Category Archives: Afghanistan

Our robot overlords have arrived

This K-Max robot helicopter, which has no human crew, is doing resupply for Marines in Afghanistan. Up to 4,500 pounds worth. Yes, but will it do Medevac?

Meanwhile, our drone-lovin’ president (like Slick Willie a natural-born killer when he can do it by remote control without endangering himself) is encouraging the use of drones over our airspace. Maybe the next time you see a helicopter fly over your neighborhood, you should duck and cover.

Or else bring out your still-legal (so far) AR-15 semiauto and shoot the sumbitch down. Not that I would ever advise anyone to break the law, you understand.

Via Mouth of The Brazos.

Not a good time to be a soldier

The soon-to-be-former defense secretary has decided that the military will get the smallest possible pay raise while King Putz has already submitted a fat hike for civilian federal employees.

As Darkwater so eloquently quotes from Kipling:

“God and the soldier we adore/In times of trouble, not before/When trouble’s gone and all things righted/God’s forgotten and the soldier slighted.”

Not that our unwise withdrawal from Iraq means “trouble’s gone” nor our impending skedaddle from Afghanistan, either. Both are starting to smell a lot like our defeat in Vietnam. To my old ‘Nammie’s nose, at any rate. Which brings to mind this other appropriate quote from Kipling:

“When you’re wounded out on Afghanistan’s plains/And the women come out to cut up what remains/Then just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/And die like a good British soldier!”

Or an American one.

Meanwhile, back at Fort Hood, where 13 were killed and 32 others wounded in an obvious 2009 jihadi massacre, the civilian cops who stopped it have been laid off and are p.o.’ed that King Putz still insists that it was a case of  “workplace violence” with no politico-religious overtones.

Muslim persecution of Christians

“….the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching pandemic proportions...”

Strange how we never hear much about this in our snooze media, which always falls into deep slumber with a Democrat in the White House. Or, for that matter, from American Christian pulpits. Oh, they’d much rather talk about divesting from Israel.

A roundup of December killings, bombings and other blatant persecution (particularly back at Christmas) via Monkey In The Middle.

Infantry’s oldest enemy: mud

“Afghan peanut butter turns treads into sleds,” is war correspondent Michael Yon’s caption on this photo of a combat vehicle stuck in the mud in his post Amber of War. It’s an old lesson the Pentagon seems never to have learned.

I slept in the mud in Vietnam a few times on night ambush in ’69 and recall once trying hopelessly to get a jeep that had slid off the road out of the mud, but I was lucky not to have to hump through it hour after hour, day after day.

I’m not surprised there are books about it. None, however, seems as focused or as complete as Mud: A Military History, which Yon recommends and I am reading. Whoever invented body armor, heavy packs and persnickety machinery like M4s that need constant cleaning should as well. (But probably won’t.) It’s not the soldiers who have lost our recent wars, but the leadership—so-called.

Petraeus: A useful fool

He went to Congress and repeated the lie about the nasty anti-Muslim video being the cause of the Benghazi attacks and murders. His usefulness done, he fell under the infidelity sword Barry’s AG had hanging over his head since before election day.

To at least one observer, retired Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor—a Desert Storm combat veteran whose caustic battle book Warrior’s Rage rants against careerist, non-combat generals like Petraeus—he had it coming.

“Petraeus is a remarkable piece of fiction created and promoted by neocons in government, the media and academia…Petraeus was always a useful fool in the Leninist sense for his political superiors….”

And when the fool was no longer useful, Barry exiled him in permanent shame. Now he seems to be telling a new story in Congressional hearings, setting Democrats and Republicans to arguing about what it means.

There’s a clue to the reason behind Gen. P.’s downfall in old photographs of him in uniform: the “chest candy” (once called “fruit salad” in a more modest epoch) that precedes his smile. He wears every ribbon for every paper-pusher medal he ever received as a staff officer and aide to generals, plus more shiny badges than even Colonel Qaddafi used to wear, if not as large. He did dispense with Daffy Duck’s sash. Who knows, in the egotistical, banana-republic style of today’s generals and admirals, he may have one.

Makes you think he wasn’t really very sure of himself, which may explain why he threw his marriage and his children to the winds for a fling with his nubile biographer. He may well have done it before but wasn’t caught.

Me and Buck Travis

Gotta like this view of an F-16 from my native state (me and William Barret “Buck” Travis of the Alamo), and the colorful “shock diamonds” in its exhaust. But it needs to come home from Afghanistan ASAP, along with the rest of our troops. Thanks to Obozo and the Pentagon, their mission is a true disaster.

“…the ICU at Bethesda Naval fills up…”

And nobody in Obozo’s court media gives a rat’s rear. Or, for that matter, among Mittens and his entourage.

‘Course, if Mittens wins in November, it will all be different. The court media will suddenly get crackin’ on being journalists, so-called, again. They always do with Republicans in the White House, you know.

And then maybe they’ll notice our troops who’ve been hung out to dry in Afghanistan by Obozo (though they certainly won’t mention that part) and start demanding that Mittens do something about all those American wounded clogging the ICU at Bethesda Naval…