“Do not get yourself into the illusion that there is something so unique about the question of organ or body parts … that the general rules of economics do not apply.”
On April 17, 1961, just after midnight, a force of CIA financed and trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. The Cuban armed forces quickly defeated the invading combatants. Several hundred to several thousand people were estimated to have been killed, wounded or missing in the fighting, and more than 1,200 Cuban exiles were captured by Castro. In August, Che Guevara sent a note to President Kennedy, reading, “Thanks for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the revolution was weak. Now it’s stronger than ever.” Finally, days before Christmas 1962, Castro signed an agreement to exchange 1,113 prisoners with the U.S. for $53 million in food and medicine.
On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 returned safely back to Earth.
On April 17, 1975, Cambodian government forces surrender to the Khmer Rouge, who capture Phnom Penh, the capital. In the next five years, more than 1 in every 5 Cambodians died of starvation, was worked to death or was executed.
On April 17, 1986, the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly ended. Peace at last!
It can happen to any organization. The original intent — or, at any rate, declared purpose — of the concern gets lost amidst the chaos of hard-to-manage projects and personnel, as individuals re-define their goals at variance with the official end; as corruption sets in; as functions decay into forms persisting out of mere inertia; as institutional memory and learning get short-circuited by broken feedback loops and a culture of silence, secrecy, and hush-hush prudence.
No organization is exempt, but it happens most often, and easiest, in government.
Take the experience of Peter Van Buren, late of two State Department Provincial Reconstruction Teams, related in The American Conservative:
In some 24 years of government service, I experienced my share of dissonance when it came to what was said in public and what the government did behind the public’s back. . . .
What I saw while serving the State Department at a forward operating base in Iraq was, however, different. There, the space between what we were doing (the eye-watering waste and mismanagement), and what we were saying (the endless claims of success and progress), was filled with numb soldiers and devastated Iraqis. . . .
Van Buren wrote a book on that huge divide between secret truth and public lie, and, of course, got in trouble for it. Folks higher up in government are not renowned for their love of whistle-blowers. Van Buren not unexpectedly finds himself being shown the door on his own career, or, as he puts it, his superiors are preparing to put his “head on a pike inside the lobby of State’s Foggy Bottom headquarters as a warning to its other employees.”
Government may not honor whistle-blowers, but citizens should. After all, it is allegedly for our sake that government does what it does. To discover, as Mr. Van Buren discovered, that “we failed in the [Iraq] reconstruction and, through that failure, lost the war,” is news we must incorporate into our storehouse of foreign policy wisdom.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.”
On April 16, 73 A.D., Masada, a Jewish fortress, fell to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the Jewish Revolt.
On April 16, 1520, the citizens of Castile, Spain, rebelled against the rule of Charles V in what became known as the Revolt of the Comuneros. At its height, rebels controlled the heart of Castile, ruling the cities of Valladolid, Tordesillas and Toledo.
On April 16, 1862, the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia, became law.
On April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.
On April 15, 1452, Leonardo da Vinci, the polymath of the Italian Renaissance, was born in Vinci, Italy, near Florence.
On April 15, 1783, the Continental Congress officially ratified the preliminary peace treaty with Great Britain that was signed in November 1782. Five months later, on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed by representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Spain and France, officially bringing an end to the Revolutionary War.
On April 15, 1945, the British 11th Armoured Division liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, discovering 53,000 prisoners inside, most half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lying around the camp unburied.
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson stepped onto Ebbets Field to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African-American player in Major League Baseball. Eleven weeks later Larry Doby would break the color barrier in the American League with the Cleveland Indians.
On April 15, 1998, Saloth Sar, known as Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, died. He led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death, and served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979. During his time in power more than one of every five Cambodians died by execution, forced labor and starvation.
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Jean-Paul Sartre (died on April 15, 1980)
“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”
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Townhall: Shut Up and Listen
The common-sense column this weekend is up on Townhall.com, now, so please click on over and give it a try. And then come back here for links:
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Video: Class Warfare
The president’s recent attack on the Paul Ryan budget elicited no small amount of commentary and debate.
It’s fascinating to watch Cato’s Dan Mitchell “defend” the Ryan budget, while maintaining that it doesn’t really cut anything. The PBS host and his opposing talking head don’t seem to know what to do when someone speaks truth instead of blindly cheering for the Red Team or the Blue.
And yet it’s Dan Mitchell who gets tarred with the dread epithet “ideological.”
Question of the day: Do you laugh or cry?
“The fight for justice against corruption is never easy. It never has been and never will be. It exacts a toll on our self, our families, our friends, and especially our children. In the end, I believe, as in my case, the price we pay is well worth holding on to our dignity.”