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

Category: Military issues

  • Gates: Euroweinies endanger world peace

    I don’t much like Robert Gates the Secretary of Defense, but at least in this case he calls a spade a shovel;

    “The demilitarization of Europe – where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it – has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st,” he told an audience filled with uniformed military officers from many of NATO’s 28 member countries.

    The danger, he added, is that potential future adversaries may view NATO as a paper tiger.

    “Not only can real or perceived weakness be a temptation to miscalculation and aggression, but, on a more basic level, the resulting funding and capability shortfalls make it difficult to operate and fight together to confront shared threats,” Gates said.

    The Euroweinies have become like like Japanese – they’re taking advantage of living under the protective umbrella of American military force. They stood back and waited for us to move in Bosnia and Kosovo. They left us to go into Iraq while they pelted us with insults, but relieved that Hussein was gone. They toss paltry numbers of soldiers into Afghanistan and whine loudly when someone mentions the fact that the numbers are insufficient to make a difference.

    I’m no isolationist, but those culturally-backward third worlders in NATO are making it harder to remain so every day.

  • Bellavia: Our Mission is Finally Accomplished… Anyone Care?

    One of the best friends of this blog, David Bellavia, puts down his snarky pen and ruminates publicly about the cost of the war in Iraq and what it shouldmean to Americans. He begins;

    I understand that there are individuals who opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning and I believe their passion, although misguided at times, is rooted in a deep desire for peace. What always baffled me was the reaction they had to pro-victory veterans when we came home. As if we were some robotic arm of the Bush White House. It was foreign for them to understand why winning in Iraq was so important.

    And ends;

    If you can’t bring yourself to give the living the sense of accomplishment for winning a war that many claimed was endless, at least humor the dead. Allow them to rest knowing that the war that took their lives was won because of their sacrifice.

    Is that too much to ask for?

    I tried to add a few thoughts to David’s post, but it’s impossible. Go read the whole thing.

  • Brothers to guard Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers

    The Old Guard
    U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jonathan Brisiel, left, takes part in a Tomb Badge Ceremony with his brother, U.S. Army Spc. Mathew Brisiel, right, as their mother Cathy Brisiel looks on, Friday, Feb. 19, 2010, at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)

    For the first time in history, two brothers are in the platoon of 27 soldiers whose responsibility to guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

    Army Spc. Mathew Brisiel of Spring, Texas, on Friday followed his brother, Staff Sgt. Jonathan Brisiel, when he became the 578th soldier awarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Identification Badge since 1958.

    The training for that particular job wasn’t just physical;

    Most striking, though, was what it came to mean for him when his trainers would ask if he “loved the unknown soldiers.”

    “In my head, I was thinking, love the unknowns? That’s a little strong, that’s a little much,” Mathew Brisiel said.

    But something changed over eight months of training.

    “When I’m standing out on the plaza and I’m walking and I see an elderly woman sitting there by herself crying … it sends chills up your body,” he said. “You realize how awesome it is. … You represent every soldier that gave the ultimate sacrifice.”

    It wasn’t just the two brothers who recognized the importance of the moment;

    Their mother, Cathy Brisiel, said her sons have joined a tradition she knew as a child. She grew up in Washington, and her grandfather is buried at Arlington.

    “I wish my late husband had been present to witness such an accomplishment for his boys,” she said. “I thought my heart would pop out of my chest this morning when I saw my boys in their uniforms.”

    If you’ve never seen the Guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, here’s a video I took of the changing of the sentinels on Memorial Day, 2008;

  • Five Fort Jackson soldiers

    We were talking about it last night in emails when CBN released their story about five Fort jackson soldiers who were being investigated for plotting to poison the food of their fellow soldiers. At the time, I thought it was odd that they were hatching such a potentially complex plan with little chance of success. About that time Fox released their story;

    The Army is taking the allegations “extremely seriously,” Grey said, but so far, “there is no credible information to support the allegations.”

    Now that sounds fishy – they’ve been investigating for more than two months yet there’s no credible evidence? There’s either no evidence and they stop investigating, or there’s enough evidence to justify two months of investigation.

    Crush at Blackfive links to the Palmetto News;

    Army officials, however, denied the allegations and said none of the men were Muslim

    Crush points out that the soldiers were all in a language program for Arab speakers;

    So 09L’s – who speak Arabic, Dari, Pashtu, Farsi or Kurdish as a first language, who may also be in contact with other Jihadists in Pakistan – aren’t Muslim?

    There’s funny shit going on in the Army Department. They tried to hide the fact that Nidal Hasan survived his gun shot wounds at Fort Hood, now this. I’ll grant you that this food poisoning plan was childish and ill-conceived, but a threat is a threat. And the Army seems more concerned about the public finding out there’s a Muslim plot afoot than they are about catching these buffoons and punishing them. If there’s some grand plan, I wish they’d tell us what it is instead of waiting for bloggers to throw up a smoke screen for them – that part seems to rate a fail.

    In fact, that’s why I’ve been so slow in writing about this story.

  • Our heritage

    I’d like to think I’m a pretty brave guy, but when I read stories from World War II, I wonder if there will ever be men as valorous as guys like 19-year-old Louis Stamatakos over Kassel, Germany on February 28, 1945;

    “Someone called out, ‘Get Stamatakos, he went to armament school.’ ”

    Stamatakos took off his parachute, for better leverage, and lowered himself cautiously into the bomb bay. He straddled the bay, which was open, the two bombs at his feet. He had a hatchet handle in one hand and was clinging to a leather grip with the other.

    “I looked down and knew that if the bombs were accidentally struck or detonated in any way it would most likely take out our plane right there.”

    He said some of the crew members were praying. “I was so cold and the blast was coming in on us. As I looked down all I could see were two big old bombs and 20,000 feet of German sky.”

    He continued, “It was intimidating, but at times like that you don’t think about what to do. You just do it.”

    He used the hatchet handle and nudged the first live bomb from its shackle. He swung at the shackle trying to free the swinging bomb, which had been defused by rushing air spinning a propeller on the bomb’s nose that armed the device.

    At the age of 84, Stamatakos finally got his Silver Star for hanging underneath a rickety old bomber that none of us would fly in conditions other than war and prying loose two live 250 pound bombs with a hatchet handle. Without a parachute. Read the whole story.

  • The ultimate mark of an infantryman

    armyexpertinfantrybadge

    I guess the Infantry School is worried because the EIB has lost it’s “luster” since the war against terror began almost nine years ago. From the Stars and Stripes;

    Since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the once- highly coveted badge has been overshadowed by its more glamorous battlefield counterpart, the Combat Infantry Badge.

    Leaders at the Army’s infantry school in Fort Benning, Ga., hope that by revamping the test for the EIB, they can return some luster to the award.

    A story in the January issue of the Army’s NCO Journal reminds soldiers “though mostly unseen during recent years of constant deployment, the simple blue rectangle and musket of the Expert Infantryman Badge has not gone away.”

    It remains “the ultimate mark of an infantryman,” the article reads.

    In five of the last eight years, the average number of EIBs awarded annually has dropped from pre-Sept. 11, 2001, levels, according to Army estimates. Between 1999 and 2001, approximately 6,500 soldiers earned the EIB per year, a number the Army hasn’t seen since.

  • AWOL Mom gets discharged

    Alexis Hutchison, the single Army Mom who went AWOL with her son to avoid deployment will get an administrative discharge and a reduction in grade as a result. She should get reduced – there’s no excuse for missing movement and going AWOL. But I blame her mother and the father of the child for the rest.

    Her mother claimed that she couldn’t handle taking care of her grandson for a year. But she had no problem taking care of twelve other kids in her day care nursury for pay. The father – well, I’ve heard rumors about who he is, but nothing I can put my finger on. He’s as culpable as the grandmother in this. Why wasn’t he trying to find care for the boy instead of putting the 21-year-old mother on the spot.

    The Army sees it a little differently;

    Larson said the Army had evidence that Hutchinson, regardless of her family situation, would have resisted deploying “by any means.” He said commanders decided a court-martial would be too disruptive to the Army, requiring soldiers now in Afghanistan to return to the U.S. to testify.

    “This case wasn’t about a soldier having to choose between her duty to the nation and her family,” Larson said. “There is evidence both from Pvt. Hutchinson and her fellow soldiers to indicate she had no intentions of deploying.”

    Sussman denied that Hutchinson was exploiting her status as a single-mom to get out of going to Afghanistan.

    As I pointed out before, Hutchison’s idiot lawyer is from the Branum-chaired Military Law Task Force and just interned last summer at the National Lawyers Guild, the Communist front organization for barristers.

    We’ve tried to do right by you, our readers, but for some reason, our usually reliable contacts at the Army’s PAO didn’t return our calls on this one.

    Thanks to Jerry920 for the link.

  • So? What’s your point?

    Headlines at the Washington Post this morning scream 75% back letting gays serve openly. The article goes on to describe the results of an ABC/Washington Post poll;

    Three-quarters of Americans say that they support openly gay people serving in the U.S. military, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a finding that could lend momentum to the Obama administration’s effort to dismantle the policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

    The level of public support for allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly far outpaces that in the spring of 1993, when Congress and the Clinton administration established the policy.

    Well, ya know what? I took a poll last night in which 95% of respondents agreed that Washington Post and ABC employees should all stand outside their respective offices naked in a snow bank through the upcoming weekend. All of the respondents were not employees of ABC or the Washington Post and admitted that their position on the issue wouldn’t affect them personally so why should they care? I’ll be anxiously awaiting ABC and Washington Post’s compliance with the results of my poll beginning tomorrow morning.

    I fully expect dicksmith to have an anuerism from glee as he posts this story on VoteVets this morning while disregarding any mention that 75% of Americans also approve of keeping Guantanamo open.