spirit of jealous resentment, it seems to me, may just be animating the current closed-door discussions aimed at reforming the military’s longstanding system of early retirement.  The fact of the matter is that military families never got “everything for free,” and they still don’t.  They endure privations and sacrifices that are hardly offset by the option to retire at half pay after twenty years’ service.    

            The group responsible for the current initiative, the Defense Business Board, however, just may not be seeing it that way.  Shades of Robert McNamara and his whiz-kids of the sixties, these are a group of civilian business executives who would put the Department of Defense on a more-business-like footing with a 401-K system of voluntary contributions and pension payments that would not start until age or 62 or 65.

            At first glance, today’s all-volunteer force may seem to be very well paid indeed.  Base pay is higher than it used to be, and a large part of the compensation package still consists of tax-free allowances for housing, uniforms, and food.  Contrary to popular belief, these subsidies do not cover the total cost of such necessities, but the average military family would be hard-pressed to get along without them.  The kicker is that, upon retirement, the allowances are lost.  A twenty-year retiree merely gets 50 percent of his or her base pay, and that is taxable. 

            What we are hearing now, of course, is that the current system has simply become unaffordable, but the presumption that our Armed Forces enjoy unwarranted and undeserved benefits certainly predates our current economic crisis.  The current mania for supporting the troops notwithstanding, the civil-military relation in America has always been a strained marriage of convenience.  As essentially a socialized system that demands conformity, the military cuts across the grain of our cherished American mythos of rugged individualism, unbridled freedom, and limitless opportunity. 

            Personally, I suspect that many of the neo-conservatives who have been celebrating and promoting these same myths do not have nearly as much respect for the military as they profess.  As people who have realized the American dream on their own terms, many of today’s Tea Party patriots probably join liberals and media elites alike in looking down on the military as a haven for those who lack the talent and the ambition to make it in America, most of whom they consider to be expendable.

            Ironically, today’s neo-conservatives are the same people who like to remind us that “freedom isn’t free.”  True enough.  We have to continue to pay for it in many ways, the current twenty-year retirement included.  It is an entitlement in the literal sense of the word—something that a twenty-year veteran has earned and is indeed entitled to. --EFP