In light of the recent Veterans Day commemoration, I want to thank all veterans for their service. We honor the fallen and all past servicemen and women, and salute active personnel.
Though I never served, I take pride in my parents’ and grandparents’ military service.
My grandfathers, while living long lives, died before I was born. My maternal grandfather fought in the Spanish American War. I have an old 1898 daguerreotype of him in Cuba. My dad’s father served during WWI. Would have been great to talk to them.
My mom’s military service ended before she had me. She was a WWII Army hospital train nurse in Europe. Many photos, many stories of her nine years in the Army. My dad served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam — an Army career that spanned 27 years. He fascinated me with wartime adventures and his massive scars.
Some threats my parents faced, like fascism and communism, have mostly been supplanted by modern terrorism and religious fanaticism. While communist threats remain in zealous and expansionist-minded China and Russia, the primary global and domestic national security threat is radical Islamism.
Our military is confronting these challenging and complex threats as they evolve day to day. But our military’s plans to real and immediate threats don’t stop with ISIS, Crimea, Iran, or China. Both the Pentagon and the Military Advisory Board, composed of retired 3- and 4-star Generals and Admirals from all branches, recognize that human-caused climate change is an “urgent and growing threat” to national security.
The 2015 Pentagon Report notes climate change’s “wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the foreseeable future because it will aggravate existing problems — such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions–that threaten domestic stability in a number of countries.”
We all need to recognize the obvious that our military sees: That both radical Islamic fundamentalism and climate change are real and immediate national security threats that need to be taken head-on. Neither is a hoax. To say or behave otherwise is dangerously ignorant and disrespectful to our military who will be integral in combatting both as the future precariously speeds ahead.
Van P. Keele
Hamilton