While checking one of my favorite webcomics, Terminal Lance (not for the faint of heart), I was reminded of the two ways people seem to celebrate this weekend.
Drunken barbarian or keyboard-enabled douchenozzle? You decide!
As a result, I would like to offer a small suggestion/request.
Even though this is Memorial Day weekend, and not "drunken-gorge-myself-on-hot-dogs-and-cheeseburgers" weekend, please refrain from spending a passive-aggressive weekend on Facebook trying to make people feel bad because of the following:
they did not serve in the military,
people died in uniform somewhere,
someone wants to actually enjoy their time with family and friends,
Someone in our government, another country, or both "hates the flag", or
'Murica
Please DO remember. Simply that. You don't have to feel bad about it. You don't need to make others feel bad about it. Just remember that someone else (who likely had no intention to do so) gave their life in the service of their country. I bet most of them would think it is awesome that someone is eating a cheeseburger on a back porch instead of carrying a rifle somewhere overseas. I would also bet that they would not think it is awesome that you are sharing your internalized guilt by making others feel bad.
While I was in the Army, I never went to war. I never went overseas. I never carried a weapon except in training. The closest I got to hazardous duty was one gig we played in New Jersey (I wish that was a joke).
I did participate in more memorial ceremonies than I would care to count. I get it. I have seen what we are remembering. I have seen the families, the friends, the fellow service members, the survivors. They remember much more than they want to.
One of the concerns across the museum field is the hiring of a person with specialist knowledge for a specialist position - for example, the job I had awhile back as the Curator at the Cody Firearms Museum.
This is a position that requires some specialty knowledge. Yes, the person in that job needs museum experience and understanding of the responsibilities of museum staff. It also needs knowledge of firearms.
Granted, you will find people who can take care of the collection without knowing the subject, but they cannot deal knowledgeably with patrons. They will not know where the collection gaps are. They cannot be a success going out and talking to Rotary about what they do. Positions above and below can do this, but they don't make a living as the subject expert.
The concern comes in when an organization is hiring. The organization needs the specialist. Who typically fits the mold? The enthusiast, the collector, the hoarder? It can be all of the above.
When the right person comes in, great success is had. Friends are made, gifts of money and objects come to the museum, and visitors come away better for the experience. When the wrong person comes in, things look great for awhile, but eventually the bill comes due...
I was reminded of this today when I saw an article out of France... This was a bad hire. Things likely looked tip-top. I'll bet everyone loved him. Granted, I don't know the ins and outs, but we have seen it done here in the US - moon rocks on ebay, guns walking out doors, and other outright thefts are the usual. The big stuff, though, is the use of museum funds to purchase materials for private use (embezzlement).
As an aside, this also touches on a related subject - and one that can be almost as bad. Sometimes, a collector/museum employee is offered something for the museum that they want for themselves. They refuse the gift, but make an offer to purchase it privately. Don't know about you, but I consider this to be a conflict of interest, at least, and highly unethical... For more on this, take a gander at the American Alliance of Museums' Curatorial Code of Ethics as developed by the Curator's Committee (CurCom). (disclaimer - I was a member of the CurCom board at the time of the Code's creation and I am still on that board at the time of this writing)
Have a great weekend! (and don't embezzle anything from your museum!)
This isn't an argument... It's just contradiction...
Lots of fun lately watching people on the talking box "discuss" things.
Quite often it's as Jonathon Bernstein pointed out - the "out" party gainsaying the "in" party, regardless of where they stood when they were in power, a la Monty Python. The President or Democrats say one thing and the Republicans are instantly against it - especially if Grover passes it along as the official line on the weekly phone call.
However, I think one subject has been gaining some traction lately. It is something that people can form a little bit of a personal opinion about and a subject that was not much of an issue a few years back. It is the use of a 'kill list' and its widespread use around the world and across borders.
I have asked a few people if they can think of something illegal or unconstitutional the President has done. I rarely get a response. Often it is something easily disproved by a quick trip to Factcheck.org or Snopes.com. [As a side note - anyone concerned by how "Liberal" these sites are needs to go back to them, you would love how they have been finding fault with the President. They are equal-opportunity fact-checkers.] This is the one thing on the top of my head that I have questions about - legality.
Men and Machines
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Drones have been in use by the military in a wide variety of purposes since World War I. The MQ-9 Reaper is the current top-of-the-line version of the drones
that first arrived in the 1990s. The US Air Force and the Central
Intelligence Agency use these to kill targets around the world - mainly
in the 'Stans - 309 in Pakistan, alone. However, there have been strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines.
These missions have been carried out from bases around the world. Besides bases in-theater, there are now 64 known drone bases in the US. Some of these bases are for training, some of these bases are for war fighting, some of them are for national defense. Some are all three. Most of the drones are for optical/signal surveillance only. Some can be configured to carry ordnance.
On the civilian front, there is a growing culture of amateur UAV pilots who are using their camera equipped drones for fun. Some of them are inadvertently catching evidence of illegal activity. My thoughts on this are about the same as my issues with Law Enforcement using UAVs. Pervs will Perv.
Legality and Targeted Killing
I can understand how it is OK to kill an enemy combatant with any weapon. I was in the Army. We were soldiers first, regardless of our MOS. Granted, I was a Bass Guitar Player for two different units that were without arms rooms, but I was still a soldier and knew what it could entail.
From my historian perspective, I know that you win wars by the correct application of force. Add in a little politics... A little economics... A little public relations... and you have a won war. This one, I am not too sure about.
I know that assassination is illegal. You can't just go out and kill someone who your country doesn't like. In the realm of targeted killing, however, the target has lost protection of the Geneva Convention through a "allegedly taking part in an armed conflict or terrorism, whether by bearing arms or otherwise". The 'allegedly' part is what concerns me. The only time I hear the word 'alleged' in conversation, there is a court, a judge, and a jury involved. Many of the targets had it coming to them, I am sure. Some of them concern me (there I go using that word again).
None of my reading has given me sufficient satisfaction that due process is being followed and that some attacks have been badly-researched, badly-thought-out, or badly-executed.
I can only imagine how the US would feel if we were to suddenly experience a spate of (officially) unauthorized attacks by a nation-state on American citizens because they are involved in some sort of military adventure in a 3rd-party country. I think that would last about 2.4 seconds before we would be going on alert as a nation.
