Tom Glenn's Blog, page 65

Addicted to Chewing gum

During the thirteen years I spent more time in Vietnam than in the U.S., I, like everybody else, smoked cigarettes. The non-smokers among us were so few that we considered them oddballs. And the Vietnamese smoked more than we did.

In 2015, I paid the price for my smoking: I came down with lung cancer that almost killed me. I underwent months of radiation and chemotherapy, then had the upper lobe of my right lung surgically removed. I wasn’t completely recovered until last year.

But I had stopped smoking many years before. Until the lung cancer developed, I thought I’d gotten away with all my years of smoking. It took me a very long time to wean myself off cigarettes and onto nicotine chewing gum. Years later, I gradually replaced the nicotine gum with everyday chewing gum. Eventually, I got to the point that I was chewing only regular gum. Now my problem is I can’t stop.

Yes, now I’m addicted to chewing gum. The next step is to wean myself off gum to . . . nothing. I’ll begin all that someday soon. Don’t want to rush things. What’s the hurry? Why not take another forty years to finish up?

So I’ll get to starting the process one of these days. Meanwhile, I’ve tried all the different brand names of gum. I’ve come to prefer Mentos, partly because they’re candy-covered gum balls. I don’t allow myself any candy on my diet, so the gum is my way of cheating.

Who says the life of an aging man isn’t interesting?

Intelligence Failures (2)

Because intelligence must be secretive to be successful, the public knows little about the U.S. intelligence apparatus, how big it is, or what it does. Suffice it to say that there are eighteen intelligence agencies in the U.S. government. How big are they? We don’t know, but one of the largest, the National Security Agency (NSA), where I worked, is estimated to employ 30,000-40,000 people with an annual budget of 11 billion dollars. Two other agencies are assumed to be very large and costly. They are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). And each of the military services has its own intelligence service.

The intelligence resources of the U.S. government, in sum, are overwhelming. In my years of being cleared for classified information, especially the time I spent as an intelligence budgeteer on the staff of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), I was in awe of the effectiveness of our intelligence and the depth of knowledge we had about every other country in the world. In wartime, intelligence assets are expanded and directed against our enemies. So I’m sure our intelligence on Afghanistan and the Taliban was effective and voluminous.

Consequently, I can’t believe that our intelligence agencies failed to foretell how quickly the Afghan government would collapse once we withdrew from the country. But, as we have done repeatedly during our history, when we fail, we look for a scapegoat. We claim our decision-making wasn’t flawed. Rather, we were the victims of failed intelligence.

I, for one, don’t believe that our intelligence failed. I think our failure was that of judgment.

“Intelligence Failures”

I am repeatedly irritated by reports of “intelligence failures” as the cause of governmental flubs. Most recently, the press reports that the instant collapse of Afghanistan and its takeover by the Taliban was the result of intelligence agencies failures to foretell what would happen if the U.S. withdrew. The fall of Afghanistan was so similar to the defeat of Vietnam in 1975 that sometimes I knew what had happened even before I read about it. And the U.S. government claimed that the fall of Saigon, the last bastion in South Vietnam, came as a surprise. Nonsense.

As I have reported here before, I and other intelligence officers forewarned of the impending North Vietnamese attack on Saigon time after time during the last weeks before the city fell and I escaped under fire. But the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham Martin, refused to accept our warnings. He had been told by the Hungarian member of the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS), a representative of a communist state allied to North Vietnam, that the North Vietnamese had no intention of attacking Saigon. Martin accepted this assurance in the face of overwhelming evidence from me and other intelligence sources that attack on the city was imminent. He assured Washington that no assault was in the offing. The White House and the Pentagon accepted Martin’s assessment and planned no evacuation. When the attack came, the government blamed its inaction on an intelligence failure.

I no longer have clearances and access to classified information, so I have no definite way of knowing what we knew in advance of the decision to withdraw our forces from Afghanistan. But I find it inconceivable that out intelligence failed to predict what would happen and how fast. I don’t know what intelligence resources were focused on Afghanistan, but I find it unbelievable that they all could have been misled. I know from many years of past experience that we keep track not only of our enemies but also of our friends and allies, so that we wouldn’t be taken by surprise at their actions.

Because we were engaged in a war in Afghanistan, I’m certain that we exploited all available means of gaining information on our adversaries. First, there’s human intelligence (HUMINT). That includes information from ordinary people observing what’s happening, spies working secretly inside enemy ranks, prisoners of war, and defectors. Then there’s photographic intelligence (PHOTINT), sometimes called imagery intelligence (IMINT), that results from people taking photographs and from airplane and satellite imagery. Next is signals intelligence (SIGINT) with its three subcategories, communications intelligence (COMINT), electronic intelligence (ELINT, the monitoring of non-communications signals such as radar), and telemetry intelligence (TELINT). Beyond these classic categories of intelligence, press reports, including newspapers, magazines, radio news, and television reporting, can be of great value in learning of another country’s status, actions, and plans.

More next time.

We March at Midnight (2)

The older I get, the more horrified I am by the grisliness of war. I, like Ray McPadden and many other authors of books about war, suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI), the soul damage brought on by experiencing horrific events. Much of my injury came from seeing men killed by my side during combat. My self-forgiveness for my time on the battlefield is undermined by my knowledge that my actions not only saved lives but led to the killing of enemy troops.

That knowledge reinforces my determination to do everything I can to discourage future wars. The odds are against me in that struggle because our nation has enemies determined to attack us—ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban leading the list. Besides, we Americans have no sense of war’s bestiality. No living American has experienced combat in our own land. And the number of veterans who were in combat abroad is small. I believe that Americans are more willing to go to war than our allies because so few of us have observed the brutality of the battlefield firsthand. In our innocence, we cannot possibly comprehend the monstrousness of war.

So in my writing and my public speaking, I will strive to alert my fellow Americans to the unspeakable beastliness of war. If I am even marginally successful, maybe some lives will be saved.

We March at Midnight

Yesterday, the Washington Independent Review of Books published my review of Ray McPadden’s We March at Midnight (Black Stone Publishers, 2021). You can read it at http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/we-march-at-midnight-a-war-memoir

Just before taking on Midnight, I read and reviewed Stephen Dando-Collins’ Conquering Jerusalem (Turner Publishing Company, 2021—review at http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/index.php/bookreview/conquering-jerusalem-the-ad-66-73-roman-campaign-to-crush-the-jewish-revolt). Both books detail the bloodthirstiness of war at the very moment I’m reading in the press of death and destruction in Afghanistan. All these reminders have made me think back on my own record on the battlefield. Much of the time in my 35 years of government service was spent assisting U.S. and friendly forces in combat on the battlefield by providing information on the enemy derived from the intercept and exploitation of his radio communications. Although I never once fired a weapon in combat (I carried a 38-caliber revolver), I was, nevertheless, complicit in the killing.

I remember that during the Vietnam war we rarely found enemy bodies after a battle. The North Vietnamese always cleared the battlefield of their own dead. On the few occasions when I did see bodies, I was struck by the tininess of the Vietnamese. They were so small that it felt like viewing the remains of children. The GIs always referred to the Vietnamese as “the little people” for good reason.

I forgive myself for my participation in combat by reminding myself that my purpose was not to kill but to save lives. I was there to help my comrades avoid death by warning them of what the enemy was doing, where he was, and what he planned to do. I did in fact save many lives, although sometimes my warnings were ignored and men died as a consequence.

More next time.

New Book Review

The Washington Independent Review of Books just published my most recent book review. It’s of McPadden’s We March at Midnight. Take a look and let me know what you think.

You can read the review at http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/we-march-at-midnight-a-war-memoir

Hair, Hair, Everywhere Hair (2)

Here are the rest of the words to the song, “Hair”—from the hairiest man you’re ever likely to meet:

I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy

Snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty

Oily, greasy, fleecy

Shining, gleaming, streaming

Flaxen, waxen

Knotted, polka-dotted

Twisted, beaded, braided

Powdered, flowered, and confettied

Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied!

Oh say can you see

My eyes if you can

Then my hair’s too short

Down to here

Down to there

I want hair

Down to where

It stops by itself

They’ll be ga ga at the go go

When they see me in my toga

My toga made of blond

Brilliantined

Biblical hair

My hair like Jesus wore it

Hallelujah I adore it

Hallelujah Mary loved her son

Why don’t my mother love me?

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Flow it, show it

Long as God can grow it

My hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Flow it, show it

Long as God can grow it

My hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Flow it, show it

Long as God can grow it

My hair

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Hair, Hair, Everywhere Hair

I’m the hairiest man I know. I have hair everywhere. Now that I’m getting older and it’s turning white, the hair isn’t so obvious as it used to be. But when I was younger, I got lots of looks for the hair showing over my collars and under my cuffs. So when the musical Hair came out in 1967, I immediately latched onto it. I bought the score and the recording from the original production.

The words from the title song say it all. I quote them below:

She asks me why

I’m just a hairy guy

I’m hairy noon and night

Hell that’s a fright

I’m hairy high and low

Don’t ask me why

Don’t know

It’s not for lack of bread

Like the Grateful Dead

Darling

Gimme head with hair

Long beautiful hair

Shining, gleaming,

Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair

Shoulder length or longer

Here baby, there mama

Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Flow it, show it

Long as God can grow it

My hair

Let it fly in the breeze

And get caught in the trees

Give a home to the fleas in my hair

A home for fleas

A hive for bees

A nest for birds

There ain’t no words

For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder

Of my…

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Flow it, show it

Long as God can grow it

My hair

More next time.

Cooling Down

As if on cue, the weather cooled noticeably on the day September began. In the last three days, we have had temperatures as low as the fifties. This morning, it’s in the sixties. But summer doesn’t end until September 22. What’s the hurry?

As noted earlier in this blog, I am a hot-weather person. I got that way during the thirteen years I spent more time in tropical weather of Vietnam than I did in the U.S. I became so acclimated to hot weather that any temperatures below 85 degrees feel downright cold. When the weather is where I want it to be, in the upper eighties and lower nineties, I go shirtless and wear shorts. I have never much liked clothes and always wore as little as possible. I probably would have joined a nudist colony had there been one available to me.

The lowering of the temperatures and the need to add more clothes feels melancholy to me. I associate cold weather with sadness. Winter, to me, is a time of gloom, and I always want to escape back to that place—Vietnam—where it never got cold. Walter Huston captured my feelings well in his “September Song”:

Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December

But the days grow short when you reach September

When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame

One hasn’t got time for the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few

September, November

And these few precious days I’ll spend with you

These precious days I’ll spend with you

Global Warming

As I noted some weeks ago in this blog, global warming is no longer a future threat—it’s here now. Now a report just out reveals that the world must reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 to avert climate catastrophe. As a result, we have wildfires in the Pacific northwest; flooding in Europe; unprecedented heat waves in the U.S., Asia, and at both polls; rising sea level threatening low-lying communities; and hurricanes like Ida ravaging our coastlines.

Despite the emergency, we are doing almost nothing to slow down the devastation. Coal burning goes on worldwide, with the U.S. in the lead. We continue to drive and manufacture automobiles with gasoline engines that pollute our air. How bad does it have to get before we wake up and change our ways?

Part of the problem is that belief in the threat of global warming, like mask wearing and getting vaccinated, has become politicized. Republicans, led by Donald Trump, pretend that climate change, like covid-19, doesn’t exist. Just as refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated has become a political statement, good Republicans deny that the earth is getting so hot that we are in danger. Being a Republican is rapidly becoming ignorance writ large.

So I call upon all, especially Americans, to step up and take on global warming. We have proven historically that we can change the course of history through our joint efforts. Let’s do it again.