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No One Loves the Warrior Until the Enemy Stands at the Gate

/ Charles Henderson / Leave a comment

by Taylor MacHenry

The spirit of the words in the below picture, I believe, are best expressed by Rudyard Kipling in his poem, TOMMY.

As a journalist, he witnessed the valor and bloodshed of the British soldier, and then the disdain in which “proper British society” held their soldiers, whom he named Tommy Atkins, a common fellow among people of little worth or importance.

This incensed Kipling because no one among “proper British society” had sacrificed even a whet’s worth of their own value compared to the boy he called, Tommy Atkins, who gave up his life on the battlefields for King and Country.

The Scots Observer in Edinburgh first published Kipling’s poem, TOMMY, on March 1, 1890.

Some 25 years later, on September 27, 1915, Rudyard Kipling’s dearly loved son, John, went missing in action, fighting the Germans in the Battle of Loos in Northern France, bringing the poem TOMMY home to resonate with all of the English-speaking world. Kipling died on January 18, 1936, never knowing the fate of his beloved son, John Kipling, an 18 year old British lieutenant, cannon fodder they called them.

John Kipling shipped off to France on his 18th birthday, August 17, 1915, and six weeks later, he led a platoon of Irish Guards into the jaws of no-man’s land, in the Battle of Loos. More than a thousand British soldiers lay scattered on that killing field, many of them buried in mass graves, known only to God. Young Lieutenant Kipling was one of those Unknown Soldiers who died there.

In his youth, Kipling wrote of adventure, The Man Who Would Be King. But the loss of his son, John, left the great poet, novelist, journalist and critic of society in a dismal, gray pal.

He wrote great poetry, but they were always words of some sort of mourning.

Responding to the death of 16-year old Sailor, Jack Cornwell, Kipling was inspired to write, MY BOY JACK. Many say that the poem is a veiled commentary about the loss of his own son.

MY BOY JACK
by Rudyard Kipling

“Have you news of my boy Jack? “
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

A supporter of the war effort in England, with the declared death of John Kipling, the great poet grew disgruntled with war and angry at “proper British society” in general. And angry with himself for supporting the war, which he believed helped motivate his boy, John, to join up and go to France.

Kipling’s very brief, single-sentence, COMMON FORM, slaps the face of British society, including himself.

COMMON FORM
by Rudyard Kipling

If any questions
why we died,
Tell them,
because our fathers lied.

Rudyard Kipling’s life-long passion of supporting all soldiers called to war, however, is perhaps best remembered by the world in his angry words in each stanza of TOMMY.

TOMMY
by Rudyard Kipling

I went into a public ‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, ” We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ” Tommy, go away ” ;
But it’s ” Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s ” Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-‘alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ” Tommy, wait outside “;
But it’s ” Special train for Atkins ” when the trooper’s on the tide
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s ” Special train for Atkins ” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap.
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul? “
But it’s ” Thin red line of ‘eroes ” when the drums begin to roll
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s ” Thin red line of ‘eroes, ” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Tommy, fall be’ind,”
But it’s ” Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s ” Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! “
But it’s ” Saviour of ‘is country ” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An ‘Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!

Vladimir Putin Hoists Banner of Nuclear War

/ Charles Henderson / Leave a comment

by Taylor MacHenry

Here are some hard and true facts: As long as Vladimir Putin wants war in Ukraine or elsewhere too, any idea of a negotiated peace is a waste of time, and second of all, Vladimir Putin quit honoring the nuclear arms treaties with the United States and free world years ago. The fact that Tuesday, February 21, 2023, Putin officially proclaimed that the nuclear arms treaties no longer apply is good news for American defense strategy. America’s political hands are now untied. If it’s war Putin wants, then a Stinger missile up his tailpipe needs to happen. That or the free world braces for nuclear war.

A well-planned drone strike on Putin would solve many problems, and for most Russians, it would give them a reason to celebrate. Russian soldiers don’t want the war in Ukraine. They didn’t even know they had gone to war when Putin sent them to Ukraine, telling them it was a planned military exercise. Lots of Russians have died, and at home the bread lines remind Muscovites of days gone by when a different despot commanded the Soviet Union.

As for the nuclear arms treaties, many uninformed Americans now worry in their basements, including the President. However, the meat of the nuclear arms treaties had little purpose other than perhaps slowing down the ultimate destruction of entire Planet Earth. The real nuclear threat never received any mention in any nuclear arms treaties: the small nuclear bombs that the United States, China, Russia, and other allies of both sides, can fire from their field artillery pieces. Yes the so-called short-range weapons that all sides counted for use in theaters of contained warfare. Ukraine is such a theater of contained warfare, and field artillery, such as the Russian 2S19 152-millimeter self-propelled Howitzer or its big brother, the 2S7M Malka 203-millimeter self-propelled Howitzer, or the M109A7 Paladin 155-millimeter self-propelled Howitzers or any of the thousands of its towed brothers that US and NATO forces use. All of these weapon systems have nuclear capabilities. They use something called “wrap-rounds” that propel the nuclear projectile that they fire precisely onto targets anywhere nearby, a few miles distance, to 70 or even 100 miles away.

The numbers of these nuclear weapons are a mystery. The United States has a highly classified count of them, along with locations, however, the Russians have no idea how many nuclear projectiles exist in their bunkers nor where they exist. But they do exist and they exist in large numbers.

With Vladimir Putin announcing that the nuclear arms treaties today are no longer valid, clears the decks for him to employ nuclear artillery and rockets, within the contained battlefield of Ukraine, without concern of violating any treaty anywhere. With the nuclear weapons employed in Ukraine, in addition to wantonly killing hundreds of thousands more innocent people (a war crime against humanity) the nuclear fallout will salt the highly productive farmlands of Ukraine, rendering them useless for decades if not centuries. Putin’s only drawback to the nukes are the prevailing westerly winds that will blow any nuclear clouds back into Mother Russia.

But does he really care? Most likely, he does not. Russian lives mean nothing to the dysfunctionally narcissistic leader.

What should the United States do? Probably our leaders won’t, but this approaching horror story will require leadership with resolve and iron courage, the likes of which Winston Churchill and a few others possessed. Not some blowhard loudmouth and certainly not some soft-spoken lily of the valley who waffles and worries about political winds and elections.

With the announcement of Vladimir Putin that Russia no longer regards any nuclear arms treaties valid, represents the big red banner of nuclear war standing at the threshold. Western leaders, not just Joe Biden but all leaders of NATO and the free world should stand in resolve, and gird their nations for nuclear war. Unless someone can engineer a drone strike that can penetrate the bunker where Vladimir Putin hides today.

Biden Administration’s Increase of American Federalism at the Cost of American Wealth and Freedom

/ Charles Henderson / Leave a comment

by Taylor MacHenry

America’s second President, John Adams, would be elated with the dramatic increase of the strong central government in Washington, DC more stringently controlling the states and the people. Adams likened the Federalist Government to act in the same respect that a King would rule in a monarchy. Of course, Thomas Jefferson and his cohorts in the Republican Party (later called Democratic-Republican Party) led the Opposition to Adams and his Federalists who had cut their teeth on Thomas Hobbes Leviathan.

Generally speaking, most Americans embrace the ideals of Jefferson’s opposition to federalism, because it holds that Freedom is born with the People and Limited Powers are given to the Government by the People as the People determine that the Government needs to adequately operate. Yet, free money waved at the hungry masses always wins over sound thinking. So, the people take the money without considering the consequences of Socialism taking away their Freedom of Choice, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Faith and Freedom to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

An overriding Federal Government, by its very nature, dictates to the People what the Government believes that the People ought to have and not have. It sees itself as the benevolent Great White Father, and Joe Biden is the embodiment of the Great White Father. And he knows best. Just ask him and he will tell you.

Hold on. So will Donald Trump. He is outspoken about being the smartest man in the nation, and he has no doubts that he can dictate to you how best you can live your life.

So, what’s the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump? Biden is soft spoken. However, as individual presidents, they are both driven by much the same engine. Neither man has many morals or scruples, and both men subscribe to any ideals that rewards them with power and dominion.

It would be nice to just elect a government rather than a person as President. Because it is the government that surrounds the President that matters. A collective mindset, Conservative or Liberal or a Blend of Both, that guides Economic Policy, National Defense, Foreign Policy and Domestic Policy (which includes Energy Policy).

Trump’s policies embraced many of President Ronald Reagan’s blend of Conservative and Middle-of-the-Road politics. Trump’s government was a long way left of Libertarian while still embracing Conservative ideals. It netted a result of a powerful economy and growing industry in America with lowering fuel and energy prices. However, the Chinese economic attack on the world, the COVID-19 Pandemic, derailed even the most powerful and energetic economies. It crippled the Trump government’s economic boom, and it paved the way for a far-left led, so-called Progressive (more Socialist than Democratic) victory in the 2020 election that made Joe Biden President.

Removing the Politics from the view, and just looking at the bare facts, the Biden Presidency has claimed the future happiness of most Americans, leaving nearly everyone deep in debt and struggling to make ends meet even with minimum wages set above $15 dollars an hour. Inflation is the cruelest of Poor Taxes. It robs families of food, warmth and clothing. It leaves working people enslaved to just surviving. And the wealthy, blind bastards who lead this government have not one clue.

Biden’s government brags today that they have heralded great success for America. Voters need to re-elect this presidency to keep the successes rolling.

Joseph Goebbels mentored Adolf Hitler in the 1920s and gave the Austrian paper hanger the central idea of Mein Kampf (My Fight): Say a Big Lie and keep repeating it as Truth. If we repeat the Big Lie long enough and people begin to believe it as Truth and repeat it as Truth then The Big Lie becomes Truth.

We do not portend that Biden nor Trump presidencies are anything akin to Hitler or his mentor Goebbels ideals, but both politicians do embrace the notion of selling America on their own Big Lie. And when people believe the Big Lie as Truth then it is always bad. Politicians since Caesar have had difficulty with Truth, especially when it gets in the way of their garnering power and dominion. However, the constant problem with The Big Lie is that it always hurts the People.

Just as in America today, The Big Lie has resulted in a nation polarized with Hate. And in the past three years, The Big Lie has resulted in a nation of people suffering under higher taxes, higher cost of living, less opportunity, borders in crisis, and a record national debt with no hope of ever turning it around. Most importantly, The Big Lie has resulted in Less Freedom by the railroading of Federal Laws and misguided State Laws, all written in the name of keeping people safe.

Here’s a secret: Laws do NOT keep people safe. People keep People safe.

Denver Broncos Leadership Considers Hiring Yet Another Head Coach with No Head Coaching Experience, While the Obvious Choice, Sean Payton, Stands In Front of Them

/ Charles Henderson / Leave a comment

by Taylor MacHenry

Several years ago, I watched a movie about the great golf legend, Bobby Jones. In one scene, Jones vied for a British Open championship at the Old Course at Saint Andrews, Scotland, and his ball had landed in a bunker with a high, green-side cliff. In several years past, when he had hit his ball into the bunker with the near-impossible green-side shot that required him chipping his ball straight up and landing it on the green, he lost the championship because he pressed himself to make the impossible shot. The multiple strokes he took each of the previous times had cost him the championship. This time, his caddy saw him about to take yet the same impossible shot once again and stopped him before he took the stroke.

The caddy said, “The definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same mistake, and each time expecting a different outcome.”

The Denver Broncos appear to be trapped in that same bunker with the high cliff on the green side, and they seem determined to repeat the same mistake over and over while expecting a different outcome.

San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator, DeMeco Ryans, is without question a brilliant football coach, and at 38 years old, with his brilliance and great opportunities laid before him, he should only get better. Should, being to operative word. No one has a crystal ball, and no one can say that as a brilliant defensive coordinator of a team packed with talent and having the best defense in the NFL, would DeMeco Ryans expand that brilliance on the next level as a head football coach? Yet all the football pundits on television, radio and Sirius XM tout him today as the second coming of Mike Shanahan, the last great head football coach that the Denver Broncos have had.

Yes, John Fox and Wade Phillips were pretty good too. But Mike Shanahan is one of 13 head coaches in Super Bowl history to have won at least two Super Bowls. He is the winningest coach in Broncos history with a record of 146 wins against 91 losses, a career winning percentage of .616.

Broncos head coaching candidate, Sean Payton, as a head football coach in the NFL has over a 15-year career as head coach amassed a winning percentage of .631, with 152 wins against 89 losses. Just a tad better than Mike Shanahan. And from 1988 through 2021, a 33-year coaching career beginning at San Diego State University, he has had only 11 losing seasons. In other words, in 33 years from quarterbacks coach and assistant coach to head coach, he has been part of or as head coach produced 22 winning seasons. Most of the losing seasons, 7 of them in 11, he was not head coach but an assistant or a specialties coach. As head football coach, Peyton has had only 4 losing seasons.

It has been 6 years since the Denver Broncos have had a winning season. In 2016, the year after the Super Bowl win, the Broncos finished 3rd in the AFC West with a 9 and 7 record. Gary Kubiak and Joe DeCamillis coached the team, and this was the year after Peyton Manning retired with the 2015 Super Bowl 50 victory.

In those Broncos losing seasons across the past 6 years, Denver has languished with head coaches with no head coaching experience before their jobs leading the Broncos. Since Mike Shanahan, and not counting Gary Kubiak, who stepped in to fill the game for John Fox when his heart trouble took him off the field, Denver has had Josh McDaniels, John Fox and Jack DelRio (a tandem), Joe DeCamillis (who filled the gap when Gary Kubiak’s health failed), Vance Joseph, Vic Fangio, Nathaniel Hackett, and Jerry Rosburg (who stepped in as interim coach when Hackett was fired).

What jumps off the page is that all these coaches who busted their humps trying, were all out of their depths as a head coach who could lead a team to the Super Bowl. And it is the Super Bowl that Denver Broncos fans expect. So do the owners in the Penner-Walton Group too.

So, why does the leadership of the Denver Broncos appear hell-bent to hire yet another head coach with no NFL head coaching experience? Why?

Especially when standing at the threshold is none other than Sean Payton who has an even more impressive career record as NFL head coach than Mike Shanahan?

It is like the Denver Broncos are back in that bunker with Bobby Jones at Saint Andrews, sitting in that deep bunker with the high cliff on the green side and can only see the top of the flagstick on the green, waving above the Super Bowl hole, and they contemplate chipping that impossible shot from the bunker. Yes, that instead of laying out an easy shot onto the fairway at the entrance of the green, and making a reasonable putt from there. One more stroke but still finishing Par instead of another bogey or double-bogey or even triple-bogey or more?

Going for another candidate with zero NFL head coaching experience instead of making the obvious, logical choice to hire a head coach with a solid NFL career and a Super Bowl under his belt, a head coach that even surpasses Mike Shanahan, the winningest coach in Broncos history?

For the Broncos to pass on Sean Payton and hire DeMeco Ryans is literally the definition of insanity!

Love is a Dog from Hell

/ Charles Henderson / 2 Comments

by Taylor MacHenry

Not long ago, my friend and fellow writer, Kirk Ellis, posted his contribution to his friend Stuart Rosebrook’s challenge to post on Facebook banned books and drive Facebook censors crazy. Yes, a worthy cause.

Of course, my heart went straight to Harper Lee’s brilliant novel that won her the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1961 and was voted by the American people its favorite novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. A book that has been banned multiple times since 1968 through today with other people knowing best what a person ought to be ALLOWED to read. Set in a time when Jim Crow laws caused many innocent poor people to suffer terrible injustices, like the railroading of Tom Robinson, innocent but convicted anyway because he’s Black. That was a time when mentally challenged people like Boo Radley suffered persecution no different than Quasimodo. Scout and Jem and father, Atticus Finch, knew better, despite that ugly world that told an American truth that held up a mirror to our biased faces and helped make us better for it.

Oh, but why even enter such things in the mind? We must control the narrative that the people hear, so they can act pure and be pure and not hate. Right, that’s called brain washing. Censorship is in a way a means to wash the minds of the people, so they will agree on the prescribed politically correct path.

Me? I was always the kid who wondered why books got banned, so I searched out underground copies of the forbidden texts and read them.

Hate is hate. Thus, censors scurry today to rid us of such trash that perhaps might offend us or cause us hurt. So, they ban To Kill a Mockingbird, and of late, they remove from publication six books penned by Dr. Seuss, yanked by the sensitive publishers at Penguin Random House. Because they might be hurtful.

And that brings me to my entry of books best consumed in brown paper wrappers, for fear that the thought police might see us reading them.

As a writer, I find inspiration from an odd assortment of authors, poets and novelists, all tormented by inner demons, with which I use to mold myself into the writer I want to be, and perhaps explain why I share such demons with them. Among this sordid cast of mostly human trash, foreign to polite society, living in the shadow of down-looking noses, rises perhaps my all-time favorite, Charles Bukowski.

I find connection with such nihilistic social rejects as Hank Moody, the main character in Tom Kapinos’ creation, Californication. Totally depraved and yet inspiring. It did seven seasons on Showtime, so someone watched it. Besides me.

I liked it because I know Hank Moody’s heart. Since I have not talked to Tom Kapinos about his inspiration for Hank, I can’t say for sure. But I suspect that Kapinos, like me, draws much inspiration from the insufferable reprobate Charlie Bukowski and his even more deplorable alter-ego, Henry “Hank” Chinaski.

Hank Moody and Hank Chinaski are their own worst enemies. Very much alike. If you’ve watched the seven seasons of Californication, and related to Hank, then you must also read Bukowski’s five novels that take us through the life of Hank Chinaski.

Read the five novels in this order:

First, read Ham on Rye, then next slum your way through the pages of my offering for the list of books that offend the Facebook censors, Factotum. You’ll be hooked with Ham on Rye, and Factotum picks right up.

Then you can settle into the steamy drunk pages of Post Office, where we journey with Hank Chinaski, aspiring to be a novelist but needing to eat, gets a job delivering mail. That, and seducing women, and staying drunk as he tries to write, and keep afloat, resisting everything except temptation. Yet Hank finally reels out his first novel, as Post Office slides to a slow stop.

Next on the reading list we find Bukowski’s introspection of himself through Henry Chinaski in his novel called, Women. In it, life gets good for Henry Chinaski after his first novel takes him to stardom. Down on life, down on stardom, cynical yet fun-seeking, Hank Chinaski and Hank Moody would live well together, if they ever met. And somehow, I believe that Tom Kapinos probably did just that with these two howling mad writers.

A trail of lost loves in his own life, shown to us in the life of Hank Chinaski, I am not surprised that Charlie Bukowski wrote a book of poems entitled: Love is a Dog from Hell.

While the last in the life of Hank Chinaski, the novel Hollywood takes our hero to the land of crazy, phony and glitter, Los Angeles. Here we see Henry Chinaski write the screenplay called, Barfly.

And while Hank Chinaski lives the depraved, careless and self-absorbed life of a writer spinning out of emotional control in the novel, Hollywood, Charles Bukowski lives a similar, depraved life for real as he writes the screenplay for the 1987 feature film, Barfly, which starred Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.

When you finish reading Hollywood, get a copy of the book form screenplay, Barfly. It’s the final edit of the script, all written by Charles Bukowski.

Charlie Bukowski died in San Pedro, California on March 9, 1994, at the age of 74 years old. Same as my age now. And just as cranky and cynical.

He got his first story published in 1944 and never stopped smoking and drinking and living life with little to no control. His physical body’s worst enemy and his emotional being’s champion of self-abuse, Charlie never stopped writing for the next 50 years.

That’s when God stopped him.

Dead.

In his tracks.

A few weeks before the Grim Reaper took Charlies Bukowski down for the count, Black Sparrow Press published the first edition hardcover of Charlie Bukowski’s (Hank Chinaski’s) final novel, Pulp.

While looking Lady Death square in the kisser, Bukowski dedicates his story told in Pulp to “bad writing.”

His novel, you see, takes dead center aim at writers and publishers and spoofs their pretentious, over-inflated, narcissistic world.

No ground is sacred.

Replete with everything vile and reviling, lewdness, drunkenness, debauched, hurtful, insulting, immoral but downright funny and heartbreaking.

No Facebook censor could ever allow any of these novels to appear on these hallowed, sensitive and politically woke webpages.

So, I offer to the Facebook censors Charlie Bukowski the man, and Hank Chinaski the fictional hero, and maybe his sidekick, Hank Moody. I guarantee them to be fairly and justly insensitive, insulting and hurtful to all.

But, God bless them, our world would be pretty sad without them.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/factotum-charles-bukowski/1100609520?ean=9780061842412

A Righteous Warrior’s Ethic

/ Charles Henderson / Leave a comment

by Taylor MacHenry

A friend posted on his Facebook page some pictures of smoldering aircraft wreckage taken from the battlefields of Ukraine in past days. The caption read, “For those who have trouble identifying Russian aircraft.”

Each window in the display contained a wreckage photograph and a label of the type of aircraft the wreckage was: MI-8, MI-24/35, MI-35 or SU-34 or SU-25. In each picture, I could imagine the catastrophic event that occurred with the aircraft as the missile or exploding projectile took out the airplane and everyone inside it.

I have mixed feelings while I look at this wreckage.

Yes, enemy aircraft shot down by the good guys. Still, many of these wrecks hold the remains of a human being, the pilot, or in some cases of helicopters shot down, the wreckage contains the bodies of pilot, crew, and passengers. Enemies all.

Not long ago I watched a video of a young Russian soldier captured by Ukrainian forces. No more than a child in his late teens, the boy stood confused and scared to his core, fearful that at any second his captors might murder him. After all, the Russians are murdering noncombatant Ukrainian civilians hiding in their homes. Bombing them. So, why not murder Russian prisoners of war, some of whom may have committed the war crimes?

Righteous warriors do not murder.

We must treat our enemy prisoners with decency. Treat them as we wish that our enemy would treat our own soldiers when captured.

That terrified Russian soldier, a mere boy, now a prisoner by Ukraine forces was conscripted into Vladimir Putin’s army, not his choice but the choice of the despotic ruler who demanded this child’s presence with a rifle on the battlefront. Consider that fact before heaping wrathful vengeance upon this enemy.

Then, a few days ago, I saw a Russian pilot captured. He wore an orange flight pressure suit, typical of equipment worn by pilots flying fast-moving aircraft that draw a lot of Gs during maneuvers.

This fellow knelt, his hands with fingers laced behind his head, also terrified: Now in the hands of Ukrainian captors who could as easily murder him as take him prisoner.

This Russian pilot commanded an echelon of aircraft, like a squadron commander in America’s flying forces. Certainly, he had valuable intelligence his captors might gain, and so did the frightened conscript boy. Killing the man or the boy would be a tactical mistake, human ethics aside.

What I am reminded of while looking at the pictures of smoking aircraft wreckage, and something I was taught by my Marine Corps leaders is that we must respect our enemy.

Yes, we kill them in horrible ways, and he kills our brothers in equally horrible ways, but as warriors we must respect our enemy.

Major Jim Land, one of the founding fathers of the Marine Corps Scout-Sniper program instructed me with a valuable lesson about the idea of warrior ethics. It is a lesson that was doctrine during my active-duty days and still should be doctrine taught to Marine Corps Scout-Snipers and Critical Skills Operators today: We do not kill to punish our enemy, not to gain revenge or achieve retribution for his side’s war crimes. We respect life and do not take a life casually. We are about the mission.

Such emotion-driven attitudes and conduct will corrupt us as warriors.

We cannot be effective to the mission if we are corrupt.

We never know how treating the enemy that we capture with respect will turn out. It may come to nothing, or it could come to something of great value. Reinforcing the hatred of the enemy toward us by treating him with cruelty and abuse can only hurt us in every respect, during the war and afterwards.

Most importantly, we all must kneel before God and face judgment, regardless of whether a person believes in God or not.

We all must account for ourselves.

Furthermore, after war, as we live, as I do, as old men with memories of our better years, we must also live with ourselves and what we did.

When conscience is nearly all that an old warrior has to keep him company, it needs to be a good conscience. Not shame.

So, looking at this wreckage of enemy aircraft, I also see the human beings who were inside them and died because of the ideals and desires for power of the politicians who sent them to war to die or to kill, and in Vladimir Putin’s case, to commit murder of innocent noncombatants.

It is not the dead or captured warriors upon whom we should focus our wrath, but on the man who sent them.

Goodnight Kabul: Another Failed American War With No Declaration

/ Charles Henderson / Leave a comment

by Taylor MacHenry

Today, I watched in horror and agony as thousands swarmed the Kabul airport hopelessly trying to escape the wrath of the Taliban with their bare-rock tyranny and unbridled cruelty that lies ahead for all Afghan people who did not side with the Muslim extremist rulers. My stomach twisted as I saw Afghan people clinging to the wheel wells of a US Air Force C17 transport aircraft as it taxied to the runway and took off. What happened to those who helplessly clung to the wheel wells and any other surface of the aircraft’s exterior where they could take a handhold?

Some 640 Afghan refugees cram themselves aboard a US Air Force C17 Transport (the most people ever on such an aircraft) as it departed Kabul August 16, 2021. US Military strive to do as much as they can to save as many people as they can while Afghanistan falls.

President Joe Biden denies that this is another American war won by US Warriors but lost by America’s political leaders who lacked the fortitude nor the will to arm and equip the Afghan people and transition to their own defense. A process that takes years and cannot be done in a matter of a few months. It is just like the way that the United States Congress tied the hands of the President and quit and ran from Viet Nam in 1975.

President Gerald R. Ford told me in 1994, when I spent time with him in New York, working on my book, Goodnight Saigon, (Berkley Books, Penguin-Random House, 2005, New York, NY) that the fall of Saigon was the most tragic day of his life. He said, “It was terrible to be President of the United States and sit and watch as America quit and ran.”

No, America should not have gotten ensnared in Afghanistan, just as they should not have gotten ensnared in Viet Nam. Not with the weakness of a Congress of men and women who have no idea of the cost of war, and the horrors that the innocent people caught in the jaws of that war suffer.

When we see our beloved brothers in arms die at our sides; when we see the innocent people caught in that war suffer and get maimed and killed, collateral damage sloughed off no better than flotsam and jetsam in the wake of a war waged by cowards and prosecuted by the valiant who believe their rhetoric, it brands the memories with a hot iron of we who were there to see these things while we fought the war and endure it.

We veterans keep saying, “Never again.” But the fools in Congress and the White House keep doing it. We keep warning that the cost of going to war is not in money but in blood, and not just an enemy’s blood but the blood of the innocent and blood of the loyal. Yet those cautions go ignored when the politicians have a political status to keep, and votes to get.

For those narcissistic wastes of skin who sit in high office, basking in their self-aggrandizing glory, human life and human misery do not affect their souls, because they have no souls.

  • Women with their children try to get inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul
Women with their children try to get inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 16, 2021

A nation cannot go to war and still go shopping at the mall, as if there is no war. Going to war means total commitment by the nation, not just the warriors that the nation treats like disposable hired help who matter for nothing. All of the people of the nation that goes to war must put themselves into the effort, share the bleeding. That is, if they desire to win it.

The last war where America totally committed to war was World War II. Every conflict, every military action in which America has stuck its big toe in the water, since World War II has failed.

President George W. Bush should have listened to his father, who warned him sternly against getting America entangled in the nation building that takes place after America quashes an enemy. He should have pounded Afghanistan into submission for the crime that they helped Osama bin Laden and his zealots commit, but instead of remaining in the country, nation building, winning the hearts and minds of the populous, he should have just left them to their misery and the Taliban to continue governing. If the Taliban hosted more terrorists, bomb them again and again and again.

That’s why President George H. W. Bush left the boss thug in charge in Iraq when America blew his armies back to Baghdad when they invaded Kuwait. No nation building. And President father warned President son to leave Iraq alone.

But son did not listen to the wisdom of his father.

Thus, with the ouster of Saddam Hussain, radical zealot armies like ISIS emerged.

Once the blood bath in Kabul ends, as the Taliban exercises its wrath on all those who supported the Americans, filling the gutters with blood, I fully expect to see Afghanistan rise up as the Phoenix of Islamic terror, home base for ISIS and others who live to kill Americans and destroy the Christian nations and the Christians wherever they exist.

Yes, America should have departed Afghanistan long ago, but with an exit strategy that gave the people at least a fighting chance. What President Biden has done is cowardly and cruel. The blood of these people is on him today. It is not just like Viet Nam. No. The North Vietnamese were a nicer bunch.

This is much worse.

Hypocrite Corporations Who Decry Racism and Discrimination but Exploit the Poor and Use Slave Labor in China

/ Charles Henderson / Leave a comment

by Taylor MacHenry

Today, I read an article about how Nike, Coca Cola, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Apple, Adidas, The North Face, Abercrombie, GAP, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Land Rover, General Motors and several other worldwide corporations with strong China manufacturing ties make a big public show of how they deplore all forms of racism and discrimination, pitching millions into the PR effort, but behind corporate doors are not shy about exploiting forced labor of slaves in China, most notably the enslaved Uighur Muslims of northwest China, a heavily oppressed racial minority of Turkic people.

(For a more extensive list of these companies, go to the Business and Human Rights Resource Center website at: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/china-83-major-brands-implicated-in-report-on-forced-labour-of-ethnic-minorities-from-xinjiang-assigned-to-factories-across-provinces-includes-company-responses/)

For many of us, this news is not at all surprising. It is the stock and trade of the “limousine liberal” progressive left elitists. They have lots of money, and want to put on a good face to the flotsam and jetsam of common working people who spend their hard-earned dollars in support these villians’ markets and profits. So, they make a public and highly hypocritical showing of their tender hearts for the plight of oppressed people, and throw money and promises at the causes. But in truth, their hearts are very dark indeed.

Black lives really do matter, in my opinion. So do cop lives and all other walks of society. As do Latino lives matter as well, and the plight of these and other struggling people who seek to feed their families and at least have what America’s Constitution and Declaration of Independence states, and promises. “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” (happiness meaning that you have your basic human needs met of hearth, home, food and family security). God created all of His children (humanity) equally in His eyes and in His love.

Yet, these progressive left elitists speak with “forked tongues,” much like the prominent Southern Cheyenne chieftain, Black Kettle, said of the American government, after seeing the “great white father” break the Pine Lodge Treaty–broken as a matter of expedience for the way west, the rail roads and other profit motives of the puppet-string pullers.

While talking publicly out of the left side of their mouths, saying how everyone needs to open all the doors for all people, especially those who suffer discrimination (true indeed), yet from the other side of their mouths they probably whisper among their boards of directors, “we need the slave labor of China to ensure that our profits increase while we fleece American consumers and other world markets by charging the people with few competitive options more money for increasingly inferior goods and delivering less and less.”

They have taken out all the screws that they can eliminate and trimmed off all the engineered support parts of their products, resulting in poorer quality but another penny or two in profit. However, their biggest profit gains come from not paying for labor, skilled labor. Skills cost dollars, and workers with greater manufacturing skills bring home more dollars per hour. So the companies close their American factories and go offshore where poor, desperate people, including children, will work for pennies instead of dollars. Skills matter less too, because if the product lasts past its flimsy warranty, that they make purposefully difficult for consumers to use when needed, then that is all that matters. In fact, it is good. The consumer has to buy a new one.

So, these companies not only use slave labor in China, maximizing profits like ancient Egyptians, but they also lobby Congress to keep the slave labor operating and fulfilling their American market needs. Yes!

These are the friends and supporters of the Joe Biden Administration–heavily supporting China. Congress even passed a bill in the House of Representatives that would prohibit the purchase of any goods to sell on the American market if those goods were manufactured by Chinese slaves, like the Turkic Muslims of Northwest China, the Uighur people. Downtrodden souls enduring endless “re-education,” working as slaves in forced labor camps turning out goods for American brands. However, the guilty parties–at last count, 83 major corporations with dirty hands using slave labor to spin out the parts for assembly plants elsewhere, or making shoes, shirts, trousers and other similar goods–put up big bucks in political candidate campaigns to kill the bill. A bill that had passed the United States House of Representatives with only 6 nay votes.

Bottom line–Money is Power.

And while we talk of Slave Labor, let us not forget America’s own version of Slave Labor: The poor people from Latin America who risk their lives to slip into los Estados Unidos (the United States) just to make a living and feed their starving families. Because they do not have legal status in the USA, they must work under the covers of secrecy and subterfuge. False documents and phony identifications that enable them to work and get paid something, usually cash with no benefits. And what do they get paid? Not nearly what the employer might report.

For example, I went to a temporary labor agency in Colorado Springs not that many years ago seeking two laborers to perform cleanup and barn repairs for me. The two men came to my home, neither of them speaking English, so I thankfully spoke enough Spanish to get the job done. During our work, for which I thought I was paying each man $14 dollars an hour, I discovered that each man actually received a little less than $6 dollars an hour, and they were glad to get it.

Yes, the temporary labor service does collect a fee for connecting me with the laborers. It should be no more than a couple of dollars, though. So, I asked the men if they received a pay stub that showed their deductions, such as FICA, Social Security and Medicare. But the truth was ugly.

Both men got paid cash at day’s end when they checked out of work for the day at the service. They got a little less than $6 dollars an hour, for which I paid $14 dollars an hour, and they got no explanation of deductions.

Neither man had a social security number, nor even knew what or where to get one. One man’s wife had an American drivers license, and she drove them out here to work at my place in the country and then drove them home again at days end. A 45 minute drive each direction in an old car that did not get good gas mileage. So, fuel costs were another deduction from their daily earnings.

Learning the truth they innocently told to me, I telephoned the temporary labor service, to whom I had given a check in advance, as they required, to cover the wages–eight hours a day for five days for two men at $14 dollars an hour.

The woman with whom I spoke, a boss there, started out her lies by telling me that the men were legal, documented workers, and that they got paid net wages after federal and state deductions were collected plus the company’s 10-percent commission for finding employment for the men and maintaining the wage and work documents required by federal and state law. To which I responded that I spoke to both men with my admittedly limited Spanish language abilities, but communicated well enough to fully understand that the men were not American citizens, had no documentation and that her company was ripping the men off with false deductions that were greater than the men’s net earnings. How could either man collect any Social Security or Medicare benefits when they became eligible if they had no clue of a Social Security number or even get a tax refund?

The woman hung up the phone without saying another word. And the company never cashed my check. They destroyed the paper trail that led to these two men and to my doorstep. Fine with me!

Next morning, the two men came for work and told me that they were fired, but that they had made a commitment to me to do the work and were keeping their promises. Standing by their word!

I said fine. But I insist on giving you each $10 dollars an hour cash for every hour that you work.

They worked through the week and most of the next week too. I paid them cash each day. Exactly as they wanted me to do. Just like ranchers out here did when I was a boy, and Braceros regularly and legally crossed the border to work, get paid cash, and went home to Mexico at season’s end. What happened to that system that worked well in the American Southwest until the mid-1960s? Politics and corruption.

When the men showed up for work the first day, and it was pretty cold weather, heavy frost covering this part of Colorado, only one of them had a coat. An old Army field jacket with no liner.

“Where’s your coat?” I asked the man in shirt sleeves. He shook his head, no and said, “No tiene.”

The other fellow smiled and showed me his Army jacket with no liner. Little better than him wearing a canvas shirt over his shirt. But he was a lot better off than the other guy.

So, without a word, I went in the house and pulled out two good, warm barn coats, each with wool flannel lining over a layer of insulation, to keep the men warm. After handing each man a coat to put on, I got in my truck while the men now happily worked, saying nothing again, and drove to the Big R ranch store where I bought good winter work coats for each man. Each a gift, not tied to their work.

As I exchanged their new coats for my loaners, that were well worn, I told the two fellows that it was part of the benefits package at my ranch. Everybody that works for me gets a coat. No charity. Just the right thing to do.

Besides, I could not bear the idea of either man working in cold weather without a coat! And what kind of cruel and heartless person would allow anyone to work in the cold with no coat?

Next day, after I had gotten the men coats of their very own. New coats, not worn out or thrown away items. The one man’s wife brought homemade breakfast burritos for my wife and me as well as the men. We ate breakfast together as men with mutual respect, and went to work afterward. Then one day, as a gift, she also brought us a sack full of homemade tamales, which I love. It’s a regular winter thing in a Latin household, making tamales. A family time. It warmed my heart and my stomach too.

When we finished our work, a little more than a week later, after working together and my Spanish language skills improving daily, I asked the men what they would do next?

They said that they had saved a good deal of money during the year and were heading back to central Mexico. The man with his wife would drive there, and give the other man a ride home to his wife and four children. The money would give them a start in a construction business of their own down there.

They hugged me goodbye and I never saw them again, nor have heard from either man.

But the bottom line here is a clear example of doing what is only right in the face of what is blatantly wrong, and remains wrong today: Exploitation of the poor and desperate by the wealthy. It is common in America and openly done in China as outright slavery!

Slavery is the reason for human trafficking. It is big business. Bigger business and even more profitable than the drug business. That is why the underworld of China and the Mexican cartels exploit human trafficking as a major source of their profits.

And these so-called respectable international corporations like Nike, Apple and Coca-Cola and all the 80 or so other hypocrites, are not one bit better than the underworld crime organizations in China and Latin America, and in the United States.

Right is right and wrong is wrong. Slavery and exploitation of the poor and desperate people struggling to simply survive and hold their families together is perhaps the most wrong of all wrongs done in the world today.

It stands against the ideals of the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence, the very foundation of America.

And it stands against God! An affront to God! It goes against everything that Jesus Christ stated in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) that begins His Sermon on the Mount.

Mark my words, regardless of whether any of these corporate leaders believe in God, the Lord God Almighty will hold these people who exploit and enslave God’s children accountable. Just as God will hold us all accountable on Judgment Day.

Plus, there is this thing that some people call, “Karma.” I call it, God gets even. And He does. Just stand by.

 ©Copyright 2020 Charles W. Henderson