Category: History

The American atomic bomb test in 1951 at Yucca Flats, N.M. USA put a lot of troops at risk. You can see from the photograph that the troops are bunched together not that far away from ground zero.

At the time the American government scientists should have had a darn good idea that exposure to an atomic bomb blast from such a close distance was not a good idea. Not if you cared about the health of the troops. After all the US had been monitoring the terrible effects and health issues faced by the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for six years, since 1945.

You can tell from the photo that the troops were given a good view of the atomic bomb test. I doubt if any of them could ever forget the event. 

Any reasonable analysis of the data obtained from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors would have shown that exposure to massive doses of radiation is going to cause health problems. Yet the US government ordered American troops to be observers from open trenches just six miles from ground zero.

The photo shows some of the troops who took part in the Buster Dog” operation. Desert Rock I - the first U.S. nuclear field exercise on land was conducted in association with the Dog shot. In the weeks before the shot the assembled troops (from the 188th Airborne, 127th Engineer Battalion, and the 546th Field Artillery Battalion) dug field emplacements to simulate a defensive deployment southwest of the shot location.

The troops observed the shot from a point six miles from ground zero, were transported to the defensive emplacements to view the weapon effects, and then conducted maneuvers in the area. Since this shot was an air burst there was no local fallout, although some neutron-induced radioactivity existed.

A treasure trove of information about American Presidents life portraits is yours for the surfing. The site was developed originally to complement C-SPAN’s 20th Anniversary Television Series, American Presidents: Life Portraits that aired during March-December 1999.

Your political affiliation or views really don’t matter. At the American Presidents site you will find just about everything there is to know about the lives of all of the American Presidents, the good, the bad, and occasionally the ugly.

You can watch video presentations of the facts and highlights of each President’s life and terms of office on RealPlayer.  The basic RealPlayer is free. To get it go to the American Presidents web site and click on “watch”. If RealPlayer is not already installed on your computer you will be taken to the RealPlayer site for a free download. It only takes a few minutes for the installation.

For anyone with an interest in American politics and history American Presidents is a fascinating web site. You will learn some amazing things about American Presidents.

Why build an American Empire empire if you don’t know how to manage it? Why build an American Empire if it leads you to ruin?

These and other questions I’ll attempt to explore in a series of articles about the state of the American Empire and how in my opinion a well managed Empire may be a good thing. Certainly a much better thing for every nation of the world than the incompetent management of the Empire that we have today.

But first a little history.

The British know a thing or two about empire. For almost four hundred years the British Empire was the largest, most successful empire in the history of the world.

The much discussed Roman Empire was small potatoes compared to the empire that the British built. The new American Empire has much to learn from our British friends. If only American leadership was open to learning.

The term “British Empire” dates back to the mid fifteen hundreds during the age of European exploration to all corners of the globe. At it’s peak in the 20th century the British Empire truly was a world empire. The British ruled over 25% of the world’s population and had outposts and garrisons in every part of the globe.

The phrase “the sun never sets on the British Empire” was true. One fairly small island nation, the population of Great Britain today is only about 70,000,000, with few natural resources other than coal, (the North Sea oil fields weren’t discovered untill well after the days of empire) ruled over much of the world.

How did the British manage to accomplish such a feat? How did they working from a small base become such a super power?

Hong Kong has long been one of my favorite cities. I worked there in the mid 1990’s and still have my Hong Kong ID card tucked away in my wallet.

While the card doesn’t show an expiration date I expect that its validity ended on midnight 30 June 1997. That was the date that Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese after more than 150 years of British rule.

You have to give the Brits credit there. They kept their word and forever gave up control over one hell of a city. Of course, after 150 years of orderly rule the British influence is still strong in Hong Kong to this day.

To me it is a wonderful experience to hear native educated Hong Hong citizens speak English. The British accents and full command of English with their Chinese faces generates a certain disconnect as their English is better than mine. But man, I love to hear them speak. I miss seeing my Hong Kong friends.

There was a lot of concern on the part of the Hong Kong citizens at the time of the transfer from British to Chinese rule. Hong Kong was and still is one of the most capitalistic cities in the world. How would Hong Kong function under Communist China rule?

While there have been some bumps in the road the “one nation, two systems” approach taken by the Chinese has served Hong Hong well. The Hong Kong economy is doing well and Hong Kong is still one of the easiest cities in the world to set up and operate a business in. 

The ever practical Chinese have been wise in not pushing the citizens of the more liberal Hong Kong too hard in bending to Chinese rule. As a result Hong Kong has prospered and provided China with an impressive gateway to the world.

The story of the United States involvement in Afghanistan is an almost unbelievable one.

If it weren’t so tragic for the long suffering people of Afghanistan and US citizens, especially the US military, it would be almost funny in it’s circular what goes around comes around implications.

In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Since the cold war between the Soviet Union and the US was still very much underway naturally the US opposed the Soviet’s efforts to control the country.

The US backed Islamic fighters were known as mujaheddin, including an Islamic leader from Saudi Arabia known as Osama Bin Laden. The US supported mujaheddin, “solders of God”, fought the Soviets and the country became a Cold War proxy battleground.

By 1989 the Soviets had suffered enough in the hostile unforgiving terrain of Afghanistan. They withdrew after transporting more than 15,000 dead Soviet troops back to their homeland in coffins. The Soviets left behind hundreds of thousands of dead Afghans as a testament to the brutally of war.

Now get this.

The Soviets began to take heavy losses only after the US began supplying the mujaheddin with sophisticated weapons, including stinger missiles. The stingers proved to be highly effective in bringing down Soviet fighter jets and attack helicopters. The missiles indeed took the sting out of the Soviet military machine which had relied on air power to kill the mujaheddin.

What goes around comes around. Now the US is confronted with sophisticated weapons, especially IED’s, which are finding their way into Iraq.

After the withdrawal of the Soviet Union forces the US made a huge mistake. Instead of helping Afghanistan recover from the devastation of war we basically patted ourselves on the back and said “mission accomplished”. The US also withdrew from active involvement in the region.