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.

Reflections on the Death of Saddam
by Jim Clonts, 2006

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT MILITARY.COM, January 8, 2007

Early Saturday morning, while standing in line at the local grocery, I saw the newspaper headline that during the night in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein had been executed. I knew the execution was coming, but when I saw the headline I was still surprised, both at the news and at my reaction to it.

For some reason I couldn’t imagine a world without Saddam. He was a ruthless, evil, murderous dictator, but he also played a major role in my nine years of military service. He was the great nemesis. I’d spent a great deal of the 1990s either bombing his military, planning to bomb his military or worrying about what he was going to do next with his military. For Saddam to be gone seemed---wrong. His execution left me---unsatisfied. There was no feeling of justice. Inside, I was not saying, “Yeah, he got what he deserved!”

Even though I hold mostly conservative values with regards to the economy and foreign affairs, I’ve departed with my conservative brothers over the death penalty. I was once a staunch advocate of capital punishment. After all, why should we let men who have murdered in cold blood lounge in our prisons for the rest of their lives? The public pays for their nutritionally-balanced meals, healthcare, recreation and even some education, for decades. Doctors hired by the State work diligently to keep these men alive as long as possible, providing them with better healthcare than millions of law-abiding citizens. I’m sure even in Iraq Saddam was getting good healthcare and three square meals a day. It costs money to keep these people alive, still I’m inclined to pay it.

My disdain for capital punishment doesn’t come from a moral sense of the value of human life or any liberal notion that it is cruel to execute a convicted killer. My problem with capital punishment is that justice is not served. The prevailing method of execution in this country is lethal injection, where the prisoner is first given an injection to induce sleep. Is justice really served by falling asleep? Or is it one long decade after another of life in a cage?

Call me cruel, but I believe life behind bars is far worse than being “put to sleep.” Lethal injection is what we do to our dogs and cats when they get old and feeble, and we love our pets! We call it “putting them down”, but it is lethal injection. Putting down Timothy McVey was not my idea of justice. Keeping him in a concrete box with minimal human interaction for the rest of his natural life to reflect on his crime would have been a far more fitting punishment.

Many Shias in Iraq celebrated the death of Saddam. That feeling of “justice” will last a day or two, then Saddam will become just a memory. His execution will register as a tiny blip on the radar scope that is the sectarian war between Shias and Sunnis. No one there was really fighting for Saddam anymore and his death is now just symbolism.

I liked the notion of Saddam behind bars. He was a constant reminder of the tyranny that existed in Iraq before the war: mass graves, torture chambers, rape rooms and the chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds. In a few years memories will fade and Saddam’s image will become warped by time and a sense of nostalgia. The real “Butcher of Baghdad” will be lost to history, only existing in the hearts and minds of his victim’s families. As they die off, his image will change once again and people will begin to question his tyranny, just as today some are denying the Holocaust. Had Saddam been kept behind bars until his natural death, we would have had a tangible reminder of his evil for another decade or so.

I can’t help but think many families of Saddam’s victims will feel as I do, just a little bit empty, just a little cheated. When Saddam was alive and in prison we all knew he was paying for his crimes. Saturday the payment stopped.

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