It is the 4th of July here in Kandahar City, Afghanistan.
The day arrived earlier than stateside due to we are 8 1/2 hours ahead of the US. Most back home are preparing for a night's rest along with some going out on the night before a day off.
Here in Afghanistan, it is just another day.
On military bases here, there will be a bit of celebration and some good food at the DFACs ( Dining Facilities). At the same time, many will carry out their normal work of going in harm's way, working to guard the freedom of the people here. All will go about the normal business of the work that occurs here in the war zone.
Likewise, the work here will go on for me also. It is another work day and one that has become a bit of a habit for me. This is the 3rd year in a row that I have been here for the 4th of July. I have been working contract work for the past three years and that means being here for most of the year including the summer.
There will be no BBQs to attend or fireworks ( as the fireworks here are usually a bad thing). The holiday passes quietly here and that is understandable. It is what we have agreed to as part of the deal of working overseas, away from home and family.
Back home in the USA, things are not all "beer & skittles" either. 1.4 million people in the Mid-Atlantic area are still w/o power due to the thunderstorms that came through earlier this week, 14 million people are unemployed or underemployed ( leaving them w/o work or the type of work they usually would perform) and the majority of our citizens are unhappy with the direction our government has taken over the last 4 years.
Being away from home is tough at times like this, but so is being at home without work. I have had to deal with that and it is a terrible place to be. Like many others, I have spent a significant number of years working as a manager in HR and now face the new reality that what was of value to employers in the past is undervalued now. The degree and experience I have is treated in the same manner as some look upon an older car.
Employers are hiring younger workers and paying them 1/2 of what someone like me should earn. This is not just happening to HR professionals, but professionals from all different professions. The recession has given businesses the ability to shed older workers, who carry larger wage & benefit costs and hire younger workers who seek less.
This trend will wind up hurting companies as they will spend more in traning and loss of customer satisfaction. They are acting shortsighted and it is only making things worse economically.
Don Henley is on my IPAD with the song The Heart of the Matter and sings, " These times are so uncertain, there's yearning undefined and people filled with rage..." - very true and accurate even after the 20 years since he wrote the song.
America finds itself in perilous straits - The economy is sluggish and that is partly due to the 14 million people who are effectively unemployed. They don't have the income they need and that means they are not purchasing goods and services. That in turn holds the economy back. We have a President who acts like an insolent teenager and thinks that it is cool to hang out with Hollywood types. Instead of seeking maturity and competance, his supporters want to act like eternal high schoolers on a spending spree with their parent's credit card. The Middle class is struggling more than ever and all we get from the President is " Party on..." as he parties on the taxpayer's dime.
We deserve better leadership and the person sitting in the White House ain't it.....He needs to go back to Chicago.
The 4th of July is one of the days that makes me think more about the country I love and how difficult it was back in 1776. The signers of the Declaration of Independence faced tough times. It must have seemed as difficult as our times seem to us. My family has been in America since 1635 so many of my ancestors were there when the Revolutionary War freed our nation.
The key is that as Americans, we will continue to make our country and the world a better place by our actions. Though we will disagree with each other and argue about what is needed, the outcome will still be an example to others about what can be accomplished if we set our minds to doing something.
That is essentially what I am doing here in Kandahar City - working to help the people of Afghanistan by leading them to create a better country for themselves and their children. That is the lesson we learned back in 1776 and one we still honor and celebrate today.
Happy 4th of July to all our military serving abroad, our colleagues working to support them and all back home in the USA.
235 years ago today -
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
- He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
- He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
- He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
- He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
- He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
- He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
- He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
- He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
- He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
- He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
- He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
- He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
- He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
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The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton
The day arrived earlier than stateside due to we are 8 1/2 hours ahead of the US. Most back home are preparing for a night's rest along with some going out on the night before a day off.
