Veterans Day

To everyone who is either serves or served in the military: Thank you. Thank you a thousand times. Thank you for your work, sacrifice and keeping us safe. Thank you to your families for letting you do this and for the sacrifices they make. It may seem we take you and your actions for granted and that we care about today only because it is a day off work. That is not true. Your work makes ours possible and while saying thank you seems inadequate it is the best I can do.

Veterans day was initially intended to remember those killed during World War I. From the VA web site:
World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…" (http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp)

There is a World War I memorial in Washington, DC — http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiktok-africa/2636925512/ has a photo. Yes, it is as small in person as it looks in the photo. There’s an interesting story here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27646518/?GT1=43001.

Armistice Day was changed to Veterans Day after World War II in 1954 and the original Act was amended so that the day would commemorate veterans of all US wars.

The United States is not alone in having a day to remember those who served. November 11th is called “Remembrance Day” elsewhere. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_day) including parts of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

As 2008 closes we will have been at war for seven years, though sometimes it is far too easy for those of us without friends and family serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to forget. Unlike WWII where people were asked to do something for the war effort, aside from the debt we are building, most of us have been pretty unaffected by the war. It’s strange to think that we are fighting wars in two countries. The tragic events of 9/11 were the closest we have come to having war on our doorstep since Pearl Harbor. Today is not the day to point fingers or talk about the politics of these wars, though what got us to this point deserves the debate it will get. It is easy for me to sit in my house and talk about the military like it is some abstraction, but as cliché as it is, freedom isn’t free. When asked, the men and women of our military have gone to protect us. Far too many people, on both sides, have died or suffered terrible injuries. We have not done enough for these people. We must make sure we do better.

So thank you for your service.

Thank you, Howard

As we all expected, Howard Dean is leaving the DNC in January when his term expires. He is probably one of the only people in politics to stick to a self-imposed term limit. The last person I know of who did that was George Washington. I think he always planned to do this and would have even had Barack Obama asked him to stay, which everyone also knew was never going to happen.

The irony of something rarely gets missed, by me anyway. Here it almost hits you in the face. Howard Dean began the ‘fifty state strategy’ and got a lot of crap for it. This plan helped win the election for Obama. I have heard there is some bad blood between the two men but have not found anything to prove that. It is customary for a president to pick the chair of the party but I don’t feel Dean has been given the credit he deserves. The Nation ran this back in February: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/berman.

I don’t know how President-elect Obama feels about Dean. I am not sure it matters and it would be natural to want someone from his inner circle there. The problem is that Dean rebuilt a party that was in trouble all over the country. His departure, while expected and blah, blah, blah makes me wonder what direction the DNC will take now. Given the recent success of Dean’s plan (in both 2006 and 08) I hope they continue it.

PS. Note to sensible readers, I know everyone just loves the Huffington Post. I don’t. This is because they do not believe in fact checkers. That is important because when they ‘break’ a story it is hard to tell if it is real and they have put stories up that were later found to be false. If you read it on a regular basis, just keep that in mind. You’ll get better breaking news from Drudge.

Chilren are not adults

This week an eight year old boy shot and killed his father and a family friend. He has been charged with murder and the prosecutor hopes to try him as an adult. This is wrong on so many levels I do not know where to begin but I will find a way.

Children are not adults. That seems like a pretty obvious thing to say. It is the reason we treat them differently. We have laws to protect them from abusive families, from exploitation in the workplace and to keep them in school until they turn 16. We also treat them differently in terms of the rights we afford them. They cannot vote, drink, drive or join the military. Until very recently we treated them very differently when they commit crimes. The argument is often made that we if we let 18 year olds vote and die for their country we should allow them to drink. I don’t know if we should do that or not (though the US view on alcohol use is clearly, to me, draconian as in Europe where kids are allowed to drink much earlier the amount of binge drinking is lower but that is a subject for another day). Let’s assume that logic (if you can serve in the military you should be able to buy a beer) is valid. Armed with that, if you can be put to death or tried as an adult for murder then you should be able to drink, drive (not at the same time) and be afforded all the other rights normally given only to adults, right?

No. Again, children are not adults. The reasoning behind not giving them the rights and responsibilities of adulthood is simple; they lack the judgment, the ability to understand the consequences of their actions, their sense of right and wrong may not be developed and their brains are still developing. This is especially true to adolescents, for whom this is mainly appropriate because they are generally the kids who commit crimes for which they are tried as adults. Studies have shown that adolescent boys’ brains are very different from adults. They are prone to impulsive behavior. They do not think through what they are going to do and how that will affect them or others. That is the heart of what impulsiveness is. The impulse to act is followed by the act itself. When prosecutors say these kids need to be tried as adults to protect the public and send a signal it just proves that they miss the point, these kids aren’t thinking about what is going to happen immediately following most of the things they do (there is a reason car insurance is more expensive for teenage boys) much less what punishment they face. If they had the ability to think if I do this, I may be tried as an adult and then go to prison. Secondary to that is the fact that when we send kids to prison we change them into criminals. They may have committed a crime to get them there but the prison experience, during a formative period of their lives, never has the effects society wants. Prison is hard on adults but it is much worse for children who may be dealing with the experience of where they are but also being away from home for the first time. Many kids have problems going to camp, can you imagine how they would deal with an adult prison? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_development, just one site on this. There are better ones but you can find them yourselves).

Minors and the death penalty. I oppose the death penalty for anyone. Rarely do I see things as being black or white and think the world is more shades of grey but not in this instance. The death penalty is wrong. My main problems with it are that I do not believe we should give the state the right to kill people and I cannot get beyond how barbaric it is and the message it sends; killing people is wrong unless done by the government. For me this offers me an easy out when people want to debate when it should be used, because I don’t think it should ever be used. The idea of executing minors seems to bring the barbarity to an extreme. The safety net we have for children often fails. One of the leading causes of death among children is being killed by a family member. Maybe the more appropriate statistic is that if a child or woman is murdered, the most likely person to have been the culprit is a family member, spouse or significant other. We were all horrified when Susan Smith killed her children but she is not alone in doing this. I do not think past abuse excuses violence or criminal behavior but if those are not mitigating circumstances, what are?

Back on point, prosecutors around the country will cite the ‘heinous nature’ of certain crimes as reason enough to try minors as adults. I think that’s crap. If anything the worse the crime, the less the accused may have understood their actions. I repeat, children – be they 15 or eight, may not understand what their actions mean.

But in Arizona, we have a child who committed a terrible crime. He had been taught how to use guns by his family so they did not scare him. They do not know why he did this. There was no history of abuse. He had never been in trouble. In some states, like Florida, if a child takes the life of another person with a gun, the gun owner is responsible. I have to wonder if that applies here.

Regardless of what happens in Arizona, we really need to reevaluate our position on minors who commit crime. We also need to put more money into helping children before they resort to this. Far too many fall through the cracks and end up in untenable situations. We need to hold ourselves as accountable as we do them for whatever they do because they aren’t growing up on islands by themselves. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22055708/page/2/

Word on the street

This has been an amazing week. Washington, DC is very much a southern town in a lot of ways but it is a relatively ‘large’ city. My reference points before coming here were New York, San Francisco and Paris so WDC may be our nation’s capitol but it usually feels like a small town. The only exception to that rule is that people generally do not talk to strangers like they might in real small towns. At least they didn’t until this week.

Ever since Barack Obama won the election most people are smiling. They say hello. I feel like Elaine’s plan to make NYC friendlier has been implemented here. (Elaine, from Seinfeld, told her boyfriend, who worked for the mayor’s reelection campaign, that people should wear nametags to encourage them to talk to each other. The idea flopped and the guy’s boss, I believe it was Mayor Dinkins, lost.) Everywhere I go people are talking to everyone and anyone about how happy they are. True conversation I had today in line at the grocery store:

Random guy: I just cannot believe Obama actually won!Me: I know, it’s great! RG: And the rest of the world is happy, too!Me: Yeah, it’s nice to not be hated anymore.RG: That’s true. People like us again!

Bill Clinton said he believed in a ‘place called hope.’ Right now I would mark a new place called hope on the map and it covers most of the planet.