PBS’s “Carrier”: Life In The Fleet At Sea

“Carrier”

(apparently if you’re like me and don’t watch TV, let alone have cable, you can watch the episodes online starting tomorrow).

Kudos to the Navy for greenlighting this PBS project which is airing this week April 27-May 1.

The creators had near-total editorial freedom and present crew members on the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-6 for an entire six month deployment to the Persian Gulf. They interviewed hundreds of the 5,000 sailors and Marines onboard while focusing largely on more than a dozen individuals, ranging from a fighter pilot to a ship’s cook. 

Everything from sex on the boat to disillusionment with the mission is captured, as well as daily living conditions, challenges and the mission each crew member plays a part in achieving.  

Above all else, the series profiles a unique band of individuals who the American people have perhaps never seen before, except for split second viewings in a movie like “Top Gun” or a TV show like “JAG”. The human growth (and failure) that occurs when pushed to your physical and emotional limits is eloquently profiled. Truly a must see if you have any interest in the Navy or the youth that join the Navy and serve their country.

 

 

 

Jimmy Carter’s Pathetic Last Stand

Carter disgraced himself even more than usual this past week. He not only managed to harm himself, he discredited a few valid critiques of Israel and America for years to come.

- He laid a wreath at Arafat’s tomb. Why reward a criminal whom even the Palestinian people share little affection for these days?

- He called Hamas a “national liberation movement”. Thank you for swallowing and regurgitating Hamas propaganda like a champion apologist Peanut Man.  

- He didn’t even pretend to condemn the latest Hamas terrorist act against Israeli civilians.

The valid points he utterly condemned with his vapid actions are thus:

- Israel has serious “apartheid” fears that were at the forefront of policies Ariel Sharon instituted before his death, mainly the abandoning of various settlements in Gaza.  He foresaw an Israel engulfed in non-Israelis and understood the danger of continuing this untenable position.  Carter could have used his formerly relatively honorable position and image as a peacemaker to help support those who continued Sharon’s policies to avoid such a future. Instead he discredits them by using bunk arguments about “peace, not apartheid” as if the two were the only choices available and then demolishing his public image in America and Israel.

- He could have simply wondered aloud publicly why America wants democracy through elections in the Middle East yet will not recognize the democratically elected Hamas leadership?  This is a state of affairs that is absurd.  It is constantly referenced by people in the Middle East as proof of America’s fundamental hypocrisy and undercuts our credibility in the region and much of the world. That doesn’t mean we have to honor Hamas as Carter did, but it does mean we should talk to them, if anything to tell them publicly we’re aware of their crimes and preparing indictments at the International Criminal Court for war crimes and authorizing terrorism or more mundanely, to discuss ways the US with the international community can help alleviate the health crisis in Gaza and elsewhere and force Hamas in a public showdown to back down on its insistence that any and all aid be routed through the Hamas social network.

- Israel kills countless Palestinian civilians a year in operations against Hamas and other groups.  Carter could have roundly condemned this as well as terrorist bombings by Hamas and others as not useful to the peace process.  He could have gone further and made the point that Israel has arguably not gained much from such operations in the past (a debatable point but one worth forcing the Israelis to back up with facts, not rhetoric), yet did not. Instead he stood silent in the face of terrorism.

Jimmy Carter is the best friend of Hamas and the far right in both this country and Israel who have no interest in peace in the Middle East except through conquest and ideology.  How?  He is a one-man discrediting machine, adopting previously valid points and rendering them moot by using them in service of his vanity and self-serving alternative worldview. With Carter involved, there can be no debate about such topics because the man hijacking valid critiques in service of himself is utterly discredited and rightly increasingly reviled. 

* The “Peanut Man” has never been a favorite in my family.  My parents endured the military he continued to strip to the barebones, for one thing.

The Battle Of Maxton Field

While driving my friend to his appointment at the excellent VA facility in Salisbury, NC, we took a stop at the North Carolina Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Lexington.  My friend lost the lower half of his left leg on his second deployment to Iraq but manages fairly well for himself.  An older gentleman noticed this and inquired about his service.  After introductions were made, he spoke of his three tours in Vietnam.  He also added he was proud to join the Army because of the “Battle Of Maxton Field” he had been a part of when he was 15.  We had no idea what this was and learned it was a confrontation between the Ku Klux Klan and the Lumbee Indians in 1958. 

Researching this now I further learn the Battle Of Maxton Field was a testament to the arrogance and overkill terrorist groups often fall prey to.  Utterly misreading the attitudes of the local populace, they burned crosses on the front lawns of two Lumbee Indian families as part of an angry condemnation of interracial dating and “coloreds and braves” not knowing their place.

Assembling for a rally, about 50-60 KKK members (mostly from outside Robeson County) got the fright of their life when they realized they were surrounded by nearly a thousand Lumbee Indians armed and pissed.

Nicholas Graham offers the aftermath:

 In the sudden darkness, the Lumbees descended upon the field, yelling and firing guns into the air, scattering the overmatched Klansmen. Some left under police protection while others, including Catfish Cole, simply took to the woods.

News photographers already on the scene captured the celebration. Images of triumphant Lumbees holding up the abandoned KKK banner were published in newspapers and magazines throughout the world. Simeon Oxendine, a popular World War II veteran, appeared on the cover of Life Magazine , smiling and wrapped in the banner. The rout of the Klan galvanized the Lumbee community. The Ku Klux Klan was active in North Carolina into the 1960s, but they never held another public meeting in Robeson County.

A parting note about this glorious moment in NC history is that men like Simeon Oxendine (and Garrison, the gentlemen we met at the memorial) took from their military service a lifelong ethos of honor, courage and leadership.  Combat veterans (In particular) to this day return to and inject these values into their communities through their example and their actions.