This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Memorial Day rememberances

    These are the daughters of Timothy (Griz) Lynn Martin taken nearly four years ago on the 10th anniversary of his death in Mogadishu. If you saw the movie or read the book Black Hawk Down, you know Tim’s story and what happened to him there.

    I’d known Tim nearly 19 years when he was killed (we met at the Reception Station, went through Basic, AIT, Basic Airborne School and Camp Mackall together) and I’d never met his family – but thanks to the internet, I found his wife who sent me most of the pictures that are posted at the link above.

    This is from the year before, when I’d finally found him.

    He was probably snickering his ass off seeing me slogging through the mud in the pourin’-ass rain looking for him. But I know he’d have done it for me.

    Rosie O’Donnell calls our troops terrorists, Dick Durbin calls them SS Nazi camp guards, John Murtha calls them murderers, John Kerry says they’re too stupid to know better than to go to war, John Edwards wants to stand on their corpses so he can see above the crowd.

    But there are folks who know the troops only as Dad or Mom, Honey, my Brother or my Sister and my Son or my Daughter. And, perhaps unfairly, those folks pay a higher cost for our personal freedom and peace than most people are willing to think about.

    That’s why, on this Memorial Day, I want to add those who “also serve” as the families of servicemembers to my list of “thankees”.

    There are more Memorial Day tributes at:

    Crotchety Old Bastard

    Flopping Aces

    American Thinker

    Blackfive

    Hang Right Politics by COgirl and Big Mo

    The Opinion Journal

    The Right Wing Nut House

    Sister Toldja (with more links)

    Soldiers’ Angels New York

    The Anchoress (with more links)

    Oh, Hell, most of the links in my Blogroll have stuff – check them all out!

  • Gathering of Eagles/Rolling Thunder rally for the troops (Updated)

    Every Memorial Day weekend on Sunday, Rolling Thunder, an organization of mostly Viet Nam veterans, comes to DC for their motorcycle ride from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Memorial. It’s an hours-long parade of thousands of participants from across the country to insure that America doesn’t forget the men and women who died for this country in that unpopular war.

    This year it’s a little different – today they partnered with the newly-formed Gathering of Eagles, which has it’s roots in the internet. When Vietnam veterans felt that the Wall was threatened by anti-protesters back in March of this year, they hastily assembled an internet gathering point and made plans to protect that monument from being defaced. On March 17th, they gathered around the three Vietnam memorials and the Korean War Memorial and lined the protest to the Pentagon. Crowd estimates were about 20,000 pro-troops participants to about 4,000 anti-war protesters.

    I reported on that event and brought you pictures and videos, so I felt it my duty to you and the rest of the nation to bring the same to ya’all this time, too. It doesn’t look like the traditional media is going to cover the event – I didn’t see any journalists there for the three-and-a-half hours I roamed the area. No trucks, no shoulder-carried cameras. Nothing on C-SPAN’s schedule. I remember when they used to cover Rolling Thunder’s event, Brian Lamb himself interviewing participants, but none of that anymore.

    Traditionally, Rolling Thunder gathers to remember the Vietnam veterans, but this year, the day before their customary ride, they partnered with Gathering of Eagles to show their support for the next generation of warriors. There probably weren’t 20,000 this time, but the were a few thousand there, as you can see from the following pictures.

    Parking was no problem, apparently;

    The biggest crowds were at the Vietnam Memorial;

    Patriotism was the theme of the day;

    Here’s a tribute for all of you patriotic motorheads;

    That’s a little too much powerplant for my taste, though.

    Click the “View Show” buttons below for two slide shows of other pics.

    Maybe the crowds weren’t the size of the crowds back in March, but I think veterans have made their point – once again. And apparently, the media doesn’t care. I’ve even been watching Fox News Channel for even a mention of the event – and there’s nothing. Anywhere. If there were this many anti-war protesters, or half as many anti-war protesters, the news trucks and journalists would be swarming all over it.

    Shame on the media for neglecting to give America the whole story.

    UPDATE: Jim Holt at Gateway Pundit reports on the anti-US protest at the West Point graduation and Gathering of Eagles’ counter protest entitled “Battle of Bullhorns; Eagles and Moonbats clash” and Rob at Say Anything reports on the court order that kept ANSWER outside of West Point at “Court: West Point Can Deny Access to Smelly Hippies“. Silent_man wrote a detailed After Action Report of the West Point event on the GOE blog. Urban Infidel has more great pictures of the West Point event.

    Skye has more pictures of the DC event at MidnightBlue. Big Dog reported “Great Day in DC; Not a Moonbat in Sight“.

  • Who I remember on Memorial Day

    I wrote this two years ago, so forgive me if you’ve read it already.

    I joined the Army just after combat troops were withdrawn from Viet Nam. Everyone above the rank of Buck Sergeant had a combat patch and a CIB in my first units. None of the guys I knew had flashbacks or night sweats, none were drugged out freaks like they were all portrayed in the movies. Mostly, they were just like me. They got a little tanked up on off-hours, they liked to chase the ladies and they liked to tell tales. Some were happily married and went to church every Sunday, others weren’t.

    During training, they were deadly serious, though. They pounded every performance measure into our rock-hard heads until it stuck. They ran us in the morning like our lives depended on it – 5 miles in 35 minutes was an easy PT day. When we had time between training, they’d quiz us on things we’d learned the day before and warn us to be prepared for the next day.

    Money for training was scarce, so they used what they had to teach us. Some would dig into their own shallow pockets and buy training aids at the local pawn shop that some pogue had sold the week before. Every minute of every day we were preparing for war. Because they, the survivors of Viet Nam knew from first hand experience what happened to ill-prepared troops on their first day of contact.

    Our politicians knew, too. After all, who doesn’t know the fate of the Union Army at the first Battle of Bull Run, or those greens troops who first met the Germans at Kasserine Pass. Or the fat garrison troops who had made up the hastily assembled Task Force Smith. But, in those days, the military was a low priority. We were political bastard children. In the eyes of the Washington elite, the troops had let them down in Viet Nam, although, as history has proven, the reverse was true. The politicians had forsaken the troops despite the military’s consistent overwhelming tactical victories.

    The seemingly impossible task of rebuilding the military fell on the shoulders of a relative handful of men who were determined that when danger loomed, the military would be ready to respond. And, to a man, they’d all bathed in the fire of Viet Nam.

    Men like CSM Henry Caro, who was my battalion sergeant major. He’d assumed command of a company in Viet Nam as a staff sergeant when all of his superiors became casualties. He had metal pins in his back and holding his leg together from when he’d been raked by machinegun fire in that role. He was out running with us every morning. He was killed soon after I left for another assignment in a training jump. The NCO academy at Fort Benning and the gym at Fort Stewart (where he died) are named in his honor.

    Men like CSM William Acebes, who had been my squad leader. He made a name for himself in Viet Nam as a tunnel rat. He also had a talent for blending in with VC patrols (he is Filipino) and interrupting their nefarious plans. Every detail of every military performance measure was in that man’s head, and he had a solution to every problem.

    Men like my old platoon sergeant SFC Martin (forgive me for forgetting his first name after thirty  years) who had made Captain in Viet Nam but was RIF-ed down to E-7 (a promotion by my standards, though). He knew every inch of jungle in Panama, every edible and poisonous plant and he could smell another patrol 200 meters off.

    I can see all of their faces and I can still hear their voices. There were hundreds of them, too numerous to mention here. But they trained us as only combat veterans can train. And they instilled in us a tiny voice that reminded us that the next battle might be just over the horizon. That training is for war, not for a pay check or for a free college education.

    I sat a table with some of them on a Sunday morning in the Howard AFB snack bar as we usually did when we were off on a Sunday. A stunned silence interrupted the usual good-natured bragging about the previous night’s conquests. The headline of the Miami Herald told us that President Carter had pardoned the draft dodgers.

    Each looked as if they’d had a dagger run through their hearts. All of the friends they’d lost halfway around the world, had just been made mistakes. The politicians had just swept them under the rug. The VFW hadn’t allowed them membership, they’d been rejected by friends and family, and finally their country dealt them this low blow.

    The men and women who served in Viet Nam did so from within themselves. It was never very likely they’d get support from their neighbors or communities. It was a personal, or family, thing. And they did so from a personal commitment to this country. Then, a large number had the intestinal fortitude to stay and teach the next generation of warriors to be prepared for the next war.

    That’s who I remember on Memorial Day – the troops who went off to serve without marching bands and streamers on their ships, and the ones who came back still thinking about the welfare of this nation when no one else cared.

    Welcome home.

    Editor’s note: If you want to support the troops this Memorial Day weekend, you’re near DC, and you’re not John Edwards, be at the Rolling Thunder/Gathering of Eagles joint rally for the troops tomorrow at 11:00 am. I’ll try to get pictures up tomorrow afternoon when I get back.

    Update: Mike at Flopping Aces wrote a great Memorial Day tribute. Stop by and turn your speakers on.

  • Congress capitulates to the will of the people

    Last night, Congress finally got off it’s high horse and passed funding for the war against terror in Iraq. The Washington Post reports that the anti-American wing of the left was apoplectic;

    Antiwar groups demanded that Democrats continue pressing for withdrawal dates and bombarded congressional offices with angry phone calls and e-mails in the hours before yesterday’s votes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), both war opponents, called the benchmarks woefully weak.

    But Democrats were reluctant to hold up troop funding. Nor could they override a second presidential veto. In an anguished floor speech, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime war opponent, said he would reluctantly support the spending bill. “We do not have it within our power to make the will of America the law of the land,” Durbin said.

    Got news for ya, Durbin, you don’t have it within your power to inflict the will of a tiny minority of Americans on the rest of us.

    The Washington Post reports that al Sadr finally came out of hiding this morning - I don’t suppose that losing a timetable forced him to return to Iraq;

    Moqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric and militia leader who went into hiding before the launch of a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive in February, made his first public appearance in months today, delivering a sermon before thousands of worshipers at a mosque in the southern city of Kufa.

    After months out of public view that U.S. officials say he spent mostly in neighboring Iran, Sadr arrived at the mosque in a motorcade and rekindled his anti-American rhetoric at a time when he is trying to broaden his standing as a national leader.

    “No, no for the devil. No, no for America. No, no for the occupation. No, no for Israel,” the firebrand cleric chanted to a crowd estimated at around 6,000, the Associated Press reported.

    It’s my opinion that al-Sadr resurfaced because he’d hoped the Democrats would prevail, but when they didn’t, he needed something to rally his troops before they becaome too disillusioned – as if dying in droves isn’t doing that anyway. 

    The Washington Times’s S.A. Miller reports the actual numbers for the votes in Congress calling it a “painful defeat” for Democratic leadership;

     The Democratic leadership’s painful defeat in challenging President Bush on war policy was evident in the 280-142 House vote, with 194 Republicans and 86 Democrats supporting the war funding. More than half the Democratic caucus, 140 members, voted against it, as did Republican Reps. John J. “Jimmy” Duncan Jr. of Tennessee and Ron Paul of Texas.

    Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne takes a long view of their “struggle” to end the war in Iraq:

    Democrats, in short, have enough power to complicate the president’s life, but not enough to impose their will. Moreover, there is genuine disagreement even among Bush’s Democratic critics over what the pace of withdrawal should be and how to minimize the damage of this war to the country’s long-term interests. That is neither shocking nor appalling, but, yes, it complicates things. So does the fact that the minority wields enormous power in the Senate.

    What was true in January thus remains true today: The president will be forced to change his policy only when enough Republicans tell him he has to. Facing this is no fun; it’s just necessary.

    Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said recently that no one remembers how long it took to reverse the direction of American policy in Vietnam. Obey is hunkered down for a lengthy struggle.

    It’s really too bad that Democrats can’t summon the testicular fortitude to “hunker down” for the long struggle against terrorism the way they’ve “hunkered down” against their political rivals.

    Over in the Senate, two Presidential candidates decided winning the primary is more important than winning the election, according to the AP;

    Courting the anti-war constituency, Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both voted against legislation that pays for the Iraq war but lacks a timeline for troop withdrawal.

    “I fully support our troops” but the measure “fails to compel the president to give our troops a new strategy in Iraq,” said Clinton, a New York senator.

    “Enough is enough,” Obama, an Illinois senator, declared, adding that President Bush should not get “a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path.”

    How do you support the troops yet vote to shut off money for them to complete their mission? How does that make a lick of sense? And, Obama, your job is to write blank checks for the Executive Branch. If you want troops out of Iraq, pass a law – that’s your job, too.

    The Wall Street Journal brings the bad news about the bill;

    Included in the measure is a $2.10-an-hour increase in the federal minimum wage as well as billions in new domestic spending for Democratic priorities. But President Bush will retain a free hand over managing the war after vetoing earlier efforts by lawmakers to force him to begin to withdraw U.S. troops Oct.1.

    * * * * *

    In the case of the minimum wage, the $2.10 increase to $7.25 an hour would be spread over the next two years in three 70-cent increments, the first of which would take effect 60 days after the president signs the bill, which is expected this weekend. It promises small business employers new tax breaks to help absorb the added payroll costs, including more generous expensing rules worth $3.5 billion over the next five years.

    But, that was political manuevering by the Democrats – when the economy slows because of increased wages which will result in layoffs and slowing job growth, they can blame the Administration just in time for the 2008 elections. Of course, they’ll blame the tax cuts which influenced job growth (and increased tax revenues) in the first place.

    David Sirota of SirotaBLOG is pretty angry at his party for pulling off a political stunt instead of letting the train just run over them.

    This is what we’re dealing with folks. A party that runs to the press to brag about the brilliance of using their majority not to end the war, but to create a situation that makes it seem as if they oppose the war, while actually helping Republicans continue it.

    I’m constantly amazed that the activist Left just doesn’t understand that “not enough votes” means that there aren’t enough votes. They don’t understand the veto process, and they just think that everyone should give them their way all of the time, without questions. What a terrible existence. Intentionally irretrievably ignorant.

    Now, according to the Washington Post and AP;

    “I think the president’s policy is going to begin to unravel now,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who described the just-passed measure as a disappointment because it did not force an end to U.S. participation in the conflict.

    This from the same woman who predicted that the President didn’t have the guts to veto the first spending bill. You just keep hoping you’re right, Nance – someday you’ll get that pony.

  • A political strategy that will surely kill us all

    The Democrats have decided that they can’t convince the American voters that Democrats are committed to protecting us. They ran what they perceived to be a war hero as their Presidential candidate in 2004, not realizing that he came with loads of baggage that real war heros would recognize as snotty, elitist Hollywood faux-heroism.

    Democrats realize that they can’t win the 2008 presidential election within the confines of the current state of affairs in the world – that being the global war against terrorism – without a candidate that can prove they are committed at any cost to defend Americans. They can’t find a candidate like that while their base voters are a bunch of Left-wing nutballs convinced that any war Republicans fight is illegitimate and some sort of conspiracy.

    So what’s the Democrat strategy to overcome such an obstacle? Deny that there’s a war against terror. John Edwards is just the latest to tell us to ignore the man with the bomber’s vest behind the curtain. Last month Dick Durbin claimed that he knew the American people were being misled to war by the White House – there was no threat, but anyone who has been half-awake for the last six years knows Durbin would have leaked any damaging information to the press in heartbeat if he thought he could hurt the administration.

    Dennis Kucinich, last month declared that the war was lost the minute the administration fabricated a cause to go to war. So there was no reason to go to war, because the Global War on Terror doesn’t really exist, except in the minds of some nebulous neo-con organization somewhere.

    So that’s the strategy – deny there’s a war so they don’t have to prove that they can defend us. Mainly because Americans will never trust the Left with our National Security. Rational people might try to formulate a coherent policy to answer America’s problems. But, then, we’re not talking about rational people here.

  • Little Willie Arkin laments noninvite (UPDATED)

    During my nightly perusal of my favorite blogs, I stumbled across this from Blackfive who mentioned a line from an almost forgotten William Arkin, so I went to Arkin’s blog to read the whole thing. He’s still a sniveling little elitist;

    Let’s see if I can do this without insulting either baseball fans or bloggers. Blogging baseball fans, I ask for your forgiveness preemptively.

    I went to a Red Sox game on Saturday, and up above home plate I couldn’t help but notice the press box: five, six, seven tiers of desks, filled with print, radio, television and who knows what other media all reporting every move and anomaly. It dawned on me that there are more reporters covering the Sox, just one baseball team, than cover the Pentagon.

    I’ve been wanting to write about the 2nd Annual MilBlog conference (I wasn’t invited), and did write earlier about the brouhaha over the Pentagon’s supposed new restrictions regarding blogging.

    First of all, let me say that there were alot of people at the Milblog Convention who weren’t invited by name – I was one. I met a guy there who blogs about maritime stuff that I didn’t understand. He was interesting, but he had never been in the military, didn’t know anyone in the military and didn’t blog about the military. He’d just read about the conference and saw there was still a slot open, paid his $40 and went to meet other bloggers. If you wanted to go, William M. Arkin, you could have found a way. But seein’s how it’s Mud Season in Vermont, I’m sure you didn’t want to miss a moment of that.

    And the crybaby way you started this piece hoping you wouldn’t tick off any baseball fans – was that yet another shot at us?

    And the only reason you, and your fellow “journalists” stuck up for Milbloggers recently because you saw it as another opportunity to criticize the Administration and the Pentagon. It’s not like ya’all give a tiny rat’s ass about the military bloggers (you made that quite clear in the first blog I read from your poisoned pen). So this line, from your latest attempt at smoothing ruffled feathers rings hollow;

    The MilBloggers got an extra boost of attention after the news about the Army’s “crackdown” on blogs, with the overheated claim that the new operations security (OPSEC) and bandwidth rules cut off soldiers from their families and restricting people’s freedoms. An extra boost from whom, you ask? From the mainstream media they so seemingly despise….

    Blackfive replied that we only despise you, but I won’t go that far. I despise alot of members of the more traditional media, so, although my list is longer than Blackfive’s list, there are similarities in the content.

    UPDATE: Day-by-day gets into the Arkin-bashing;

  • It ain’t just a river in Egypt, Edwards

    John Edwards, the prettiest girl in the Democrat field of Presidential candidates, denies that there’s a terrorist threat to this country, according to USAToday;

    Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.

    In a defense policy speech he planned to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan President George W. Bush has used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad to the invasion of Iraq.

    “We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes,” Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. “By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set — that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.”

    I’m sure that the Jersey Girls will be outraged that Edwards called their slaughtered husbands “bumper sticker slogans” for a “discredited ideology”. Funny, but we can replay the scenes of the World Trade Center attack over-and-over and some people still don’t believe it happened, I guess.

    I wonder what Edwards considers a 21st century threat – maybe split ends epidemics or caked mascara in the corner of his eye? Does he think that space aliens are going to fly their craft into the White House? What the hell could a 21st century threat be if not this global war against terror?

    Edwards outlined several steps he said he would pursue as president to strengthen the military, including using force only to pursue essential national security missions, improve civilian-military relations, and root out mismanagement at the Pentagon.

    Ah, that’s the real enemy – the Pentagon. Now we can see clearly – thank you, poodle-boy.

    I’ve catalogued on this blog that terrorists are cooperating across ideological borders to prepare for the next attack. If they can find IRA terrorists in Columbia and Basque separatists in Bolivia, what more proof do we need that there is a GLOBAL war against GLOBAL terrorists?

    Not only is Edwards wrong about terrorism, he’s wrong on the economy, too, according to the Wall Street Journal;

    It’s been a rough week for John Edwards, and now comes more bad news for his “two Americas” campaign theme. A new study by the Congressional Budget Office says the poor have been getting less poor. On average, CBO found that low-wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one-third higher in 2005 than in 1991.

    The CBO results don’t fit the prevailing media stereotype of the U.S. economy as a richer take all affair — which may explain why you haven’t read about them. Among all families with children, the poorest fifth had the fastest overall earnings growth over the 15 years measured. (See the nearby chart.) The poorest even had higher earnings growth than the richest 20%. The earnings of these poor households are about 80% higher today than in the early 1990s.

    What happened? CBO says the main causes of this low-income earnings surge have been a combination of welfare reform, expansion of the earned income tax credit and wage gains from a tight labor market, especially in the late stages of the 1990s expansion. Though cash welfare fell as a share of overall income (which includes government benefits), earnings from work climbed sharply as the 1996 welfare reform pushed at least one family breadwinner into the job market.

    If Edwards can’t get simple economics right, how can we trust him to handle the big stuff – like our lives.

  • What would we do without Hillary

    I guess Hillary Clinton (D-NY Carpetbagger) figures she’s the only one on the planet to think the Pentagon needs to have contingency plans. In a letter to Defense Secretary Gates, she prodded the seasoned professional to produce a withdrawal plan from Iraq. From AP:

    The Democratic presidential candidate, whose recent statements have made her own position murky on when the bulk of U.S. troops should leave Iraq, urged top military brass in a private meeting and a public letter to detail how they would bring forces home.

    The New York senator met privately with Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace late Tuesday, and sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging military leaders to begin such planning if they haven’t already.

    The move by Clinton follows word from Baghdad that Iraqi military officials are drawing up plans for the possibility of a withdrawal of U.S. forces, and a failure by congressional Democrats to muster enough votes for legislation forcing a timed withdrawal.

    Clinton now wants the Pentagon to brief lawmakers on their withdrawal contingency plans.

    What else can we expect from her – she doesn’t think parents are smart enough to raise their own children until the age of four, why would she think that the Pentagon doesn’t already have a plan to extricate it’s troops from Iraq without her telling them to present her with a plan?

    And anyone dumb enough to brief that leaky Democrat caucus on a withdrawl plan doesn’t deserve their job.

    This purely a political move to make voters think Clinton is all caught up to the political game. Someone tell that goofball from Chicago, by way of Little Rock, that the Pentagon planners don’t sit around on their butts until some halfwit from across the river tells them to plan something. They’ve probably got an OpPlan laying around to invade her Georgetown mansion if they needed to. My Aspen Hill mansion, too.

    But, the Left already thinks she’s some sort of rocket surgeon;

    Now here’s an anti-war candidate who’s thinking.

    If Democrats muster the political will to cut off war funding, how bad would it be for them if the military then had to flee Irag in chaos and confusion, with no plan, because the money spigot suddenly was cut off? You could be pretty sure the GOP would be back in charge in 2008.

    Yeah, well, after another year of the performance I’ve seen from Democrats this year, I think they’ll have a tough time convincing Americans they can be leaders. If this is the best they have, we should coast till November – if we can come up with a candidate, that is.