Local author releases new book: "No Lilies or Violets"

Johathan Hayes' book, No Lilies or Violets, Reminiscences of a Fighter Pilot, is about to be released, just in time for Veterans Day! Hayes is active in local Republican politics and conservative causes.

Title: No Lilies or Violets, Reminiscences of a Fighter Pilot
Publication Date: November 4, 2011

Book Description (Amazon.com): No Lilies or Violets, Reminiscences of a Fighter Pilot, the first book written by author Jonathan A. Hayes, is a fast-paced, in-your-face trip into the world of an F-4 Phantom II fighter pilot and his exploits during eleven years and three tours into the tumultuous Vietnam war. Hayes recounts his reminiscences forty years after the experiences, lending a mature insight into the raucous adventures of a man and his machine. Visceral recollections are dished to the reader in a shotgun of images. This is a man putting his life on the line numerous times a week, having to react at lightning speed in concert with pilots around him as they pursue the ever-moving enemy in hostile and explosive environment. One of the weird things about aerial combat is how quiet it is. The air around you will be filled with explosions from anti-aircraft shells and missiles and the only thing you will hear is your backseater's quiet breathing and the occasional radio transmission. You are totally cut off from the sonic part of your surroundings. They lived hard and played hard in an effort to maintain their sanity and balance so that could go out there and do it again the next day. No Lilies or Violets puts the reader in the mind of a fighter pilot. Daily on-the-ground routines are predictable, but the mind and body are always braced and torqued for the next bombing run. Join Hayes for a journey into war.

Note from the author: Buy a copy for yourself, one for each member of your family and for all your friends, coworkers, people you ride the bus with. It's a great book (says he, modestly) and you'll love it!

Check six,
Jonathan Hayes
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Amethyst Moon Publishing, Tucson, AZ
ISBN: 978-1-935354-67-67-3 (13 digit) Read More......

Vietnam vet is awarded Silver Star after 43 years

LOS ANGELES TIMES (via FOX Nation), 10/4/2009 - It took 43 years, but Marine Pfc. Daniel Hernandez finally got his medal. ∴ And when he did Saturday morning in Boyle Heights, the Vietnam veteran stood up straight and proudly puffed out his chest, his eyes glistening with emotion. ∴ "His immediate and fearless actions, while himself painfully wounded, undoubtedly saved many lives," said Marine Lt. Jim Lupori, reading from the Silver Star medal citation that, because of lost paperwork, was never awarded to Hernandez by the secretary of the Navy after he left Vietnam in the late 1960s. Read more at latimes.com... Read More......

Bear what price, or burden?

Learning not to repeat the exit mistake of Vietnam
WASHINGTON TIMES, 8/19/2009 by Richard Botkin, Vietnam historian and Marine Corp veteran, (Hat tip: World Net Daily) - With the stroke of a pen 36 years ago this month, a Democratic-majority Congress passed the Fulbright-Aiken Amendment, a law that assured American politics, rather than battlefield achievement, would determine the freedom and fate of millions of South Vietnamese citizens. ∴ The Fulbright-Aiken Amendment cut off funding for ongoing American military operations in support of our Vietnamese ally. The amendment outlined a dramatic change in policy that said;

"Notwithstanding any other provision of the law, on or after August 15, 1973, no funds herein or heretofore appropriated may be obligated or expended to finance directly or indirectly combat activities by United States military forces in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia."

In Iraq, democracy is balancing on a razor's edge. Read more at the Washington Times... Read More......

Robert Strange McNamara dead at 93

FOX NEWS reports that [the former Secretary of Defense] “died at home in his sleep Monday morning, his wife Diana … said he had been in failing health for some time. Known as a policymaker with a fixation for statistical analysis, McNamara was president of the Ford Motor Co. when President John F. Kennedy asked him to head the Pentagon in 1961.” Read More......

Iraq: Hold And Build, Or Lose

WASHINGTON POST, 5/12/2009 by Anthony H. Cordesman - Despite the violence of the past few weeks, it is Iraq that now risks becoming the "forgotten war." Iraq has become both a perceived "victory" and a war that many Americans and members of Congress would like to forget. As a result, we may rush toward the "exit" without a strategy -- and lose both the ongoing war and the peace that could follow. ∴ It is all too easy to forget that we "won" in Vietnam. We left having defeated the Viet Cong, having forced North Vietnam to halt its offensives -- and having gotten a Nobel Prize for the settlement. We created something approaching a functioning democracy, a reasonable level of development, and Vietnamese forces that seemed able to defend both without our support. It only took a few years, however, to show how costly an exit without a strategy can be. Read more at the Washington Post...

Hat tip: John H. Detweiler
John says, "As Jeff Limon says, 'History may not repeat but it rhymes.'" Read More......