I don’t understand why Presidential candidates need to espouse on things they don’t have firm opinions or knowledge of.  I’d be happy to accept  “I’m not ready to discuss that, I’m more focused on my 9 9 9 plan now”.

But the gaffe did get me thinking about China. And, frankly, they don’t worry me.  Oh sure, if they wanted they could take Taiwan. Or Japan. But why would they go to that trouble when they could just let a few hundred million “volunteers” absorb the Asian provinces of the old Russian empire?

So when I think about China, I think less about nukes, and more about Greece.  And in particular how little old Greece is putting a hurt on all of Europe just because they let them borrow money and screw around with their currency.

Sound familiar?  Well, we’ve got a lot more debt with China than Greece did with the EuroFools. And they’ve been holding their currency at wacky rates so they could make stuff and lend money to us so we could buy it.  And we are rapidly proving ourselves to be as irresponsible as Greece. I’d say we have China just about where we want them…

So if I were in charge, I wouldn’t worry too much about China. I’d worry more about getting our systems (free market, hard work, democracy) back in order so we can capitalize on their fall.

Right now, idealistic young Americans are gathered together to fight injustice and build a better world.

Sure, they’re a little dirty, and maybe some of their language is a bit rough, but they’ve left behind family and friends, as well as the creature comforts the rest of us take for granted, to make a stand for what they believe in.

It’s just too bad that today the mainstream media is focusing on the spoiled, incoherent clowns of Occupy Wall Street and ignoring our young fighting men and women.

Read the whole thing.

http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/05/10/inside-seal-team-six/

BUDS
Coronado Island, San Diego, CA

Later, when Obama wants to cut the military, Time will stop writing about them.

I was still hoping for a bb-gun at this age.

When I was in the Army I was issued an M16 rifle. To the best of my recollection I never had a jam with live ammo. I did with blanks, but I don’t recall ever with live ammo. We did practice jam recovery (slap – tap – rack – bang), but with many tens of thousands of rounds down range, some with barrels almost bending from heat, no jams.

Those rifles were old, many dated to Vietnam, and they were loose, sloppy and inaccurate. But they ran fine.

I was worried when issued the gun, because I was old enough, and interested in guns enough, to know about the controversy that the M16 caused when first introduced. It jammed… a LOT.   This turned out to be due to the Army using the wrong ammo, and also to a buffer spring issue.

I now have a decedent of the M16A1 introduced in Vietnam. It is of the M4 variant and is  tuned for competition shooting.  It has a compensator to minimize recoil by venting gas backwards.  It has a lightened bolt driven backwards with just enough gas to cycle the rounds, but hit the back of the receiver too hard.

It doesn’t jam either.

Given that history, you might find this history, of the M16’s introduction into service interesting.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/ak-47-history-1110?page=all#

He got the facts basically right, which is refreshing for a journalist – especially one Esquire would hire. Read it.  The author also wrote the popular book “The Gun”, which is a history of the AK-47.

By my estimate, this song, played live on BBC1, perfectly, represents about 150,000 hours of dedicated practice – or 17.1 years by the musicians involved.

The song’s style  isn’t really my normal fare.  It is good, no doubt, but what I’m drawn to is the expertise the performance represents. The effort. The dedication.

So much in life means time.  I often think of it that way.  A car represents some fraction of my work year. Taxes too.

So, for instance, when I see a soldier killed, I feel sadness at the loss of life, and potential future, but I also know that parents spent years of their lives preparing the soldier to be an adult.   The investment staggers the mind when considered cumulatively. When politicians kill they are really spending other people’s past and future time.  We really ought to include that investment when calculating the possible returns from our “wars”.

I’m not advocating some silly peace platform. I’m just suggesting that if you want to make the case for taking away my son’s future, and squandering my past investment,  you (the collective, government “you”),  better offer up a better reason that you’ve been doing lately.

If General Petraeus tells me that publicly stating my view that Islam is a dangerous religion hurts our war effort, should I refrain?  I can tell you I would strongly consider it. Out of respect for him and what he has done.   But after some consideration, I’d probably tell him to pound sand and pull his head out of his bottom.

Drudge has him warning that the Reverend in Florida burning a Koran (Quran?) was endangering the war effort.   Thus the Reverend was not patriotic.  Was he less patriotic, for instance, than a Senate Majority Leader publically saying our war was lost?   Probably not.  But hey… Petraeus only answers the questions asked and no liberal reporter is going to ask that question.

I’m not of the persuasion that believes if a liberal does it then I should do it. Far from it.  But, unlike most liberals,  I definitely want to help our soldiers beat this enemy.   My bigger question would be what is the best way to do that?

The core question, raised by the Reverend, and ignored by Petraeus, is who exactly are we fighting?   Radical Islam is the answer most American’s would give.

And I don’t think Petraeus would give that answer. Nor would many in our political leadership.

So my question to Petraeus, and to his bosses, is that if you don’t even know who you are fighting, what are we doing fighting at all?

I want to fight Radical Islam – in a number of ways. Overseas, certainly. But I also want to keep them from living here.  I’d end Islamic immigration immediately so that we don’t have areas like England, France, and Holland where radicals can act with impunity.

I want a war effort that can work. And what we have now, frankly, probably can’t.

This is a 1941 picture of German soldier, Josef Schultz, shortly before his death at the hands of his own comrades.

He refused to shoot Serbian civilians. After a quarrel with his NCO, he dropped his helmet and firearm, and walked to stand with the civilians. They were all shot.

His actions accomplished nothing. He died. The civilians died. The German Army clearly didn’t have our American Army concept of legal and illegal orders.

Should he have “worked within the system”? Should he have fired and missed? Who knows?  The details are lost to time. His actions inspire, but probably aren’t practical.

His result, however, is a clear message from the past, that dissenters to central authority end up on the wrong end of a gun.  Hence, we should be EXTREMELY reluctant to grant central, unquestionable authority of ANY kind.  The power will be abused.

The disarmament movement has been tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmanment.

Walter Lippmann
1943

As quoted in Angelo Codevilla’s “Advice to War Presidents“

Lippmann, who has become best known these days when vilified by Glenn Beck, probably deserves vilification. But he did make a valid point here.

It comes to mind as the FIRST cuts the Obama Administration seeks are in our, at war, Defense Department.

I can easily envision cuts in our military apparatus, just not before a few hundred billion elsewhere.

I’m reading Angelo Codevilla’s Advice to Wartime Presidents.  I got it after seeing him on CSPAN Book Notes.

This excerpt sums up his premise:

Losing wars while winning battles is hard and rare. Yet American presidents and their advisers have managed to do just that for nearly a century.

and the books goal is to basically explain statecraft to the people purporting to practice it.

The introduction thrashes every President of the last 90 years. And treats every Secretary of State even harsher.

If you don’t want to read the book, you still may find the CSPAN Book Notes segment informational:

http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/Teachable/867/Advice+to+War+Presidents.aspx

The video above is from last year, but it was the only I could find of it actually impacting targets.  The Army has deployed it to Afghanistan in select Special Forces units to get real combat feedback.  Each unit costs $25K, and each round, $25 bucks.

It looks cool, but the soldiers did seem slow to fire it. Not sure if that was just for demonstration, or if it has some inherent complexity that slows them down.

Read more here.

Steny Hoyer seems pretty stupid, you know, for an educated, “elite”, kind of fellow.

Military members are under paid, relative to risk and responsibilities. Now is NOT the time to cut their pay.

Federal employees, however, are over paid and except for paper cuts at very little risk.  We need to not only cut their pay, but also cut their numbers, their duties, and their reach.

Hoyer is of age to have served, but never did.  I don’t require it in order to speak about military issues, but this level of stupidity rises to the point where the man’s qualifications should be questioned.

His is a classic Democratic stupidity. HIs “constituency”, Federal district workers, aren’t happy, and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the country in his efforts to please them.  What is so stupid about it is that the Federal workers, if asked, wouldn’t want what is happening to them to also happen to members of the military.

Pssstt…. Hey Steny… there’s a WAR ON.

It is a small thing, but Google finally recognizes Veterans Day as it does other days of importance:

One year ago today a Muslim Army officer committed an act of terrorism at Fort Hood, Tx.  These soldiers, and an unborn baby, were killed by the terrorist:

Lt. Col. Juanita Warman, 55, Havre de Grace, Md.
Maj. Libardo Caraveo, 52, Woodbridge, Va.
Cpt. John P. Gaffaney, 54, San Diego, Calif.
Cpt. Russell Seager, 41, Racine, Wis.
Staff Sgt. Justin Decrow, 32, Plymouth, Ind.
Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, Kiel, Wis.
Spc. Jason Hunt, 22, Tillman, Okla.
Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, Mountain City, Tenn.
PFC Aaron Nemelka, 19, West Jordan, Utah
PFC Michael Pearson, 22, Bolingbrook, Ill.
PFC Kham Xiong, 23, St. Paul, Minn.
Michael G. Cahill, Cameron, Texas [civilian]
Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, Chicago, Ill.
Velez, unborn child

I wish I could write that thankfully the Army learned its lesson and adjusted how it handles Muslim soldiers, but they haven’t. And they also still leave their soldiers unprotected on bases all over this country.  Soldiers are still not permitted to carry defensive firearms on or off duty.  Personally owned firearms are still banned on bases.

It is sad, and irritating, that the softest targets in America are our military bases.  The jihadists certainly know this.  I just spent 3 days at Fort Benning. I left my carry gun at the hotel when I went on base.  Security wasn’t particularly tight.  They did check identification and momentarily confused me with a Ken Nelson who is a violent murderer and is a wanted man, but was born one year earlier  than me. By the time they sorted it out I could have shot them all and made my way to softer targets on base.  Cars weren’t being searched. Any jihadist could have snuck in pretty much any amount of weapons. And had a fiest on America’s finest, but unweaponed, soldiers.  The jihadists would be safer on base than at a local mall.

When my son asks “Dad, should I join the Army”… I honestly can’t say what my response will be.  There are great things to learn and do in the Army, but at the same time, if the Army won’t protect him or let him protect himself, how can I approve?  And even more importantly, if they are willing to sacrifice troops for false political correctness at home, what is happening overseas?   I’m just not sure the Army’s and our political leadership have America’s interest in mind any longer.

Warren “Skip” Munk

If you read the highlights of Bob Woodward’s new book it seems clear that Obama doesn’t want to be in Afghanistan. I don’t know if that is because he is generally anti-war/anti-military, because he’d rather spend the money on unions, or because he just wants to hide his head in the sand.

But instead of just imposing his will as Commander in Chief, and taking responsibility for this decision, he instead takes the best advice of his military advisers and corrupts it. He thus ensures lots of soldiers are there to get hurt or killed, but not enough to get the mission done.  He even refuses to talk about the war in terms of winning or losing.

In this he rises his stock as American’s most evil, narcissistic, “it’s all about me”, President since Richard Nixon.  That’s right… evil.  Getting other people killed, for your political benefit, is evil in my book.

This isn’t hope and change. This is politics from 1970. Its retro… and not the good kind.

Those who voted for Obama ought to be ashamed. And if they haven’t yanked their support for him then they need their head examined.

Obama is 2010’s Nixon. There are no protests because there is no draft, and the military is a tiny percentage of our population. Our callow nation pays false homage to the sacrifices our volunteer military makes while voting in those that will abuse that service. It’s sick, frankly.  It says much about Obama, and even more about us.