Category Archives: Troops

Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal immortalized himself on Feb. 23, 1945, when he took the famous flag-raising picture on Iowa Jima where more than 6,000 American troops died.

“’Millions of Americans saw this picture five or six days before I did, and when I first heard about it, I had no idea what picture was meant,’ he said.

"He added that if he had posed the flag-raising picture, as some skeptics have suggested over the years, ‘I would, of course, have ruined it’ by choosing fewer men and making sure their faces could be seen."

The six men who did the flag raising are immortalized in the picture, and the memorial built from it, but also in the recent book "Flags of Our Fathers," James Bradley’s narrative of his flag-raising father’s Marine rifle company on Iowa Jima. 

Rosenthal died Sunday in an Arizona nursing home. He was 94.

Simple, but effective, idea.

"To honor our soldiers across the country and increase community morale, Xerox Corporation has created Let’s Say Thanks, a national program designed to deliver thousands of cards to soldiers overseas with messages of support from home."

The anonymous milblogger "An Army Lawyer" has an illuminating post on the MSM report on the gay Arabic linguist who was recently discharged from the 82nd Airborne because of homosexual conduct.

"As an initial matter, while the soldier was an Arab linguist, that was not his assignment at the time. He was assigned to the All-America Chorus (i.e. a singer), which is part of the 82nd Airborne Division but with a decidedly different mission.

"So unless we’re fighting the enemy with show-tunes, discharging this soldier is not part of some ‘Sept 10’ mentality. Were the soldier actually working as an Arabic linguist at the time, perhaps you could make that argument. But as he wasn’t, you can’t."

What you can do is question the Army’s concern about gays in the ranks, at all. Since they are there, have always been there, and probably always will be there. But the Army didn’t set the policy, afterall, although it was backed by such as Gen. Colin Powell, who as I remember vociferously denied that it was in any way related to the previous discrimination against minorities and women.  I asked  "An Army Lawyer" in a comment on his site about  why the sexual harrassment rules couldn’t be applied to heterosexuals and gays as they are now applied to women soldiers, and will update with his answer.

UPDATE  He responded quicker than I thought he would (or I would have waited before posting), with this: "I see your point. Though I think the analogy to soldiers’ reluctance to accept black soldiers doesn’t quite hold for the reason that introducing the sexual element (as opposed to the more easily surmountable racial element) presents more problems than it solves."

John Noonan, co-founder of the milblog OP-FOR, writes in National Review that the elite universities are doing their best to see to it that the ranks of America’s all-volunteer military contain few if any of their graduates.

"At Harvard, cadets are forbidden from drilling on campus grounds, the same grounds where George Washington drilled the Continental Army. At Yale, Air Force ROTC cadets are forced to endure a two-hour round-trip drive to the University of Connecticut to attend aerospace-science classes. Dartmouth’s refusal to offer its ROTC cadets even token support was enough for U.S. Army Cadet Command to substantially cut funding to the college’s tiny ROTC detachment."

Which reminds me of this recent speech by a Marine Corps general. 

Nevertheless, as a Heritage Foundation study released last fall shows, the war on terror has attracted volunteers across the income range and, so far anyway, despite no draft, isn’t a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.

"The household income of recruits generally matches the income distribution of the American population. There are slightly higher proportions of recruits from the middle class and slightly lower proportions from low-income brackets. However, the proportion of high-income recruits rose to a disproportionately high level after the war on ter­rorism began, as did the proportion of highly edu­cated enlistees."

Noonan posts today on the hate mail his NR article generated.

"’I am very proud of my brother,’ said Ronald Womack, as he spoke from a lectern at Greater Saint Matthew Baptist Church in southeast Houston. ‘He sacrificed his life to do an honorable thing. … He was willing to sacrifice his life to do his job to protect our freedoms.’"