I wish you a peaceful, uneventful Christmas. 

I'm not sure  "Merry Christmas" is appropriate because I know from experience it's difficult to feel merry when you are thousands of miles from home and there  are people outside the perimeter who would like to kill you.    It's more difficult for many of you than it was for me because many of you are away from your spouses and children as well as being away from your parents and siblings.

I spent Christmas 1969 at Landing Zone English just north of Bong Son,  South Vietnam.   I hope your Christmas will be comparable to mine.   

I worked in the army post office  serving the 173rd Airborne Brigade.  After weeks of abnormally large amounts of mail we had a day off with no mail coming in.  We had had help with the extra mail which included a large number of small artificial Christmas trees.   Several lucky men from various  infantry units had been given the opportunity to spend their last  couple of months in Vietnam  sorting mail instead of  looking for  Charlie.

The weather was sunny but without the heat and humidity of summer.  Winter days in that part of Vietnam were often cloudy and sometimes rainy.    That night some of the men on guard duty got a little carried away and started popping red and green flares until someone decided to sound the siren for a red alert.  The enemy had agreed to a truce, primarily so he could resupply his units.

Of course not all Christmases in Vietnam were pleasant.  For some other memories, songs, etc. see the site started  by  Mary Garvey in 1994. 

I hope your Christmas isn't anything like my dad's wartime Christmas.  He was a truck driver in Patton's army.  His unit was outside of the area the Germans occupied in the Battle of the Bulge, but he and his brother earned Bronze Stars by disobeying orders and taking some supplies through German lines.   When he talked about it later he felt he hadn't done anything special. He had simply shown the officers that they were wrong about the danger.
    
American soldiers, sailors and Marines have at times  been spending their  Christmases in  harm's way since the American Revolution.   Members of the Air Force joined them 60 years ago.

The American army's first major  victory came on Christmas, 1776,  when General George Washington  led his army across the Delaware River to defeat the Hessians at Trenton, N.J.
The next  Christmas  was rough  because of the frigid weather at their encampment at Valley Forge.

Perhaps the most remarkable  wartime Christmas occurred  in  1914  in World War 1  when  English. German and French troops ignored the wishes of higher officers and declared an informal truce and talked and sang with each other before returning to the war.
 
I wish you could all be home for Christmas, but that isn't possible.  You are participating  in a unique conflict.  Our previous wars  were against  other nations including the wars against the Cherokee, etc  Even our Civil War was a war involving a group of states acting like another nation.

In the War on Terror your enemy is more like an oversized criminal gang armed with military  weapons.  Their primary focus is on killing people.  They claim to have a religious motive, but they will kill their fellow Muslims just as readily as they will kill us "infidels".  They would like to take over a country, but that isn't their primary goal.   

Many of them want to provoke a war between Muslims and the rest of the world.    They want to get others to blame all Muslims for their actions and attack  Muslims who aren't involved in the violence. 

Your job is to keep them from getting a country to use as a base of operations.    In Vietnam we  weren't always sure which of the Vietnamese were friendly and which were not.   As the recent at Ft. Hood indicates, you cannot even be sure of your own comrades.  

Eliminating all terrorists probably isn't possible, but you can minimize their opportunities to conduct mass murders. 

 
President Barack Obama should follow the example set by North Vietnamese  negotiator Le Duc Tho in 1973 and refuse the Nobel Peace Prize.  Many are criticizing the decision to award Obama the Peace Prize.  This isn't the first controversial decision by the Nobel committee.

It is inconceivable that the Commander in Chief  of a nation whose  troops are actively engaged in armed combat should be awarded a peace prize.  I happen to support the U.S. role in both conflicts, but recognize that involvement in war is inconsistent with receiving the Nobel Prize.

If Obama has made an "extraordinary effort" for peace, why are Americans still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan?  How is the practice of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan an example of "reaching out" to the Muslim world?   Is the Nobel Prize Committee demonstrating racism  by seemingly suggesting that  the killing of Muslims is insignificant?

Whether or not the American role in Iraq and Afghanistan is justified or not, that role is not a role of peace, but of war.  Peaceful resolution of these conflicts may not be possible,  but  peaceful resolution of conflicts is what the Peace Prize should be about. 

The Nobel Committee awarded the 1973 Peace Prize to Tho and Henry Kissinger for the work on the Paris Peace Agreement designed to  end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.     Tho refused to accept the award because he realized his nation had not abandoned its goal of uniting Vietnam by force if necessary.    Kissinger initially accepted it but subsequently attempted unsuccessfully to return it.

Tho and Kissinger at least had done something  that  could qualify  them for consideration.  Obama has done nothing but talk. 

Obama has  not ended any war as President Theodore Roosevelt had  when Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for helping negotiate an  end to the Russo-Japanese War.  Many questioned the decision to give the award to Roosevelt because American military forces were dealing with a violent rebellion in the Philippines.

Whether or not the American role in Iraq and Afghanistan is justified or not, that role is not a role of peace, but of war.  Peaceful resolution of these conflicts may not be possible,  but  peaceful resolution of conflicts is what the Peace Prize should be about.

President Obama should  not accept a Peace Prize so long as these conflicts are going on.

Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize, Le Duc Tho, 1973, Vietnam, Henry Kissinger, Theodore Roosevelt, refuse
  

I've seen occasional recent references  comparing  Pakistan to Cambodia during the Vietnam War.  If the Bush administration, or Barack Obama, thinks the two are comparable it is making the biggest miscalculation since the U.S.  made the mistake of getting too close to China in the Korean War.   Obama wants to expand the current Bush attacks on border areas to include an attack on Osama bin Laden where ever he might be in Pakistan.

U.N. forces had routed the North Korea Army and appeared to on the verge of winning when China became concerned that the Americans might decide to go ahead and conquer China as well because China had been supplying the North Koreans.  China responded by sending in its army.  President Harry Truman decided that it was best not to antagonize the Chinese any more than necessary and prohibited  bombing supply bases in China.

Enemies using sanctuaries  isn't a new situation for the U.S.  Andrew Jackson faced such a situation  along the border of what was then Spanish owned Florida during the administration of President James Monroe.  Jackson took care of the problem by in effect declaring war on Spain with nothing more than an ambiguous letter from President Monroe. Jackson invaded Florida without any authorization from Congress and captured the Spanish governor at a poorly defended fort at Pensacola.  Spain after a protest decided Florida wasn't worth the trouble and ceded it to the U.S.

 During the Vietnam War communist forces started using areas  of Cambodia along the Vietnam border as sanctuaries for supply depots and troop bases.  Cambodia with a population of only 7 million and no military force to speak of couldn't force the Vietnamese out and was afraid that acknowledging their presence would draw the country into the war.  North Vietnam denied having any forces in Cambodia. 

The U.S. occasionally bombed these forces and sent in commando type forces, but denied doing either.  The U.S. didn't want to formally enter the country because it didn't want to  risk forcing Cambodia to ask for assistance from someone like China or the U.S.S.R.  Cambodia also ignored the actions of  the U.S. claiming it wasn't aware of the presense of foreign troops or any bombing. 

In early 1970 Prince Norodom Sihanouk's efforts to keep the country out of the conflict failed and he was overthrown in a coup by pro-U.S. officials.   The new government  invited the U.S. in to eliminate the communist bases.  Subsequently the country endured a civil war that resulted in over a million deaths.

Pakistan with an estimated 2006 population of 165 million is the 6th most populous nation in the world with a population equal to the population of Iraq plus the population of  Russia.  It has the world's 7th largest military force, including nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them.   Pakistan's population is approximately equal to the combined populations of World War II Germany and Japan. 

Militants are a potential threat to overthrow or even take over the government.  They would welcome an incident  they could use to attract support for  a  Jihad type war. 

Al Qaeda may be using Pakistan as a sanctuary as part of a  strategy to create an incident to draw Pakistan into their Jihad.  Osama bin Laden  might welcome  being killed if he could  achieve martyr status  and induce Pakistan to declare war or to start supplying his forces with conventional or nuclear weapons. 

Pakistan has already had a problem with a government scientist helping other countries develop nuclear weapons without government approval.  Other government officials might respond to a U.S. incident by allowing militants to "steal" nuclear weapons.  If those militants could also "steal" a missile that could be fired from  a ship, they might be able to destroy a U.S. city.

The United States have enough to handle without having to take on a major military power like Pakistan.  Al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan do increase the hazards of those serving in Afghanistan just like the Cambodian sanctuaries increased the  threat to those of us who served in Vietnam.  The rockets and mortars fired in my direction may have been stockpiled in Cambodia before being provided for attacks.  The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces where I was took their R & R in Cambodia.

However, the potential threat of a  much wider war makes the risk of attacking sanctuaries, or attempting to attack Osama bin Laden as Barack Obama wants to do,  too great to take the chance.  Pakistan isn't a weak nation like Cambodia or early 19th Century Spain. Pakistan has a stronger military force than China had during the Korean War.  Little Iraq ignored an ultimatum. Why would any intelligent person think Pakistan would take orders from the U.S.?

Many people in the Main Stream Media (MSM)misuse the term "Swiftboating".  They refuse to admit what the Swift Boat vets were actually doing during the 2004 election. 

The Swift Boat vets were doing what members of the MSM would have done if they had been  real journalists.  The first thing political reporters should learn is that one thing Republican and Democratic politicians have in common is a tendency to lie about their backgrounds. 
 
Real journalists are supposed to check with a variety of sources before writing or telling stories, or at least that's what I learned when I took some journalism courses over 30 years ago.  The MSM in 2004 accepted whatever  candidate John Kerry told them without question because they were good Democrats who believed it was their duty as journalistic prostitutes for the Democratic Party to follow orders from party leaders.

Those of us who have been in a war know that some people  like to exaggerate what they did.  Real journalists would have attempted to verify Kerry's account by talking to the other men who were there.  The Swift Boat vets  were the other men who served with John Kerry and knew what he had actually done.

Real journalists would have checked to see if Kerry and his crew had provided consistent accounts of what happened.  The Swift Boat Vets did that and discovered discrepancies in the published accounts Kerry and his crew provided.  For example, there was even an account in the July 23, 2004, "Oregon Statesman Journal" that the  Green Beret  who fell off Kerry's boat and had to be rescued  was supposedly on another boat entirely.