Jasper Journal

I met an astronaut yesterday.  It was the second time I had  met a member of our space shuttle team during my life. In both cases I felt as though I was in the presence of greatness.

I spent an hour with this man  and was taken by his modesty, his intelligence,  the way he carried himself, and his passion for space.  I hesitate to use the term hero but if one was looking for a role model or a hero today, I would put a member of our astronaut team right at the top.  There’s only one problem : our president has killed our manned space program.

Oh sure, he gives lip service to his plans for the future and how he still wants the program to continue, privately funded of course.  But he really doesn’t care.  We have no way to get a man into space now outside of buying a ride on a foreign rocket.   Our great manned  space facilities at  Cape Canaveral lie dormant. The space industry is dying.  Manned programs that were  nearing completion were cancelled at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.  Why should one want to be an astronaut today? The president killed the dream.

I think what saddened me most this week was watching the Space Shuttle Discovery make its final flight on the back of a 747. It circled the monuments in Washington before it landed at Dulles airport to go into a museum.  I saw incredible pictures of it and they sent a message to me. “This is what we could do; This is what we did.”

No one on the planet could match the imagination, ingenuity and passion that built a reusable space transportation system. The world  couldn’t touch us . Yet now we have voluntarily abandoned manned space to the Russians, Chinese and French. The president tells us that we will be back, but leaner and smarter in the future. Everything about him is in the future.  But what is a child to dream of today? Where is the greatness and the awe of having a real  hero? It certainly isn’t in this White House. We need imagination, vision and  and a dream for America.  If the president had one, It is no longer there; and that is truly sad.

You may have seen or heard of photo’s showing US soldiers posing next to dead suicide bombers in Afghanistan. The pictures were two years old, but that did not stop the LA Times from stirring up a scandal today. Almost immediately, we had the Secretary of Defense, the White House and the US military leader in Afghanistan condemning our troops and apologizing for their actions.

War is ugly, and I would probably not be respectful of the body of a suicide bomber who just tried to blow me up.  One of the units there at the time had lost over 25 soldiers to the insurgents.  That does not make for a great deal of mutual respect. What are we doing there now anyway?

I am tired of us apologizing while fighting someone elses war. However, my anger comes nowhere near the level of Ralph Peters on Fox news today. He is a retired Army LtCol and a long time writer on military issues.  To him the scandal is our political and military leadership and their abysmal defense of our soldiers. If you have the time, please watch the seven minute segment. It is incredible. Thank you LtCol Peters!

Yesterday, several newspapers carried the story of Defense Secretary Panetta’s weekend trips to California. According to the articles, he travels to Monterrey almost every week to visit his family, and does so aboard an Air Force executive jet equipped with the requisite communications systems. The total cost of the trips to the Defense Department is $860,000, of which Panetta reimbursed the government $17,000 (the legal amount, based on commercial airfare). Panetta apparently also flew to Monterrey almost every weekend when he was the Director of CIA. In defending the trips, a senior administration official stated, “That’s where his family lives, after all.” Panetta said that he regretted the cost of the trips, but gave no indication that he would curtail this travel.

On Monday, in testimony before Congress, Panetta defended increases in Tricare fees, arguing that the Defense Department was critically short of money. Does the Secretary see no incongruity between his conduct and his testimony? It’s okay for him to spend almost a million dollars of Defense money, but we need to increase health care fees for even the lowest-ranked retirees? I realize that the cost of the Secretary’s trips does not even amount to a rounding error in the Defense budget, but it is the appearance and the principle that counts.

Similarly, does the Secretary not realize that there are tens of thousands of military members separated from their families, who do not have the luxury of weekend commutes home at taxpayer expense? If Panetta wants to spend time with his family, why doesn’t he move them to Washington; I’m sure that he can afford to do so on his salary. Of course, that would mean setting an example. Think of what the media reaction would have been had a four-star general done this, or given the response that Panetta did. Of course, that would not have happened because military officers are taught to lead by example — something it seems we need to teach civilian leaders.