Jeff Edwards is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, and an Anti-Submarine Warfare Specialist. He is currently working as a civilian expert consultant to the Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Command, the Navy's think tank for high-tech undersea warfare. His naval career spanned more than two decades and half the globe -- from chasing Soviet nuclear attack submarines during the Cold War, to launching cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf.
He puts his extensive experience as a Surface
Warfare specialist to work in his new novel,
TORPEDO.
In a plot that could easily be ripped from
today's headlines, TORPEDO combines an accident
at a nuclear power plant, an illegal arms
deal, and a biological warfare attack, to
ignite a crisis that could draw Western Europe,
the Middle East, and the United States into
all-out war. TORPEDO mixes the elements of
a classic sea chase novel with state-of-the-art
technology to create a cutting-edge Surface
Warfare Thriller.
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February 10, 2005
[Have an opinion on this article? Go to the Discussion
Forum to sound off.] 'Fish are not aware of water.' So sayeth the ancient Chinese proverb. I don't know who first uttered those words, or even which of the many Chinese languages or dialects they were spoken in. In all honesty, I cannot even say for certain that the proverb originated in the Middle Kingdom. But, like most proverbs, the truth inherent in those six little words is so obvious as to be inarguable.
We rarely pay attention to the things that surround us all the time. The sun goes down every evening. But how often do we even notice a sunset, let alone pause to savor its beauty? Sunsets are free, and they happen all the time. Both of those factors somehow devalue sunsets in our minds. If we had to pay for every sunset, we'd devote more attention to them. If they were as rare as solar eclipses, many of us would take great pains to be prepared for the next one. But sunsets are neither rare nor expensive, so we tend to forget about them. We swim along like good little fish, blithely unaware that we are surrounded by water.
If we restricted our indifference to sunsets, our lives might be a little less enriching, but we'd otherwise be alright. Unfortunately, sunsets are not the only things we fail to appreciate properly.
A few months ago, following aggressive get-out-the-vote campaigns on the part of both the Democratic and Republican parties, 59.6 percent of the eligible voters in America turned out to cast their ballots in the general election. It was America's highest voter turnout in over thirty years.
A few days ago, millions of Iraqis defied threats of violence and death to vote in their country's first free election in half a century. Despite the dire predictions of journalists and media experts, fear did not keep the Iraqi people away from the polls. Some of them woke to the sound of mortar fire on the morning of January 30th, and still they went to the polls. Voters were attacked by suicide bombers at least nine times, and still the Iraqi people went to the polls.
They had to be terrified. Nearly forty Iraqi voters were killed, and seventy others were wounded for daring to exercise their newly won right. Over 60% of the eligible voters in Iraq risked their lives and the safety of their homes and families to cast their ballots.
Sixty percent. That's a humbling figure for me. America hasn't seen that kind of voter participation since the general election of 1968. We walk or drive to our polls without fear, and indeed, without a second thought. The people of Iraq cast their ballots against a backdrop of mortar fire, bombs, and death, and they still managed a better turnout than we have seen since the middle of the last century.
The right to vote in America has become devalued in the minds of many of our citizens. It is neither rare, nor expensive. It's like water to a fish: too common and easily attained to be noticeable.
But the right to vote, and the other freedoms that we treat so casually, are not without cost. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply does not know the history of our nation. Liberty is not guaranteed. It isn't cheap, and it's never ever easily attained. Although we frequently forget that it's true, the freedoms that America holds dear have been purchased with blood and with sacrifice.
The closing salutation of the Declaration of Independence takes the form of a pledge: '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.'
That was the price our forefathers swore to pay for the freedoms we now take so lightly: Their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor. If we treat those words as mere political rhetoric, they don't carry much more weight than an empty campaign promise. Less, perhaps, as they seem too grandiloquent to have much application down here in the real world.
But they were not empty words. The fifty-six men who signed their names to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence were prepared to honor the price they had sworn to pay. And they did pay the price.
