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David Petraeus –

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– A Prefect Avatar for America’s Corrupt Ruling Class

Remember this guy? He’s a bud of Mattis, they called them Warrior Monks. LOL. That’s a joke. They are nothing more than high ranking retired military officers who climbed the ladder of success by BS-ing folks with their bravado and secretly sucking down gallons of Kool Aid. Neither of these “Warrior Monks have ever pulled a trigger except at the range. Before or after reading this post please go to my post of 19 June entitled “Mattis & Petraeus – Warrior Monks?” and read about what this scum did and was caught.. He should be stripped of his retirement and spending the rest of his life, in prison for what he plead guilty and got a p-lea bargain. If any of us did what this POS did, guess where we’d be? Unbelievable. Our country does not hold these high ranking scumbags accountable for anything — absolutely nothing. As I have said before, Lady Justice no longer wears a blindfold.

Below is a Warrior Monk, do you honestly think either of these hotshots ever looked like this Warrior?

General David Petraeus, for many years (decades?) lauded as the greatest and most successful soldier of his generation, just insulted, in terms paradoxically both implicit and vicious, the men who made both his military renown and his post-military success and wealth possible.

“The most significant terrorist threat in the United States is not actually from Islamist extremists, it’s from right-wing terrorists in our own country,” he recently said to a gathering of elites.

This assertion, in a sense, is unremarkable given that it has become a common ruling-class talking point. It’s a lie, of course. Your own senses tell you so. When was the last time you even heard of a “right-wing” terror attack, much less one that actually inflicted mass casualties?

Sure, the ruling class and its propaganda arm tell you that they happen all the time, but they’re lying. They don’t lie merely by predicting waves of rightist violence that never materialize—though they do predict that, often.

Remember all those “warnings” of right-wing terror that would rock America in the event of a Trump loss? Allegedly violent Trump supporters have an even stronger case than mere loss to be angry, given the fishiness of the election and their belief that it was stolen. And yet none have so much as broken a window, much less committed any acts of terror. The one major demonstration in Washington, D.C. was entirely, not “mostly,” peaceful—that is, until leftist thugs showed up to beat on the marchers. Beatings which the same people who, naturally, never apologized for being wrong about imminent right-wing violence just as naturally never mentioned.

Nor does the ruling class merely lie by saying that every act of violence by the melanin-challenged is somehow connected to Nazism—though of course they do say that, daily. They also insist, risibly, that violence manifestly committed by people who are neither white nor on the Right is nevertheless perpetrated by the white Right. Witness, in only the most recent and egregious example, the repeated attempts to attribute 2020’s Antifa-BLM riots to “white supremacists.”

Don’t trust your own eyes and ears? How about “data”? Terrorism expert Timothy Furnish has found since the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Islamic terrorists have murdered just under 28,000 people worldwide. The global death toll over the same period from every act of violence even plausibly—that is to say, not necessarily—connected to “white supremacy” is 346. Or 1.5 percent of the Islamist butcher’s bill. This is the “grave, urgent threat” that David Petraeus insists poses the greatest danger to our country.

Petraeus may be lying from conviction. Certainly, all his peers in the ruling class believe, or profess to believe, that native-born whites are uniquely evil and hell-bent on killing their fellow citizens. And it can be hard to tell genuine ruling class belief from merely useful cant. Yet there’s no doubt that this particular lie is useful—to them. It’s one of the key ways in which the ruling class libel and smear dissent against their rapacity and misrule. So Petraeus has an interest in saying what he said, whether he believes it or not.

Who Does Petraeus Think Made Him a Success? 

Who is David Petraeus? Currently, he’s a partner at KKR, one of the world’s two or three most important private equity firms. What is “private equity”? The charitable way to describe that activity is the buying up of failing or underperforming companies and making them more profitable via a ruthless imposition of focus and efficiency. The less charitable description is “vulture capitalism”: hunting down value, wherever it may be, and stripping it out of even successful companies by closing facilities, laying off workers, outsourcing production and any other move that might reduce costs and (further) enrich the firm’s new owners.

Whatever you may think of private equity—salutary driver of market discipline or greedy despoiler of the American heartland—the fact remains that David Petraeus is not a private equity investor nor an analyst capable of restructuring even the smallest company. He’s a former military officer—a capable one, by all accounts—now getting rich from the profits of private equity by trading on his former service and (especially) his domestic and foreign government contacts.

Which is what makes the lie especially egregious coming from Petraeus’s lips. Why is David Petraeus famous? That is, apart from getting fired from the CIA over an extramarital affair and receiving a slap on the wrist for illegally sharing classified information with his mistress? His prior claim to fame, the one that won him his current job and stature, was to have successfully presided over the Iraq “Surge” of 2007, in which a bloody, three-year insurgency was finally quashed.

How was the Surge accomplished? In part by spreading around an enormous number of American greenbacks to buy off local militias. But also, in part, via “COIN,” or counter-insurgency warfare doctrine, a body of thought and practice revived from its post-Vietnam oblivion by David Petraeus. (This is another pillar of Petraeus’ fame; a so-called “soldier-scholar,” he has a Ph.D. from Princeton.)

One tenet of COIN as reimagined, and implemented, by Petraeus is that soldiers attempting to pacify an insurgency must show their “virtue” to the local population by taking risks, i.e., exposing themselves to danger. This is not, to say the least, what soldiers are ordered to do in nearly all other combat situations. But many thousands followed this particular order.

Again, whatever you may think of the Iraq war—nobly-intended tragedy, pointless adventure, deep state conspiracy—or the Surge, there can be no doubt that Petraeus’s success was achieved on the backs of American soldiers—many of whom lost their lives, and many more others, limbs, to achieve it.

Where did those soldiers come from? The overwhelming majority of American service members who volunteer for dangerous combat roles grow up in red, rural, conservative America: the South, Appalachia, the Rust Belt, the Mountain West. The majority are also, not to put too fine a point on it, white—exactly the demographic that the ruling class has in its targeting sights when it lies about the alleged threat from “right-wing terrorists.”

Why the Need to Insult?

It’s no exaggeration to say that, without these proto “right-wing terrorists” and the milieus from which they emerge, the United States military would have no combat units at all. To say the least, woke transsexual gender studies majors from the blue coasts are not showing up in droves, or even singly, to Officer Candidate School or basic training. Neither are the children of the upper, upper middle, and increasingly the middle classes.

The military, at least for its combat missions, is more reliant than ever on that part of America that the ruling class openly despises. What would it do without them? Stop fighting constabulary wars? Either that or scour the rest of the country to recruit men far less committed to the mission, and probably less good at their jobs, than those who volunteered to fight the post 9/11 wars and made the Surge a success.

Why insult these people, then? Why denigrate their families, faith, and communities by insinuating that the places from which they come are breeding grounds of terror, violence and hate? For, from where else may we assume this alleged “right-wing terrorist threat” originates? Portland? Santa Monica? The Upper West Side?

Either Petraeus really believes what he said or he said it because he knows it’s what his ruling class paymasters want to hear—and especially want to hear from professional talking heads like David Petraeus. We can assume Petraeus knows the latter; he’s not a stupid man. Is this, therefore, a case where interest and belief coincide? Or was he, perhaps unthinkingly, selling out the brave men he used to command and whose success made his reputation and caused his great good fortune and wealth?

I don’t know the answer. Either way, the incident is revealing—not about what the ruling class thinks of us; we already knew that. It is instead revelatory of how insincere is their unctuous, ubiquitous praise of our men in uniform, of the sentiment behind all those incessant repetitions of “thank you for your service.”

There are many reasons to wonder how long the ruling class can keep recruiting stalwart young men to fight its wars—not least being our best-and-brightest’ s inability to win seemingly anywhere or even to define victory. Expressions of contempt such as the one uttered recently by David Petraeus are, however small by comparison, another such reason.

Michael Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump Administration. He formerly wrote under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus when he was a senior editor of American Greatness. The is the author, most recently, of The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return.

Originally posted 2020-12-07 09:37:54.

Recent Posts

“The Day of Delusion”

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Once again, Mr Starmann sees what every “been there, done that” experienced combat veteran knows to be true. My only question is where’s General Mattis in all this utter nonsense?

By Ray Starmann

As the feminist Kamikaze bears down on the U.S.S. Pentagon, spineless brass sip Mint Juleps on the bridge, adding up their pensions and hoping to abandon ship before the US military is catastrophically killed in the next war.

Which it will be, if nothing changes, mark my words.

Across the military, standards are dropping faster than a Greg Maddux sinker; as lackeys, perfumed princes, feather merchants and cultural Marxist, Obama holdouts do their best to make the US Military the Laughing Stock of the World.

Standards are hitting new lows across the board in the military, in order to fuel feminists’ fantasies. There are currently no physical standards at the Special Forces Qualification Course. What does this mean? It means that your 90-year-old grandma can become a Green Beret now. The Marines recently chucked a grueling physical endurance test they had been using at the Marine Corps’ Officer Basic Course for 50 years. (not completely true Ray, it’s in the Infantry Officer’s Course, not the Basic Course. And it wasn’t chucked, it’s still there but no longer an immediate dis-qualifier.) There is no longer a requirement to throw a live grenade successfully at Army Basic Training.  And, Fort Benning, is pumping out female Rangers faster than you can say ‘shotgun wedding.’

If women are passing Ranger School honestly, let’s see the records for all the women who graduated, starting in 2015, and including 37-year-old Mommy Ranger.

I love the idea of a Mommy Ranger. She can seize an airfield one day, and pick up her son at soccer practice the next. Isn’t diversity cool? Oh rejoice, equal opportunity!

And, then there’s General Maude…!

 ‘These are the Mommies of Pointe du Hoc. These are the mothers who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.’

God Help us all. ‘Colonel Darby, who was a mighty brave, is rolling around in his shallow grave.’

It is all a gigantic lie, a Potemkin Village waiting to be burnt down, a US Government, machine fabricated Quonset hut of cards that will collapse the moment the first green tracer rounds go down range in anger at our vanguard of crack, female troops. It is all a mammoth Pinocchio. Feminists know it. The generals know it. The Secretary of Defense knows it. Yet, it continues to metastasize like an unstoppable cancer.

Liberals applaud all of it as some kind of 21st Century civil rights crusade tantamount to a Dr. King march. What it is really tantamount to is national suicide.

Want to know the current state of PC, liberal delusion wafting through the US military now? Just listen to the comments recently made by several female general officers during the Women Leadership Roundtable Discussion at the Pentagon on February 7, 2018, aka ‘The Day of Delusion.’

Major General Marion Garcia, commanding general for the 200th Military Police Command, shared her experiences with congressional staff delegates and fellow general officers at the Roundtable.

“I just know that the future leader of the Army is going to be a woman because that person is going to be infantry and come up through the ranks and do it. I know they can,” said Garcia.

Of course they can! Within a year there will be no physical standards remaining in the US Army, much less the entire military to accommodate women into the combat arms. Ten old ladies steering walkers into a Marie Callender’s is the new infantry squad of 2018.

The Day of Delusion continued with comments by Major General Tammy Smith:

“Women don’t go to Pathfinder School,’” she recalled as she conveyed the response she received when she asked to attend the course in her earlier years, even though the rules had changed, allowing her to do so. Today, that culture has changed drastically, and that situation would play out much differently, she said. There is recourse for a supervisor who prevents female Soldiers and officers to attend courses that they are eligible for, she said.

I wonder how Smith would have done on D-Day, jumping into Normandy in the middle of the night to light the drop zones for the main airborne effort? Why do I get the feeling she would have gotten pregnant to avoid being deployed to the ETO in the first place? But, back then, the military didn’t have to deal with this nonsense. In 1944, the military was focused on winning a world war, not on placating the feminist and LGBT lobby. To Smith, like most feminists, the combat arms and its schools are just useful tools for them to use on the road up the career ladder, national security be damned.

The general officers conveyed how the military has changed since they first joined, discussed the stigma of pregnancy in some command environments and talked about balancing civilian life and their military careers while serving in the Army Reserve.

The military has not changed. It has self-destructed like one of Mr. Phelps’ reel to reel decks.

“It’s not easy raising kids while you’re doing this,” said Maj. Gen. Mary Link, commanding general, Army Reserve Medical Command.

Well, General Link. If the Army wanted you to have a kid, they would have issued you one.

“The Army Reserve has been very good as far as being able to balance those other priorities in my life,” said Brig. Gen. Lisa Doumont, commanding general, Medical Readiness and Training Command.

“I had twins, and then I was pregnant with my third son, so I said, ‘You know, I want to be around,’ so I left active duty and came into the Army Reserve. It’s been wonderful,” she said.

Absolutely! The Army exists to serve the needs of pregnant soldiers. And, with the Army’s new breastfeeding and lactation policies, pumping and storing breast milk in the field was never easier! Remember, to balance lactation support with readiness!

Lt. Col. Angela Wallace, public affairs officer, Army Reserve Medical Command and moderator for the event, opened the roundtable discussion and set the scene for the panel, stressing how America’s security thrives when relying on every service member’s talents, regardless of gender.

Obviously, Wallace has never been in a war, much less a fire fight, much less within 5000 miles of any shot and shell. She should ask any surviving veterans of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Pelelieu, Omaha Beach and the Bulge, how having women in the combat arms would have added anything except total disaster to those military operations and battles.

When Garcia was asked about her experience as a military police officer, she said, “This was one of those branches that had been open to women for quite some time.”

“(Military police) run gun trucks ahead of the infantry to clear the roadways and make sure they can get to where they need to go. We’ve been doing that for years,” she said. Really? Maybe for street parades, welcoming home ceremonies, and convoys to move farm animals out of the way. But, I dare say in combat, it would be Combat Engineers clearing the roads of IED’s, not people. That was a cheap shot that I would have hoped someone asked the general to elaborate on that one. But I’m sure no one did.

I’m not sure what Garcia is talking about, but it’s actually the infantry that seize and hold ground, not the military police. But, keep on dreaming, general.

Lieutenant General Gwen Bingham, Army assistant chief of staff for Installation Management, recalls an earlier time when her male leaders reacted to her pregnant appearance.

“Whoa, what happened here? What’d you go and do that for?” and “Soldier! What kind of uniform are you wearing? Is that the right uniform?” Bingham repeated. “Today, the military services are more pregnancy friendly. Maternity uniforms are available for pregnant service members and pregnancies are no longer seen as a hindrance or inconvenience.”

No, pregnancies are no hindrance at all. In fact, throughout history there are thousands of examples of pregnant soldiers fighting in battles, in fact whole units that were in fact, pregnant. Who can forget the 10th Welch ‘Bun in the Oven’ Regiment at the Somme? Where has the military been all this time?  Of course, the pregnant soldier is completely non-deployable, but don’t worry about that. The important thing is that the military is a big social welfare program and is there to provide its soldiers with cradle to grave benefits.

Maternity Army Combat Uniform… Let that bit of total lunacy roll around in your cabeza for a moment.

Goodbye Patton, MacArthur, Collins, Ridgway and Schwarzkopf. Hello, Garcia, Bingham, Wallace and Link.

God help us all.

Of course when questioned about the feminist destruction derby taking place in the military, the first thing out of the liberal mouth is that real bastions of militarism and prowess like Sweden have women in the infantry.

Bravo for the Swedes – they faded out as a group of bad ass killers in about 1100 A.D. with the advent of Christianity in Scandinavia. The only Vikings left are the guys from Minnesota who now play in a domed stadium because the snow is tough on their fragile Millennial bodies.

And, Bud Grant ain’t smiling…

Message to the Obama loyalists and feminists in the US Military. We ain’t Sweden. We ain’t Belgium. We ain’t Canada, nor are we Germany, a country that gave the world Rommel and the Afrika Korps, but now couldn’t find ten men with testosterone running through their veins.

On the contrary, the USA has some very tough and very determined enemies, enemies who will bringing planes, tanks, ships and MEN to the next war with us. And, we are in the process of committing national suicide.

I have a few questions for Generals Garcia, Bingham, Wallace and Link:

How does the integration of women into the combat arms increase or maintain a unit’s operational tempo?

How does the integration of women into the combat arms increase a unit’s strength?

How does the integration of women into the combat arms increase or maintain esprit de corps and the camaraderie of men in battle?

How does the integration of women into the combat arms not create a high school atmosphere in what was once a hard-nosed, all male, efficient group of steely eyed killers?

How does the integration of women into the combat arms increase or maintain our national security?

Do you understand that our enemies, who will be bringing only men to war, view us as politically correct imbeciles?

Besides given feminists a big warm and fuzzy, how does the integration of women into the combat arms do anything, but turn the US military into a feminized weakling?

Will you take responsibility for the thousands of dead women who will be arriving home in flag draped coffins in our next conflict, casualties of your stupidity, selfishness and dishonesty?

Of course you won’t. People like you never do.

The Day of Delusion speaks volumes about the current politically correct atmosphere that is burning down the military.

Infantry Women, National Security Equals Gender Neutrality, the Army is a Welfare Program and Pregnancies are No Hindrance to Combat Readiness.

The Hour of the Clusterfu*k is rapidly approaching and there is no one who has the guts to stop it. Hopefully, there is someone, and I believe he is waiting for the right time to stop some of this lunacy.

 

Originally posted 2018-04-08 08:12:40.

Current Events, Recent Posts

Task & Purpose

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Greg Newbold is one of the smartest, most professional Marines with whom I ever had the pleasure of serving. We were Captains together in the Ninth Marines at Camp Schwab, Okinawa 1977-78. Even among us captains, we all had a sense that Greg was destined  to become a flag officer.
Captains Tad Curtis and Greg Newbold outside the BOQs, Camp Schwab, Okinawa,  1977. Tad was my suite mate.

Knowing him as I do, it comes as no surprise that Greg has been one of the few flag officers of any branch who have come out against the travesty besetting our military today.  He never was one to mince words, and no one could exchange verbiage with him. I remember a story going around from  years ago about, a “word war” ensuing between Greg and his boss. As I recall, Greg was two-star  and at a press conference he used the word eviscerate. Later his boss, a pompous Air Force three-star “tried” to make fun of Greg by saying he didn’t know Marines were smart enough to use such big words like eviscerate. Greg started using words at press conferences that the news reporters didn’t know their meaning. The three-star lost the war.

Greg does a great job of laying it out in simple terms for everyone to read and “hopefully” understand. Of course the arrogant, know-it-all, Woke generals of today in every branch, including our current CMC,  aren’t smart enough to truly understand about which Greg is speaking. Sad. None of them could hold a candle to this Officer of Marines. Read and be informed by someone who has been there , done that!

From “Task & Purpose”

BY  | PUBLISHED FEB 10, 2022 9:03 AM

Many Americans, particularly our most senior politicians and military leaders, seem to have developed a form of dementia when it comes to warfare. The result is confusion or denial about the essential ingredients of a competent military force, and the costs of major power conflict. The memory loss is largely irrespective of political bent because all too many are seduced by a Hollywood-infused sense of antiseptic warfare and push-button solutions, while forgotten are the one million casualties of the Battle of the Somme in World War I, or the almost two million in the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II.

This “warfare dementia” is a dangerous and potentially catastrophic malady, because the price for it could alter the success of the American experiment and most assuredly will be paid in blood. The condition is exacerbated and enabled when the most senior military leaders — those who ought to know better — defer to the idealistic judgments of those whose credentials are either nonexistent or formed entirely by ideology.

The purpose of this essay is to explain the fundamental tenets of a military that will either deter potential enemies or decisively win the nation’s wars, thereby preserving our way of life. What follows are the tenets of Critical Military Theory:

1. The U.S. military has two main purposes — to deter our enemies from engaging us in warfare, and if that fails, to defeat them in combat. Deterrence is only possible if the opposing force believes it will be defeated. Respect is not good enough; fear and certainty are required.

  • Relevant Wisdom: “If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for War.” George Washington.

2. To be true to its purpose, the U.S. military cannot be a mirror image of the society it serves. Values that are admirable in civilian society — sensitivity, individuality, compassion, and tolerance for the less capable — are often antithetical to the traits that deter a potential enemy and win the wars that must be fought: Conformity, discipline, unity.

Direct ground combat, of the type we must be prepared to fight, is only waged competently when actions are instinctive, almost irrationally disciplined, and wholly sacrificial when required. Consensus building, deference, and (frankly) softness have their place in polite society, but nothing about intense ground combat is polite — it is often sub-humanly coarse.

  • Relevant Wisdom: “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us.” Attributed to George Orwell, possibly originally from Richard Grenier.

3. There is only one overriding standard for military capability: lethality. Those officeholders who dilute this core truth with civil society’s often appropriate priorities (diversity, gender focus, etc.) undermine the military’s chances of success in combat. Reduced chances for success mean more casualties, which makes defeat more likely. Combat is the harshest meritocracy that exists, and nothing but ruthless adherence to this principle contributes to deterrence and combat effectiveness.

  • Relevant Wisdom: “I shall see no officer under my command is debarred….from attending to his first duty, which is and always has been to train the private men under his command that they may without question beat any force opposed to them in the field.” The Duke of Wellington

4. A military should not be designed to win but to overwhelm. In baseball, you win if your total score is one run better than your opponent’s. In war, narrow victories incur what we call “the butcher’s bill.”

  • Relevant Wisdom: “But these things do not belong to war itself; they are only given conditions; and to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.” Carl Von Clausewitz.

5. Wars must be waged only with stone-cold pragmatism, not idealism, and fought only when critical national interests are at stake. Hopes for changing cultures to fit our model are both elitist and naive. The failures of our campaigns in Iraq and especially in Afghanistan confirm this.

  • Relevant Wisdom. “They enjoy playing poker with someone else’s chips.” B.V. Taylor

6. A military force’s greatest strengths are cohesion and discipline. Individuality or group identity is corrosive and a centrifugal force. Indeed, the military wears uniforms because uniformity is essential. The tenets of Critical Race Theory – a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement that seeks to examine the intersection of race and law in the United States, but which has the unfortunate effect of dividing people along racial lines – undermine our military’s unity and diminish our warfighting capabilities.

Recruit training teaches close order drill and the manual of arms (drill with weapons) not because they still have relevance to maneuvers on the field of battle, but because they instill a sense of how conformity creates efficiency and superior group results. Upon a firm foundation of cohesion, imaginative leaders can spark initiative and innovation. But when we highlight differences or group identity, we undermine cohesion and morale. Failure results.

  • Relevant Wisdom: “Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely. There is the science of the organization of armies in a nutshell.” Colonel Ardant du Picq.

7. “The enemy gets a vote.” An objective lens for military theory is how the nation’s foes regard our martial ethos; after all, that is what constitutes deterrence…or lack of it. Ferocity, not sensitivity, prevails.

  • Relevant Wisdom: “We will not fight them. They are not normal. When we shoot at them, they run towards us. If we fight them, we die. They are worse than the sons of Satan.” Taliban radio intercept after engaging U.S. forces.

8. Infantry and special operations forces are different. The mission of those who engage in direct ground combat is manifestly distinct, and their standards and requirements must be as well. Not necessarily better, but different. For direct ground combat units, only the highest levels of discipline, fitness, cohesion, esprit, and just plain grit are acceptable. Insist on making their conditions and standards conform to other military communities, and you weaken the temper of steel in these modern-day Spartans.

  • Relevant Wisdom: “It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it.” General Douglas MacArthur.

9. Those who enlist in our military swear an oath to carry out dangerous, sometimes fatal duties. We call it “being in the service,” because it’s service to others….selfless sacrifices when the other option was often more comfort, freedom, individuality, and higher pay. Those who occupy the most senior ranks of the military must repay this selflessness with courage that is even rarer — moral courage. Civilian control of the military is indisputable, but its corollary is the ordinary principle that advice is sought, offered, and seriously considered before crucial decisions are made. My personal experience provides examples — the willful exclusion of military judgments in the build-up to the Iraq War with the attendant consequence that the invasion force was too shallow (thereby creating a vacuum which the insurgents quickly filled), and the decision to disband the Iraqi Army (the single most unifying institution in that country) after the collapse of the Baathist regime. A more recent example worth considering involves the Afghanistan withdrawal.

  • Relevant Wisdom: “There’s a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top.  Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent.” General George S. Patton.

So what’s the problem? The problem today is one of both priorities and standards. We signal a dangerous shift in priorities (as just one example) when global warming, not preparedness to defeat aggressive global competitors, is considered the greatest problem for the Department of Defense and headquarters and rank inflation blossom out of control to the point that the support element greatly diminishes the ground combat element that wins wars. A problem of standards when every service and the Special Operations community dilute requirements based purely on merit in favor of predetermined outcomes to favor social engineering goals, and when new training requirements crowd out expectations and measurements of combat performance.

This principle is the most clearly and frequently violated in our current military environment. Although the examples are many, the most egregious sidestepping of scientific evidence occurred when the U.S. Marine Corps’ lengthy examination of the effects of integrated (coed) ground combat performance was refuted and ignored (often by those who hadn’t read it). This brings to mind the verbiage used in another context: “inconvenient truths.”

The critical tasks outlined above may omit some essentials, but these serve as a starter and perhaps as a wake-up call. We have witnessed extraordinary and sacrificial service by our Armed Forces — too good to squander by confusing our military’s purpose with those of individuals who don’t pay in blood for their errors. And too good for a foe to misjudge our intrinsic toughness. In any case, these are not Critical Military Theories; these are Critical Military Facts.

Greg Newbold is a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General who commanded at every level from platoon to division.  His last assignment was as Director of Operations for the Joint Staff in the Pentagon. In retirement, he operated a science and technology think tank, and co-founded a private equity firm and consulting group. He has been a director on a dozen non-profit and for profit companies.

Current Events

The Corps Part III

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I hope all enjoyed a feast yesterday and now have lots of “stuff” to sustain several meals left over.  I love cold turkey sandwiches’ with lettuce, and some cranberries spread about. Yum!

Okay, continuing the sad saga of the destruction of all that was good about the once recognized as the toughest military organization in the world — actually the most feared by our enemies. Read about it, it’s in the history books . Remember Belleau Woods?

Anyway, I keep getting mor emails telling me more and more of what’s happening. Which is good since I read no newspapers nor watch any news. Thanks to those contributing! So, here is more from the “boss.”

US Marine Corps Adopts New Commitment to Diversity and Representation Within Its Ranks

Written by Brian Good on 

Recognizing the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of life, including the military, the U.S. Marine Corps has announced a new plan designed to help the storied institution “reinvent” itself to look more like modern America.

NPR’s Emma Bowman and Rachel Martin reported that “the Marine Corps, the smallest U.S. military force, has plans for a big overhaul designed to address its lack of diversity and problem with retaining troops.” Now there are two reporters that everyone believes, right? They can be trusted to report nothing but facts. LOL

Gen. David Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps, told NPR that “the goal that’s driving what amounts to a cultural shift within the service is for the Marines ‘to reflect America, to reflect the society we come from.’”

In the interview, Gen. Berger was quick to point out that the change was not meant to reflect “political correctness” or an attempt at being “woke.” Instead, the policy change was a general reflection that all institutions, including the Marines, are better when they include voices, insight and knowledge from a variety of different backgrounds, races and ethnicities. In short, Gen. Berger said America’s strength comes from its diversity, adding that it is also true for the military.

“Our advantage militarily is on top of our shoulders,” Gen. Berger told NPR. “It’s not actually our equipment. We are better than anybody else, primarily because we don’t all think exactly alike. We didn’t come from the same backgrounds.”

Oh really, I thought Boot Camp and OCS took care of that difference and made us all Marines? I guess we don’t want that anymore??

To help bring his vision to fruition, the general and other Marine leaders have created a new plan titled “Talent Management 2030” that includes a number of different measures the Marine Corps will implement in the coming years to not only help increase diversity within recruitment but also aid in improving career flexibility and retainment with the military branch.

“About 75% of troops leave the Marine Corps at the end of their four-year term, the highest turnover rate among the military services,” Bowman and Martin reported. “To compete in an age of cyber warfare and space-based weaponry, the Marines wants (sic) to shake its ‘manpower’ model that historically prized youth, physical fitness and discipline over education, training and technical skills. According to the new plan, the aim is to grow a corps that is ‘more intelligent, physically fit, cognitively mature and experienced.’”

Gen. Berger said although he is eager to see the changes take shape, he was also realistic with his plan, realizing that it will take time for a reform of this scale to work its way through the Marine Corps, especially reaching senior leadership. He said this is especially true with the Marines since the branch didn’t open its ranks to women until 2016. What? That’s a spin, a play on words. Currently, less than 10% of active-duty Marines are female compared to the 20% to 25% range of other military branches.

 

“We are a purely combat force,” he said, pointing out how the Marines differ from Army, Navy and Air Force. “We were built under a different set of circumstances — but that is changing.”

Yes sir general it certainly is!

Book News, Recent Posts, Reviews

Kilo 3

I have read only one Vietnam War book in my lifetime. It was Fields of Fire by James Webb. While I did enjoy the book, the author is a POS as far as I am concerned; therefore, I am not touting his book.

Since I participated in the original “play,” I have chosen not to read someone else’s version of how he experienced the war, much of which is, in my view, a “war story” that gets better each time it’s told.; including mine LOL.

Having said that I am making an exception. Why you ask? It’s simple, I know the author very well. If you read my book, We’ll All Die as Marines, he is mentioned in it. I’ll not; however, tell you what chapter. Yeah, I know that’s mean. All I shall divulge is I was a fresh caught brown bar. That should surely take you right to the place if you still have the book. If not write me and I will sell you one. LOL.

Anyway, I digress. The book of which I speak was just released a few weeks ago. Its title is, Kilo 3. For Marines that should tell you it was Kilo Company of the 3rd battalion, of some regiment. Well, it’s the Striking Ninth, none other than the 9th Marine Regiment of the Third Marine Division, traditionally written a K 3/9.

I’ll not share any of the book with you as that would be cheating the author. I will; however, say this book makes Webb’s read seem like a child’s fairy tale. For those who have not experienced combat from an infantryman’s perspective, you will be enlightened beyond belief. As I read I could smell the cordite, feel the anger, hear the different types of explosions as he describes them perfectly, experience the sweat and intense heat, and remember the danger and fear.

However, this read is more than about the Vietnam War. It’s about leaving the blood, sweat, and horror of that horrible war and stepping into the glamour, perfectionism, and discipline of the Corp’s most famous and fabled duty station — Marine Barracks, 8th & I Streets SE, Washington, D.C. Many did exactly that during the 1968-69 timeframe, I was one of them, so I know what these Marines went through. Many did not make the cut. This read is about one who almost didn’t, but because OZ didn’t give him anything he didn’t already have, he not only made it, he made it big time!

That’s all I will tell you, except to repeat myself, I am certain you will thoroughly enjoy it. I stared reading it around noon on Saturday and finished it Sunday evening, and I am a slow reader. I could not put it down! I then called the author and congratulated him and thanked him profusely for sending me a signed copy..

 

Front Dust Cover

Back Dust Cover