The Obama Family Vacation

“One must bear in mind that the expansion of federal activity is a form of eating for politicians.” — William F. Buckley, Jr.

It’s nice to take a family vacation. Over the years my family and I have taken many family vacations. We have toured the United States by car and flown to Europe. I have taken my kids to see Big Ben, the Eifel Tower, and Canals of Venice. We kissed the Blarney Stone and saw the Tower of London.

Each time we took a family vacation we had to save our money so we could pay for it. We did not have the luxury of having someone pay for our vacation. My wife and I, like every American family, earned the money to pay our vacations. But not so with our first family.

As I write this blog post Barack, Michelle, Sasha, and Malia are in Ireland enjoying the sights while Michelle and the kids are staying at a $3,300-per-night hotel suite in Dublin’s five-star Shelbourne Hotel. She and her entourage have booked 30 rooms in the hotel.

The first lady will be hunkering down in the Princess Grace Suite, which is named for the late Hollywood film star and princess. The suite is fit for a princess, with two guest bedrooms, a living room and a dining area, four phones, three large televisions, bedding of 100 percent Egyptian cotton, an espresso machine and butler service.

The estimated cost of the two-day trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland is approximately $5 million, with the bill being footed by U.S. taxpayers.

Mrs. Obama, the president and their daughters flew on Air Force One to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where Obama is attending the Group of Eight summit. A few hours after touching down, the first lady and the girls boarded Air Force Two for a flight to Ireland, landing in Dublin.

While the Obama’s are enjoying the Princess Grace Suite the White House is closed to kids from Iowa and Maine who sell soap, candy, and cookies to pay for a trip to Washington, D.C. to see our historic landmarks. Obama claims his residence is closed due the of sequestration budget cuts.

The “journalists” at Good Morning America on Tuesday offered a light-hearted, whimsical look at the Obama family's multi-country vacation. Reporter Linsey Davis played U2's "Beautiful Day" and compared the Ireland part of the trip to National Lampoon's European Vacation. Davis gushed, "You know it's a beautiful day when U2's Bono reportedly invites you to a private lunch at his favorite Irish pub, the famous Finigan's of Dalkey.

She added that "dining with a rock star is one of the perks of being a first family." Nowhere on the morning program was there any mention of the cost of the trip. Ireland's Independent reported, "It is understood a total of 30 rooms in the five-star, 265-bedroom hotel, have been booked for the visit of Mrs. Obama and her entourage."

We know the left-leaning mainstream media loves the Obama family and just can’t wait for an opportunity to trip over themselves to proclaim the beauty of the emperor’s new clothes as Michelle, Sasha, Malia do the light fantastic around the hot spots of Ireland on the taxpayer’s dollar. I do hope Michelle gets to kiss the Blarney Stone as it’s quite a task while you are held upside down by your feet.

But if you think this a bit extravagant just consider where the Obamas are going after they leave the emerald isle. They are going to Africa! And this one is a vacation fit for the royalty they believe they are.

When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-Saharan Africa this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances.

Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.

Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.

The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post. While the preparations appear to be in line with similar travels in the past, the document offers an unusual glimpse into the colossal efforts to protect the U.S. commander-in-chief on trips abroad.

The first family is making back-to-back stops from June 26 to July 3 in three countries where U.S. officials are providing nearly all the resources, rather than depending heavily on local police forces, military authorities or hospitals for assistance.

The president and first lady had also planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of the trip, which would have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat, according to the planning document.

But officials said Thursday that the safari had been canceled in favor of a trip to Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner.

“We do not have a limitless supply of assets to support presidential missions, and we prioritized a visit to Robben Island over a two-hour safari in Tanzania,” said spokesman Josh Earnest. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t do both.”

Internal administration documents circulated in April show that the Obama family was scheduled to go to both Robben Island and the safari park, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also made trips to multiple African nations involving similarly laborious preparations. Bush went in 2003 and 2008, bringing his wife on both occasions. Bush’s two daughters went along on the first trip, which included a safari at a game preserve on the Botswana-South Africa border.

“Even in the most developed places of Western Europe, the level of support you need for mass movements by the president is really extraordinary,” said Steve Atkiss, who coordinated travel as special assistant for operations to Bush. “As you go farther afield, to less-developed places, certainly it’s more of a logistical challenge.”

Obama’s overseas travels come as government agencies, including the Secret Service, are wrestling with mandatory, across-the-board spending cuts. The service has had to slice $84 million from its budget this year, and this spring the agency canceled public White House tours to save $74,000 a week in overtime costs.

“For the cost of this trip to Africa, you could have 1,350 weeks of White House tours,” Rep. George Holding, a North Carolina Republican, said last week. “It is no secret that we need to rein in government spending, and the Obama administration has regularly and repeatedly shown a lack of judgment for when and where to make cuts. The American people have had enough of the frivolous and careless spending.”

The White House had defended the trip cost saying the Secret Service plan determines the security cost and that first family’s trip will result in long-term goodwill.

“The infrastructure that accompanies the president’s travels is beyond our control,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “When you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you tend to have very long-standing and long-running impact from the visit.”

Meanwhile on the home front as the Obamas flit from hither to yon thousands of civilian workers at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — the country’s top facility for wounded combat soldiers — are facing furloughs this summer, as a result of sequester and other federal budget problems, according to the Defense Department.

According to a report on Fox News.com:

“Roughly 2,400 workers at the suburban Washington facility were recently notified by letter that the department needs them to take off as many as 11 days without pay this summer to help with “extraordinary and serious budgets challenges.”

The furloughs target a wide scope of non-combat facilities and civilian workers to “provide the war-fighters with what they need to protect national security,” states the May 28 letter, first obtained by Federal News Radio.

In a development that worries advocacy groups, the furloughs will impact about 94 percent of the Walter Reed civilian staff including doctors, nurses, lab technicians and physical therapists.

In a development that worries advocacy groups, the furloughs will impact about 94 percent of the Walter Reed civilian staff including doctors, nurses, lab technicians and physical therapists.

However, officials insisted Monday that the quality of care, particularly for wounded soldiers, will not suffer and that they continue to assess the situation including appeals from workers saying their jobs are too critical for them to be furloughed.

“Wounded warrior care is our top priority and will not be compromised,” Louise Cooper, spokeswoman for National Capital Regional Medical, told FoxNews.com on Tuesday. “Exemptions were targeted to those individuals needed for warrior care and other critical services.”

…

The massive federal budget cuts known as sequester have caused a number of other spending decisions to be called into question. Among them are plans for President Obama and the first family to take an eight-day trip to Africa that is projected to cost as much as $100 million.

Walter Reed’s Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation is the largest of its type within the Defense Department and is made up of seven specialty-services clinics including one for traumatic brain injuries.

Raezer fears the situation at the flagship facility will unfold like many others.

“It starts as an access issue and goes to a quality of care issue,” she told FoxNews.com.”

Michelle Obama has been capitalizing on her status as a descendant of slaves. Her latest junket to Ireland and the planned African junket show she is definitely enjoying the 21st-century benefits of the transatlantic slave trade her radical friends in Chicago refer to as Linda Chavez writes "genocide" by white Americans.

According to the First Couple's pals, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rahm Emanuel, and Dr. Conrad W. Worrill of Northeastern University, white Americans should monetarily compensate black Americans for past slavery. The four, along with others, have been pushing reparations legislation since 1987.

Worrill, a lesser-known Obama friend, has been involved with the National Black United Front, a Chicago-based, '60s-style radical group. He's also with the National Coalition of Reparations for Blacks in America (N'COBRA).

The black professor doesn't admit that it was his own hatred, along with that of others like Michelle Obama, that beat this reparations and "slave masters" garbage into the black consciousness over the last four decades, but the meme is finally paying off for jet-setting Michelle.

According to Worrill, who showed up as Obama's special guest this past February when the president spoke at Hyde Park Academy in Chicago, "white folk of all stripes owe reparations. Yes, they owe. They benefited simply because they white."

In 2002, Worrill actually organized a March in D.C. called "They Owe Us." He was also a close friend of Michelle's hero, Stokely Carmichael, and a rabid anti-Semite. He railed against Jewish organizations in 2010, stating, "They do not want to face the truth. The Jewish Zionist forces have consistently not wanted to address the truth of their involvement in the slave trade, controlling Black institutions in the philosophical and educational arenas."

In a 2008 interview, Worrill let us know why Michelle and Barack will continue to spend our money without shame — and why slavish blacks will continue to give him a pass.

“Black people were inspired at the idea of a Black man being in the slave master's house that the slave master built. So we're celebrating in this idea.

What we have is historical discontinuity where one generation does not know what previous generations have contributed so if we do not have the history of the evolution of Black people’s participation in electoral politics, if the young generation doesn’t understand the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments; the period of Reconstruction, the compromises of 1876, the retrenchment of our enfranchisement in voting in the United States. From 1870 to 1901 there were 20 Blacks elected to the Congress of the United States; by 1901 there was not one national Black elected official in office because of the compromise of 1876; the violence that was protracted against our people, the Ku Klux Klan, the lynching, the poll, everything they did to take back the Black vote. So if you don’t have this history underpinning our fight in America around electoral politics, then you don’t understand where we are and how Barack Obama got to be president of the United States in the first place.”

So you see, Michelle is entitled to fly all over the world as the surrogate beneficiary of reparations. Hope the poor black folk living in Obama's and Valarie Jarrett's tenement slums in Chicago are having a wonderful time watching their beloved First Lady enjoy her $5-million Irish holiday and her $80-$100 million dollar African junket.

Barack and Michelle Obama have no doubt taken more trips for vacations, fund raising, and political speeches than any president and his spouse in our history. This fact should cause Travelocity.com to replace its garden gnome with bobble-head dolls of Michelle and Barack Obama traveling hand in hand to various places on the globe.

The next time you pack the family into your 5-year old SUV with the snacks and cooler as you make your way to a national park or Disneyland, dining at MacDonald’s, and making reservations at a Motel 6 or Super-8 think of the Obamas staying at a $3,300 per night luxury hotel and eating at Finigan's of Dalkey on your dollar. I am sure it will warm the cockles of your heart.

Is Syria in Our National Interest?

“Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favours and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.” — George Washington, Farewell Address — 1796

George Washington realized that foreign entanglements would run contrary to our national interests. He was not an isolationist as be believed that relations with foreign nations in the areas of commerce and trade were desirable things for the new republic. But he also believed that political entanglements with foreign governments were not to be desired. As he stated in in his Farewell Address of 1796:

“The Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled, with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”

Other Founders were in agreement with Washington. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 11:

“Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!”

Thomas Jefferson stated in a 1797 letter to Elbridge Gerry:

“I have been happy in believing that whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.”

Our Founding Fathers believed all relations with foreign nations should be in our national interest. This is why they stated in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution when defining the powers of President:

“He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.”

In essence what our Founders were saying was the Executive could not enter into treaties or agreements with foreign powers without the consent of the Senate. This is why Wilson’s desire for the joining the League of Nations was defeated in the Senate.

Since the end of World War II the Executive branch has muddied the waters by entering into shadow agreements with foreign powers. They have sent military aid and advisors to prop up popular and unpopular regimes. Presidents have sent troops to intervene in foreign entanglements like Libya, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. Now we are considering entering into the vicious civil war raging in Syria, a nation with a regime we don’t like. Whether we like Bashar Hafez al-Assad or how many people have died in his civil war is not relevant. What is relevant, however, is what is our national interest of any involvement in this conflict.

Last August, President Obama declared that the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons was a "red line." About four months later, Al Jazeera released unconfirmed reports that a gas attack killed seven civilians in a rebel-held neighborhood of Homs. Last April, the UK, France, and Israel each claimed that there was evidence that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in Aleppo, Homs, and/or Damascus. By April 25th, the U.S intelligence assessment was that the Assad regime had likely used sarin gas, but President Obama dodged his red line by announcing that a thorough investigation was still needed (as if the Syrian government would ever allow one). Meanwhile, reports from foreign intelligence agencies and journalists continued to corroborate the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. So why did Obama's requirement of a thorough investigation to confirm the crossing of his red line suddenly vanish last Friday?

Viewed through the lens of domestic politics, Obama's Syria epiphany looks conveniently timed to deflect attention from an ever-swelling wave of scandals: Benghazi-gate, IRS-gate, AP/Fox-gate, and now NSA-gate and State Department prostitution-gate. As the film Wag The Dog highlights, international crises are great at diverting attention from domestic scandals.

But from the perspective of the Syrian rebels, the timing and nature of U.S. military assistance may be viewed as either too little, too late, or a cynical attempt to ensure a perpetual stalemate. After all, the outgunned rebels have needed lethal weapons from the U.S. for over two years. Chemical weapons use by the Assad regime is old news. So what has changed? The Syrian regime recently defeated rebel forces at the crucial battle in Qusayr, a town providing a strategic supply conduit for rebel forces in Homs. After the military gains enabled by the robust battlefield support of Iran-backed Hezbollah, the Syrian regime is now preparing for a major offensive to retake Aleppo. With another crushing blow to a key rebel stronghold, the regime could ultimately prevail in the conflict, unless the U.S. provides just enough rebel support to restore the pre-Qusayr stalemate.

Obama has already made it clear that any lethal weapons or no-fly zone provided by the U.S. would be limited. Such tentative U.S. involvement is unlikely to end the carnage, given the vigorous support that the Assad regime enjoys from Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia (which could undermine a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone by supplying Syria with its potent S-300 missile defense system). Indeed, the New York Times reported on June 14th that "the president's caution has frayed relations with important American allies in the Middle East that have privately described the White House strategy as feckless. Saudi Arabia and Jordan recently cut the United States out of a new rebel training program, a decision that American officials said came from the belief in Riyadh and Amman that the United States has only a tepid commitment to supporting rebel groups."

What a difference two years makes. In 2011, the relatively non-sectarian Free Syrian Army (FSA) was the main force fighting for freedom from Assad's tyranny. Sunni Islamists had not yet felt compelled by FSA failures to join (and ultimately lead) the military effort in large numbers. In 2011, Obama also had far more credibility and political capital — important presidential assets when undertaking a foreign military intervention.

But now the Syrian crisis has deteriorated into a regional sectarian war, increasingly creeping over Syrian borders and into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, and Jordan. The Syrian belligerents have also radicalized, decreasing the odds that the ultimate victor will be friendly to the U.S. or able to achieve a postwar reconciliation and reconstruction in Syria.

Today, with a death toll exceeding 90,000 Syrians (and increasing by 5,000/month) and millions displaced, the humanitarian need for intervention is greater than ever. But Iran and Russia are redoubling their support for the Assad regime, so the U.S. must not enter the Syrian cauldron with half-measures or it could suffer a costly setback with far-reaching repercussions. If Obama's "red line" was crossed months ago and the tardy "consequences" are America's feeble and ineffective entry into the Syrian civil war, then Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and other U.S. adversaries will only feel emboldened to challenge U.S. interests.

A cardinal rule in foreign policy is this: if your enemies are busy killing each other, don’t step in and try to stop them. Yet, that’s exactly what we would be doing if we train, arm or provide military assistance to the Syrian rebels.

In other words, the Syrian civil war is now down to a fight between the mass murdering, chemical-weapons-using Assad government, and the Al Qaeda-affiliated, radical extremists.

We don’t want either of them to win. But Iran, Russia, Lebanon, Al Qaeda, and some Gulf states all do. And they’ve lined up on both sides of the battlefield providing fighters, arms and aid.

The Syrian civil war has become a proxy battle between Sunnis and Shiites, and serves as a giant sponge soaking up militants from as far away as Europe and South Asia.

It is a tragedy of epic proportions.

But Americans don’t like to stand by while innocent people are killed and watch a human disaster unfold. It goes against our very fiber. We feel compelled to DO something.

Arming the pro-Western rebels in Syria would give them a major assist, but it is unlikely to change the final outcome.

It also carries the risk that whatever arms we give them now could be seized by Al Qaeda rebel forces and used against us or our allies down the road. And, while establishing a no-fly zone might be a setback for Assad’s forces, the major beneficiaries will be the Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels.

It was for several good and solid reasons that Barack Obama's administration long resisted pressures to intervene more forcefully in Syria's civil war. To start with, there is the sheer complexity of a conflict at the intersection of religious, ethnic, regional, and global politics, as illustrated by the plain fact that the most Westernized of Syrians (including its Christians) support the Assad government that the United States seeks to displace, while its enemies are certainly not America's friends and, indeed, include the most dangerous of Muslim extremists. But no matter: After two years of restraint, the administration — having decided to send "direct military assistance" to the rebels — has chosen sides and is now choosing sides within sides.

By now, after failed attempts at managing complexity in Iraq and Afghanistan, all should soberly recognize that any successful intervention requires the terrible I-win, you-lose simplicity of war. When that is absent, so too is success. In the end, regardless of the costs in blood and treasure of U.S. efforts — costs that in this case also include a greater enmity with Russia — it is still likely that all sides will blame the American infidel for anything that displeases them, as in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, and Libya. Neither complexity nor the inevitable accusations of sinister American motives (greed for oil, war on Islam, or both) can be helped, but the Obama administration has stepped forward anyway. Even if conditions on the ground in Syria virtually exclude the possibility of a good outcome, the following five rules — derived from bitter experience in arming other rebels (some of it personal) — could at least serve to minimize the damage.

Rule 1: Figure out who your friends are.

The first rule, politically, is to identify one's allies. When Obama finally, officially, makes the announcement that Washington is arming the rebels, it must include the key phrases: "We are acting with our allies in the region" or, better, "our close allies in the region and beyond it." But once the obligatory words are spoken, it is essential that all U.S. personnel all the way down the chain of command be fully aware of the brutal truth that explains the survival of Bashar al-Assad's regime: America's "allies in the region" are remarkably ineffectual, in spite of every apparent advantage. Early on, Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani proclaimed his total support for the "Syrian people," sending money and buying weapons at ridiculous prices (and delivering very few). And though his armed forces are small and poorly placed to provide any combat support, he does have billions of dollars at his disposal that he can and does spend on every passing whim. The same goes for the Saudis, who are much less noisy than the Qataris in supporting the rebels but are the real leaders of the Sunni crusade against Assad — and they too are not short of funds.

Yet in spite of the most ample promises by Qatar and the Saudis, Syrian refugees in Jordan have been living in misery — there are even persistent reports of the sale of child brides by desperate families. Likewise, the actual flow of weapons to the rebels has been notably meager. In neither case it is just a matter of simple avarice, but rather reflects the operational incapacity of both governments. For more than a year, Washington has been content to allow others to funnel weapons and money, but with Assad's recent victories against the rebels, Obama was forced into action. The Saudi and Qatari rulers just do not have honest, efficient officials whom they can rely on to distribute money or weapons wisely. In the bad old days, the Saudis would just hand over sacks of $100 bills to Osama bin Laden, before he turned against them. Now, too, they would willingly hand over sacks of bank notes to a chief if there were one, but they simply cannot field officials on the ground who can choose between the great number of Syrian claimants, given U.S. injunctions not to arm the most extreme jihadists, including those who accept the "al-Nusra" label.

A much greater surprise is Turkey's all-round incapacity. Early on, with characteristic bombast, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan more or less ordered Assad to stop shooting and start talking. With 75 million inhabitants, a fast-growing economy, a million men under arms, and a 510-mile border with Syria, Turkey should have been the dominant power in the confrontation. But instead of being intimidated into surrender, or just moderation, the Assad regime publicly ridiculed Erdogan and Turkish imperial pretensions, denounced Turkey's Islamist government as nothing more than Sunni fanatics, and then proceeded to shoot down a stray Turkish jet fighter before repeatedly sending artillery rounds into Turkish towns. The Turkish response to this insult and attack? Nothing. And that is what Turkey will do as an ally of the United States in Syria: nothing.

It turns out that the country's 15 million to 20 million Bektashis and other Alevis, long cruelly persecuted by Sunni rulers, oppose any action that would strengthen the Sunnis of Syria. In addition, there are also some 2 million Alawites along the border with Syria, mostly in Hatay, the piece of Syria annexed by Turkey in 1939, who vehemently support their compatriot Assad. Then there are the Kurds who predominate in the provinces along the border with Syria and automatically oppose any action by the Turkish armed forces they have so long resisted. On top of that, Turkey's ruling AKP Islamist party has used conspiracy charges, arising from the supposedly vast Ergenekon plot, against dozens of very senior officers to immobilize the armed forces, which are guilty in the party's eyes of both defending secularism and menacing democracy. They have succeeded all too well, but this leaves Turkey as a non-power — a richly ironic outcome given the solemn debates of recent years on whether Ankara is a regional power, a middle power, or a neo-Ottoman power as Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu kept claiming. The world has discovered that Turkey is not even a small power. The bottom line is that the United States will not only lack an ally in fighting Assad, but will also have to operate in a hostile environment, given the many people in Turkey who support the Syrian regime — some of them ready and willing to attack any U.S. personnel they encounter, or at least help Assad's agents in trying to kill Americans.

Rule 2: Be prepared to do all the work.

Given these "allies," the United States will have to do the lifting — and not just the heavy part. There should be no illusions now that anyone will be of much help, with the possible exception of whatever money can be extracted from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. That, in turn, raises the issue of which Americans should do the dirty work of funneling weapons. Always bureaucratically adept, even if operationally incompetent in far too many cases, the CIA already has the Washington end of the action. But if weapons are to be supplied, it is essential to call on the only Americans who can tell the difference between Sunni bad guys who only want to oppress other Syrians and the really bad guys who happen to be waging their global jihad in Syria. What's needed are true experts, people who really speak the region's Arabic: the regular U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers who successfully sponsored and then effectively controlled the Sunni tribal insurgents in Iraq whose "awakening" defeated the jihadists who were attacking U.S. troops. Some of them are already involved in supporting the rebels under Joint Special Operations Command, but if the mission were expanded it would be a good idea to call for volunteers from the reservists who did the same job in Iraq.

Rule 3: Don't give away anything that you would want to have back.

That includes expertise in identifying and handling any chemical weapons that might be encountered, as well as the supply of any portable anti-aircraft weapons. There are likely already a great number of them in Syria, some of them much more effective than the old “9K32 "Strela-2" or “SAM-7” models that have already been used by terrorists against civilian aircraft. Whatever happens, the U.S. counterpart to these weapons — the current version of the FIM-92 Stinger — cannot be supplied, as it is even more lethal than the original that was used to such great success against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Syrian government's use of aircraft for bombing rebel targets might have to be deterred by threats alone — under-the-table threats, of course, given the impossibility of obtaining Russian or Chinese consent at the U.N. Security Council. Any U.S. intercepts of Syrian aircraft would amount to a drastic escalation, but Assad knows full well that American strike aircraft could reach Syrian airspace in minutes from nearby bases, including from the British staging facilities in Cyprus.

Rule 4: Do not invite an equal and opposite response by another great power.

The prospect of any such drastic escalation immediately brings us to Rule 4, which might as well be Rule 1, or Über 1: Nothing should be done, not even the supply of the smallest of small arms, without a serious, full-dress effort to find some understanding with Russia, for which Assad is not one ally among many, but arguably its only existent military ally. After being cheated over Libya, where a no-fly zone was illegally converted into a free-bombing zone, the Russians will want compensation in Syria if they cooperate at all, including a continuing if diminished role for Assad. That will not satisfy Sunni supremacists but should satisfy Washington, for which neither a rebel defeat nor a rebel victory constitutes a successful outcome. In exchange for the keeping of Assad, the Russians would have to secure the essential quid pro quo for Washington: a clean and final break with Iran and Hezbollah — which, by the way, would satisfy the Saudis too, as well as Israel.

Rule 5: Lay some ground rules for the endgame.

The fifth and final rule reflects some more bitter experience: Whatever happens, but especially if the regime collapses, it is imperative to maintain a sharp distinction between the government that must be purged and the state that must be preserved. This includes institutions like the regular army and police, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture and other such agencies. Under the Assads, decades of nominally Baathist (but actually secular) rule favored the rise of Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Ismailis in the bureaucracy. If U.S. arms prove to be the factor that gives Sunni rebels victory, and if Sunnis fire them all, the Syrian state will disintegrate — with all the disastrous consequences experienced in Iraq. Unpaid soldiers and police become bandits and insurgents; public services and utilities, including water and electricity, go to pot; chaos and sectarianism flourish. As it is, Syria after Assad is likely to fragment into ethnic ministates, but if its state apparatus is also dissolved, the ensuing anarchy will be especially miserable and uncontrollably violent, with plenty of evil consequences for all near and far. The last thing the Levant needs is another Somalia, or several of them. The rebels must be told from the start that if they start firing state employees en masse (as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan), all aid will be cut off.

The Obama administration has displayed prudent restraint in dealing with Syria until now. After recent regime successes against the rebels, it can convincingly argue (despite the somewhat inconclusive and murky assertion that Assad's use of chemical weapons has now been verified) that it must provide some help to the rebels simply to deny a victory to Iran and Hezbollah. Even so, one hopes that it retains its prudence — and keeps these five rules in mind.

The cold harsh reality is that Syria is already lost.

So, is there anything we can do that advances our interests and has a reasonable chance of success? Yes.

1. We can provide humanitarian assistance to refugees who are living in refugee camps throughout the region.

2. We can allow some Syrian refugees to emigrate to the US, provided they are fully vetted.

3. And we can shore up our allies in the region, especially Jordan, which is most at risk.

There are officially half a million Syrian refugees in Jordan, some think there could be a million refugees before long. Jordan is a poor country that is running out of water, natural gas, and food. A million refugees flooding into Jordan is like some 50 million refugees showing up on America’s shores.

If Jordan is to remain stable and independent it needs assistance now. If Jordan descends into economic and political chaos, it risks igniting the Palestinians and drawing the entire region into a widening conflict.

4. Finally, we can make sure we know where Assad’s chemical weapons are stashed and work with our allies in the region to seize or destroy them before they fall into the hands of forces that would use them against us. — We failed to secure Qaddafi’s weapons caches during the Libyan war. Today they are being used in conflicts from North Africa to the Gaza strip. We cannot make that same mistake with Syria’s chemical weapons.

President Obama laid down a red line stating what he would do were Assad to use chemical weapons. We now know he has.

Some argue that is reason enough for the U.S. to intervene in Syria; that our credibility is on the line. But President Obama is fond of red lines and making threats — to Iran, to North Korea, to Syria. His credibility is already damaged. It will be much more so if we aid and arm Syria’s rebels and our efforts fail.

In fairness to them, Obama nor the Republican interventionists suggest that we should put U.S. boots on the ground in Syria. But in fairness to the American people, enforcing a no-fly zone or training rebel forces are military operations, despite what we call them.— It’s like calling taxes “revenue enhancements.”

One of the lessons of Vietnam, which we failed to heed in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan surge, is that before you commit U.S. military forces to aid or assist, it is essential to know what you want them to achieve.

Without a clearly defined mission, it is impossible to know what kind and how much assistance to give, or predict how long the commitment will be.

Once we send military aid, or American troops to train and fight or set up a no-fly zone, it is crucial that we match resources to mission and means to ends.

We must also be prepared to adjust both as necessary, since the enemy will inevitably adapt and the situation will evolve.

We should have a sense of what constitutes victory, and what is the likely outcome once the shooting stops.

Finally, we should be upfront with the American people about the costs of our involvement, both human and material.

If all those sound like limiting factors, they are. It is all too easy for our political leaders to intervene in conflicts. That is why we should only commit American forces to fight if it is in America’s vital and essential national self-interest, and if we are prepared to do whatever necessary to prevail. In that case, losing is not an option.

On the other hand, the only thing worse than not getting involved in a fight we feel is just, but not vital, is getting involved and then losing, or despite our best intentions, making things worse.

Thus, Obama effectively has two choices: 1) continue his disengagement from Syria to preserve whatever political capital and military deterrent he has left for the inevitable showdown over Iranian nukes, 2) enter the Syrian fray in a massive way that ensures a military victory and says to the Iranian regime: "you are next, unless you discontinue your nuclear program." After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran feared that thousands of American troops would turn eastward and offered to negotiate the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration refused to engage but Iran still temporarily suspended its nuclear program out of trepidation.

U.S. entry into the Syrian conflict could defeat Assad and deter Iranian nukes, but only with the resolve and overwhelming firepower to demolish the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis (ideally with help from NATO forces). Joining the conflict with insufficient commitment mainly to distract a scandal-weary U.S. audience could have catastrophic consequences for the U.S., and that would be the biggest scandal of all.

This Day In History

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" — Inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

On my iPad I have several applets that each day shows me what happened on this day in history. It displays events and the birth or death of famous people. I find it quite interesting and sometimes it gives me ideas for this blog.

I have always found history to be a fascinating subject as it gives some context to current events. I refer to William Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 59 where the bard said:

“If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss

The second burden of a former child.

O, that record could with a backward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the sun,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done!

That I might see what the old world could say

To this composed wonder of your frame;

Whether we are mended, or whe'er better they,

Or whether revolution be the same.

O, sure I am, the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.”

Another and more familiar quote from Edmund Burke states:

“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”

Burke’s statement on the value of history was slightly modified by the Spanish poet and novelist George Santayana and has become the axiom for the value of history:

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

There are many people in this nation that have no knowledge or connection to History. This malady usually affects liberals and progressives. This has been proven many times through tests given college and university students as they enter and exit their college studies. They begin their higher education with a woeful lack of knowledge of history and geography and graduate with little more. It appears as though Shakespeare, Burke and Santayana saw the same condition.

With this preface I will now get on to what happened on this day in history 128 years ago.

On this day in 1885, the dismantled State of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of America, arrived in New York Harbor after being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces packed in more than 200 cases. The copper and iron statue, which was reassembled and dedicated the following year in a ceremony presided over by U.S. President Grover Cleveland, became known around the world as an enduring symbol of freedom and democracy.

Intended to commemorate the American Revolution and a century of friendship between the U.S. and France, the statue was designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi (who modeled it after his own mother), with assistance from engineer Gustave Eiffel, who later developed the iconic tower in Paris bearing his name.

Bartholdi was inspired by French law professor and politician Édouard René de Laboulaye, who commented in 1865 that any monument raised to American independence would properly be a joint project of the French and American peoples. Due to the troubled political situation in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s. In 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue and the Americans provide the site and build the pedestal. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions.

The statue was initially scheduled to be finished by 1876, the 100th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence; however, fundraising efforts, which included auctions, a lottery and boxing matches, took longer than anticipated, both in Europe and the U.S., where the statue’s pedestal was to be financed and constructed. The statue alone cost the French an estimated $250,000 (more than $5.5 million in today’s money).

Finally completed in Paris in the summer of 1884, the statue, a robed female figure with an uplifted arm holding a torch, reached its new home on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor (between New York City and Hudson County, New Jersey) on June 17, 1885. After being reassembled, the 450,000-pound statue was officially dedicated on October 28, 1886, by President Cleveland, who said, “We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected.” Standing more than 305 feet from the foundation of its pedestal to the top of its torch, the statue, dubbed “Liberty Enlightening the World” by Bartholdi, was taller than any structure in New York City at the time. The statue was originally copper-colored, but over the years it underwent a natural color-change process called patination that produced its current greenish-blue hue.

In 1892, Ellis Island, located near Bedloe's Island (which in 1956 was renamed Liberty Island), opened as America’s chief immigration station, and for the next 62 years Lady Liberty, as the statue is nicknamed, stood watch over the more than 12 million immigrants who sailed into New York Harbor. In 1903, a plaque inscribed with a sonnet titled “The New Colossus” by American poet Emma Lazarus, written 20 years earlier for a pedestal fundraiser, was placed on an interior wall of the pedestal. Lazarus’ now-famous words, which include “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” became symbolic of America’s vision of itself as a land of opportunity for immigrants.

Some 60 years after President Calvin Coolidge designated the statue a national monument in 1924, it underwent a multi-million-dollar restoration (which included a new torch and gold leaf-covered flame) and was rededicated by President Ronald Reagan on July 4, 1986, in a lavish celebration. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the statue was closed; its base, pedestal and observation deck re-opened in 2004, while its crown re-opened to the public on July 4, 2009. (For safety reasons, the torch has been closed to visitors since 1916, after an incident called the Black Tom explosions in which munitions-laden barges and railroad cars on the Jersey City, New Jersey, waterfront were blown up by German agents, causing damage to the nearby statue.)

The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service. The statue was closed for renovation for much of 1938. In the early 1980s, it was found to have deteriorated to such an extent that a major restoration was required. While the statue was closed from 1984 to 1986, the torch and a large part of the internal structure were replaced.

There are several plaques and dedicatory tablets on or near the Statue of Liberty. A plaque on the copper just under the figure in front declares that it is a colossal statue representing Liberty, designed by Bartholdi and built by the Paris firm of Gaget, Gauthier et Cie (Cie is the French abbreviation analogous to Co.). A presentation tablet, also bearing Bartholdi's name, declares the statue to be a gift from the people of the Republic of France that honors "the Alliance of the two Nations in achieving the Independence of the United States of America and attests their abiding friendship There is a tablet placed by the New York committee that commemorates the fundraising done to build the pedestal. The cornerstone also bears a plaque placed by the Freemasons

In 1903, a bronze tablet that bears the text of "The New Colossus" and commemorates Emma Lazarus was presented by friends of the poet. Until the 1986 renovation, it was mounted inside the pedestal; today it resides in the Statue of Liberty Museum in the base. It is accompanied by a tablet given by the Emma Lazarus Commemorative Committee in 1977, celebrating the poet's life. The plaque reads:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

(The giant of Greek fame refers to the Colossus of Rhodes)

A group of statues stands at the western end of the island, honoring those closely associated with the Statue of Liberty. Two Americans—Pulitzer and Lazarus—and three Frenchmen—Bartholdi, Laboulaye, and Eiffel—are depicted. They are the work of Maryland sculptor Phillip Ratner

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, it was closed for reasons of safety and security; the pedestal reopened in 2004 and the statue in 2009, with limits on the number of visitors allowed to ascend to the crown. The statue, including the pedestal and base, was closed for a year until October 28, 2012, so that a secondary staircase and other safety features could be installed; Liberty Island remained open. However, one day after the reopening, Liberty Island closed due to the effects of Hurricane Sandy, and the island remains off limits to the public. Public access to the balcony surrounding the torch has been barred for safety reasons since 1916. The statue will reopen to the public by July 4, 2013.

From the 1890s until the beginning of World War One millions of immigrants passed beneath Lady Liberty as they made their way to our immigration facilities at Ellis Island. They mostly came from Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe. They were Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Germans, Romanians, and Irish. They came as individuals and as families and needed sponsors in the United States.

Beginning in 1892, immigrants to the United States were subject to a medical inspection, created to restrict the entry of persons with a "loathsome or dangerous contagious" disease, like tuberculosis or mental deficiency.

Ellis Island, which received over 10 million newcomers between 1900 and 1914, served as the largest ever medical screening facility. Far from reflecting a unified policy, the medical inspection offered a complicated compromise amidst a swirl of competing interests. Many industrialists blamed the waves of Southern and Eastern European immigrants for urban joblessness, filth, unrest, overcrowding, and disease. In an era of depression, labor groups opposed immigrant competitors for scarce jobs. Nativists believed immigrants could not overcome their defects because these were genetically transmitted. Germ theory proponents recognized communication of microorganisms as the problem, with controlling the spread of infections as the solution. Many Progressive reformers held that the scientific screening of immigrants offered a systematic solution for the disorder.

Dozens of immigrant aid societies struggled to attenuate the effects of the inspection, and as depression subsided after 1900, employers, too, favored the influx of immigrants.

At the examination the immigrants are asked to show their money. Some craftily failed to show it all; others willingly displayed their whole petty hoardings. The money was carefully counted, and, after a record had been taken, restored to them. Later, they are asked if they wish any money changed. Many refuse for fear of being cheated; others stop before the busy money-changers' booth at the end of the long examination room.

In 1901 388,931 immigrants showed $5,490,080, an average of $14.12 The French led all the others with an average of $39.37. The Hebrews stood at the foot of the list bringing on an average $8.58. The Germans followed the French with an average of $31.14. The other nationalities stood in the list as follows:

Race Average per Capita

• Italians (Northern) $23.53
• Bohemian and Moravian $22.78
• Scandinavian $18.16
• Irish $17.10
• Armenian $15.75
• Croatian and Dalmatians $15.54
• Greek $15.10
• Slovak $12.31 Magyar $10.96
• Italian (Southern) $8.67

Roughly speaking, the North-of-Europe people were considered to make better citizens than those from the South of Europe. The better class would go to the country and the worst to the cities unless they had a sponsor waiting for them. Greeks were considered about the least desirable of all; the Italians from the southern portion of the peninsula also were considered to make poor citizens; but those from the northern part of Italy ranked with the Swiss and other desirable nationalities.

A few of the notable immigrants passing through Ellis Island were:

Annie Moore	1892	First arrival through Ellis Island
Antonius Dvorak	1892	Composer
Fritz Austerlitz	1892	Father of dancer Fred Astaire
Rudyard Kipling	1892	Writer, Poet
Israel Beilin	1893	Composer/Musician Irving Berlin
Moses Teichman	1897	Dancer Arthur Murray
Angelo Siciliano	1903	Bodybuilder Charles Atlas
William Claude Fields	1903	Comedian W.C. Fields
Enrico Caruso	1904	Musician, Opera singer
Johann Weissmuller	1905	Actor and Olympian Johnny Weissmuller
Henry Youngman	1906	Comedian Henny Youngman
John & Mable Ringling	1906	Circus Owner
Giacomo Puccini	1907	Opera composer
Gustav Mahler	1908	Composer, musician
Leslie Hape	1908	Actor/Comedian Bob Hope
Arturo Toscanini	1909	Musical Conductor (1 of 5 arrivals)
Carl Jung	1909	Physician
Sigmund Freud	1909	Physician
Lily Chauchoin	1911	Actress Claudette Colbert
Arthur Stanley Jefferson	1912	Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy
Barbara West	1912	Titanic Survivor
Charles Chaplin	1912	Actor/Director Charlie Chaplin
Leopold Stokowski	1912	Musical Conductor
Madeline Astor	1912	Titanic Survivor
Woodrow Wilson	1912	U.S. President
Rodolfo Guglielmi	1913	Silent actor Rudolph Valentino
Harry Houdini	1914	Magician
Javier Cugat	1915	Violinist, Bandleader
Pablo Casals	1916	Master cellist, musician
Sergei Rachmaninoff	1918	Composer, conductor, pianist
Walter Elias Disney	1919	Pioneering entertainer
William Tyson	1919	Father of actress Cicely Tyson
Archibald Alec Leach	1920	Film star Cary Grant
Bela Lugosi	1920	Actor, Count Dracula
Albert Einstein	1921	Professor, Nobel Prize in Physics
Cole Porter	1921	Composer, songs and musicals
Ernst Lubitsch	1921	Film Director
F. Scott Fitzgerald	1921	American novelist
George M. Cohan	1921	Songwriter / Composer
Leslie Howard	1921	Actor, Gone with the Wind
Maurice Chevalier	1922	Comedian, Actor
Joseph Conrad	1923	Author
Pietro Berra	1923	Father of Yogi Berra
George Gershwin	1924	Composer, songs and musicals
Jascha Heifetz	1924	Master Violinist

For a more comprehensive list of famous immigrants please click here

In 1911 three not so famous immigrants passed through Ellis Island on the way to meet their sponsor in Cleveland, Ohio. They were my maternal grandparents and their 2-year old son Joseph. As they came from Hungary they were tagged with their nationality “Magyar” — the Hungarian name for Hungary. When they immigration official saw the tag he entered “Major” in as the last name for Joseph, Rose, and their little boy Joseph.

The Majors arrived in Cleveland and settled in the Hungarian community on Cleveland’s east side. Joe Sr. soon found work and a year later my mother was born and four years after that my aunt Elizabeth.

Joe Sr. and Rose never became citizens and had to register as an alien each year at a post office. Joe Jr. received his citizenship while serving in the U.S. Army during WWII where he was attached to a tank destroyer unit in Patton’s Third Army in France. Joe Jr. received several medals including a Purple Heart for his actions during the Battle of the Bulge.

The Major family like so many other immigrant families during the period from 1890 to 1914 brought no real skills except their willingness to work and raise children that would go on to help build this nation. They worked in the mills, factories, and on the farms. They did not take government assistance and paid their taxes. They came here legally under a quota system and abided by the rules. Their children went on to become part of the “greatest generation” and their children’s children became the “baby boomers.”

Today, the Statue of Liberty is one of America’s most famous landmarks. Over the years, it has been the site of political rallies and protests (from suffragettes to anti-war activists), has been featured in numerous movies and countless photographs, and has received millions of visitors from around the globe.

A Tribute to My Dad on Father’s Day

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.” — William Shakespeare

Ask people about heroes, and you will hear a small number of names again and again. Martin Luther King, Jr. comes up a lot. So does Mother Theresa. And so do mom and dad, often for reasons that aren't clear to anyone other than their progeny.

The psychology behind that phenomenon is pretty obvious. Parents are more than our first role models. They are our first superpowers, our first gods.

Towering above us, these exalted beings hold our fate in their hands. They reward us, punish us, protect us, mystify us, and sacrifice for us. When we are small, they are heroes of the first rank. But as the years go by, they fall from grace in our eyes. To establish our own identities, we are forced to rebel and to look elsewhere for heroes.

But for many people, the deep-down longing for heroic parents persists. Even if our parents are almost entirely lacking heroic qualities, we honor their quieter virtues and cherish the few stories that cast them in a noble light.

It's no wonder that many people, given the chance to name their heroes, pick their parents first.

Of course, some parents really are heroes. Take, for example, my dad.

His name was Fred and he was born in Hamilton, Ontario Canada in 1911. At the age of 14 he along with his father and siblings emigrated to the United States where they settled in Cleveland, Ohio. In Cleveland he attended parochial school until he graduated from the eighth grade. This was the highest level of formal education he achieved.

In 1935 he married my mother and shortly after I was born. 12 years later my brother entered the world.

My dad worked as a typewriter repairman his entire life supporting his family with one brief exception. During World War Two he took a job considered critical to our defense at a plant making turret lathes that would be used to assist in the manufacture of tools needed to make our guns, tanks and planes.

During his time working in the defense plant he worked the second shift so I did not see too much of dad. He would leave for work at two in the afternoon before I got home from school and was in bed sleeping when I left in morning.

It was during this period that dad became a real hero.

At 2:30 p.m. on the afternoon on Friday, October 20, 1944, the above ground storage tank number 4, holding liquefied natural gas in the East Ohio Gas Company's tank farm, began to emit a vapor that poured from a seam on the side of the tank. The tank was located near Lake Erie on East 61st Street, and winds from the lake pushed the vapor into a mixed use section of Cleveland, where it dropped into the sewer lines via the catch basins located in the street gutters. As the gas mixture flowed and mixed with air and sewer gas, the mix ignited. In the ensuing explosion, manhole covers launched skyward as jets of fire erupted from depths of the sewer lines. One manhole cover was found several miles east in the Cleveland neighborhood of Glenville.

The first explosion was visible from our home and my school. I was evacuated from the school and when I got home I found that my Dad was missing. My mother told me that when he saw and heard the explosion he thought it was on the next street and rushed to see if he could help the neighbors. The explosion was not on the next block but about one mile northeast of our house. Evidently my Dad joined a group of onlookers and kept going north until they reached the site of the explosion. Fires were raging, homes were burning, people were screaming and manhole covers were flying a hundred of feet into the air. When Dad saw a man trying to get some of his belonging out of his house he decided to pitch in and help. That’s when the second tank blew.

By 8:00 p.m. that evening when Dad had not returned home we were getting very concerned. Radio reports were calling this the worst disaster in the history of the city and with the war still going on there were rumors of sabotage. Around 9:00 p.m. we received a call from Mt. Sinai Hospital that Dad was there in the burn ward. When he was acting as a Good Samaritan and the tank exploded he put his right arm up to shield his face and his neck and his arm suffered third degree flash burns. My uncle Archie, the only one in the family to own a car, drove my mother to the hospital to see how he was doing. As an eight year old I was very frightened that something very bad had happened to my Dad. As it turned out he was in hospital for about a month and needed several skin grafts from his leg onto his arm and neck. These days there would have been TV reporters swarming all over the hospital calling folks like my Dad heroes. In those days he was just another guy trying to help a neighbor. He was certainly a hero to me.

Soon after the war ended Dad left the defense plant and went back to his profession as an office machine repairman. He fixed typewriters and adding machines in the downtown office buildings. He was the fastest two finger typist you would ever see. The neighborhood where we lived on Cleveland’s east side . was becoming run down and my parents wanted to get out. So in 1948, using his savings from his war work, they purchased a new home in Parma, a southern suburb of Cleveland. You may have heard of Parma. It was made famous by detractors saying that there were pink flamingos on every lawn. We didn’t have any pink flamingos and I thought it was the greatest place in the world to grow up.

My dad never owned an automobile until they relocated to Southern California to join me, my wife, and new-born son in 1967. All the time he worked in Cleveland he took the bus to work every day. He would walk the half mile to the bus stop each morning, rain, shine, or snow, to catch the bus that would take him to downtown Cleveland where his place of employment was located.

Once there he would take his 15 pound tool box loaded with the tools he needed to service the office machines of his clients. He would walk from office building to office building each day serving his clients. At the end of the work day he would take the bus home and trudge the half mile home each night.

During the weekends he would work around the house doing yard work and fixing things that had broken. He tiled the basement floor and treated the concrete block walls with colored cement-based paint so we could have a nice recreation room to enjoy. This was his life — his family, his home, and his work. For this he was a hero.

When dad moved to California in 1967 he, my mother, and my brother lived in an apartment complex close to my family. He found another job repairing office machines, but it was located about 20 miles away from his home and there were no buses. This forced him to learn to drive and purchase a car, which he did. It took him a while to learn to drive and he avoided the freeways with their high speeds as this made him very nervous. In this sense he was a very responsible driver.

For the next 20 years he worked at his profession every day until the owner of the business that employed him closed his shop. This caused dad to finally retire. Soon after his retirement he lost his right leg due to diabetes with an above the knee amputation. This did not stop dad. He was able to, through modern prosthetics, physical therapy, and hard work to make due. He and my mom even traveled to Europe with us to take a Christmas Rhine Cruise. Once again dad proved to be a hero.

Dad was a self-educated man. He loved history, geography, and politics. He was an avid reader and loved his map books where he would trace out the boundaries of newly formed nations. This love of history and education influenced his two sons who went on to successful careers in engineering and law.

His one son (me) became a surveyor and civil engineering and an owner of a mid-sized civil engineering, surveying, and environmental planning firm employing 800 persons at the time of my retirement. His younger son (my brother) became a successful attorney owning a law firm employing 25 persons.

Both my brother and I had children who attended college and became successful in their chosen profession. These children had children who are now the third generation of my mom and dad.

It was the values imparted on my brother and I that gave us the moral foundation to build our lives on. They taught us love of family, responsibility, and appreciation of hard work. They did not do this so much by lecturing, but by example. For this they were both heroes.

Dad passed away in 1991 and the older I get and look back on the accomplishments of my dad I realize how strong his character was and the steadfastness he had to his family.

Sometimes we look for great men and women doing great things as heroes. But we should not overlook the quiet and steady daily efforts of our parents who are our most immediate heroes.

Today according the Heather MacDonald of The Manhattan Institute 23% of white babies are born out of wedlock, 53% of Hispanics, and 72% of Blacks. Who will these children celebrate Father’s Day with? Who will their heroes be?