Berlin Airlift 75th Anniversary

OPERATION VITTLES

Tomorrow will be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift; the fifteen-month campaign to supply West Berlin by air with all its needs—from food and medicine to clothing, and even coal to operate their power plant—in defiance of a Soviet blockade of all other methods of supply.  

The events that led to the blockade comprise another complex story - though one that is well worth learning.  This post celebrates the tightrope walk of Harry Truman and his counterparts in London and Paris; ready to do everything required to preserve the freedom of West Berlin – while taking precautions that these efforts not trigger World War III.  These efforts were not only successful in that, but transformed nations who were, just three years earlier, hated enemies, into allies - and friends.  

Richard Reeves' history of the airlift 'Daring Young Men', is a tribute to the veterans who were suddenly called back to duty to help save the same people they had only three years earlier been bombing into oblivion.  He includes a story that illustrates this transition. He tells about Captain Arlie Nixon, who was called up from his job as chief pilot at TWA (that paid $750 per month) to go back rejoin the military (at $150 per month).

"Arlie tells the story of before the Airlift really got underway, he would go into a restaurant in Frankfurt and every German would stand up and walk out when he went in," Reeves said. "Two weeks after the airlift was underway, he went back and walked into the same restaurant and everybody stood up and went to the bar and bought him a stein of beer and cheered him as he drank the first one."  

I'm not among those who drape themselves in the flag, but this chapter in our history makes me feel very proud.  

There's a particularly heartwarming sidebar about the 'Candy Bomber', and the effect that 'Operation Little Vittles' had on children who gathered near the airport for treats.  

Candy Bomber

Macron Reelection

It was gratifying to see that Emmanuel Macron won a second term as president of France.  

The vote was not particularly close, until one considers who his opponent was.  The fact that a far-right anti-immigrant, anti-minority candidate such as Marine Le Pen garnered over 40% of the vote is as terrifying as the sway Donald Trump holds over the American right wing.

Macron's speech included a note of conciliation toward those who have been disaffected during his first term of office - and the realization that his shortcomings are directly related to the attraction of somebody like Le Pen.  French people who feel left behind by economic changes, and ignored by politicians who focus more on urban and suburban interests are a powder keg.  Another series of 'yellow vest' demonstrations could be enough to tip the balance to dangerous populists, who might spell the devolution of the European Union and NATO into fractious individual countries, vulnerable to manipulation by tyrants like Vladimir Putin.  

So I celebrate his victory, but more so, the lessons to which he offers promises.  It is critical that he finds a way to make those promises a reality.  

Slow Strangulation of Putin Regime

I commend the approach our nation, along with our allies in Europe and elsewhere, have taken in response to Putin's brutal, criminal, invasion of Ukraine.  

As viscerally satisfying as direct military retaliation would have been, such rash action would have led to escalation - perhaps even including the use of nuclear weapons.  Once things escalate, it becomes easier for each side to point to the other, with tangible evidence that the other is the aggressor - obfuscating the historical record.  

The more measured, more effective, approach the world has taken has already begun to devastate the Russian economy.  While Russians can't speak out publicly, this damage will serve to delegitimize the Putin regime, and may eventually even topple it.  

It is important, even after Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine (or at least whatever part of Ukraine negotiations call for them to evacuate), sanctions must not be lifted immediately.  Aside from the cruel human toll, this unprovoked aggression has caused a great deal of damage to private and public property, utilities, and other infrastructure throughout Ukraine.  That nation must be restored to it's pre-invasion state before sanctions are lifted.  The costs of repairs to these must be borne by Putin and his supporters.  

Additionally, those who commanded and/or oversaw the well-documented campaign of atrocities must be brought to justice.  An international warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin must be issued.  Though he is unlikely to turn himself in, he will become a prisoner of the nation he rules - his most inner circle of victims.

Critique of a Critique of Obama

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/23/a-man-child-in-a-promised-land/?fbclid=IwAR046KKaS80JStkvnakyPnpFK7T8O77PBVskqagznbouZ3_9qBAjY9st8Rs

I understand the perspective offered in the Counterpunch article, but with most of the reservations Tony mentions.  

Barack Obama, along with his many other roles in our culture, served as a Rorschach test.  As the first Black president—elected a mere forty years after Martin Luther King gave his life to make it possible for such a man to be elected for the content of his character (or perhaps his charisma), rather than his pigmentation—his ascendancy was attended by all the expected range of aspirations and fears.   

Many of the hope and fears were based upon the same two-dimensional caricature of the beholder, rather than by Obama’s promises or policies.  For every paranoid racist who feared a military-backed Mau-Mau uprising, there were others for whom that would be a prayer answered.  

But Barack Obama was not without a track record, and was not silent about his plans.  The author compares him disparagingly to the Clintons.  I feel that the comparison has merit, we should consider the alternatives.  I personally consider myself somewhat to the left of President Obama.  But when we consider the domestic and international ecosystem we inhabit, how much more progressive a candidate could be elected; indeed, how much more progressive could policies be, and hope to be enacted by a Congress which represents a center-right constituency?  Would we prefer a president whose administration went down in flames ‘fighting the good fight’ for a public option on healthcare, or one who will settle for a program that meets most of the needs, but leaves this important program to be taken up by a future administration?

We need perspectives like Paul Streets - though they could better be phrased more civilly.  We need to remember what has been left on the table, lest we forget and leave it there indefinitely.  But, as painful as it can be, we need to remember that politics plays out in the theater of the possible.  And we need to evaluate the success of an administration compared to the promises the candidate actually made, rather than those we imputed upon him or her, based upon our own aspirations.  

Governor Cuomo and COVID-19

 Response to Jack Scofield's criticism of Governor Cuomo, and Cuomo's concerns around a new vaccine that has to be kept extremely cold (-80 F).

Jack's post:

Let me get this straight...

According to this self-serving idiot, (exceeded only by his Hollywood wanna-be Brother) five long months ago, the world was coming to an end due to the COVID plague. Now he’s bitching about the burden of dispensing the vaccine?

Thank Gawd! We must begin assembling committees and legislative counter measures to keep this potential panacea under control and away from the gullible public he so adroitly protects.

My response: 

Excellent, if baseless, takedown of Governor Cuomo - and a bonus takedown of his brother. Your expression of contempt seems heart-felt, and worthy of the current embittered lame-duck insult-comic president. Good work!

Since you asked, let me help you ‘get this straight’.

Five months ago, Governor Cuomo was absolutely correct. He never said the ‘world was coming to an end’, but his well thought-through daily briefings provided an intelligent counterpoint to the bullshit coming out of the White House that COVID would ‘just go away’.

The good news is that New York—one of the hardest-hit states early in the pandemic—has a better handle on the crisis than almost all others, due primarily to measures taken by Governor Cuomo and his administration. Note the time series in this graphic, and watch NY disappear off the ‘worst-case’ list in early June, and rise to one of the safest states by the end.

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/3835611/?fbclid=IwAR0y8yVE2CuVNbmtw3jfuc1ymSicjwDhnMVHtf3jX55me85dAjbW-KRJeKI 

I watched this video. Governor Cuomo is expressing well-grounded concerns about the logistics of distributing to an entire population a vaccine that becomes, at best, ineffective, if not dangerous, if it experiences a temperature excursion above -80ºC (-112ºF). Its efficacy is not regained by just chilling it again; it must be KEPT below that temperature. Such a distribution to an entire population is totally unprecedented, even if it didn’t have to be precisely duplicated for each person six weeks later.

So what part of Cuomo’s comments do you dispute?

COVID - Quarantine vs. 'Herd Immunity'

I am very aware of the toll that quarantine is taking on people, both financial and psychological.  One of my dearest friends has pretty much given her life over to babysitting her granddaughter every school day - attending virtual classes with her, as the child’s mother is in the other room being a virtual school counselor - to dozens of kids with special needs, who are also isolated at home with (or maybe without) parents distracted by other obligations.  This is taking a serious toll on Pam, and her relationships with her family.  So many kids don’t have a grandmother who can just drop everything to be a full-time nanny.  This can only be much tougher for them - and a serious setback to the children’s education.

We are ALL ready for this to be over.  I don’t compare my sacrifice to that of others, but I was supposed to be in Europe for two months this spring, taking the unstructured vacation I should have taken when I was nineteen.  I will not be hosting my family’s Thanksgiving dinner this year - which is the first time in almost a decade.  Since I live alone, and don’t see my family that often  that means a great deal to me each year - but so does the safety of my loved ones.  We also lost our brother this spring, and have not been able to gather to commemorate him.  Compared to what Pam, her daughter and grand-daughter, and your grand-children are facing, my story is inconsequential - but still worth sharing.  

Worldwide, this plague is taking a toll, both where restrictions are stric, as well as where they are lax.  In most of Europe, they imposed strict quarantine measures in the early spring, and held this disease at bay for months.  But isolation was exhausting for them, and they eased the restrictions, or people started violating them, and now their infection rate comes close to ours.  

My comment about mass murder wasn’t intended to suggest motivation.  But the reality is that large-scale infections and deaths are the inevitable result of loosening restrictions when there is no other way of limiting infection rates.  The concept of ‘herd-immunity’ is only humane when it is achieved through vaccination.  There is no way of truly isolating vulnerable populations as a deadly disease runs its course through the general population.  Because we don’t have a national approach to handling this, each state has run it as they choose.  The results speak for themselves.  

To complicate matters, this disease seems to be mutating in such a way that surviving it may only afford a person a brief period of partial immunity … which means that letting it run its course through the population would not result in herd immunity anyway.  It is to be hoped that researchers will develop a vaccine with broad enough effect that the immune response will be durable for a long period of time.  

Minority viewpoints DO need to be heard.  And the consequences of choices need to be weighed against one another, so the decision can be informed.  Unfortunately, a pandemic is not a place where each family should be allowed to decide for themselves how to approach it.  

I wish I had assurance that if we all just hunkered down for a few more months, this would go away … or, alternately, that if we just let it run its course, it would soon be over with.  The reality is that nobody knows … not you or me, not Anthony Fauci, and the majority of the world's epidemiologists, and not those who promote the Great Barrington Declaration.  

Profiles - Courage and Cowardice

 One of the most courageous things for a leader in a democracy to do is to take a necessary, but unpopular stand, and stick with it, despite tremendous pressure to change their mind.  John Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage is a collection of stories of US Senators who took such stands, knowing it could (and generally did) cost them their jobs.  

Career-limiting decisions like these are courageous under the best of circumstances.  How much more courageous to stick to such a decision in a broken society, where gangs of armed dead-enders form up into ersatz militias, and form plans to violently overthrow authorities who make decisions with which they disagree.  

One thing such leaders can typically count on in our country is the support of law enforcement, and the federal government.  How vastly more courageous it must be for a governor to sustain a necessary, but unpopular decision when the local sheriff sides with the anti-government vigilantes - and even the president tweets dog-whistle endorsement for their criminal plotters.  

A profile in courage stands out most boldly within a milieu of cowardice.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-plot-cnntv/index.html