Category: Military issues

The Washington Post reports that the US Special Forces is having trouble locating that Lord’s resistance Army and Joseph Kony in the Central African Republic;

Kony, a Ugandan guerrilla who began his uprising in the 1980s, long ago ordered his followers to stop using radios and cellphones to avoid leaving an electronic trail. Nowadays, officials said, his 200 or so fighters rely on foot messengers and preordained rendezvous points to communicate.

Kony’s methods have proven effective against the U.S. military’s satellites, sensors and other forms of surveillance. Commanders warn that it could take years to find him.

It’s obvious to me what the problem is, and therefore, the solution is just as obvious. You guys aren’t “Like”ing that video enough. If more people would “Like” the video, Kony would see the futility of his escape, and surrender immediately. Um, /sarcasm.

Rurik sends us a link to the story about how the Joint Base Lewis-McChord fire department was called out to rescue a male paratrooper from his perch in the top of a 30-foot pine tree near Mount Ranier. From Firehouse;

But they had to wait for the Thurston County Special Operations Rescue Team to rescue the female paratrooper, who was between 70 and 75 feet off the ground, Lacey fire battalion chief Steve Crimmins said.

Yeah, the guy who was 30 feet off the ground should have deployed his reserve and climbed down like we’re trained to do. The lady in the taller tree was kind of stuck, though. Well, I always think it’s humorous when someone besides me ends up in the trees.

Greg sends us a link to the report that the Secretary of the Army announced that the 7th Infantry Division will be reactivated at Joint Base Lewis McChord;

The soon-to-be reactivated division will encompass 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division; 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division; 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division; 17th Fires Brigade and 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, for a total of some 17,000 Soldiers. But as a nondeployable headquarters, the new division headquarters and its estimated 250 personnel will primarily focus on making sure soldiers are properly trained and equipped, and that order and discipline is maintained in its subordinate brigades.

“When you have the number of soldiers, the number of civilian personnel, the number of other service components in one location as they do here at JBLM, (having) eyes on those units … is enormously important,” McHugh said.

McHugh denied that the decision to create a division on the installation came in response to recent incidents involving soldiers from the base, emphasizing that the plan to station a division headquarters on the installation has been in progress for some time. He defended the base, saying it faces the same challenges as other similar installations.

Greg says, and I agree that it’s just a way to keep some of the general officers and colonels around when the axe falls later this year. I’m just now catching up with what units are at what base and now the shuffling begins again.

The 7th Infantry Division is scheduled for activation on Oct. 1 of this year, and a commander is expected to be announced in a few weeks. Personnel will begin arriving in early summer.

The ass-kissing and sucking up will begin this weekend.

StrikeFO sends us a link to an opinion piece in which John Rico, a veteran of Afghanistan preaches to the masses at Salon about “Why soldiers take pictures”. He does the best job I’ve seen anywhere. I hope the regulars at Salon take note;

Taking a silly photo to relieve the stress doesn’t strike me as the worst thing in the world, given the circumstances. The desire to document surreal experiences is a normal human motivation. Yes, in this particular context the details are rather gruesome, but this is a gruesome task we’ve handed them.

The real grotesqueness isn’t in infantry soldiers taking a few war trophies. No, it’s the idea that’s been sold to the American public that war can be sterile. It’s the idea that 18-year-olds who have been ordered to kill people will never play with the body parts afterward.

You should go read the whole thing and don’t forget to read the comments as Rico’s explanation, the first honest explanation I’ve read on the subject goes right over the pointy heads of Salon’s readers.

Yeah, there’s an insurmountable divide.

There’s an article that C-Rat sent us this morning, that I found interesting. A young National Guardsman, a specialist, tells the local news that he rescued a woman from attackers with his handgun. He was pretty descriptive about how he used his Army training to prevent the attack and then held the hoodlums until the police arrived and corralled them off to jail.

I was suspicious about the story when it began with a “proud father’s” phone call to the media. I can certainly believe that the father is proud of his son for stepping up and doing the right thing. But that’s not normally how the media finds out about these kinds of stories.

After reading the whole story I got to this line – because it’s a great story that you would enjoy;

We’ve contacted Chattanooga police to verify Walker’s story, and find out more about the arrests, but have not yet heard back.

Yeah, I’ve contacted the author and she still hasn’t heard back from the police. I called the police, too, and no one I talked to had heard the story, which seems strange to me…it seems to me that this would be a topic of conversation among the cops and there’s no other mention of the story anywhere else in the media.

So if anyone knows folks in Chattanooga who can verify this story, I’d love to write about young Bradley Walker’s heroic day, but in the meantime, I’m skeptical…but I’ve gotten cynical about this shit since I started this blog and I doubt everything no matter where it’s printed.

By the way, I’ve got a screen shot of the article in case I need it later.

Kevin sends us this from the Wall Street Journal in an article by Ann Marlowe so we can lower our blood pressure after reading that Paulian drivel this morning. She begins by pointing out that it was the LA Times that posted the photos on the internet, not the men involved;

In polite circles today—meaning circles in which few people under 60 have served in uniform—the American military is seen through distorted lenses. One lens exaggerates the good characteristics of those who serve, making even the most indifferent truck mechanic or supply-chain manager a “hero.” This does little for the real heroes, who have received less recognition in our Afghan and Iraq engagements than in any previous war. The other lens, measuring ordinary men and women against this impossible standard, labels every ordinary lapse of judgment as a grave indicator of the failure of a chain of command, a moral blemish, and a comfort to our enemies.

These young men should never have taken those photos. But that is the extent of their “crime.”
Was the picture-posing culturally insensitive? Probably less so in Afghanistan than it would have been here. Afghans themselves have often denied Islamic burial to suicide bombers.

When I was embedded with U.S. troops in Khost province several years ago, the Afghan governor allowed one bomber’s body parts to be left in tree branches as a deterrent to others.

Thanks, Ann, now, if you could go conk Mande Wilkes on her pointy head, we’d all appreciate it.