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Two Burning Questions Philip V. Brennan I have a couple of questions nobody seems to want to hear, much less answer. Question #1: If the reason we spend billions maintaining our armed forces is to enable them to fight wars, why are we so anxious to bring them home from the battlefields where wars are fought? If we don't want a military force to fight, why do we bother to maintain our armed forces? Yet the battle cry we're hearing from a lot of Americans is to bring the troops home even if the war they are now fighting is still going on and will continue to go on for God knows how long. In other words, it seems that the fighting forces we have deployed should not be forced to fight any longer. Bring 'em home. I might be able to more fully grasp this idea if the troops were draftees, torn from home and hearth against their will and compelled to fight on foreign soil far from home. But we have a wholly volunteer fighting force. They knew that when they put on Army, Navy or Marine uniforms they might be placed in harm's way. That's the job. That's why they are members of the armed forces. We don't pay them to sit around bases here at home when there is a war going on abroad. Almost all of them know that. And even if they don't enjoy being away from their loved ones and being plunked down in places they would not prefer to be if they had their own way, they are content with the knowledge that they are doing the job they are being paid to do – the job for which they willingly volunteered. You don't hear them whining that they want to come home to Mommy. They are proud of their service to their country.
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But despite their willingness to serve in harm's way as long as they are needed, the cry to bring the boys and girls home is getting louder and more shrill. We Americans have very short memories. In World War II, the length of service overseas for most service men and women was 36 months, and few complained even though a majority had been drafted. Today it's about 12 months, often with leaves interspersed. There is a familiar ring to the demand that the troops be brought home sooner rather than later. At the end of World War II there were similar demands to bring all the boys home immediately regardless of the fact that their presence there was a deterrent to Soviet expansion, and the well-organized campaign to withdraw the majority of our troops was largely stage-managed by Soviet sympathizers and their communist fellow travelers. Harry Truman, the kind of tough-minded Democrat realist that no longer exists in our times, simply ignored the demands and kept a sufficient number of troops in Europe until the threat of a Soviet thrust into Western Europe was over. And the majority of the American people understood why we had to stay in Europe and supported the president even though they couldn't wait until their loved ones came home. And as I said, almost all of these troops were draftees who had not volunteered to serve in the armed forces, as have today's soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. They may have groused about it, but they accepted their lot. And, by the way, we still have troops in Germany 60 years later, as well as in Kosovo, the Balkans and Korea.
I recognize that we have a somewhat unique situation in that many of the men and women serving abroad nowadays have wives and husbands and children at home, placing a burden on them. This is why Roman legionaries were forbidden to marry while serving the empire. Imperial Rome didn't want its soldiers distracted by family cares. It's also why it used to be said in the Marines that if the Corps wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one. So I ask again: If we don't want our fighting forces to fight, why are we spending billions to maintain our armed services? Question #2: I've asked this before and am going to keep asking it until somebody answers me. If the polar ice cap is melting and the poles are getting warmer and warmer, as the global warming fanatics insist, why is the world experiencing bone-chilling cold fronts. As I have noted, if your refrigerator is losing its coolant, it will lose its ability to ... well ... refrigerate. Instead of pumping out frigid air, it will start producing less and less cold air. The poles are the world's refrigerators. If the North pole is warming, it cannot send bitterly cold air southward. Yet, during this winter many parts of the Northern Hemisphere have been struck with record-breaking cold spells and blizzards which have dumped as much as 13 feet of snow in one storm, as happened in Japan. Here are a few headlines compiled by iceagenow.com: Heavy Snow in Northern Great Britain – 12 March 06 – A late season storm dropped more than 20 cm (8 inches) of snow across parts of Scotland, Northern England and Wales, making roads impassable and closing airports across Scotland. The storm brought 24 cm (9.5 inches) of snow to parts of Glasgow and more than an inch of rain to other parts of Northern Britain. [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news/12032006news.shtml ] Thousands Stranded by Heavy Snow in Scotland – 12 March 06 – The M74 motorway linking Scotland and England was closed to northbound traffic at Johnstonebridge, while the A9 to Inverness was shut in two places. Some 3,000 people were stranded in Glasgow and had to seek shelter. Snow also fell in Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle. More heavy snow is expected on Monday, affecting mainly northern England and southern and eastern Scotland. [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4796492.stm ] Thousands Trapped by Record Snowfall in Europe – 6 March 06 – Heavy blizzards swept through Western Europe over the weekend, killing at least seventeen. Some regions in Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy saw the heaviest March snowfalls in nearly three decades. Several thousand travelers returning from ski holidays in southern Germany and France were trapped on the roads as record snowfalls slowly buried their cars. The Red Cross provided emergency shelters in Germany and France, where some 2,600 tourists were housed in the town hall in Bourg-Saint-Maurice in the French Alps after snow made travel impossible. Even so, many had to spend the night in their vehicles. Train traffic in southern Germany was virtually shut down, and Frankfurt International Airport experienced one of its worst weekends in decades. [ http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060306-060418-1990r ] It is very important that we understand what is happening, and it is not global warming. Put simply, we are in the middle of the interim period between the present interglacial period and glaciation. History has shown that period to be one of increasing violence. It begins with tectonic activity, when magma is forced through cracks in the sea floor or through underseas volcanic activity. As a result, the world's oceans are sending aloft huge amounts of moisture, which falls as rain in the spring, summer and fall, and snow in the winter. The more moisture, the heavier the rainfall or snowfall. As I write this, in just three weeks Hawaii has been inundated by an astonishing 106 inches of rain. Last fall, parts of New England were drowned in storms which, in a couple of days, dumped almost two feet of rainfall. Had it fallen as snow, that would have been 20 feet of the white stuff. As I have written before, over the last 4 or 5 million years, ice ages have occurred every 90,000 years or so, with interglacial periods lasting about 12,000 years before the next ice age sets in. We are now about 12,000 years away from the end of the last ice age. Paleological research has shown that the period of glaciation is preceded by a 20-year period of incredible violence. All the evidence suggests that we are in that 20-year period. The chances are good that before this brief period is over, at least two-thirds of humanity, or maybe all of us, will perish. Is anyone listening? Deus exaudi nos!
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
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