Ground pounders always get the suck. It’s a law of nature. So naturally the Air Force is aiming to scrap the A-10 Warthog—the best ground-support aircraft since the dive-bombing P-47 Thunderbolt—so they can keep their high-altitude F-35 toy in the budget. Too many fingers in the F-35 pie, no doubt, to allow it to fade into the sunset. Nope. Screw the infantry. Flyboys rule.
Posted in Science/Engineering, Troops, War Without End
Bush Jr.’s assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 made perfect sense after their sanctuaried client Al Queda’s murderous work in Lower Manhattan a few months before.
Likewise our 2003 invasion of Iraq where dictator Saddam Hussein had the means, the motive and the opportunity to aid Al Q as well, though our leftist federal bureaucrats never could seem to find the proof of it.
More than a decade of largely-feckless political and military operations later, Bush’s leftist successor cut and ran from Iraq and is hobbling what’s left of the American military in Afghanistan.
As pathetic as it all is, as Darkwater shows, this history actually rhymes—with Rudyard Kipling’s 1917 poem Mesopotamia. Kipling even called our aftermath as the leftist federal bureaucrats, their president and lifelong pols like Hillary Clinton continue their lucrative careers:
“Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide –
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?”
You betcha. Their leftist media pals who likewise don’t believe in military service will continue to cover for them and the American dead of Iraq and Afghanistan will be forgotten by all but their families. Some of the crippled ones can even look forward to being assaulted on American streets.
I hope the volunteers of 2001 and 2003 and subsequently will impart the lesson they learned to a new generation of would-be warriors: our government cannot be trusted and joining the micro-managed American military—for any reason other than to repel a direct attack on the homeland—is only slow-motion suicide.
Via Darkwater at Phase Line Birnam Wood.
Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Obamalot, The Culture, The War, Troops
Tagged history rhymes, Phase Line Birnam Wood, Rudyard Kipling
Another longtime family friend passed away this week, our good bud Ray Brownfield of Quicksburg, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He had struggled for several years with pancreatic cancer.
Ray was a retired Army colonel, former commander of the Ranger School, and fellow Vietnam combat veteran. He was always especially interested in Mr. Boy on our infrequent visits to Reveille Vineyard, jointly operated by Ray and Mr. B.’s godfather Richard Torovsky, the last time in 2011.
Ray, an Army brat, was born in Washington, D.C. But home was Brownfield, a town in West Texas between Lubbock and Odessa that was named for one of his ancestors. He and Richard were Citadel graduates and Ray also had graduated in 1964 from the Staunton Military Academy, a Virginia prep school which closed in 1976. My Corsicana great grandfather was a graduate of Staunton’s first military class in 1890.
Ray was a prominent Shenandoah Valley Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for public office in the largely Republican area. We argued frequently about politics in email exchanges, but it never got in the way of the friendship. As Ray often said to folks he liked, you were a great American, Mr. Brownfield.
And we and the country will miss you.
UPDATE: Ray’s obituary appeared in the Northern Virginia Daily on Feb. 26.
You could blame B. Hussein and the Democrats for withdrawing from Iraq. You could blame Bush-the-Younger and the neocons for sending American troops there in the first place.
You certainly could blame the Iraqis for handing the town back to the Jihadis. But maybe they really like living in the 7th century CE.
The Marines who fought there, of course, are anguished. As undoubtedly are the Army soldiers who fought there, too, although to much less publicity. As were a lot of combat veterans of Vietnam when the feckless pols withdrew from there, leaving the American dead to have died for nothing.
Well, not for nothing. They died for the Marines, for the Army, for their comrades-in-arms. That might not be enough for their survivors. But, in the end, it’s about all there ever is in war.
Posted in Blogosphere, Iraq, Obituaries, The War, Troops, Viet Nam, War Without End
Tagged Althouse, losing Fallujah
Ariel (Arik) Sharon was “…a father of Israel. A man who minced neither his words nor his actions. He is loved, he is hated, he is revered. Death will not change the range of emotions and opinions held on this son of Israel. He will be remembered as a man who saved Israel when she needed him most, more than once.”
Via Harry’s Place and Simply Jews
Comments Off on Arik, R.I.P.
Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Obituaries, The War, Troops, War Without End
Tagged Ariel Sharon, Arik RIP, Harry's Place, Israel, Simple Jews
The pensions of civilian federal retirees were not affected by the cuts written into law by Republican Paul Ryan and backed by the Democrats. Meanwhile, last year, in the 12th full year of fighting, American troop deaths in Afghanistan finally reached 2,301.
Via Darkwater.
UPDATE: Apparently the law was amended to exempt the pensions of disabled retirees and their spouses from the cuts, while retaining the cuts for all other military retirees. Civilian federal retiree pensions still were not affected.
Posted in Afghanistan, Blogosphere, Obamalot, The War, Troops
Tagged congress cuts disabled veteran retirement, Phase Line Birnam Wood
The recent cooperation by both of our corrupt political parties in cutting military retiree income, including war-disabled retirees, is an ominous warning we ignore at our peril.
So far (how ironic is this) militant lesbian feminist Camille Paglia is the only one I’ve seen take up the challenge.
“The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service—hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster,” she says. “These people don’t think in military ways, so there’s this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we’re just nice and benevolent to everyone they’ll be nice too. They literally don’t have any sense of evil or criminality.”
I also think people are basically kind and cooperative. But I know that some are not and so I own guns and am ready to use them if need be. But then I’m also a veteran. Fortunately not a disabled one, having to depend on our lying political class.
The elite will learn. Wormtongue won’t be in the White House forever. We just have to hope that too many of us don’t have to learn with them. But I fear that as their pathetic attitudes trickle down to corrupt the tiny fraction of the populace still eager to serve, conscription will have to come back. And if you think the military is expensive now…
Paglia’s take on this and many other contentious topics is part of a larger interview you’d do well to read. Who else is championing the old-fashioned masculine virtues? Other than Duck Dynasty, I mean.
She isn’t the first to make this argument, but she does it better than most: “Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It’s oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys,” she says, pointing to the most obvious example: the way many schools have cut recess. “They’re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.”
Via WSJ and Darkwater.
Posted in Blogosphere, Guns, The Culture, The War, Troops
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 