I\u2019m too old to go to war.\u00a0\u00a0My draft card (1974) is in tatters, but still legible.\u00a0\u00a0I remember going to register in downtown Cincinnati.\u00a0\u00a0I knew that the war was almost over, and that I wasn\u2019t going to Vietnam.\u00a0\u00a0But I was still nervous:\u00a0\u00a0this was a \u201crite of passage\u201d that changed so many American men\u2019s lives, including my father\u2019s.\u00a0To further assuage my concerns, my \u201cdraft number\u201d, the lottery selection (drawn like a life and death game of bingo) was a \u201cperfect\u201d 343. (The highest number ever drafted was 195). But it really didn\u2019t matter. Nobody in my year was going in the draft, or to Vietnam.\u00a0\u00a0It was over.\u00a0\u00a0The era of the \u201call volunteer\u201d military began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The card survived a swim to the bottom of the Cheat River (not my choice) and innumerable rain soaked track meets.\u00a0\u00a0 I finally \u201carchived\u201d it, carefully placed with other \u201ctreasures\u201d of the past: original birth certificate (hand written in 1956), baptismal document (really),\u00a0\u00a0a letter to Dad\u00a0\u00a0from my Scoutmaster (about a good thing), passport and passport identity card, marriage \u201clicense\u201d, and other stuff.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No army wants me.\u00a0\u00a0At sixty-eight, my body is “pre-owned” (read as \u201cused\u201d). There might be some mileage left, but it isn\u2019t ready for combat.\u00a0\u00a0My \u201cobligation time\u201d has long since passed.\u00a0\u00a0But there are situations where I could see a return of the draft and compulsory military service for our young men AND women, the current Secretary of Defense to the contrary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am not interested in our Nation following in the footsteps of the famous American Generals, Hull and Harrison.\u00a0 \u00a0They both invaded Canada during the War of 1812.\u00a0\u00a0Hull was driven back from Ontario by the British and then surrendered American Detroit without a fight.\u00a0\u00a0Harrison won the battle of Thames River, in present day Ontario, defeated the combined Shawnee Confederation and British troops, and killed Tecumseh.\u00a0\u00a0But the enlistment time for his men\u00a0was almost up, so he returned to US territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Americans soon figured out that trade with Canada was better than war, and that Canadians weren\u2019t interested in becoming Americans.\u00a0 \u00a0America set its sights West, instead of North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I\u2019m not interested in another foreign \u201cadventure\u201d in Panama.\u00a0\u00a0We\u2019ve been involved there since we \u201cguaranteed\u201d their independence from Columbia, gaining the \u201cright\u201d to build the canal in 1903. (If that sounds like some kind of rogue CIA operation, encouraging a section of a nation to break away so we could build in it, it is.\u00a0 \u00a0Except, of course, there wasn\u2019t a CIA in 1903).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US troops were in Panama from then until 1999, including a full-out invasion of the country in 1989. That year, we captured their President, Manual Noriega. We forced him out of the Roman Catholic Church Embassy by playing Highway to Hell,<\/em> over and over <\/em>at maximum volume. He was tried and convicted of narcotics trafficking in a US Court, and held in Miami Federal Prison for seventeen years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Canada and Panama \u2013 we\u2019ve \u201cbeen there and done that\u201d, \u201cGot the T-shirt, and bought the post card\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0And the United States discovered that \u201cwanting something and having something are often very different\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0Certainly being the \u201cBully of North America\u201d isn\u2019t worth spilling a single drop of Canadian, Panamanian, or most certainly American blood.\u00a0\u00a0Don\u2019t send our kids to fight for American imperialism.\u00a0\u00a019th<\/sup>\u00a0century Manifest Destiny is over:\u00a0\u00a0America already goes from \u201csea to shining sea\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0We displaced the Native Americans and the Mexicans, and it was done by the 1870\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0That time is past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now it\u2019s Greenland. The President of the United States openly discusses (mutters, mulls-over, ruminates) on how the US would \u201cget\u201d Greenland, in spite of the will of the 60,000 people living there.\u00a0\u00a0He wanted to send the Vice President of the United States and several other high ranking US officers to \u201cvisit\u201d the place.\u00a0\u00a0But the government there, a huge geographic island, said they weren\u2019t welcome.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t blame the Greenlanders. \u00a0If someone is trying to take over your home, you don\u2019t usually invite them to dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So instead, the \u201chigh level delegation\u201d went to US Space Force Base Pituffik (pronounced \u201cBee-Doo-Feek\u201d), on the far, nearly unpopulated Northwest corner of the Island, a thousand miles from the capital in Nuuk (\u201cNook\u201d).\u00a0\u00a0The people of Greenland, guided by Denmark, graciously allows the US to have that far flung base there, above the Arctic Circle.\u00a0\u00a0During the height of the Cold War, over 10,000 US servicemen were stationed in Greenland, including a base buried in the Greenland icecap.\u00a0\u00a0Now that’s dwindled to 150 shivering Space Force Guardians. The abandoned icecap base is melting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0The Vice President gave a press conference (of course he had to bring in his own press) and spent a couple of hours.\u00a0\u00a0 He even \u201ctalked\u201d to some Native Greenlanders.\u00a0\u00a0Then he headed home.\u00a0\u00a0The press got a couple of shots of the \u201cblue ice\u201d on the beach, breaking off from the nearly frozen Arctic Sea.\u00a0\u00a0But the Sea isn\u2019t not as nearly frozen as it should have been \u2013 that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canada, Panama, Greenland:\u00a0\u00a0what do all of these things have in common?\u00a0\u00a0They are (or will be) on commercial sea routes.\u00a0\u00a0And Donald Trump is convinced that he is the next \u201cTeddy Roosevelt\u201d, protector of \u201cAmerica\u2019s\u201d sea trade.\u00a0\u00a0Panama is obvious:\u00a0\u00a0there is a canal there, one that Roosevelt was responsible for.\u00a0\u00a0But what about Canada and Greenland?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n To understand, we have to be serious about climate change.\u00a0 \u00a0Our planet is warming (as John Wayne would say, \u201cMy fault, Your fault, Nobody\u2019s fault\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s not the issue, though it is \u201cour\u201d fault).\u00a0\u00a0A warming planet is causing the Arctic ice pack to break up.\u00a0\u00a0What I learned as a child; that you could, with the right equipment and luck, walk from Canada to Russia across the ice; will be impossible.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there are those around Trump who see tremendous profit potential in being able to ship through the Arctic.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s the same \u201cNorthwest Passage\u201d idea that brought Henry Hudson to the \u201cnew world\u201d in the late 1500\u2019s, looking for the shortcut from Europe to Asia.\u00a0 \u00a0That\u2019s how we ended up with a river and a bay named after him.\u00a0\u00a0He was probing west, to find a seaway through North America.\u00a0\u00a0Now, with the ice breaking up earlier each year, there will be a corridor around the top of the world.\u00a0\u00a0And just like the commercial aircraft that fly the \u201cGreat Circle\u201d routes over the North Pole, ships might be able to get from Europe to Asia via North America quicker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greenland, Canada, the US (Alaska) and Russia are the main nations along the way.\u00a0\u00a0Trump wants to control at least three of them. \u00a0\u00a0(And there are also \u201crare earth\u201d minerals, both in Canada, Greenland, and Alaska; another economic \u201cboon\u201d of a US takeover).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teddy Roosevelt arranged \u201ccoaling stations\u201d across the Pacific to fuel the steam ships of the \u201cGreat White Fleet\u201d of the American Navy in the early 1900\u2019s. Trump wants to snatch the way-stations along the new Northwest Passage.\u00a0\u00a060,000 Greenlanders and 40 million Canadians might not like it. But Teddy Roosevelt wasn\u2019t so worried about Columbians, Hawaiians, Filipinos, or Pacific Islanders along that route either.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are other ways to get trade agreements, besides bullying.\u00a0\u00a0Instead of threatening invasion (and that\u2019s exactly what we are implying to the good folks in Greenland), Trump could do what he\u2019s supposed to do best, make a deal.\u00a0\u00a0And for those who cry out; \u201cHe\u2019s just setting up a bargaining position\u201d; I think back to Major, the bully on my playground in second grade. He failed school twice, but was successful at stealing lunch money.\u00a0\u00a0He got my money a few times with \u201c\u2026an offer I couldn\u2019t refuse\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0But in the end, the community of students and parents and teachers stood up to him, and he went \u201caway\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump is squandering American good will in the world, for a tenuous idea that Henry Hudson had centuries before.\u00a0 \u00a0He wants to be the next Teddy Roosevelt, using the might of America to force American desires on the world.\u00a0\u00a0He is a bully, and so are we, the United States of America.\u00a0\u00a0The world will have to answer to that.\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t want our kids to have to fight on the wrong side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imperialism<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Melting Icecap<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Northwest Passage<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bully<\/h3>\n\n\n\n