WHEN PENGUINS FLEW AND WATER BURNED This is the true memoir of one US Air Force navigator’s journey from the schoolhouses of Air Training Command to the nuclear alerts of the Cold War to combat in a 35-year-old anachronism called the B-52. It is a first-hand account of life during the last days of Strategic Air Command, the early days of Air Combat Command and the ensuing military drawdown of the 1990s. From peacetime training exercises across the globe to combat operations in Desert Storm, Jim Clonts takes the reader inside the cockpit where life and death are seconds apart. Often comical, sometimes heart-pounding, other times tragic, WHEN PENGUINS FLEW AND WATER BURNED takes you into the world of military aviation, a crucible where warriors learn the true nature of character, conscience and mortality.

So How Do We Fix the United States?
by Jim Clonts, 2006

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT MILITARY.COM, August 22, 2006

A few years ago a famous pop artist wore a T-shirt at an awards show which read: The best policy is to have no enemies. Today we have enemies, people who are willing, able and literally dying to kill us. So how do we change that? Obviously, we can't please everyone. The French don't like us much, but they aren't killing us, so I'll concentrate on the Muslim world. If we cannot fix the Muslims, which is becoming apparent in Iraq, maybe we can fix ourselves.

The very first stumbling-block to Muslim love is our very first amendment. We are guaranteed freedom of speech, which our liberal judiciary has ruled also means complete freedom of expression, including pornography, exotic dancing, urinating on crucifixes, etc. This freedom can only lead to blasphemy, heresy, hedonism and dangerous, liberal ideas. I suppose we could censor our freedom of speech, excluding topics such as religion, politics, government and anything deemed sexually deviant by Islamic Law. Of course there would have to be a severe purging, a cleansing so to speak, in the modern media, those working in television, magazines and newspapers. No doubt we’d have to pull the plug on the Internet, but getting rid of computers shouldn’t be a problem for a world returning to the 7th Century.

Freedom of religion? We'd have to ban Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism and all the other false religions. The First Amendment would need to be amended to make Islam the national religion. Would there be repercussions? Like the Buddhists will start blowing up supermarkets? No way. The Jews? They'll just leave. Christians will have to head south to Mexico or South America, quite an ironic reversal of fortune. The Atheist will present the biggest question mark. Conversion or beheading?

Our legal system would have to incorporate Islamic Law, pretty much ending the Fourth and Fifth amendments as we know them, but they were always such a drag on law enforcement anyway. It will be a lot easier to punish law breakers if we don’t have to worry about illegal search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment and the rights of the accused. We also get way cool public punishments like beheadings, cutting out tongues and cutting off fingers and limbs. Now there are some deterrents to crime.

If we're going to win Muslims hearts and minds we have to put women back in their place. Perhaps we should adopt some Saudi cultural values where women are not allowed to speak with men outside their families, or drive cars, must remain completely covered from head to toe in public and may be executed for adultery or merely bringing shame on their families.

Should we continue to buy their oil? Absolutely. Oil sales pump trillions of Western dollars into the Middle East. How could the Muslims not like that? We provide them with funds for buying weapons and influence around the globe. Oil is funding the Jihad. If we want to keep them happy, keep pumping the gas.

Our military spent most of the 90s protecting Muslim lives. We tried to protect the Somalis from tyrannical warlords, the Bosnians from the Christians and, of course, the Kuwaitis and Saudis from the more-fascist-than-Muslim regime of Saddam Hussein. When Chechyen Muslims were committing terrorist acts of rebellion against the Russians, we pressured Moscow for moderation and tolerance. In return for these efforts two United States embassies in Africa were blown up, the USS Cole was attacked, the Khobar Towers barracks was bombed and the World Trade Center was attacked once in 1993 then again in 2001. It seems protecting Muslims does not make them like us any better. That seems to be a lesson we are learning again in Iraq.

We support the nation of Israel, an industrious, peace-loving representative republic, a nation that has been attacked by its Arab neighbors over and over again since its inception in 1948. Jerusalem is a holy site for both Jews and Muslims and both can be found worshipping in their respective ways within yards of each other. The Jews do not stop the Muslims from this freedom of religion. Would a Jew praying in Damascus get the same treatment? Doesn't matter. To gain Muslim friendship we drop Israel like a hot potato.

Finally, let's face it. The liberal, sex, drugs and rock and roll society that we've become and laugh at when portrayed on television comedies, is a fundamental cause of their hatred for us, far more than our military might, which they fear and respect. Our permissive culture is poison to Islamic society. It is viewed as a virus invading their bodies and destroying their souls. We can joke about the pot smoked in high school or the sexual conquests made in college, but to our enemies these are nails in the coffin of the Great Satan. I guess we just start saying no to everything.

I'm sure most Americans reading this sense my sarcasm, the total impossibility of transforming the United States of America into the Islamic Republic of America. We would have to abandon all of our ideals, all of our freedoms, all that it means to be Americans. The great irony is that many devout Muslims reading this wouldn't recognize the sarcasm at all. To them it would be a simple prescription for fixing America, or at least a good start, a start to a process they mean to see completed at some point in the future. We might ask ourselves one question. If we know they can’t change our beliefs, ideals and principles, and we cannot change theirs, just what is the end game for Islamic domination of America?

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