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
It was in the spring of 1845, according to the USS Constitution Museum, at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Massachusetts, where Old Ironsides is docked nearby, still afloat after more than 200 years.
Captain John “Mad Jack” Percival was then in charge of the pride of the American Revolution’s world cruise and he ordered the shelling that redistributed some of the tile on the roofs of old Da Nang. Back then the French had dubbed it Tourane—or soup bowl—for the shape of its harbor on the South China Sea.
Percival was acting on behalf of what he thought were some unfairly detained French missionaries, though the Vietnamese emperor Thiệu Trị considered them disruptive. I alluded to the incident in my Vietnam war novel The Butterfly Rose, which focuses not only on our war there but the 19th century French invasion as well.
I didn’t give much space to the shelling, apparently done by the ship’s starboard Paixhans guns, the first naval guns designed to fire explosive shells, being preoccupied by my fictional French Foreign Legion assault on Hoi An a few miles south and almost 20 years in the future, during the American civil war.
So it’s good to see the museum website’s offering of the story and you should give it a read to appreciate just how long ago American involvement in that part of the world began—almost a hundred years older than the accepted 1950s version of most contemporary histories.
Our post WWII role as world policeman, it seems, is much older than we think.
Posted in Civil War, Guns, Obsessions, Sailing, The Culture, War Without End
Tagged "The Butterfly Rose", Old Ironsides Shelled Da Nang, USS Constitution
The ME 264, dubbed the Amerika Bomber, was designed to fly 3,600 miles across the Atlantic, bomb New York City, and return to Germany. A prototype was fortunately destroyed in a bombing raid. A few score with incendiaries could have cored the Big Apple. And then started firebombing D.C.
Posted in Science/Engineering, War Without End
Tagged Amerika Bomber, ME 264, Nazi warplanes
The WaPo’s brilliant new hire (at least for the “opinion” pages, though he outshines their lapdog reporters) Radley Balko marshalls the statistics that show the drug war really is a war on the poor and minorities and the excuse for the militarization and corruption of police agencies and politics in general.
Odd that the war didn’t even rate a mention in Ditherton’s SOTU. And him a minority at that. Too realistic, I suppose.
Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The Drug War, War Without End
Tagged End the Drug War, Radley Balko
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
Our clown secretary of state, owner of a “lucky hat” he allegedly acquired in Cambodia (one of Jean Fraud Kerry’s more imaginative lies), got told off in colorful terms the other day by Israel’s defense minister Moshe Yaalon:
“Secretary of State John Kerry,” Yaalon reportedly said, “… who operates from an incomprehensible obsession and a sense of messianism — can’t teach me anything about the conflict with the Palestinians…The only thing that might save us is if John Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us be.”
It would be remarkable if Lurch could teach anyone about anything, knowing as little as he does about much of anything except gaming the system to go home from Vietnam early, catsup and yachting. But the clown posse in Washington demanded that Yaalon apologize and that Bibi, the PM, denounce his minister for, uh, telling the truth.
Yaalon, bless his heart, made a classic non-apology apology if Lurch “was offended by words.” No words yet from Bibi. Crybaby Lurch, meanwhile, is still in hot pursuit of a meaningless “agreement” between the Israelis and the Palestinians that will ensure his Nobel Peace Prize. And why not? They gave one to Wormtongue just for getting elected. They even gave one to Arafat, the world’s oldest terrorist, for, what? Oh, yeah, for shaking hands with another Israeli PM.
By all means they should give one to Lurch for getting his feelings hurt.
Via Althouse.
Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, War Without End
Tagged Israel, Lurch got insulted, Moshe Yaalon, Nobel Peace Prize
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 TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
