Austin, Texas Chapter

The Association for all Military Officers
Companion Bulletin-May 2006

Commander's Comments We are coming to the end of another year for the Austin Chapter of the Military Order of the World Wars. We should take pride in the fact that our organization is supporting youth development at the high school level. Our Chapter's sponsoring of local high school sophomores and juniors to attend one of the Region VIII Youth Leadership Conferences is a significant individual and collective effort to enhance the future of our great nation and can only be described as energy and monies well spent. Thanks to all who gave generously to fund this program. Our Chapter's support to local high school JROTC and ROTC units through presentation of medals and certificates is a noteworthy assist to those very meaningful programs. In addition to performing these duties and services, our Chapter has enjoyed significant social camaraderie, outstanding guest speakers and good food at our monthly meetings. We should all take pride in our many meaningful accomplishments. 1 want to thank each of you for your continued support through out this very meaningful and rewarding year. Membership still looms as a major concern and needs the attention of all companions. During our three-month break, please make an effort to enroll at least one new member.                          COL Charles Szendrey

Meeting. May 11 2006   The Austin Club (110 East Ninth Street). Please fill out the menu form on the last page and return it with your check payable to MOWW to Mary Kelso, 7502 Valleydale Drive, Austin, TX 78731 to arrive not later than 5 May. Note: The low cost per person requires a minimum of 30 in attendance., contact COL Szendrey (388-1005).    Schedule:  1830-1930-Social  1930-1915- Invocation & Salutes  1935-2020-Dinner  2020-2030-Break  2030-2100- Awards & Festivities   2100          -Adjourn  Chaplain's Selection  "The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at you feet, duties at you hand, the path of God just before you." - Robert Louis Stevenson Quote to Ponder "Freedom is the right to live as we wish." - Epictetus

Legislation   * H.R. 5037, the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act, would ban all demonstrations one hour before, during, and one hour after a military funeral at a national cemetery. It would impose a 500-foot separation restriction, and would allow for fines and/or jail time for violations. It also encourages the states to enact similar bans for public and private cemeteries, as well for funeral home services. * S. 2617, the "Military Retirees' Health Care Protection Act", protects military retirees and their families from DoD's proposed increase in health care fees and contains many of the provisions contained in H.R. 4949. S. 2617 would limit increases to TR1CARE premiums, deductibles, and co-payments. Under the legislation, increases in health care fees cannot exceed the rate of growth in uniformed services beneficiaries' military compensation, thereby protecting beneficiaries from an undue financial burden. The bill would also prohibit the establishment of a first-time-ever enrollment fee for TR1CARE Standard.

Items of Interest  One hurdle in the quest to eliminate the Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) offset to the Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) was overcome by the inclusion of amendment 3001 in the Senate FY 2007 Budget Resolution. The amendment provides for the budget authority needed to enable survivors to collect both the SBP and DIC in full. Unless similar budget headroom is included in the House Budget Resolution, which has not yet passed, the status of the issue remains tenuous. Even if authority is included in the final budget resolution, the elimination of the offset must still be authorized in the FY 2007 National Defense Authorization Act.

 

Awe and Loathing     Why is America disliked so intensely and widely, with special emphasis in the Middle East? Here is one explanation: "No people are so disliked out of their own country... They assume superiority, and this manner is far from pleasant to other people ... I have never seen among any people such rudeness and violation of good breeding... As a nation they are intensely selfish and arrogant." A furious indictment, to be sure — but not of the United States. For the words are those of an American, Robert Laird Collier, writing of the Britain he toured at its imperial zenith in the 1880s.     Over the past half-century, in one part of the world after another, U.S. influence has moved into the vacuum left by the British and other departing powers, often with reluctance (the Middle East), not always with success (Vietnam) but in any case as the pre-eminent force among several, even where the commitment has been a U.N.-endorsed multilateralist's dream (Korea, Kuwait). What America shares with an earlier Britain is that insufferable sense of mission, the conviction that it a force for good in world affairs. Any force for change, good or bad, presents a challenge to an existing order, and resentment comes with it. That would be enough to raise hackles. But America represents a special type of challenge to the world. That challenge has been recognized, feared, resented and finally hated.  Austin Chapter Website   If you have items for the website contact LTC Howard (255- 2206 or email: jr99howard@austin.rr.com).  Staff Meeting The next staff meeting will be at the call of the Commander.

More directly, U.S. might has left behind democratic states in much of Europe and Japan. Middle Eastern autocrats fear they are next. America is the agent and principal of Western civilization and its ideas can be explosive. To rally adherents to any number of causes - totalitarian, authoritarian or merely culturally reactionary — demonization of the United States serves an indispensable purpose. This is why even official U.S. allies in the Middle East, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, carefully direct the publics' hatred towards America. It is perhaps the mark of a force for good that its opponents have the liberty of expressing resentment. Nothing like self-censorship afflicts the commentariat of the Arab world, or even Europe, however threatened by America they claim to be. In contrast, when Nazi Germany was on the rise, European powers great and small felt impelled at times to censor their own press. Winston Churchill was informally banned from speaking about Germany on the BBC during much of the 1930s. Malevolent powers by contrast have little tolerance of dissent and opponents know it only too well. All of this provides the clue to the wanton, uninhibited resentment of America. Its mission is undiluted by the fact that it possesses no colonies and never ran an empire, lording it over subject peoples. Its military interventions have been vital to the freedom and sovereignty of more than one country in Europe and the Middle East. Like any other major power, it has tallied its fair share of deplorable decisions and disastrous mistakes. This, we are often told, lies at the bottom of the current harvest of hatred and terrorism. - Middle East Forum