Past tense; Present tense; Future tense?

There has been a longstanding debate among historians, philosophers, and others, as to whether or not history repeats itself. Anyone who has pursued the study of history for any length of time will have encountered those moments of recognition that bring to mind a similar event in another time and another place and involving completely different individuals and told in a completely different language. Since I myself count in this number, I should offer my own conclusion that it isn’t so much a question of history repeating itself as it is a matter of human beings repeating themselves – that is that human beings frequently respond in a similar fashion to similar situations or circumstances, regardless of differences of place, time, language, etc.

So it is with no surprise that I am now seeing the return of “the winter soldiers,” i.e., veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who are recounting their experiences in these conflicts to justify their opposition to the continuation of these wars and in hopes that they will persuade others here at home to join in that opposition. The same label was adopted in the 1960s and 1970s by American veterans of the war in Vietnam who came home and campaigned for the end of that war, as many of you know thanks to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. The name of “the winter soldiers,” of course, is taken from that advocate and author of revolution, Thomas Paine, whose most famous work “The American Crisis” referred to “the summer soldier and sunshine patriot” who would “shrink from the service of their country.” Unlike these the winter soldiers would stand by their country and deserve “the love and thanks of man and woman.” As a historian, I cannot resist pointing out that as the ultimate “winter soldier,” the eternal agitator Thomas Paine would die in 1802 at the age 72 after years of living with ill health, poverty, abuse, neglect, and even hatred from his fellow countrymen and would even be denied burial in the Quaker burial ground that represented his natal faith.

Perhaps some 200 years later, in the 21st Century, Americans are more intellectually curious, open-minded, and sophisticated about such things. Perhaps they can even willingly listen to people with whom they disagree or with whom they suspect they will disagree if they actually bothered to hear them out before coming to a firm conclusion on that point. Perhaps in this case they may think that out of respect for their service to this country, individuals such as this latest generation of winter soldiers deserve to be heard and to have questions about their patriotism or loyalty withheld until they have been heard.

For those who think they are up to this challenge, these winter soldiers are gathering in Washington DC from March 13-16 to present their testimony about what they individually saw and experienced in the ongoing conflicts. These four days will reportedly be closed to the general public, though they will be joined by panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists who will try to put this collected testimony into a larger context. Video footage from these four days will be shown to the public in Baltimore March 14-15 and will reportedly also be available for viewing on line at www.ivaw.org, the website of The Iraq Veterans Against the War.

I would like to think that perhaps American today are capable of meeting this challenge, but so much of what I have read of history tells me otherwise. I will try to put myself to this test as well as this effort progresses and see what conclusions I might draw from the experience, and I will try to share them here. Let us see together how we stand this test.



"Nothing ever happened in the past, only in the present. The difference is it was somebody else's present, not ours." David McCullough

Hold the Fort!

One of the more interesting pieces of legislation and related political activity in the United States is the Congressionally mandated Base Re-Alignment and Closure, more commonly referred to for obvious reasons as BRAC. BRAC is probably unique on this planet as it is the process by which the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Armed Services compare their real estate holdings against current and projected needs. Property determined to be surplus to those needs is then released by DoD for the use of other federal, state, or local government agencies or put up for sale. The concept dates back to the 1960s and you can find its history on Wikipedia and on the Global Security.Org website. The latest BRAC round began in 2005 and the Commission’s own website presents its full report. As you may imagine, however, this can be a process fraught with pressure from every direction as industry, business, community, political interests, as well as the different levels of government compete for a particular piece of real estate.

But I also want you to visit The Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park because the 2005 BRAC report states that the military will leave Fort Monroe on the Chesapeake Bay near Norfolk, Virginia in 2011. CFMNP is pushing for Fort Monroe to then become a National Park, supported by the Civil War Preservation Trust and other preservation organizations, and me (for what that’s worth) and I hope will be supported by you. It this proposed park is to become reality, it will need strong public support and time for the National Park Service to plan and budget for its preservation and presentation to the public.

Construction of Fort Monroe was begun in 1819 in the vicinity of the Old Point Comfort Lighthouse (built in 1802 and still there today). It was planned as a first class fortification for the defense of Hampton Roads and the James River (leading ultimately to Richmond). The fort was part of what is called the Third System of forts intended to strengthen the young nation’s Atlantic coast defenses after the demonstrated ease with which British forces invaded American territory during the War of 1812. It was named for the fifth president, James Monroe (1817-1825) and designed by the French military engineer Simon Bernard, who bore the American brevet rank of a brigadier-general based upon the recommendation of the Marquis de Lafayette and his own prior service at that rank to Emperor Napoleon I.

Called Fortress Monroe until officially changed to Fort Monroe in 1832, the new masonry, granite, and earth fort was located on the point of Old Point Comfort and linked to the mainland by a narrow isthmus and a single bridge. The fort was given a perimeter circuit of 2,394 yards and encompassed 63 acres. Its placement and its design as a regularly bastioned work with seven fronts or faces, was expected to make it impossible to take by siege, which it never was.

Although Bernard designed and began the construction of Fort Monroe, it was not actually completed until 1847, long after his return to France in 1831. At that time it already hosted the U.S. Army’s first service school – the Artillery School of Practice since 1824, and in the first half of the 20th Century it would host that school’s successor, the Coast Artillery School, making Fort Monroe the center for harbor defense training and for related research and development programs. Monroe would later serve as Headquarters, U.S. Continental Command (CONARC). Today’s Fort Monroe covers 570 acres (including the fort) and hosts the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), as well as Army Accessions Command, Headquarters Cadet Command, and other Army, Navy, and defense organizations.

Although Fort Monroe never saw battle, its story is deeply entwined with our nation’s history. Robert E. Lee was stationed there from 1831-1834. The Fort’s Casemate Museum also includes the cell in which Confederate President Jefferson Davis was held after his capture at the end of the Civil War. During that war, the Union garrison at Fort Monroe rendered it an important base of support for operations along the Confederacy’s Atlantic coast and against its capitol city of Richmond in 1862 and again in 1864-1865. Southern slaves also recognized this Northern outpost as an outlet to freedom and made active use of its existence throughout the war.

If you are interested in the subject of forts and fortifications in general, whether in the United States, Europe, or anywhere in the world, you may also want to visit the website of The Fortress Study Group and join this active international group of scholars, historians, and enthusiasts.

"For what we are about to receive..."

The above noted fragment comes from a blessing that has been used (with variations) at mealtime for hundreds of years. I imagine that in its original un-ironic sense, this prayer was uttered at many a Thanksgiving table this past week. I remember it from reading the adventures of Horatio Hornblower, Jack Aubrey, and others as a half prayer/half joke uttered by seamen of Britain’s Royal Navy just before the guns of an enemy ship would send several hundred pounds of metal hurtling toward them.

In this ironic sense, it may have also been on the minds of the volunteers the State Department found for those 48 jobs in Iraq that need to be filled during the coming year. In case you hadn’t heard, members of the Foreign Service did step forward and volunteer for these positions. There probably won’t be anywhere near as much attention paid to this news as was paid to the report that the State Department had previously put the Foreign Service on notice that these positions would be filled by ‘directed assignment’ if volunteers were not identified. That means that the Department was threatening to send the ‘press gangs’ through the corridors in order to shanghai the required number of personnel. I am confident that from Secretary Rice down to individual Personnel Officers, the Department’s management is grateful that such extreme measures were not necessary (though we don’t yet know if any of the volunteers might now be able to discuss the merits and of water-boarding as a means of persuasion).

It is probably true that this would have been the first time since the Vietnam War that the Department would have filled positions via directed non-voluntary assignment. However, it is not the first time since the end of that war that the Department reminded Foreign Service employees of such a possibility. All members of the Foreign Service join with a stated commitment that they are available for assignment anywhere, anytime – worldwide availability. In reality, this commitment has not prevented some officers from spending little to no time outside of Washington, DC, or plum assignments in Western Europe. During my own thirty years of service, the Department made repeated efforts to convince personnel that the assignment process was fair and ensured that everyone had their share of both plush and hardship posts. When Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State, such an effort was given the unfortunate name of “GLobal Opportunity Program” and the officers thus selected to leave Europe for the underdeveloped world were christened “GLOP-ees.”

The ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought to center stage the question of personal safety and security for Foreign Service personnel serving abroad. When I joined the Foreign Service in 1973, the Department had just lost two officers killed by Palestinian terrorists in Sudan. Those deaths brought to over 100 the number of names on a memorial plaque commemorating members of the Foreign Service who died while serving abroad. Those two officers, Cleo Allen Noel, Jr., and George Curtis Moore, are buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Today there are two plaques in the C Street lobby of the State Department building in Washington http://www.afsa.org/plaquelist.cfm bearing the names of 225 members of the Foreign Service who died while on service abroad. The related guidelines have changed since 1973 so the entries are no longer strictly chronological, but the plaques include the names of 71 individuals who died from 1973 to 2007.

The official U.S. government (USG) position on the protection of its diplomatic/consular personnel and facilities abroad is based upon international law and on the agreements that govern diplomatic and consular activity, which make it clear that their security is the responsibility of their host governments. However, while the USG will rarely say so publicly, the protection provided by host governments has frequently failed in the face of terrorists or of angry crowds of their own citizens.

The Department of State has taken and continues to take steps to protect its employees and its physical plant or facilities, as well as the sensitive information to which it has access. The Department’s Division of Security, or DS, did not exist in 1973 in the robust incarnation that it presents to the world today. The Department also requires all personnel going abroad on assignment to undergo several days of security-related training before they leave. However, DS cannot provide bodyguards for every employee abroad, and the question of issuing personal firearms to American diplomats for self-defense is so surrounded with questions of legal liability, international law, host government laws, and the terrible international public image it would create that the possibility is never even seriously raised.

The Departments of State and Defense (DoD) had repeated discussions over my own 30 years’ service about the possibility of using military personnel to provide security for State facilities and personnel abroad. The response has always been, and I believe continues to be, “No,” other than the ongoing and highly successful Marine Corps’ Embassy Security Guard program. DoD rightly argues that it does not have sufficient personnel for such duties, that most military personnel are trained for combat not for security duties, and that such added duties would draw military personnel from other critical missions and duties.

The facts of the matter are clear. The Foreign Service has always been a career accompanied by real risks and confronted by some very real threats. This is even more so in this 21st Century world. It is up to the individual to recognize this and decide what to do about it, including considering the possibility that this not a career they wish to pursue. For its part, the Department’s management is obligated to discuss the risks and threats frankly and fully with all personnel and potential employees; to take every practical precautionary measure to assure the safety and security of Foreign Service personnel while still allowing them to pursue their duties effectively; and most importantly that means the Department must ensure that every member of the Foreign Service is adequately trained and prepared to confront the threats – both real and potential - with every possible chance of success. Those sailors I mentioned at the beginning of this blog fully recognized that their given (if not chosen) trade entailed serious risks including injury and even death. Their half-jesting prayer was an acknowledgement of the realities of their world and a declaration that they would meet those challenges head on. As even Defense Secretary Gates recently acknowledged, the United States is in greater need than ever of the skills, talents, and dedication of its Foreign Service than ever in its history. What the members of the Foreign Service need from us is the moral, physical, and fiscal means necessary to enable them to effectively work as their service to the nation takes them in harm’s way. “For what we are about to receive….. “