He Made His Bed

Review by Bill Doughty

"Life is a struggle and the potential for failure is ever present, but those who live in fear of failure, or hardship, or embarrassment will never achieve their potential. Without pushing your limits, without occasionally sliding down the rope headfirst, without daring greatly, you will never know what is truly possible in your life."

Those are the words of retired Navy Adm. William H. McRaven, author of "Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life ... and Maybe Change the World" by Adm. William H. McRaven (Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Group, 2017)

Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL students participate in Surf Passage at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. Surf Passage is one of many physically demanding evolutions that are a part of the first phase of SEAL training. Navy SEALs are the maritime component of U.S. special forces and are trained to conduct a variety of operations from the sea, air and land. (DVIDS photo by Kyle Gahlau, Navy Media Content Services)

McRaven describes SEAL training in Coronado and the life-lessons to be learned, including: the importance of routine, perseverance and commitment, "even in the darkest moments;" failure makes people stronger; bold decision-making can and did save lives in Afghanistan; and to succeed "find someone to help you paddle."

Malala

He encourages people to face and keep paddling past their fears. It takes a team, but every individual can make a difference.

"If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person, a Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela, and even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala. One person can change the world by giving people hope."

"Hope is the most powerful force in the universe. With hope you can inspire nations to greatness. With hope you can raise up the downtrodden. With hope you can ease the pain of unbearable loss. Sometimes all it takes is one person to make a difference."

Gen. John Kelly, United States Marine Corps, retired.

McRaven tells of the inspiring story of a visit to Dover Air Force Base by Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly, then military assistant to the Secretary of Defense, to comfort families of dozens of service members killed in the war in Afghanistan. Kelly had lost a son in combat, Marine 1st Lt. Robert Kelly, killed in Afghanistan while serving with the Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. On that day at Dover, he provided real and personal comfort to others.
"Only John Kelly could have made a difference that day," McRaven writes. "His words were words of understanding. His were words of compassion, and above all, his were words of hope."

This small but powerful book is a quick and easy read but with a deceptively deep message of positivity in a pessimistic and divided time.

"...life is hard and sometimes there is little you can do to affect the outcome of your day. In battle soldiers die, families grieve, your days are long and filled with anxious moments. You search for something that can give you solace, that can motivate you to begin your day, that can be a sense of pride in an oftentimes ugly world. But it is not just combat. it is daily life that needs this same sense of structure. Nothing can replace the strength and comfort of one's faith, but sometimes the simple act of making your bed can give you the lift you need to start your day and provide you the satisfaction to end it right."

A Navy SEAL can inspire his team. His team can win a battle or cut off the head of a "snake." A battle or a key mission can win or stop a war.

One act can make a difference. "Start off by making your bed," advises McRaven. He made his bed and he changed his life and the lives of others, and he can change the lives of those willing to read and lead.

Former Navy Admirals McRaven and Stavridis

Before leaving the Navy after 37 years of distinguished service as a Navy SEAL, Adm. McRaven served as commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces. Like Adm. James Stavridis, who serves as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, McRaven moved from leading in the military to leading in higher education. McRaven is chancellor of the University of Texas system.

A Jerry Lewis Farewell

by Bill Doughty

Jerry Lewis couldn't join the military, reportedly because of a heart murmur. He went on to have a long career, at first as part of a comedy duo with Rat Packer Dean Martin, then as a solo comedian. 

Lewis died today in Las Vegas. He was 91. He brought joy to the world, especially during the dark days of the Cold War. And he served as a humanitarian, raising more than 2 billion dollars for the Muscular Dystrophy Association over 45 years.

Both Dino and Lewis "joined the Navy" in "Sailor Beware," one of those great lowbrow black-and-white comedies of the middle of the last century. As with the Three Stooges and Marx Brothers comedies, the lack of a laugh track somehow made the goofy humor drier and funnier.

Lewis signed up again for duty in "Don't Give Up the Ship," filmed in 1959 aboard USS Vammen (DE 644), named for naval aviator Ens. Clarence E. Vammen, lost in the Battle of Midway.

Jerry Lewis also "served" (food) in the Army and sang about the stereotype that Sailors had it a lot better than Soldiers: "Navy Gets the Gravy and Army Gets the Beans."

Lewis is the well-meaning neurotic that would inspire Woody Allen and Peter Sellers. His work is controversial in its over-the-top slapstick ridiculousness. But "Don't Give Up the Ship" is considered by auteurs as one of his best.



















In the end Jerry Lewis faded away and became somewhat controversial with his sclerotic views. But in his heyday, he was energetic, full of life, and willing to let his freak flag fly.

North Korea's Real Problem

Review by Bill Doughty

What does the leader of North Korea want?

What was Soviet Russia's role in creating the so-called Democratic Republic of North Korea?

How did the Kim regime gain and keep total control over the people of North Korea?

Why is the best weapon against the totalitarian regime also the least destructive?

These and other questions are brought to mind in a bite-sized book of history and context: "North Korea: Unmasking Three Generations of Mad Men" (Lightning Guides, Callisto Media, Berkeley, CA, 2015).

Like Neil deGrasse Tyson's, "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry," this book offers quick, to-the-point, relevant information – in this case about the inscrutable black hole of North Korea in the 21st century.



Nothing illustrates the stark difference between the North and South better than the NASA image of the Korean Peninsula showing a bright South Korea with blazing lights of Seoul and Pusan compared with the North's blackness except for a "tiny speck of light in the region of Pyongyang."

The editors of this Lightning Guide enlighten readers with the origins of North Korea in the years following World War II. The Soviet Union wanted the entire peninsula under their control, so they supported Stalinist Kim Il-sung, who served as a major in the Soviet Red Army in the 1940s until Imperial Japan surrendered.

"Though both North and South were hoping for a unified Korea, the ideological tensions between the pro- and anti-communists were ultimately too powerful. In the short time between the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic in the north and the Republic of Korea in the south, it became increasingly clear that each side would try to overtake the other. The conflict – one as much between the Soviet Union and the United States as between North and South Korea – cost millions of lives and cemented in place a division that brought chaos to one side and prosperity to the other."

Kim Il-sung launched an invasion of the south on June 25, 1950, taking control of Seoul. With the help of the U.S. military and the United Nations, the communists were forced back to the 38th Parallel, which became a demarcation line under the Korean Armistice Agreement and created a militarized demilitarized zone. Notably, China came to the aid of the North Korean regime to fight against UN forces.

The endangered Amur Leopard

One of the more fascinating chapters of this book is an examination of the DMZ, a "deceptively peaceful" swath of land that "crosses through prairies, mountains, lakes, tidal marshes and swamps" and is home to endangered species including the Amur Leopard. Naturally, the North opposes UNESCO's (United Nations Environmental, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) efforts to designate and protect endangered wildlife in the DMZ – "with typical North Korean rhetoric about the South's ulterior motives for the designation request."

The paranoia and resentment of leaders in the North creates an environment of fear, hate, intolerance and distrust, where absolute obedience is mandated ("Juche") and freedom seems like a fantasy.

This Lightning Guide quickly introduces us to each of the three Kims who have ruled with an iron fist and who continue to threaten the United States. "Son of the Sun" Kim Jong-il is introduced and described as leaving a "legacy of destruction and despair." He curried favor with his father through narcissistic fawning, built thousands of statues of his father throughout the countryside in the midst of a nationwide famine, and produced thousands of propaganda films. Kim Jong-un, the current dictator, continues his father's and grandfather's quest for totalitarian power and a reunited Korean Peninsula. But in the Kims' world, reunification can come about only if the peninsula is under the control of North Korea.

Will the United States be lured into another war? What if we have faith in our defensive capabilities and the power of a freedom and prosperity? Would knowledge of the outside world be the ultimate weapon to free the people of North Korea? When will the "light come on" for the oppressed people in the north?

"To those living outside North Korea, the situation can seem abstract. Oppression is less harsh without the sound of individual cries, and the Kims have gagged an entire nation. Starvation can be difficult to understand for people who have never been hungry, and the Kims have made it invisible. Perhaps their isolation is a blessing to North Koreans, since just across the Demilitarized Zone, so close and yet so far away, people with the same cultural legacy are thriving. Yet the electronics and digital revolution that has brought so much prosperity to the South may eventually be the undoing of the Kim Dynasty. When information [objective truth] is the greatest threat to a regime, a single tablet or cell phone may end up being more powerful than Kim Jung-un's weapons of mass destruction and repression."

That may be the regime's real problem: how to defend against the truth.

Freedom fighters, including defectors, routinely send information via balloons carrying information leaflets, snacks and even U.S. and ROK currency. Broadcasters send information over radio waves to the hungry people in the north.

This small book can whet your appetite to dig deeper for more information about the history of North Korea, and I'm working my way through Bradley K. Martin's 874-page "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty" (St. Martin's Press, 2004, 2006), which includes details of the USS Pueblo incident and the effects of "Vietnam Syndrome."

Martin considers options for dealing with North Korea and urges patience and understanding even in the face of heated hyperbolic rhetoric. His conclusion: "If the United States should feel compelled to fight with North Korea, I had been saying and writing for a decade, the war should be fought with information rather than bullets."

Fighting Fundamentalism, Fanaticism and Tyranny

Reviews by Bill Doughty

Adm. John Sylvester "Slew" McCain.

One hundred years ago, in August 1917, Lt. John S. "Slew" McCain (grandfather of Sen. John S. McCain) served aboard USS San Diego (Armored Cruiser No. 6). 

The USS San Diego joined the Atlantic Fleet to perform vital escort duties, protecting American ships from German attack in the First World War.

Out of the ashes of World War I, nationalism and Nazism arose in Germany. Tyranny grew and spread in Imperial Japan, leading to World War II. 

Sen. McCain's grandfather, Adm. John S. "Slew" McCain took a stand as Pacific Carrier Commander, alongside other heroes like Nimitz, Spruance, King, Mitscher and Halsey, to fight fundamentalism, tyranny and fanaticism nearly 75 years ago.

Three books explore those three concepts – fundamentalism, tyranny and fanaticism. One book also asks the question, "Can it happen here?"

From "A Little History of Religion" by Richard Holloway (Yale University Press, 2016):

"Fundamentalism is a tantrum. It's a screaming fit, a refusal to accept new realities" such as equality for women, gays and people of other races. "But if scientific change and the new knowledge it brings is hard for the fundamentalist mind to accept, even harder is change in the way we run society. In our era, religious fundamentalism became more agitated by social change than by the pressures of science. And in some of its forms not only did it get angry. It got violent."

Radical extremist fundamentalists such as ISIS claim their interpretation of reality is factual, even if it is not verified by a critical objective review of the facts.

"Fundamentalists don't debate. They don't try the evidence. They deliver a sentence. And it's always 'guilty' because their holy book has already decided the issue. This means that the crisis of fundamentalism in our time, including its violent versions, poses a question that goes to the heart of religions that claim to be based on a revelation that came directly from God. Surely, if it is used to justify not only the love of ignorance but the love of violence then there is something fundamentally wrong with it, to borrow their own language."

A contemporary of Adm. John S. McCain in both world wars, Sir Winston Churchill, believed that leaders must first and foremost have strong principles and then rely on objective facts upon which to base decisions.

The first targets of fascists and tyrants are reason, truth and free speech.

In Brian E. Fogarty's "Fascism: Why Not Here?" (Potomac Books, 2009) we see how authoritarianism arose in Germany in the 1930s, during the same years that Sen. McCain's grandfather was studying air warfare, on his way to earning his wings (at the age of 52) and becoming commander of USS Ranger (CV-4).

Fogarty defines fascism as "totalitarianism that enlists citizens against themselves."

Benjamin Franklin warned centuries earlier, "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Sir Winston Churchill speaks at Harvard, Sept. 6, 1943.

On Sept. 6, 1943, speaking at Harvard University, Winston Churchill said, "Tyranny is our foe, whatever trappings or disguise it wears, whatever language it speaks, be it external or internal, we must forever be on our guard, ever mobilized, ever vigilant, always ready to spring at its throat. In all this, we march together."

At the same time, in the late summer of 1943, Vice Adm. "Slew" McCain was the new Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air), about to head back to Pearl Harbor to take command of "huge task forces, spearheaded by carrier-based aircraft" against Imperial Japan.

Fogarty, like Holloway, spotlights the importance of objective facts and reason. He notes how in the 1930s the Nazis sponsored public book burnings, abolished the free press and dissent, and began to ostracize Jews and other non-Aryans as members of the public went along.

Brian Fogarty

"More than anything else, the rise of Nazism was fueled by the negation of reason as a basis for government and for social and political discourse," Fogarty writes.

"Without universal or at least agreed-upon standards of knowledge, the truth of a statement comes to depend on the speaker's identity, persuasiveness or charisma." That can lead to blindly following, as happened in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the early part of the last century.

"People commit evil, or acquiesce as others do it in their name, when it is sanctioned and legitimated by the community in which they belong." He warns us to beware of a "vortex of fear that drown(s) out debate and reason."

So, "why not here?" or put another way in the book's final chapter, "Can It Happen Here?" Fogarty answers with "fundamental ambiguity":

"On the one hand, Americans have a history since the nation's beginning of fierce individualism and of resistance to authority. The national mythology is replete with challenges to every social institution – state, family, church, school – and Americans tell and retell the stories of dissidents and rebels. One of the abiding national myths is the revolution against the English mother country – the most powerful empire of its day – which gave birth to the nation itself. And viewed from this perspective, we have been a nation of rebels ever since, from the Shays and Whiskey rebellions, to slave revolts and the Underground Railroad, to the abolition movement and John Brown's insurrection, and to the Civil War itself. More recent social and cultural movements have also challenged popular convention if not the authority of the state ... It is true that Americans have not hesitated to defy authority when they found it necessary, but they also have been astonishingly conformist and willing to acquiesce in their own oppression when faced with uncertainty and threats. Even the most revered acts of resistance to authority – women's suffrage, civil rights, (the counterculture movement of the Vietnam era, gay pride), and many other movements – usually brought negative reactions from fellow citizens who viewed the causes as un-American, immoral, sinful, or just weird."

Germany and Japan suffered greatly after the worldwide depression. Both had a chip-on-their-shoulder nationalist attitude as victims who wanted to participate in global imperialism. That's why most of their citizenry supported race-based fascism leading to the Second World War.

As an immigrant nation, however, the United States may not be as susceptible. Here, "racism has been more divisive than unifying," for most Americans. Diversity may be our biggest strength in being able to resist fundamentalism, tyranny and fascism.

Fogarty writes, "American society includes too many ethnic and racial groups to form a credible 'them' from which 'we' can protect ourselves." But he says, we may not have faced a major enough threat to our security, and we may, when really tested, have the propensity collectively to choose safety over liberty.

"Our history demonstrates that Americans have the capacity to react to adversity in a general director toward fascism," he concludes.

"On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century" by Timothy Snyder (Tim Duggan Books, Penguin Random House, 2017) explores how leaders embrace fundamentalism, reject facts and rely on arguments of victimization:

"Both fascism and communism were responses to globalization: to the real and perceived inequalities it created, and the apparent helplessness of the democracies in addressing them. Fascists rejected reason in the name of will, denying objective truth in favor of a glorious myth articulated by leaders who declined to give voice to the people. They put a face on globalization, arguing that is complex challenges were the result of a conspiracy against the nation. Fascists ruled for a decade or two [Hitler and his ilk], leaving behind an intact intellectual legacy that grows more relevant by the day. Communists ruled for longer, for nearly seven decades in the Soviet Union, and more than four decades in much of eastern Europe [and to this day in North Korea]. They proposed rule by a disciplined party elite with a monopoly on reason that would guide society toward a certain future according to supposedly fixed laws of history."

As a champion for freedom and democracy – and an intense study of history – Churchill stood strong against Hitler. He was a lynchpin in opposing tyranny and fascism. "Had Churchill not kept Britain in the war in 1940, there would have been no such war to fight."

The late Christopher Hitchens warned of tyrants who are unpredictable and who don't believe in facts. 

Reading is inoculation to protect us from fascism and tyranny. Otherwise we're at risk of a society as painted by Ray Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451" and George Orwell in "1984."

Bradbury's "firefighters" were authoritarian book burners. In "1984" Orwell describes not only the pollution of ideals and objective facts but also the dissolution of meaning and disappearance of words.

In his "The Principles of Newspeak" appendix to "1984," Orwell writes: "Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words to a minimum."

Among Snyder's recommended list of books and authors packed into this slim collection of how-to advice:

• "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera
• "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis
• "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth
• "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J. K. Rowling
• "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell
• "The Language of the Third Reich" by Victor Klemperer
• "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt
• "The Rebel" by Albert Camus
• "The Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milsosz
• "The Power of the Powerless" by Vaclav Haval
• "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible" by Peter Pomerantsev

Timothy Snyder

Snyder asks us to examine the difference between nationalism and patriotism.

"A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, 'although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,' wrote Orwell, tends to be 'uninterested in what happens in the real world.' Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others."

Chapter 10 is called "Believe in truth": "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights."

Three generations of John S. McCains.

Chapter 10 is titled "Be a patriot": "Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it."

Adm. John S. "Slew" McCain demonstrated his patriotism fighting for his country in both World Wars, eventually standing aboard USS Missouri (BB-63) for the surrender of Imperial Japan. Militarists in Japan were purveyors of a spreading nationalism and fascist tyranny in Asia in the 1930s and 40s.

Adm. McCain's son was another four-star flag officer, Adm. John S. "Jack" McCain Jr., a submariner who also fought in WWII. Jack McCain also fought during the Cold War and, of course, during the Vietnam War, where his son, Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III, the future senior senator of Arizona, was imprisoned as a POW for five-and-half years.

The McCains' story is one of service and sacrifice. Adm. "Slew" McCain, who saw so many naval aviators go to their deaths, died four days after Japan's surrender. Adm. Jack McCain had to carry out President Nixon's orders to bomb Hanoi, where he knew his son was a POW. Sen. John McCain has been serving his country throughout his life.

The legacy of another WWII naval hero, President John F. Kennedy, recognized Sen. McCain's patriotism. Sen. John McCain received the JFK Profile in Courage award from the Kennedy family for his commitment toward campaign finance reform. In his acceptance speech of May 24, 1999, McCain said: 

JFK's brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and daughter, Caroline, present Sen. McCain the courage award. 

"Most Americans believe that we all conspire to hold on to every political advantage we have, lest we jeopardize our incumbency by a single lost vote. Most Americans believe we would let this nation pay any price, bear any burden to ensure the success of our personal ambitions – no matter how injurious the effect might be to the national interest. And who can blame them. As long as the wealthiest Americans and the richest organized interests can make six figure donations to political parties and gain the special access to power such generosity confers on the donor, most Americans will dismiss the most virtuous politician’s claim of patriotism ... In John Kennedy’s memorable phrase, 'without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget the courage with which men have lived.' I’ve seen more than my fair share of both kinds. And I could not forget them if I wanted to." – Sen. John S. McCain.

According to Fogarty in "Fascism: Why Not Here," again from 2009, citing the work of Nancy Bermeo, "The mutual demonization of opposing parties locks up the machinery of government":

"The single best predictor of success for fascist movements is political polarization ... Such movements tend to be antidemocratic because they blame the democratic process itself as the cause of the gridlock. When parties have become so polarized that all anyone – voters included – can think of is vanquishing opponents, then a sort of political disillusionment sets in, and political principles give way to an empty contentiousness. A second useful generalization about the rise of such movements is that they tend to occur when existing democratic regimes are incompetent. Government is not just a theater for ideological or political drama; it is also an essential institution to human life. People get hurt when it doesn't work ... These two generalizations offer a warning to Americans: beware those who seek always to discredit government, to blame it for the nation's ills, and to alienate citizens from its workings ... Their game is to alienate citizens from their government, to trivialize the vote, and to make the democratic process look ineffective and foolish. The best way to prevent fascism is to avoid alienation, to resist extreme polarization, and to remain connected to the political process."

Looking toward the future back in 2009, in the face of crises, when the Great Recession and Iraq and Afghanistan wars were deepening, Fogarty asked, "How will Americans react ... Will we still value our individualism and love of liberty? Or will we find a leader with a bold plan that requires new conquests, new enemies, or a new world order. Will Americans reject the cool rationalism of the Obama presidency and rush to a bold outsider with a simple explanation and audacious plans?"


CAM RANH, Vietnam (June 2, 2017) Sen. John S. McCain III is piped aboard during a visit to the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) in Cam Ranh, Vietnam. The U.S. Navy has patrolled the Indo-Asia-Pacific routinely for more than 70 years promoting regional peace and security. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Joshua Mortensen/Released)