The lead in post is here….

Look at our pattern of waging since we have twice used miniature suns on our enemies:

Korea – Took the attack, got rolled back, finally got into the battle, rolled over the enemy, right up to the far end of their country, when we let them. joined by their allies, push us back and a long term armistice has been in place ever since, the Korean War having nver reached “closure.”

Vietnam – Took over from our allies, brought a conventional military, in terms of equipment and mindset, designed for a fight against an armor heavy military, into triple canopy jungles, initially to fight against an un-uniformed militia. While we dominated on the battlefields, even with our historical mindset and equipment limitations, world political opinion was picked up by our own governmental authorities, and we declared victory and departed, promising support for our allied forces. Strategically, we lost the war and the cause of world communism enslaved the people of South Vietnam, when too many loud voices said we couldn’t stomach the carnage anymore. In this war, we faced an enemy who wanted us out our their country, which, was definable by internationally recognized lines on maps.

Gulf War I – A defined mission to liberate Kuwait was handily achieved, using tactics requiring entry into a second nation (Iraq). While the military sought to not only push the aggressors out of Kuwait, they began to neutralize, by elimination, the forces of Saddam Hussein. With his paper tiger military was trapped on the “Highway of Death” while leaving Kuwait, our public opinion lost it’s stomach once more and demanded the end of the carnage, which was actually the strategic destruction of enemy armed forces, and was not engaging civilians. Once again, we fought against a country, one that we could identify on a map. We pushed them back within their borders.

The Global War on Terror – We have used far fewer troops to control two foreign nation far from our shores than any nation has used before in a “war.” We have been exceedingly “delicate” in the application of force, which has left mostly infrastructure intact, compared to the carpet bombing in WWII. We now are hamstrung by an enemy that knows no national boundaries, flies no flag, and wears civilian clothing, operating freely in all nations of the world. The stated goal of the enemy is not for us to leave “their land,” for “their land” is the entire planet. As a result, they are demanding the conquest of all lands of the world. We may leave Afghanistan and Iraq, but that will not be the end of the conflict. At best, it will provide a time to breathe, but no more.

This discussion is about our “governor,” metaphor being the control imposed, short of being able to reach full power on a piece of machinery, a limiting device. I would contend, with each conflict after WWII, we went in and adjusted the governor each time to a lower level than before, while at the same time, we were engineering more and greater military might and technical ability to attack anyone who attacks us.

Why? That is the main question.

You can understand the nations of the rest of the world, our allies, our enemies, and those who are still trying to decide who to stand with in the future, is looking at our much publicized debate and hoping they have correctly ascertained a trend in our policy and actions. The hope of the enemy is we will, lose our lunch and and, maybe, unlike Vietnam, not have the politicians declare victory and then bring the troops home (More like force the withdrawal by cutting off the appropriations money), but this time, following the trend line established, declare we are defeated in our effort to attack a root cause of aggression not only against us, but against all peoples who do not declare Islam as their guiding principle, and tell the rest of the world, from the mouths of our most senior elected officials, we should be ashamed of having sent out troops to their doorstep, to barge in and rape their daughters and kill their sons and fathers, and then cut off the funding, causing a “redeployment” all the way back to their stateside bases.

So, we are coming to a crossroad in our history. Do we, with the most powerful weaponry, the most militarily effective, yet compassionate people every to step forward in the defense of our nation, allow people, who are now well over 30, yet proclaimed “Don’t trust anyone over 30!” while they are young, to emasculate the military, so they may bow before any other country who does not “like” what we do?

It is clear. The projection of the ability to back up your statements, showing your strength, is what the world respects, unless you are the strong one. It is a particular human condition to try to tear down the ones who have risen to the top. We see it in the business world, as software companies went to Congress to try to break up Microsoft. We see the liberals attacking Wal-Mart, and we have the Islamofascists telling the world we need to be conquered. The enemy, respects the strength of our military, and like the Soviets, realize they cannot beat us on the battlefield. They can, as proven in Vietnam, in Central America, and to a lesser extent, in Gulf War I, defeat us by turning the stomachs of those in Congress and a few widely respected media outlets.

We have the answer and it also shows the degree of schizophrenia that has come to be accepted within our society. That will be the topic of Part III of this serial posting.

Batteries Released! Put your links here!

Dateline: Just before Independence Day, 1973, Charleston Naval Base, Charleston, SC, aboard USS CONE (DD-881).

The ship has been to sea for two weeks, playing “Orange Force” (polite way during the Cold War of not offending our enemy by calling our seaborne aggressor units, something other than “red forces.”) surface units, catching up on their Naval Gunfire Support (NGFS) qualifications by sending round after round of 5″/38 cal (54 lb projectiles) at the Carribbean isle of Culebra.

The long weekend was coming, there were 6 third class (“3/c”) midshipmen aboard, the crew had recently returned from a year off the coast of Vietnam, providing real world NGFS services for the Army and Marines, and the stacks needed a good going over with haze gray and the Ship’s company deserved some “R&R” after a hectic operating schedule.

I certainly wasn’t privy to the discussion, being a guy wearing dungarees for 6 weeks, as my first hands on educational experience as a one day to be Naval Officer, but I know this: Someone up the chain of command had the brilliant idea of letting the crew take off early for the really long weekend (Wednesday was the 4th that year), and deemed that the 3rd Class Middies, already with some practical experience handling painting implements in the fire rooms and the interior of the ARSOC launcher, as well as on the Signal Bridge, would be tasked to remain behind and be supervised by the duty section.

So, there we hung in Bos’n’s chairs from the fore and aft stacks, armed with brushes and rollers and prodigious amounts of haze gray, on the morning of the 3rd of July, we went about getting either the Engineer Officer’s of the 1st Lt’s “to do’s” knocked out.

Read the rest of this entry »

(disclaimer: may not be in the exact chronological order, and will not list each and every act of terror, but a good list is linked here)

*click!*
The Olympics in the 70s.
*click!*
The US Embassy in Iran.
*click!*
Marine Barracks, Beruit
*click!*
Leo Klingenhoffer on the Achilles Lauro
*click!*
Lockerbee, Scotland.
*click!*
Discos in Germany where US Service members congregate
*click*
Bombing of embassies in Africa,
Swarming over the “Mog”
USS COLE
9/11
Madrid
7/7
*Click!*
*CLICK!*
*CLICKKKK!*
Read the rest of this entry »

Eagle 1 quote Ralph Peters here. Something about killing the bad guys when engaged in a war. Sounds like a tried and true technique, strategy and tactic, from well before the US of A was even a political twinkle in any one’s eye…

About a year or so ago, a gentleman came into my place of work to have us do some for him. He was older, and it was about the time we had seen the “Mission Accomplished” banner, and yet, we were still having internal security problems in Iraq.

As we talked, he said something, so I asked “the question” and yes, he was a Vet, in fact, US Army and a vet of not only Okinawa, but also he went to Japan as part of the occupation force.

I asked him what kind of problems they had with internal security. He told me pretty much none. He said as they marched to the town they would set up camp near and administer, the streets were clear, with only Japanese policemen at each intersection. As they came by, the police would come to attention and salute the formation as they passed. He said sometimes you might see a door on the houses cracked slightly open, and several sets of eyes peering out, but it was orderly and the population went about the business of rebuilding a nation.

He did say one time someone was killed, so the order went out to the locals: You have three days to turn in your weapons. After that, if you have a weapon, you will be shot on the spot.

How did it work? They came and they turned in any and everything that was a weapon, including the many heirloom samurai swords and daggers, some of great age, but…the bottom line, they complied to the letter. He said they never found anyone with a weapon and they never had any issues of anyone being attacked again.

This also, is the connection, as to how so many fine swords ended up in the hands of the vets after WWII. They were each allowed to go to the turn ins and take, for their personal property, one rifle, one pistol and one sword as the spoils of war.

Does this go against our 2nd Amendment rights? Yes, but then again, it was a necessary measure, to ensure the safety of our troops, and we took it.

Consider Iraq today….

Trackbacked to:
EagleSpeak

Yesterday, I drafted a piece “Iraq: The Democrats 21st Century Cambodia?” I cross posted the piece at Third World County andI received a comment that linked to an editorial by Gordon Dillow in the Orange County Register from April 2005, which was written 30 years to the month after the final US pullout from South Vietnam.

Don’t take my word for this coming human rights disaster (funny how the Democrats hold themselves up as the champions of this issue, isn’t it?), read about a man and his father in the following editorial, then consider the human wreckage to have and to hold, when we pull out of Iraq, thinking it will stop the Islamofacsists from demanding more and more, until we are nothing left…

This month will mark the 30th anniversary of a shameful chapter in our nation’s history. Thirty years ago we abandoned a longtime ally, the Republic of (South) Vietnam.

And with it, along with millions of others, we abandoned Quang X. Pham’s dad.

Quang is an old friend of mine, a 40-year-old Mission Viejo businessman who came to the U.S. as a boy refugee from Vietnam and later served as a U.S. Marine helicopter pilot in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His father, Pham Van Hoa, now deceased, was a U.S.-trained South Vietnamese Air Force pilot who spent 12 years in a communist “re-education” camp because he refused to leave his country when the North Vietnamese army swept through South Vietnam in April 1975 – this while America, after investing 58,000 of its own sons’ lives, stood by and washed its hands of the entire bloody and tragic affair.

And even though he became an American who loved his country and served it courageously in uniform, for many years that abandonment rankled Quang’s heart. It rankled mine, too.

Quang has written a new book about his father, and about his own experiences as a refugee who became an American Marine. It’s called “A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey,” published by Ballantine Books (you can get more information at www.asenseofduty.com), and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand what the Vietnam War meant to some of the people who suffered the most because of it – that is, the people of South Vietnam. It’s powerful, and moving, and in it Quang tries to dispel a myth about Vietnam that still persists.

The myth is that guys like his dad didn’t fight for their country.

“I just want to see South Vietnamese (military men) like my father acknowledged,” Quang told me. “Not made into heroes or anything, but just acknowledged for what they did. I wanted to set the record straight.”

Certainly the casualty numbers tell a story that’s far different from the myth. The South Vietnamese armed forces lost a total of about 250,000 men killed in the war – a number that, as a percentage of national population, was about 50 times greater than American deaths.

And the numbers of the maimed were even greater. Ten years ago, as a reporter for the Register, I went back to Vietnam to cover the 20th anniversary of the end of the war, and everywhere I went I would meet aging former ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) soldiers who were missing arms or legs or eyes, many of them reduced to beggary because the communist government offered no pensions or even menial jobs for former ARVNs. When they found out I’d been an American soldier in the war they would often break out yellowed, crumbling, long-hidden South Vietnamese military ID cards and tell me, “I was with you, I was with you.”

And they were.

Now, I know some of my fellow American Vietnam veterans will disagree with me on this subject. They’ll call me up and tell me bitter tales about “Marvin the ARVN,” about South Vietnamese M-16s that were in perfect condition because “they’d never been fired, and were only dropped once,” about South Vietnamese corruption and incompetence and cowardice. Certainly there was no shortage of such things, particularly in the ARVN’s politicized upper ranks.

But don’t tell me – or Quang X. Pham – that 250,000 guys died with no brave men among them. Don’t try to tell guys who got their arms or legs blown off that they didn’t fight hard enough. Don’t think that a lot of guys like Quang’s father didn’t have a sense of duty and honor, even as they lost their war, and their country, and languished in brutal communist prison camps for years and years and years.

In the coming weeks you’ll probably see and hear a lot of retrospectives about the Vietnam War, some of them truthful, many of them media myths perpetuated by people who were never even there – the same sort of myths that even now are being created about the Iraq war and the Americans who’ve been fighting it. More on that in a future column.

But if you think that the Vietnam War was strictly an American war, if you think that the people of South Vietnam weren’t worth fighting for, or with, then I have a suggestion.

Talk to a guy like Quang X. Pham.

And ask him about his dad.

Read the book. See history throught the eyes of one who has been there and project into the future as to what might be as a result of taking counsel of our fears.

Update 11/17/2206:

From John of Castle Arrgghhh!, an email of an Army Officer, who has had mulitple tour in Iraq. He sees something over there and it says we’re about to do what this post is about, in the minds of the Iraqis, friend and foe alike, from David J. Baer, CPT(P), IN, 3/2/6 IA MiTT Team Chief:

By all means send my note on to his family. Before I got this job on the MiTT, I was a mechanized infantry company commander in southeast Baghdad and I lost two soldiers so I know what it’s like to write letters of condolence and what kind of loss his family must be feeling. You always hear certain people in Congress talk about leaving Iraq because of the horrible casualties we are taking and whatnot. However, they never seem to be the ones with family over here doing the grunt work. And as for casualties, each loss is a blow, but overall we have been extremely lucky to have as few deaths as we have had since 2003. No one in D.C. ever seems to ask guys like me what we think because they know that we would tell them that we have to stay until the job is done. If you want to win in Iraq, you have to take the gloves off like we did in OIF I and OIF II. We were aggressive and violently kinetic. It worked and the bad guys were deathly afraid of us and the people of Iraq respected us. Now we use kid gloves and the bad guys walk all over us and the people of Iraq don’t think they should support us because we may pack up and leave and then they would be the object of reprisals. It’s the hard right (lots of offensive action and firepower and not afraid to use it in a city) or the easy wrong (the kinder, gentler approach to dealing with terrorists to try and avoid casualties). I know which one works and which one doesn’t. I know which one will solve this “problem”. It will break a few eggs, but in the end we will have an omelet that will be passably good and tasty.

How about them apples? Act strong, be respected. Act weak and suffer attacks.

H/T: Third World County reader DC

Trackbacked at: CAstle ARRGGHHH!!!

Recently, the discussion was about the Tet Offensive and how the events of February, 1968 related to current day situations was posted on this blog here and here.

Possibly now, it is the moment to get ahead of the power curve and discuss the big picture that happened 30 years ago, and see if it may relate to what happens next….

So, Richard Nixon was President. The Democrats had control of the Congress. The President, as he promised in his election campaign was pulling our troops out of ground combat positions, yet left the promise of support for the South Vietnamese Army, using the strategy of “Vietnamization,” a process of turning the war over to the ARVNs, as they were able to handle it.

Effectively, in 1972, our ground combat forces were out, safe advisers left the ARVNs. While the president is the Commander-in-Chief, Congress controls the money (you’d think people would quit accusing the presidents, of any time, of what goes on with the budget, but, once more, I digress). So Congress cut off the funding for the supporting arms and the supplies from America going to South Vietnam. Now, the study of history over the ages shows the winner of wars is the country who has the best logistics and can out-produce the adversary in the fight. When “we” (the Democratic Congress) pulled appropriations from the war support effort for our allies, they sentenced them to loss of the war, and, in many cases, death in a very literal sense.

So in 1975, the NVA rolled into Saigon and raised the North Vietnamese flag in that city. It was over. What next? The Communist rebels in Cambodia, led by Pol Pot now had nothing to fear and a totalitarian government came into power and the killing fields became a part of life, as about 1/2 of the population of Cambodia was killed it’s own.

Why did the conquest of South Vietnam and the mass murders happen across the border? There was no nation with the power to let them know this wasn’t acceptable.

What does this mean today?

We already know there is simmering hate in Iraq between the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds. We have not yet been able to help them understand there’s a better way to solve issues than to murder 75 people a day, using very brutal means.

Add to this, there is at least one neighboring country, Iran, already stirring the pot, for for us to have an ally, let alone a foothold in the region, keeps them in check, unable to carry out their desires to control much of the region. Syria is a player, too, but seem to at least be keeping their head down and themselves out of the media coverage.

So, the time may come, if the Democrats can strong arm their agenda to withdraw, whether by getting the President to acquiesce to this via the “bi-partisan” Iraq Working Committee, or by the pulling of appropriations for any support of our troops. The Department of Defense will end up with no choice to bring the troops hone, or at least out of the battle zone of Iraq.

My prediction: The Sunnis, having been in power for so many years, used to being able to, even as a minority, rape the other cultural groups of the country, literally and figuratively, feeling they have some right to murder and torture as they feel. So, the Sunnis will come back with a vengance at the Kurds and Shiites. Bloodshed…and much of it.

Add to this the military power to the East, the Iranians. They, with their affinity for the Shiites, the majority culture, will now roll across the border and become directly engaged with the Sunnis. Bloodshed.

The Kurds, who have rebuilt much of the infrastructure to the north, and are already prospering from the oil flowing, will most likely get attacked by the Sunnis and Shiites, and the Iranians, as they have valuable resources and are using them.

If we thought we stepped into a hornet’s nest in 2003, we haven’t seen anything that will be like this. The locals of the area will feel empowered to kill and plunder in even more horrific manners and scales than they have, for they now see “we” (and I substantially contribute this to the Democrats and the Liberals) don’t have the stomach for it. Much like asking someone to be an EMT and all they can do at any car accident is to stand by, while people bleed to death, throwing up. Those people, politically, are the Democrats and they, in this scenario, would decide it’s better to legislate against people having car accidents, rather than finding those who can take care of such messy conditions, and wait until things are safe to toss their cookies.

More and more, I am coming to see the Democrats in modern times are the party of death and destruction, with pools of blood running from their hands. They do this, not because it’s the best course of action for the rest of the world, or the country, but so they can ascend to positions of power, where they can rent the Lincoln bedroom out to friends to raise money, so they can buy their way back into power.

I can only figure their deep dissatisfaction with the War on Terror, is they see the revenues of President Bush’s tax cuts flowing towards Iraq, and not into their hands, to bribe the voters of the next election with their largess.

The Democrats and Liberals have never acknowledged they had a part in approximately 3M deaths in SE Asia after 1972. They cannot, for they would have to face their part in mass murder.

They stand on the edge of history and are prepared, with a complete disregard for history, their own, and that of world events, ready to loose the executioners in the Middle East, first, and later in Africa and Europe. They will then turn their face from the horror and go back to their fund raisers, not even consciously aware of their shameful part in the deaths.

My gallows humor would be to think maybe they are thinking of this outcome as a help for the environment, for after all, it’s people and the demands they place on industry, that cause greenhouse gasses and causes desertification and the now, the acidification of the oceans. If we have a few less million of us to cause pollution, let alone perpetuate the species, then we’ll not have to worry about running the air conditioners quite so long at the homes and offices of liberals.

Update 14 Nov 2006: See this follow up post, too!

Cross posted at:

Third World County

Trackbacked at:

Eagle Speak

It was Armistice Day at first, but in 1954, President Eisenhower made it “Veteran’s Day.”

Two years ago, as a barely a month old blogger, I posted this.

I still mean it.

I served during the Cold War, and those men who taught me my trade, were Vietnam Vets. Having lived overseas, not as a “brat,” by a civil servant’s son, I grew up with the Special Forces on Okinawa and the Sialors and Marines on Guam. The man across the street most of my beginning days was not an uncle, but he was “Uncle John” to my sisters and I. He had been a Marine in KOrea. One uncle was one of the first C-5 Galaxy navigators, but had flwon with Air-Sea REscue in HU-16s, and later I believe he was in C-141s.

They all had a piece of me knowing I wanted to serve.

I never have been in combat, or any closer than way out in the Med when Khadffi shot missiles at our F-14s, so I stand in awe, and a degree of jeasousness of those who have been there, as I will always wonder how well I had been trained.

In the grand scheme, it took each of us, and all of those who served, whether they stayed stateside the entire time, or ran down the bow ramp of an LCVP, into the surf and onto the sand.

I thank the America taxpayer on this day, for trusting me to protect them. I thank all those who, when by the stroke of fate, did end up in combat, did not shy away and did their duty, regardless of the fear.

It’s been an exciting 13 days. Lots of interesting blogs discovered, many interesting comments read, but…most importantly the overwhelming support fo the people to show that character trait of comapssion, just because it’s for someone they don’t even know, that stood up for them, not even knowing all of us.

All I’d say if take it to the International Date Line! Beth didn’t say which time zone’s 2359 would determine the final bell…

Thank each and every one, whether your name/blog showed up on a Valour-IT team list, or if yu just took up for the cause and pointed people to the donate buttons…

Poster from Murdroc Online

H/T: A commenter on Littel Green Footballs of a CNN Report:

Marine to receive Medal of Honor for Iraq heroism

November 10, 2006

President Bush on Friday will announce that the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, will be awarded posthumously to Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham.

In April 2004, Dunham was leading a patrol in an Iraqi town near the Syrian border when the patrol stopped a convoy of cars leaving the scene of an attack on a Marine convoy, according to military and media accounts of the action.

An occupant of one of the cars attacked Dunham and the two fought hand to hand. As they fought, Dunham yelled to fellow Marines, “No, no watch his hand.” The attacker then dropped a grenade on which Dunham threw himself.

Dunham was critically wounded in the explosion and died eight days later at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington.

“His was a selfless act of courage to save his fellow Marines,” Sgt. Maj. Daniel A. Huff of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, was quoted as saying in Marine Corps News that April.

“He new what he was doing,” Lance Cpl. Jason A. Sanders, 21, of McAllester, Oklahoma, who was in Dunham’s company, was quoted as saying by Marine Corps News. “He wanted to save Marines’ lives from that grenade.”

In various media accounts, fellow Marines told how Dunham had extended his enlistment shortly before he died so he could help his comrades.

“We told him he was crazy for coming out here,” Lance Cpl. Mark E. Dean, 22, from Owasso, Oklahoma, said in Marine Corps News. “He decided to come out here and fight with us. All he wanted was to make sure his boys made it back home.”

The Scio, New York, native would have been 25 years old on Friday.

Dunham’s story was told in the book “The Gift of Valor,” written by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Phillips.

Dunham will be the second American to receive the Medal of Honor from service in Iraq.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith was the other, honored for action near Baghdad International Airport in April 2003, in which he killed as many as 50 enemy combatants while helping wounded comrades to safety. Smith was the only U.S. soldier killed in the battle.

Good question, however, the correct day to wonder where an Air Force guy went.

Some would call it “AWOL,” but the real term is “UA” for “unathorized absense.”

Last time this happened (Scott O’Grady), it was the MARINES who saved his grounded tail.

How appropriate, on the very day we honor the 231th birthday of the CORPS, that we have to ponder this question. The good news is: We already know how to fix it: Send for the MARINES!

If you’ve seen John, tell him to get back on task and let VC know the MARINES aren’t required to leave the bar and interupt their celebrations!

You’d think he would have come up on distress by now, hollering for th PJs to get him back to the O Club…..