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Alabama, LSU and Prophets, or General William Tecumseh Sherman as Prophet

October 31, 2019

Alabama and LSU are surely looking forward to their meeting on the gridiron in November of this year. It is a great rivalry, fueled by the fact that Nick Saban also led the Tigers to a national championship a few year ago, and, of course, Nick is now here, having abandoned, from the LSU perspective, […]

Thank You for Your Service

December 2, 2018

Today is Veteran’s Day, so thank you for your service. I don’t recall when that phrase started to become part of modern greetings, but I’m glad it did since I’m a Vietnam War period veteran, and the homecoming for many of the troops in the late 1960s and early 1970s was both insulting and humiliating. […]

Surprising Warfare

September 16, 2018

Surprise has always been one of the determining ingredients in any battle or war. We can go back to Biblical times when David and Goliath met up on the field of battle. The Philistines were most assuredly surprised by the short fight they witnessed between their giant champion and the shrimp Hebrew shepherd boy with […]

Watching the Vietnam War, Redux

November 29, 2017

I can remember watching Walter Cronkite on the nightly CBS news reporting on the Vietnam War, probably from 1968, the summer it seems that the world was crashing around our shoulders. The Tet Offensive launched by the North Vietnamese and their allies the Vietcong in the South was underway and all South Viet Nam appeared […]

Backchannel Negotiations

July 13, 2017

The most famous back-channel negotiations in modern history occurred in October 1962. They far surpassed in importance the recent hoopla on Jared Kushner and the Russians, and, furthermore, underscore the commonplace of it all. Kushner was just following some tried and true trails blazed over the centuries by others who got involved in diplomacy. To […]

Remembering Egan

July 13, 2017

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. — poem by Robert Laurence Binyon, 21 Sept., 1914 There are several categories for those who died in service. Many are buried in foreign lands and cemeteries across the world, especially […]