Within the hour, former President Bill Clinton will apply his star power to the Senatorial runoff battle between Democrat Jim Martin and incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss.

As most remember, six years ago, Saxby Chambliss won his Senate seat race against triple amputee, Vietnam War hero, Democratic Senator Max Cleland, with a hateful campaign that included an ad morphing Senator Cleland’s face into Osama bin Laden’s.

Even Senator John McCain condemned Chambliss then and said: “Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield — it’s worse than disgraceful. It’s reprehensible.”

But now, McCain has forgotten Chambliss’ shameful behavior, has made this Senate seat his post-election priority, and has been campaigning strongly for the Republican in Georgia.

It is not yet certain whether President-Elect Obama will travel to Georgia to help the Democratic candidate.

Jim Martin is in a tough runoff battle, and Obama’s personal appearance in Georgia certainly would not hurt.

In 1992, the newly elected Bill Clinton campaigned for Democratic Senator Wyche Fowler, also in a runoff election. Fowler lost, and some claim that this was an embarrassment to the new president. There are reports that there are similar concerns in the Obama camp.

I personally think that president-elect Obama is bigger than that.

As a retired military officer, a low-ranking one, the highlight for me of the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer was what I called “the galaxy of stars,” dozens of retired generals and admirals that appeared on the INVESCO Field stage in support of Barack Obama the night of his nomination.

In my post on this event, I also noted that the Obama campaign listed more than 70 retired generals and admirals from all four services who were supporting and advising Barack Obama on national security, aerospace programs, energy and other issues, including retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, retired Army Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, retired Adm. William Owens, Retired Adm. John Nathman, and “at least one former service chief; several service vice chiefs, a former head of the National Guard Bureau, a former commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command and a former operations director for the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

I concluded, “Can such a galaxy of ’stars’ with a total of around 2,100 years of honorable, distinguished service to their country be wrong? ”

Apparently not.

Barack Obama won this battle and will be the 44th President of the United States. I am sure he owes part of his victory to these military officers.

However, another battle is yet to be fought, and won.

As I have repeatedly asserted, I support full equal rights for gays and lesbians.

I also support full equal rights for our gay and lesbian troops serving honorably, effectively and, in many instances, heroically in our armed forces.

I have written several columns (for example here and here) and many Letters to the Editor on the subject of gays serving in the military and, in particular, about the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that has been in effect for 16 years

In one of my posts, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the integration of the armed services, I wrote:

But even President Truman’s 1948 Executive order, commendable and progressive as it was, left “without regard to sexual orientation,” out of his promise that ”there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services.”
It is this omission that our legislators are now addressing in the hearings on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” And, predictably, the same tired and repudiated issues and arguments that were used 60 years ago are now being raised again to prevent gays and lesbians from enjoying “equality of treatment and opportunity …in the armed services.”

In another discussion on this subject, I wrote:

The future of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will not be decided based on my personal views. Rather, it may be decided on what a majority of the American people feel is the right thing to do. I say, “may” because even though several reputable recent polls have found that a vast majority of Americans feel that homosexuals should be allowed to serve in the military, there will be other powerful factors and factions at play.

One of these will be the judgment and recommendations of present and recent military leadership in our country. While many high ranking and prestigious military officers, both active duty and retired, have expressed their views on this issue, it is not clear yet which way the pendulum will eventually swing.

Well, today, according to CNNPolitics.com, another galaxy of stars has come out in support of ending the “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy.

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A few days ago I received an e-mail from one of our TMV editors asking me if I would respond to a request from “Survivor Corps” to share news about their organization and about a specific program of that organization, “Operation Survivor.”

As one who has done his best to publicize the plight of our veterans, and especially the sorry treatment they have received from an administration that sent them into harm’s way and that touted “support the troops,” but didn’t, I am glad to do it, and only sorry that it has taken me three days to do so.

If you go to the “Survivor Corps” web site, you’ll learn the following facts:

First, about “Survivor Corps”:

Survivor Corps helps people around the world who have suffered war and violence to rebuild their lives and rejoin their communities. By connecting those affected by conflict through networks of survivors, they help people overcome trauma and injury and regain their place in society. Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Network) was born out of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, and recently spearheaded the development of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the past ten years, they have established successful peer support programs in eight war affected countries in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Now, to the more recent work by this organization, “Operation Survivor”:

First, some background:

Within the United States there are over one and a half million service members that have served in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over thirty thousand have been physically wounded, but many more have experienced less visible, psychological wounds. Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have emerged as signature injuries of these conflicts, with recent reports suggesting an increase in rates of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, and domestic violence among returning service members and veterans.

Ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are creating a generation of veterans in the United States from all branches of the armed services and all 50 states who are struggling to overcome physical and psychosocial injuries. Most combat veterans convalescing in military hospitals across the country will survive physically, but getting on with their lives after returning home to their families and communities is proving a significant challenge for hundreds of thousands. Among the 1.6 million who have served since 2001, suicide is on the rise, as is unemployment and incidents of substance abuse and domestic violence

Survivor Corps feels that the successful reintegration of returning service members is “an issue that will have a long-lasting impact on American society, and may become the single defining struggle facing this new generation of veterans.”

Thus, Survivor Corps and its partners are determined to avoid the mistakes made when veterans returned from Vietnam, which resulted in tens of thousands of post-war suicides and over 200,000 men and women living on the streets.

To avoid such mistakes, Survivor Corps will build peer support programs at the community level that will bring service members and veterans together for mutual support and encourage both individual responsibility and collective action to help others in need.

It is offering an alternative “treatment” that can be made readily available in all communities, regardless of proximity to traditional military or government centers of support. Their approach is nimble enough to address the needs of individual survivors, while still broad enough to build a coalition of survivors and service providers working to effect long-term positive change.

To learn more about “Survivor Corps” and about their new program to help the recovery and reintegration of hundreds of thousands of returning U.S. service members at a critical time for them and their country, please go to SurvivorCorps.org. You may even talk yourself into donating to this worthy program

This is a clip of the opening of the pow wow at The Smithsonian … you will see some of my friends who are Veterans being the honored carriers of the United States flag. The veterans are most often in the front rows of the grand entry.

Then will come the veteran’s honor dance, one of many this night… honor truly, because they carry proudly the American flag under which their own ancestors were murdered and persecuted. Even so: The American flag is given prominence over all the Tribal and State flags. The past not forgotten, but America our country in our own way now, too. Honor.

Honor dancing; you see the opening dance as people file into the dance arena; they are doing a knee-bending dip-step that covers only a tiny amount of ground at a time. This dip-step shuffles forward, almost in place, and it makes everyone’s fringes sway, makes every last feather tremble, makes every metal jingle skirt sound like the wind over mesas, makes every set of rattles worn at knees sound like hard rain. In the storm. Dancing in the storm. Honor.

You see to the lower right in the film, the antelope, the deep, the crows, the eagles, and deer dancers and the bear spirits and more, dancing … beginning to dance, loosen up, returning to their pelts. Honor. To be so fully alive and instinctual. Honor.

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The Walking Wounded

What can be done for the literally quarter million homeless vets wandering the highways and byways of our country, those who often walk miles every day and who have feet that look like bleeding lumber?

The issue of homeless vets appears to be similar somehow to poverty in pockets of Appalachia, the poverty in the outback of the Navajo Reservation and up to Rosebud… the abject poverty through much of the tobacco belt in the South.

So much resource is thrown at it all. But, somehow, something is missing. Something, but what? For the issues persist. I don’t pretend to know the fix, but I do know some of the helps.

Us.

One help is vision correction. For, in some regard, we too often develop an accidental but severe case of ’see-through-ish,‘

…that is, we, the watcher-helpers of this poor old world, no longer see what stands right before us; we mentally erase the disheveled, the tattered sign-carrying, the addicted, the ill… as one of those chronic issues that ‘will always be with us.’

I can sometimes feel it coming over me as well, and I resist that idea of “the poor will always be with us,’ if instead of it being a clarion call to action, that phrase is used instead to put us to sleep, for the phrase can sound so peaceful a phrase, so tidy, so wise.

But, it’s not necessarily. That phrase can be, instead, a powerful and poisonous soporific.

Yet, taking on helping whatever stands right before us, within our reach, is the only mighty spell-breaker we have for our spells of see-through-ish.

Thus, four days ago, 60 working women and men veterans, including my husband ( 21 year USAF partially disabled veteran,) did just that– broke through see-through-ish. Again.

They got out their sinew and gut, their bandages and iron thread, revved up their pickup trucks and vans, and helped to mend the part of the world within their reach.

With the help of the VA, Vet’s groups, homeless shelters, churches, they went out into the streets and under the bridges and along the small forests on the Platte River, bringing homeless vets in from the cold, every last one they could find.

Some homeless vets came willingly; some had to be cajoled, some were angry– why now, why not long ago? Many were literally growing moss in their beards, some were loaded, some were mentally compromised, many had infections, some were so sick they had to be dead-man carried. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother. Yes.

This is what happened next… It could easily be made to happen where you live, too… mending up the part of the world within our reach…

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During one of our political conventions earlier this year in my hometown of Austin, Texas, I met a terrific lady who told me an amazing story.

It is a story of dedication, courage, and heroism. It is the story of a veteran, retired U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Juanyta Ortiz, whom I am proud to honor on this Veterans Day, her day.

I had hoped to have Juanyta’s compelling story ready to share with you today. But, alas, that wasn’t the case. I will continue to work on it and you will hopefully learn all about Juanyta’s ordeal and heroism in the near future.

For now, let me just tell you that almost exactly nine years ago, Tech. Sgt. Juanyta Ortiz, an Air Force medic at the time, boarded a C-130 aircraft, along with 85 other military personnel and a crew of eight, at Kuwait City International Airport.

The short, 15-minute night flight was to take Juanyta to Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base, where she was to spend the next three months in support of “Operation Southern Watch,” a military operation that was part of the United Nations effort to enforce sanctions on Iraq.

Juanyta took her seat near the middle of the aircraft, almost back-to-back to Senior Airman Sean Kirkeby, a firefighter from Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. Juanyta did not know Kirkeby, but before the night was over both would share the most horrifying experience of their lives, and both would share the ultimate duty and trust, that of trying to save human lives.

For her actions in what happened next, the U.S. Air Force awarded Juanyta the prestigious Airman’s Medal.

The citation accompanying the award tells you a little bit of the story I have been working on:

Technical sergeant Juanyta D. Ortiz distinguished herself by heroism involving voluntary risk of life near Ahmed Al Jabar Air Base, Kuwait, on 10 December 1999. On that date, Sergeant Ortiz rapidly responded to aid her fellow passengers who were seriously injured when the C-130 aircraft they were passengers on suffered severe structural damage upon ground impact. After the aircraft had become airborne again, she realized the ground impact had torn holes in the aircraft’s fuselage wheel well area and drove parts of the landing gear into the passenger compartment, injuring dozens of passengers, several fatally. With complete disregard for her own safety and despite a large hole in the fuselage near where she was working, Sergeant Ortiz unhesitatingly directed her attention to those around her, exercising her abilities as a trained Aeromedical Craftsman. While the aircrew assessed aircraft damage, she quickly unbuckled herself and made her way through the crowded plane, and attended a passenger with a critical head injury. Following a rapid assessment, Sergeant Ortiz utilized her medical knowledge and limited resources in an attempt to aid this individual. While other passengers moved him, Sergeant Ortiz moved about the damaged cargo hold to assess and treat other passengers. Only when the plane attempted to land, did she resume a safe position. After exiting the plane, despite personal trauma, she continued to assess other passengers and provide comfort as circumstances allowed. By her courageous actions and humanitarian regard for her fellowman, Sergeant Ortiz has reflected great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force.

Eloquent, commendable, and deserving as the citation is, it does not begin to describe the horrific events in the skies over Kuwait nine years ago, nor the courage of a veteran I am proud to have met, and honored to be able to tell her story—shortly.

I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. The enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days. As I’m sure Elias will be, fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called “possession of my soul.” There are times since, I’ve felt like a child, born of those two fathers. But be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again. To teach others what we know, and to try with what’s left of our lives to find a goodness and a meaning to this life. — CHRIS TAYLOR IN PLATOON

I could try to write something eloquent about how we all need to honor the many who have served our country but I would prefer to let the rest of you simply take the time to remember.

We all may complain about the trials of election time but it is worth remembering all of those who have sacrificed to give us these freedoms.

Remember, they stood between us and bullets, we can take time to say thank you.

To be an American (unlike being English or French) is precisely to image a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history. — LESLIE FIEDLER

The tears of joy have dried. The stage in Grant Park has been taken down. The celebrations are history. As the dust settles from Election Day 2008 the biggest message is that the 1960s are now officially over. The Baby Boomers have passed the torch. We are finally moving on.

And not a day too soon.

Born in 1947, I am a card-carrying Boomer and very much a product of the 1960s and the dirty little war and enormous social upheaval that decade brought. I am also aware that having been given the wheel a few elections ago, we have blown it bigtime.

To riff on a familiar campaign phrase, are we better off today than we were in 1968? Of course not.

The gap between rich and poor has become a yawning gulf. Main Street is in crisis and now Wall Street, as well. Nearly one in six Americans have no health insurance and access to decent care is becoming more difficult. There has been an erosion of civil liberties at home and rampant saber rattling abroad. The 9/11 attacks could have been a teaching moment, but instead unleashed deep-seated hatreds.

And the failure of old-style liberalism has been as complete as new-style neoconservatism.

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How did Obama get where he is? There has been a debate in this country about whether Obama’s skin color is an asset or a detriment to his evident success. But in Latin America - there is a twist to this dialogue - and that is - given Obama’s skin color, can he still be considered, as they say down south, a ‘gringo’ - which is another way of calling someone an invader from the north - or more of a Negro - which in Colombia simply means Black and traditionally refers to someone excluded from the power structure.

For Colombia’s Semana newspaper, Antonio Caballero opens his examination of this sensitive subject this way:

“I know well that one shouldn’t say ‘gringo’ or ‘Negro’: these are two politically incorrect words. One reveals a visceral anti-Americanism, the other, racism. But the reality is more obstinate than political correctness - and the fact is, that Barack Obama, the next president of the United States, is a gringo - and a Negro. Or, if one prefers, he’s a Negro and a gringo … (Caution: the order of the factors changes the product).

Then delving into the ‘gringo - Negro’ question, Caballero continues:

“He’s a Negro who has become a candidate for the Presidency of the U.S. for a party of national dimension: He’s the American dream made flesh. But Obama is also a gringo. Which means he has characteristics of a professional politician, of a senator, of a gringo president: hypocritically religious, militarily jingoistic and inevitably imperialist. … Empires are imperialist. And Barack Obama is - stands on the brink of being - the emperor of the currently prevailing empire. ”

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