It's been a tough year, and a good excuse to travel once again those lonesome roads down to New Mexico to visit friends and former colleagues and make sure my adobe in romantic old Mesilla is still there in all its charm. I depart from my usual route across the lonely Great Plains to go by way of Fort Hood, deep in the heart of Texas, where daughter Kara is a captain in Uncle Sam's army. I never dreamed that a Marine who once wore two stripes would have a daughter wearing two bars. Unbelievable!
Sprawling Fort Hood, home of the Army's Third Corps, bills itself as the largest military base in the free world. It probably is. Kara drives me around the base and I suggest that since she is a captain we stop at the Officers Club. It seemed a good idea for a former enlisted jarhead to invade the Officers Club and have a beer with the Army brass.
But the joint was closed. What? These Army guys don't drink on Saturday? Unbelievable!
I suggested that perhaps there was an NCO club where people who actually run the Army hang out. Kara said she wasn't aware of it and that, actually, anyone could go to the Officers Club, including enlisted types. The Army was downplaying the distinction between officers and enlisted personnel. What? Unbelievable!
Maybe it has to do with a tough recruiting environment. Anyway, that would take some of the pleasure out of this former corporal invading the Officers Club.
Maybe everyone was over at the PX (post exchange, for the uninitiated) doing Christmas shopping. Fort Hood's PX more resembles a Super Target than any modest PX I patronized decades ago. But then the modern Army is different from that of decades past. Many of the soldiers are married with families.
While there always were career types with families in all branches of the service, the bulk of the military once consisted of irreverent, mostly unattached teenagers, a more or less cross section of American society putting in our two to four years. Military service was a fact of life for the male half of the population. Anyone who would have piously proclaimed he subjected himself to the iron discipline of the Corps out of a sense of patriotism would have been laughed out of the barracks. Actions speak louder than words. Some things are better left unsaid, such as self-aggrandizing proclamations of patriotism. The same goes for religion. But I digress.
I observed that the soldiers off base all were wearing "fatigues," the work uniform, or "utilities" in Marine lingo. In times past, one didn't dare step off the base without wearing either a dress uniform or civvies (civilian clothes), and no jeans allowed. Kara informed me that this was a way of reminding people there is a war on.
A war on? Of course there's a war on, but I can think of a better way of reminding people. How about a draft that makes sure the human cost of the war is more widely shared? It used to be that if you didn't have a family member in military service, you knew many who did. Now, most Americans are insulated from the human cost of war. We keep recycling the same people again and again.
But the military establishment doesn't want a draft, and the civilian population, including and especially politicians, sure don't want a draft. But it would have a singular advantage.
During my Veterans Day address in Belleville (see Times, Nov. 12) I had a line about wondering how different our foreign policy would be if the sons and daughters of the nation's upper class and major decision makers would be in the line of fire in case of war. That line drew nice applause. It's reassuring that I'm not alone in this line of thinking.
It's time to leave daughter Kara and Fort Hood. I avoid I-10, preferring the lonesome road, U.S. 190, across the sparsely populated scrub country of Central and West Texas. The thermometer on my GMC reads in the upper 70s and low 80s, while the rest of the country is freezing.
These lonesome roads are conducive to reflection. Soldiers, a six-year-plus occupation, multiple deployments - as Vince Lombardi used to ask when the Packers seriously erred, "What the hell's going on out there?"
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, we didn't respond by invading Brazil and tying down our army in a six-year-plus occupation of a country that had nothing to do with it. Is it too much to ask that our politicians think more carefully before playing Russian roulette with someone else's lives? And how about getting the cooperation of our allies? That's not pie in the sky - it's pragmatism and good sense.
Then there's the collapse of Wall Street's financial house of cards. As Casey Stengel asked when first taking over the hapless New York Mets, "Does anybody here know how to play this game?"
Bankers making bad loans, investors buying the worthless paper because it was rated AAA, loans said to be "insured" when they really were not, derivatives and complex financial instruments not understood even by the suede shoe artists selling them, regulators who refused to regulate, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan insisting hedge funds didn't need adult supervision?
Indeed! What the hell's going on out there? Does anybody out there know how to play this game?
Well, at least we have a president-elect who has more depth than the Platte River in dry season, can think complete thoughts, and knows how to pick good people.
It will be a long road back. As U.S. 190 merges with I-10, I'm on the road to El Paso, and soon will be in Las Cruces - to visit old friends, old haunts, former colleagues and enjoy the best Mexican food in the country.
To be continued ...
- John Waelti is a native of Monroe Township. He is former Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics, New Mexico State University. He resides in Monroe and can be reached at jjwaelti@charter.net.
Sprawling Fort Hood, home of the Army's Third Corps, bills itself as the largest military base in the free world. It probably is. Kara drives me around the base and I suggest that since she is a captain we stop at the Officers Club. It seemed a good idea for a former enlisted jarhead to invade the Officers Club and have a beer with the Army brass.
But the joint was closed. What? These Army guys don't drink on Saturday? Unbelievable!
I suggested that perhaps there was an NCO club where people who actually run the Army hang out. Kara said she wasn't aware of it and that, actually, anyone could go to the Officers Club, including enlisted types. The Army was downplaying the distinction between officers and enlisted personnel. What? Unbelievable!
Maybe it has to do with a tough recruiting environment. Anyway, that would take some of the pleasure out of this former corporal invading the Officers Club.
Maybe everyone was over at the PX (post exchange, for the uninitiated) doing Christmas shopping. Fort Hood's PX more resembles a Super Target than any modest PX I patronized decades ago. But then the modern Army is different from that of decades past. Many of the soldiers are married with families.
While there always were career types with families in all branches of the service, the bulk of the military once consisted of irreverent, mostly unattached teenagers, a more or less cross section of American society putting in our two to four years. Military service was a fact of life for the male half of the population. Anyone who would have piously proclaimed he subjected himself to the iron discipline of the Corps out of a sense of patriotism would have been laughed out of the barracks. Actions speak louder than words. Some things are better left unsaid, such as self-aggrandizing proclamations of patriotism. The same goes for religion. But I digress.
I observed that the soldiers off base all were wearing "fatigues," the work uniform, or "utilities" in Marine lingo. In times past, one didn't dare step off the base without wearing either a dress uniform or civvies (civilian clothes), and no jeans allowed. Kara informed me that this was a way of reminding people there is a war on.
A war on? Of course there's a war on, but I can think of a better way of reminding people. How about a draft that makes sure the human cost of the war is more widely shared? It used to be that if you didn't have a family member in military service, you knew many who did. Now, most Americans are insulated from the human cost of war. We keep recycling the same people again and again.
But the military establishment doesn't want a draft, and the civilian population, including and especially politicians, sure don't want a draft. But it would have a singular advantage.
During my Veterans Day address in Belleville (see Times, Nov. 12) I had a line about wondering how different our foreign policy would be if the sons and daughters of the nation's upper class and major decision makers would be in the line of fire in case of war. That line drew nice applause. It's reassuring that I'm not alone in this line of thinking.
It's time to leave daughter Kara and Fort Hood. I avoid I-10, preferring the lonesome road, U.S. 190, across the sparsely populated scrub country of Central and West Texas. The thermometer on my GMC reads in the upper 70s and low 80s, while the rest of the country is freezing.
These lonesome roads are conducive to reflection. Soldiers, a six-year-plus occupation, multiple deployments - as Vince Lombardi used to ask when the Packers seriously erred, "What the hell's going on out there?"
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, we didn't respond by invading Brazil and tying down our army in a six-year-plus occupation of a country that had nothing to do with it. Is it too much to ask that our politicians think more carefully before playing Russian roulette with someone else's lives? And how about getting the cooperation of our allies? That's not pie in the sky - it's pragmatism and good sense.
Then there's the collapse of Wall Street's financial house of cards. As Casey Stengel asked when first taking over the hapless New York Mets, "Does anybody here know how to play this game?"
Bankers making bad loans, investors buying the worthless paper because it was rated AAA, loans said to be "insured" when they really were not, derivatives and complex financial instruments not understood even by the suede shoe artists selling them, regulators who refused to regulate, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan insisting hedge funds didn't need adult supervision?
Indeed! What the hell's going on out there? Does anybody out there know how to play this game?
Well, at least we have a president-elect who has more depth than the Platte River in dry season, can think complete thoughts, and knows how to pick good people.
It will be a long road back. As U.S. 190 merges with I-10, I'm on the road to El Paso, and soon will be in Las Cruces - to visit old friends, old haunts, former colleagues and enjoy the best Mexican food in the country.
To be continued ...
- John Waelti is a native of Monroe Township. He is former Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics, New Mexico State University. He resides in Monroe and can be reached at jjwaelti@charter.net.
