The World and Everything in It - September 2, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

People in Louisiana and Mississippi are picking up the pieces left by Hurricane Ida.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Also, some lawmakers want to limit the president’s ability to deploy military forces.

Plus, we’ll meet an Afghanistan war veteran who is singing his way to healing.

And Cal Thomas on the history lessons we ignore at our peril.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, September 2nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BUTLER: And I’m Paul Butler. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Taliban holds victory parade on U.S. military vehicles » Taliban fighters held a victory parade on Wednesday. Many rolled through the streets of Kandahar riding atop U.S. military vehicles…

AUDIO: [Helicopter]

… as an American made Blackhawk helicopter roared overhead.

AUDIO: [Helicopter]

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said Wednesday that the United States might coordinate with the Taliban on military strikes against the ISIS-K terror group.

MILLEY: In war, you do what you must.

The Taliban is not affiliated with ISIS-K as it is with al-Qaida.

Meantime, more than 30 California children are stuck in Afghanistan after traveling to the country to visit relatives weeks before the Taliban seized power.

Officials with three school districts said Wednesday that they have been in contact with the families who fear they have been forgotten by the U.S. government.

Milley said stranded Americans are not forgotten.

MILLEY: We will continue to evacuate American citizens under the leadership of the Department of State as this mission has now transitioned from a military mission to a diplomatic mission.

That means the Biden administration will now negotiate with the Taliban for the safe return of American residents and citizens.

School officials said the kids are enrolled in California schools but were unable to get out of Kabul before the U.S. government left them behind.

The officials said some of the children were born in the United States and are U.S. citizens.

Power makes slow return to eastern New Orleans » The lights are back on in some Louisiana homes. Power company Entergy said it’s slowly restoring power to New Orleans.

But Gov. John Bel Edwards acknowledged Wednesday that there’s a long road ahead to fix the storm-ravaged power grid.

EDWARDS: More than 11,000 homes and businesses were restored. Now, we were over a million, so I’m very mindful that it’s a start and only a start.

Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remain without power or water service.

Entergy said powering up the state “will still take time given the significant damage.” And the pace of those repairs will determine how quickly the region's important oil refineries can restart operations that were shut down by Hurricane Ida.

Nine Louisiana refineries had to shut down due to the storm. Collectively, they account for about 13 percent of the nation’s refining capacity. That has triggered a jump in gas prices in some states.

Texas 6-week abortion ban takes effect » A law barring most abortions is now in effect in the state of Texas. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The Supreme Court has not yet acted on an emergency appeal from abortion rights groups to put the law on hold.

If allowed to remain in force, the law would be the most far-reaching protections for the unborn in the United States since the high court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the protections into law in May. The law prohibits abortions once a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus, usually around six weeks.

Under the Texas law, the state won't prosecute abortionists. Rather, private citizens have the power to sue them and anyone involved in facilitating abortions that violate the law.

At least 12 other states have passed laws to protect unborn babies early in pregnancy, but courts have blocked all of them from taking effect.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Fire crews report progress in defending Lake Tahoe from fire » California firefighters reported some progress Wednesday in the battle to defend communities on the south end of Lake Tahoe.

Officials have evacuated thousands of residents from the area as the Caldor Fire closed in.

Chance Inwood is air operations branch director. He said planes and helicopters are actively attacking the fire.

INWOOD: 120,000 gallons of retardant. That’s including two VLATs and five LATS. For rotary wing, that’s 384,000 gallons of water.

Operations section chief Tim Ernst said, “We lucked out a little bit yesterday with some of the winds that didn’t come up quite as hard as we expected them to."

The Caldor Fire has been burning toward Lake Tahoe, climbing over a high-elevation Sierra Nevada summit and descending into the Tahoe Basin.

Despite some positive developments, officials warned firefighters that critical weather conditions remained and they would likely face more gusty, swirling conditions.

5 missing and 6 hurt after Navy helicopter crash in Pacific » Rescue crews were still searching Wednesday for five missing sailors a day after a U.S. Navy helicopter crashed in the ocean off the coast of Southern California. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown reports.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: Rescuers pulled one sailor from the water shortly after the MH-60S chopper crashed on Tuesday. He was listed in stable condition, but five others remained missing.

The helicopter crashed about 70 miles from San Diego after taking off from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. It was conducting what the Navy described as routine flight operations.

Five sailors aboard the carrier were also injured and were listed in stable condition.

The Coast Guard was helping the Navy search for the sailors in the chilly waters.

The Navy is investigating the cause of the crash.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: hurricane cleanup efforts begin.

Plus, lessons from history.

This is The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Thursday the 2nd of September, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Paul Butler.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up: Hurricane Ida’s aftermath.

As you just heard a moment ago, recovery efforts in Louisiana are progressing slowly. Thousands of households are still without power and water, conditions that could persist for weeks.

BUTLER: WORLD senior correspondent Kim Henderson visited the disaster zone on Tuesday to find out how people are holding up.

KIM HENDERSON, CORRESPONDENT: When Hurricane Ida slammed the Gulf Coast with 150-mph winds, residents of Greensburg—one of Louisiana’s oldest towns—felt the full force of her wrath.

SHOVAKA: Man, it was very powerful. It was like the wind was howling. It was very scary, like, you know, like a horror movie like you know, something you see on TV . . .

Tangipahoa—60 miles north of the coast—felt it, too. It’s about an hour east of Baton Rouge and an hour and a half northwest of New Orleans.

As power lines snapped and giant oak trees uprooted, Rachel Prichard had one thing on her mind. Her children. They were at her mother’s house, usually a 15-minute drive away.

PRICHARD: It took me six hours to get to my kids and not knowing if they was alive or dead . . .

Prichard and her husband used a chainsaw to cut a path through downed trees blocking roadways.

PRICHARD: It was horrifying. It was the worst feeling in the world, because all the AT&T towers, everything was down. You couldn't call, you didn't know nothing. And when you see all the damage that is around you, and not being able to get to your kids, that is the worst feeling in the world.

In nearby Amite, the Red Cross opened a shelter at the high school gym, a 100-year-old brick building that emerged unscathed. 

KRUEGER: We rode through the hurricane in a hunkered down position in the hallway . . .

That’s Sue Krueger. Starting Saturday, she and six other staffers doled out cots and MREs to 66 guests seeking refuge. With no electricity, temps inside the building are making their stay uncomfortable.

KRUEGER: We have one generator that is powering an air conditioning unit.

Patra Rankins is town clerk in Roseland, six miles to the north. A line of cars wrapped around her office building Tuesday as locals waited for pallets of bottled water to arrive. But drinking water isn’t the only problem. There’s no water for bathing. No water for flushing toilets.

That’s why Rankins was hoping for a bigger delivery—a compatible generator to power the town’s water system. 

RANKINS: The last I checked, when I was in my car, it was like 99. So it's hot. And we were looking at, especially the elderly community, who has no water. What if a fire happened, and we have no water.

One evacuee from Loranger, La., said the heat has tempers flaring, too. 

ASHLEY: They're driving reckless. Yesterday, like instead of using the caution lights as a stop sign because there's no lights, they are going. They're not stopping. Somebody yesterday told me, “Just hit me. Hit me.”

Emotions were also high at the Quick Way in Arcola. It’s a gas station, but pumps had the tell-tale sign of plastic wrapping covering handles. Even so, lines of hopeful cars snaked along medians. 

MAN: Need gas for the generator. Got to have it . . . They’re out of gas, you’re saying? Oh, well. Let me go a little further then.

Jared Hahn is under the awning at one of those pumps. He’s a utility lineman, brought in from Kentucky. He and his partner have opened their cooler. They’re making sandwiches. He says the work in Louisiana has unique challenges. 

HAHN: The humidity first off and the bugs. We’re not used to bugs up there. So we get somewhat of the humidity, but not enough like it is down here.

Two deaths Tuesday underscore the danger associated with the task of restoring power. A pair of contract workers died from electrocution while repairing the grid in Alabama.

It’s not Hahn’s first time to get called in for disaster relief, but he doesn’t grumble about the work.

HAHN: Very humbling that we get the opportunity to come down here and help, but very difficult for our families, because we’ve got to leave everybody behind. And we don't know how long we're going to be here.

Hahn says he packed for two weeks. But he spent 32 days repairing power lines in Louisiana after Hurricane Laura. That was just last year.

And people are still trying to recover from that storm.

Luther Harrison is a vice president for Samaritan’s Purse. It still has staff on the ground in Lake Charles, working on Hurricane Laura recovery projects. Now they have Ida to contend with. 

HARRISON: So Louisiana has always been an area that has been, I guess, prone to a lot of disasters. But we have built some wonderful church partnerships and relationships through these storms.

Harrison says his organization will focus efforts in one of the hardest hit areas—LaPlace. It’s on the east bank of the Mississippi River, right in the heart of the New Orleans metro area.

HARRISON: There will be opportunities for us to cut trees, to tarp roofs, to help families find items that can be salvaged that they've worked hard for throughout their years. And, you know, just to show them that God  has not forgotten them . . .

Matthew Delaughter pastors a church plant in New Orleans called Immanuel Community Church. He’s found some needed generator gas for an expected power outage of three or four weeks.

Delaughter believes COVID helped his church learn to be faithful in a time of upheaval. 

DELAUGHTER: I found that our congregation just kind of rolled with the punches really well. So I'm honestly kind of expecting the same even as, you know, whatever lies before us in the next three or four weeks.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: going to war.

Here’s a question from Civics 101. Which branch of the U.S. government has the power to declare war?

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Congress. Right?

REICHARD: That’s right. It’s a pretty awesome power, and thankfully, one that’s rarely used. That might come as a surprise, given the number of military engagements U.S. forces have been involved in over the last two centuries. In fact, most of the conflicts we think of as wars aren’t really wars at all, according to the constitutional definition.

BUTLER: The way the U.S. government handles military engagements hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years. But a new reform bill would give both the executive and legislative branches new marching orders.

WORLD correspondent Caleb Bailey reports.

CALEB BAILEY, REPORTER: In 1941, Congress voted almost unanimously to declare war on Japan. Here’s President Franklin Roosevelt.

ROOSEVELT: ... since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 2 1941...

That vote propelled the United States into World War II. And it was the last time Congress issued a declaration of war.

But it was not the last time U.S. troops have gone into battle.

Cully Stimson manages the National Security Law program at the Heritage Foundation.

STIMSON: Remember, Article One, Section Eight, Clause 11 of the Constitution is the Declare War Clause. And Congress, and Congress alone, under our constitutional framework, has the authority to declare war. And so Congress has declared war five times, in our nation's history. And they've authorized the use of military force over 40 times.

Those 40 authorizations have included some historic military conflicts. Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. For all of those engagements, the president has used what is supposed to be a much more limited authority to order troops overseas.

But in practice, declaring war and authorizing military force are nearly indistinguishable. So what’s the difference?

A declaration of war implies a long-term conflict between two parties. It’s such a serious step the Framers wanted to make sure no one person wielded that power. But the president still needs the ability to take swift action in more limited situations.

STIMSON: And so although Congress has the authority to declare war, it's up to the president to prosecute the war. And it's also up to the president and not 435 members, or 535 members of Congress, that's the House and the Senate combined, to be little mini commanders in chief. So the president is required, in fact duty bound, to defend the nation. So he can act with dispatch, and quickly as things change, and there are attacks on our country. And you don't want to wait around for Congress to debate these things.

The Framers built this tension into the Constitution as part of the system of checks and balances.

But by 1973, Congress decided the executive branch had too much power to involve the country in unnecessary conflicts. That year, lawmakers passed the War Powers Resolution. It requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of sending U.S. forces into hostilities. Congress then has 60 days to approve the operation or … the president must order the troops to stand down.

But Cully Stimson says in nearly 50 years, Congress has never refused to back a president’s use of force.

STIMSON: Congress has the power of the purse, as it's called. And so Congress can withdraw, on a going forward basis, financial support for ongoing military operations, but that's politically risky for them, and so they have not done it.

Critics say that has thrown the balance of power way out of whack. The War Powers reform legislation proposed in July aims to correct that imbalance.

Eric Gomez is the director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute.

GOMEZ: The slightly more optimistic take is that just by doing this and caring about it, Congress might exercise some muscles that have atrophied, right, it might care enough about this type of thing again, and it might get the experience of doing this, where maybe some members feel more passionate or more active about, give us an you know, we want a more active say and what happens.

The reform proposal tackles four major issues: It shortens the 60 day window for congressional approval to 20 days. It automatically cuts off funding to operations not authorized by Congress. It sets new requirements for authorizing the use of military force. And, it ends existing use-of-force authorizations, known as AUMFs.

Three are currently in effect: the 2001 response to 9/11 and two involving Iraq. One of those dates back to 1991 and the other to 2002.

Because the AUMFs don’t have a definite end date, they tend to live on in perpetuity. Eric Gomez says that’s partly because the current War Powers Resolution uses vague language to define a key term: hostilities.

GOMEZ: There's been a lot of dispute over legally what do hostilities mean? [6:35] The most notorious one is the 2001 AUMF, which was approved by Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and it's very short. And it just says, we can take action, all necessary and appropriate force, against entities that authorized or perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, aided the entities involved, or harbored anyone involved. And that justification has been used since 2001, to authorize strikes against countries that weren't involved in 9/11. So we've we've used them to justify attacks against ISIS, or justify operations against ISIS.

The proposed reform bill would define hostilities as ​​any situation involving any use of lethal or potentially lethal force by or against the U.S. military. That means just about any engagement would trigger congressional oversight.

Changing the way the U.S. military goes to battle might not be top of most voters’ minds heading into next year’s midterms. But both Eric Gomez and Cully Stimson say it’s one of the most important items on the congressional agenda.

STIMSON: I'm a third generation Navy officer, I'm a captain, I've been around 29 years in the military, I don't know anyone who's pro war. In the military. I don't know one person. I know a lot of people. But what they do demand is for their political leaders to explain to them the mission, the authority for that mission, and the reason behind it. And that's Congress's job. And so that's why this is much different than almost any other federal action.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Caleb Bailey.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Travelers at SeaTac International Airport outside of Seattle couldn’t believe their eyes as they flocked to baggage claim.

The Transportation Security Administration posted a video on Instagram of the unusual item circling around.

A frozen block of raw chicken, nestled in between the bags and suitcases.

In a rare show of humor, the TSA noted that at one time these wings and thighs were cooped up in a cooler but somewhere between baggage and the carousel, they became free range!

The post came with a reminder not to just wing your packing for travel. To keep from ruffling any feathers, TSA said, “meat should be properly packaged’ with ice or dry ice.” Good to know.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 2nd, 2021. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the healing power of making music.

With the recent U.S. pullout from Afghanistan a lot of people are being reminded of the challenges our military personnel face when returning home.

REICHARD: This summer, WORLD intern Grace Snell met an Afghanistan war veteran who traded in his gun for a pen and a guitar. Here’s his story.

MARTINEZ: So, I was deployed to Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base and when I was there we got rocketed a lot...

GRACE SNELL, INTERN: Juan Martinez Jr. is a retired staff sergeant. He deployed to Afghanistan in 20-13.

MARTINEZ: The thing about being deployed is that you have a job to do, and if you don't do your job, things can go wrong, because other people are depending on you.

Between missions, he wrote poetry to cope with the stress. Martinez poured his heart into one poem especially: “Joyless Reflections.”

MARTINEZ: Streams of conflicting emotions race through my troubled head/ Sometimes not knowing if living alive, I may be found dead…

Poetry helped Martinez survive deployment. But even after he returned home nine months later, memories of war still haunted him.

Then, a friend told him about The Veteran’s Guitar Project.

SOUND: ARRIVING AT COMMUNITY MUSIC SCHOOL

On a Sunday afternoon, three veterans gather with their guitar teacher in a classroom of the Armstrong Community Music School. Two more join on Zoom. They mill around, exchanging greetings and plugging in guitars.

A vet named Jack taps on a drum set.

Starting out, Martinez didn’t even own a guitar, let alone know how to play one. But here, he doesn’t feel self-conscious about his music—or his emotions.

MARTINEZ: It was a place where I could be open and talk about things that I went through, feelings that I had, and they would support me. It's good to have support from others because when you're alone, you go down the rabbit hole, and that's not a good place to be

BASINI: A one, a two, a skiddly-diddly-doo.

The group’s guitar teacher, Anthony Basini, coaches the vets. Although trained at the Berklee College of Music, Basini doesn’t talk down to any of the guys. He leads them through new songs and breaks down the tricky parts.

BASINI: Nice. Yeah, you got it...

With help, Martinez set the poems he wrote in Afghanistan to music. Now the group plays them together. Martinez’s voice teacher Chrissy sings with them.

MUSIC: JOYLESS REFLECTIONS

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Lynn Smith-Henry co-founded the group and serves as chaplain. He says music helps veterans cope with wounds from their past.

SMITH-HENRY: This context is a healing context, you know, music is healing. We have talked about this many, many times, right.

Talking about emotions isn’t easy for the guys. It runs against the grain of military culture.

MARTINEZ: In the military, they tell you, you're not issued feelings or emotions, okay? So suck it up and get the job done. But writing these songs helps me to get that out so it's not weighing heavy on my soul. For a lot of veterans, they don't know how to express themselves, or talk to people. Music is the avenue that I have to say what I need to say to heal and to move on, and to help other people around me to get through that.

The group has improved a lot over the years.

SMITH-HENRY: When we started out, it was tough. We didn't always have this level of communication and interconnectedness. We started basically as veterans who were strangers to each other, coming from each of our own military experiences.

Smith-Henry says the songs they play today sound nothing like the versions five or six years ago.

SMITH-HENRY: Those songs have gone through a whole process of change, and input from all people in the group adding their voice to it. It's not like someone sits down and writes something, and it's in concrete, and that's the way it always is.

“Joyless Reflections” is a hard song to sing, but the veterans keep doing it week after week. Smith-Henry appreciates writers like Martinez.

SMITH-HENRY: What they express that some of us can't, who don't write songs, they express the same things that we feel and they do it for us.

The heart of the guitar project is to help veterans heal. Some of the songs, like “Joyless Reflections,” give voice to their shared pain. But a song called “Rescue Me” is one of Smith-Henry’s favorites.

SMITH-HENRY: That is a cry for help that I think all those in the military we've been at some point in our life, where we have felt those things, we said those very same things, Rescue me, so, yeah, those things, those are the words that touch my soul

MUSIC: RESCUE ME

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Grace Snell in Austin, Texas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER ,HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Charles Dickens might say we have a lot to learn from the best of times and the worst of times. But what about modern times? 

Here’s commentator Cal Thomas.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: There once were summer times when the living was easy, as the song from Porgy and Bess goes. No one could say that about this summer, what with Covid-19 still spreading dangerously and the uncertainty over what happens next in Afghanistan.

Amid this summer’s flood of “breaking news,” I re-discovered a classic book by the English historian Paul Johnson. It’s titled Modern Times, and it’s more than just an account of the 20th century. It’s a chronicle of what can happen when people deliberately ignore history and thus doom themselves to repeat it.

In his chapter on the rise of Hitler in Germany, Johnson writes with profound implications for our day. He notes many Germans rejected “the Western liberal notion of freedom of choice and private provision based on high wages (preferring) the paternalistic alternative of compulsory and universal security. The state was nursemaid as well as sergeant-major. It was a towering shadow over the lives of ordinary people and their relationship toward it was one of dependency and docility.”

Think of America’s deepening debt and politicians from both parties trying to spend more. Who can deny that Americans increasingly rely on the government to take care of them? Relying on government used to be a last resort, not a first resource. But we no longer have a universal belief in the value of self-reliance.

Johnson quotes German sociologist Max Weber from an address in 1919: “The honour of the civil servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of superior authorities.” Johnson adds that Weber believed, “Only the politician had the right and duty to exercise personal responsibility. It would be difficult to conceive of worse advice to offer German mandarins. It was followed, right to the bitter end in 1945.”

This history should prove an eternal warning: People must always curb the power of the state lest it become a functional—or actual—dictatorship.

Carl Schmidt, Germany’s leading legal philosopher, argued “order could only be restored when the demands of the state were given over the quest for an illusionary freedom.” Such a position was the natural outcome of what was being taught in German schools and universities. Anyone else notice similarities between academic and political institutions in modern America?

Johnson also writes of the propensity for even wise and educated people to delude themselves. He recalls a lengthy letter written by Winston Churchill to British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in which Churchill said Japan would not present a “menace in our lifetime.” He wrote that letter in December 1924. Seventeen years later, Japan would prove him very wrong.

There is so much more in this 800-page book, including the difficulty of imposing a moral code on people who wish to live immoral lives.

History is not just a collection of old names and dates to be memorized in school. It is full of lessons we never fully learn.

I’m Cal Thomas.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet joins us for Culture Friday.

And, sports stories. We’ll review some entertainment options that put faith at center court.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Paul Butler.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Jesus said: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.