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On 16 January, 2016, the Louisiana State University of Shreveport hosted a symposium honoring participants in a top-secret and unprecedented international air strike against the forces of Saddam Hussein in 1991. Present were pilots and technicians who had been stationed operated in Barksdale Air Force Base, as well as scholars, photographers, journalists, and family members.
Today I observed a modern marvel of supreme superficiality. A meager convention of portly, aged men, mostly wasps, gathered in a self-congratulatory "symposium" to celebrate their achievements (as stated) in a small college theater. The men, dozens of them, were predominantly air force retirees who wore green shirts to designate their role in the opening volleys of an historic exercise in global air assault, 16 January, 1991, against 35 of 39 targets in Iraq, then ruled by Saddam Hussein.