This is going to get me in troubleJanuary 21, 2011

Very well spoken. I’ve just received your book and look forward to reading it. After reading your blog entries I am quite confident you are someone I would have the utmost admiration for. You actually remind me of my grandfather. He is cut from the same cloth. He’s lived his life as a hard-working man, filled with honesty and integrity.

He and my grandmother raised 7 children on a workman’s salary. Funny how, with their “traditional” values and teachings none of those children have been divorced. None are alcoholics (I think one son dabbled in mild drugs in high school), and even—for the most part—their 33 grandchildren are some of the most respectful and well-rounded cousins I’ve grown up around.

I sometimes wonder if what we’re seeing now were some of the warning signs seen before the fall of the other “empires” (Rome, Greece, etc.). It seems inevitable that when a nation reaches a level of prosperity, the populace become complacent, lazy and apathetic. At the same time the government becomes drunk with power.

I’m 35 now but remember as a teen being confused as to why we were in the middle east fighting in Desert Storm. I knew the main reasons but it seemed that we had no legal standing to invade another sovereign nation that hadn’t invaded us. I felt even more this way when we invaded Serbia to oust Milosevic on what was clearly an internal matter between the lawful government and the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Anyway, we act as the world police—costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. The bottom line is that it is wrong. I’m a firm believer in our proud military and defending our nation to the fullest extent needed (provided we are actually at risk or being attacked). Imposing our will around the world weakens us as a nation.

Keep up the great writings and I look forward to your next posting.

Thank you Adam,
You and I think alike. Maybe every generation looks at the one just ahead and sees nothing but gloom. The good news is that humans are resiliant. It’s good that we observe and criticize when we can. I wonder what people thought when the bow and arrow was invented. Must have been scary.
Forrest Fenn

Good Stories all!  Another book perhaps?  I especially like the MacArthur Piece, but also the Olds as well.  As I told you, I did have the opportunity to Gen Olds when he was at the Academy fresh out of Viet Nam in 1966.  In my own travels through life I have had the unique opportunity to meet some of my own heroes,  Robert Johnson, leading P-47 Ace from the European campaigns, Ensign Gay the year before he died, a man who watched the Battle of Midway unfold, Jimmy Doolittle is known for his Tokyo Raid, but he was the original military test pilot, and the first man to land an aircraft on instruments with needle ball and airspeed.  Scott Crossfield was personal friend as is Chuck Yeager, and I am happy to say that you are too!  Your stories make me think back to much earlier times when men where real men who made a difference in the history of mankind.  Did I ever tell you that on the quiet, a special approval was granted by the DoD to brief Jack Northrop on a TS/SCI Code Word program later revealed as the B-2, the year before died to show that his vision for flying wings would finally be realized!  You have become quite the “Story Teller”!  I did go through survival training at Fairchild AFB in the Fall of 1971 on the way to RF4C RTU in prep for Viet Nam, and could not help but notice that all of the examples of E&E and survival were all associated with the RF4C losses!  I guess your 76 figure makes the case, and while although a volunteer, I was sent to Europe in 1972 instead of Viet Nam, my backseater in RTU was sent to Viet Nam and shot down to become a POW on his third RF4C Mission!  I guess we all have our destiny!
Best Regards,
Gen K

It has been my opinion for years Mr Fenn that you cannot fight
and win half a war. The last war won was World War II and it was
won because we leveled Germany.
It is impossible to sort out the innocent from the guilty and still
conduct a proper war campaign.
Is that a heartless opinion? I guess it is merely my own and I certainly can live with it.

They say any war worth fighting is worth fighting dirty. That is the way it always happens. When are going to start leaving other folks alone?

Mike, you didn’t get two stars in the Air Force because you were a dummy. I admire you and what you have accomplished. You have had two very successful careers.

Here, you’ve repeated my very words but from a different angle. We have a president who seems to ‘not get it’ and while he throws money at large corporations, thinking that’s going to fix the economy, we now face a dire financial crisis. All the while, funding battles over the world that have nothing to do with us. I understand the need to reach out to others in pain, but to support other countries while ours suffers, makes no sense to me at all. What this president is doing, actually reminds me of my own life. (don’t ask)

I’m about to shift gears on you, a little more than a 180. I was a young teen in the late 50’s and remember making a day outing with my friend and her parents. They were familiar with the area we went, I was not and have been trying to locate it again, when all the landmarks have changed. I can’t find it. Here’s what I remember. We drove north on what is now I-25, for about 2 hours, out of Albuq. My friend’s father turned off onto a dirt road that sort of ran like a fork, instead of a right turn and drove maybe 1/2 mile where he stopped right next to a river. This river was wide and shallow and we spent the day collecting moss agates. To the west of this river, there was an undiscovered Indian ruins, barely still visible on the surface.

At the time, this was on public lands but who knows what’s happening there today. Online, I can’t find any reference to a dig that might be this site, I’m talking about and wonder if it’s still undiscovered. I don’t suppose, with my vague description, you would know where this site is. :) It’s been driving me nuts.
There’s another undiscovered site near Farmington but life kept me too busy to revisit. That one, I think I could find again but this place I’m remembering just isn’t happening.

Ah, Forrest, you dear confederate!  I always knew you could take the aerial view, and see madness for what it is.  “Let’s just leave other folks alone unless they attack us.”  Indeed.  John Quincy Adams wrote of the U.S.:

“But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

“She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.”

—John Quincy Adams, U.S. foreign Policy (1821),

Per LOU’s: “The last war won was World War II and it was won because we leveled Germany.”

The sand countries ain’t GER, and these are hardly wars.  As late journalist Daniel Schorr noted, “We’re just bombing the rubble around.”

Some accomplishment.  Some reason to lose and wreck so many fine American lives, and 100,000+ lives of others who DID NOT ATTACK us.  Terrorists—criminals—did.  See yesterday’s “How Many US Soldiers were Wounded in Iraq—Guess Again”:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-froomkin/iraq-soldiers-wounded_b_1176276.html

Einstein said he didn’t know how WW III would be fought, but surely WW IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

I am not sure if I can add a link, but if so, you will like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkI5VdttemU&list=UUgtOjC4HJ8kHBZ_R08F88sw&index=3&feature=plcp

Equanimity is the goal. Chaos, pandemonium , and agitation is often the result. Fighting has something to do with that.