MOAA Professional Series
were born between 1934 and 1941, many too young for Korea or too old for the Vietnam draft. Those who joined or were drafted after the Korean
War and left the service before 1963 served during the era of the nuclear war scare, when schoolchildren hid under their desks during air raid drills. It was when So- viet and American bombers armed with nuclear weapons flew to the edge of their respective fail-safe locations. It was the beginning of the race to space; the era of deadly covert operations to change governments or to thwart communist hegemony, and it ushered in the era of high technology to insure mutual assured destruction. Cold War warriors served in the northern-most reach-
es of North America, in isolated locations in the Aleutian Islands; in the frozen tundra in Greenland; under the seas; on the seas; above the seas; along intimidating bor- der areas of East Germany and North Korea; and in many locations where they faced potentially unfriendly forces. We lost approximately 100 forgotten warriors as a
result of hostile action. Some were lost on the ground in hostile countries, some at sea, and others in the air as a result of deliberate attacks by hostile forces. Very few of these incidents were ever publicly disclosed because of national security; nevertheless our forgotten warriors gave their lives to protect our national security interests. We remember Korean War veterans, and we have fi- nally come to acknowledge Vietnam War veterans. We build monuments, we celebrate the beginning and ending anniversaries of these events, but we have no common understanding of what our forgotten warriors accom- plished. There is no single event that would focus our at- tention on this period of time. Yet the period from 1954 to 1963 was a tumultuous de- cade to include wars on the Asian and African continents and communist guerrilla activity throughout Southeast Asia. It was a decade when the Soviet Union tightened its grip on East Europe while at the same time most of the West European colonies in Africa achieved their inde- pendence. It saw the race to space by the U.S. and the So- viet Union and the buildup of nuclear and conventional forces by both sides. Though the major military powers remained at peace, they were never idle. Their foreign ventures throughout the world spawned the coming cri- ses for the next 50 years.
VOTE FOR THE BEST Visit
www.moaa.org/essaycontest to pick your top choice from these three essays. Results will be pub- lished in the January 2012 issue of Military Officer. Members without Internet access: Call (800) 234-MOAA (6622).
What transpired between 1954 and 1963, the decade
that was allegedly peaceful, had a profound impact on the wars to follow in Vietnam and in the Middle East and kept the Cold War in a deep freeze. Our forgotten warriors were part of a significant
historical and far-reaching change in the global land- scape. After they served their country they returned to an American cultural revolution that has not yet ended. Could these men and women have been the last inno- cents in our history? Since they served in obscurity, no one will ever know,
no one ever asked them. They were never given a pa- rade, and certainly no one has thanked them. They have slipped away from their younger baby boomer siblings. These Roosevelt babies have been lost to history because they served in obscurity during peacetime. We speak highly of the greatest generation as they fade into his- tory, and we discuss the emergence of the baby boomer generation into the Medicare and Social Security phases of their lives. But there are hundreds of thousands of patriotic men and women that belong to neither of these groups, they have been overlooked far too long. To those that are still out there, we salute you. — Maj. Lewis Lambert, USAF-Ret.
Nation-Building: A New Paradigm
W
e have to get over our visceral rejection of the concept of nation-building. Denying it, badmouthing it, stating it’s a bad idea — just isn’t helpful. When we destroy the
sovereignty of another nation, we either rebuild it or leave it broken. Rebuilding creates allies (e.g., Japan, Germany) while the latter simply creates the conditions for more trouble. To build a house, you start from the bottom and move
up. You don’t build the roof and then put a house under- neath it. Yet, that’s what we’ve tried to do in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Focusing on the national levels of gov- ernment, economy, and security forces has cost us time, money, and blood. The three priorities for nation-building are very simple: security, economic development, and governance. Without security, nothing else advances. It promotes a longer-term outlook for the people. If tomorrow is un- known, then everything becomes “get all you can while you can,” which promotes corruption and lawlessness. The priority should be to develop community-level se- curity forces rapidly while building national-level forces more slowly.
[CONTINUES ON PAGE 85] NOVEMBER 2011 MILITARY OFFICER 59
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108