In 1962, I was an Army Officer assigned to the Fifth Region Army Air Defense Command (ARADCOM) as an Assistant JAG I can use the initials because being a JAG is now a big thing. The performance of Amy and Navy officer-lawyers during the torture and Gitmo dust-ups was one of the few bright spots of the Bush Administration - much to its chagrin. At great personal and professional risk, many of them actively opposed the Bush torture policies and attempts to set-up drum martial courts to railroad detainees, many of whom were, in fact, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I digress.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was temporary assigned duty as member of the "Battle Staff" of the Fifth ARADCOM. I still have vivid memory of watching Kennedy give his first address on TV in the Batchelor Officer's Quarters announcing the crisis and the steps he was taking including a naval blockade. When he stooped speaking, the telephone rang and we were informed that the Alert level had been set to its second highest level (the only higher level was Red- bombers over Canada.

I don't need to retell the events that followed. There was enormous pressure from the Pentagon and people like LBJ for an invasion. WE learned in 1990 what we didn't know then. In addition to the intermediate range missiles that threatened the US, the Russians had already given the Cubans tactical nuclear weapons under their command with orders to use them in case of invasion. Had an American invasion force been nuked on the beaches, it was World War III.

That we didn’t invade. That we reached an accommodation with Khrushchev and that in the following year signed the first Atmospheric Test Ban treaty were a tribute to the leadership of Jack Kennedy who had learned through his initial mistakes at the Bay of Pigs.

Since that time, I have had occasion to reflect on that and until now, I have not seen an occupant in the White House who could have handled that crisis any better or who would have stood up to the Pentagon hawks like Curt Lemay. Not one.

Until last might. For all the carping from the Left, last night we saw the best combination of politics and intellect since Kennedy, along with an ability to inspire and explain.

I have finally found another President to trust. I won't agree with all his decisions. I may even carp a lot at times. But at this crucial juncture in our history when the nation stands before an bottomless pit of economic chaos, we have elected the most talented gifted intellect I have ever seen in the White House to lead us.

Maybe God does bless America after all.

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com

I am saddened by the number of your readers who describes themselves as Ex-Catholics, even atheists. For all of its two millennia of folly, the fact is that the Catholic Church is still the most direct route back to the preacher who lived and died in the land between the seas, and taught us what love meant.

The Church has always been much bigger and more diverse an institution than the Vatican likes to admit. Umberto Eco's masterpiece, “The Nme of the Rose,” was much more than a medieval mystery story. It was a snapshot of the ferment, and intellectual diversity, of the Church in the Middle Ages. That ferment and diversity persists.

It was also a paean of praise for St. Francis who single-handedly staved off the reformation for two centuries. I remain a Catholic because the essential issue of the Reformation was salvation by faith alone. Luther was reacting to the scandal of the Church pedaling indulgences. He ignores St. Paul. I believe that love engenders faith and I am one with St. Paul: I can have faith so as to move mountains, but without love, I am nothing. Only I believe that literally: without love there is only oblivion.

I attended a Catholic High School and we had to spend a buck to get a black bound copy of the New Testament. More than fifty years later, I still have it, and refer to it. I once remarked to one of my sons and a friend of his that the trouble was nobody feared the judgment of God anymore and they laughed. But that was before I could explain what I meant by the judgment of God. It's all there in my little black book.

There is but one commandment, one truth and one existence. It is love. When we love, we play with eternal fire. If we don't love, we lapse into the hell of oblivion. I believe that. I also believe that it is the essence of a Catholic life.

The problem with Donahue, Opus Dei, the new Newman Society et al, is that there is no love in them. Only an intellectual self-indulgence pointing the way to oblivion.