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Okay, I am done with Mr. Mattis and his flag officer cohorts and their seditious actions. All I will say is watch them folks — they are obviously up to something about which I have suspicions, but no factual evidence.

I’d like to ask do you support “Black Lives Matter” as a cause? If you answer yes, may I ask have you vetted the organization itself, have you gone to their website and researched it thoroughly?  Well, here is someone who has done the due diligence for you. This is from someone I trust. If you question anything he says, he has provided you with his references in footnotes. It is a long read so you may want to print it out and read at your leisure. I can; however, tell you if you think this organization is fighting for the rights of black people — you certainly need to read this.

Black Lives Are a Pretext

Origins of the violent racist organization behind the riots.

by David Horowitz

Jun 8, 2020

 

Black Lives Matter emerged as a national presence in the years 2014 and 2015 by declaring war on America’s law enforcement agencies. Black Lives Matter activists made headlines occupying America’s streets, targeting racially integrated and even majority minority police forces whom they accused of killing blacks at random merely because they were black. The Black Lives Matter activists fomented riots, burned and looted cities, and incited their followers with chants that ranged from “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want them? Now!” to “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”[1]

The latter slogan was designed to highlight the movement’s baseless claim that a 19-year-old resident of Ferguson Missouri Michael Brown was singled out because he was black and shot by a police officer while he was surrendering with his hands up.[2] The protesters demanded that the officer be convicted of murder in advance of any trial – in other words, lynched. However, the facts as revealed in Grand Jury testimony and subsequent investigations by the Obama Justice Department, were quite different. The officer singled out the 300-pound Brown because he had just committed a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store owned by a much smaller Asian shopkeeper, whom he brutalized.

When the officer attempted to arrest Brown, he responded by attacking the officer and attempting to seize his gun, which was discharged in the scuffle wounding the attacker. According to the sworn testimony of six black eye-witnesses, Brown was fatally shot while charging the officer, who fired another five rounds in self-defense. Yet, so disregardful of the facts were the protesters’ claims that they demanded the officer be convicted of a racial homicide, and the chant “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” continued to live on as a battle cry.[3]

Black Lives Matter was formed in 2013 by three self-styled “Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries,” who selected as their movement icon convicted cop-killer and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur.[4] Shakur had fled to Cuba after being convicted of the homicide she committed when her car was stopped for a broken tail-light by two New Jersey state troopers. Without any warning, Shakur shot trooper Werner Foerster. The 34-year- old Vietnam veteran was lying wounded on the ground pleading for his life, when Shakur walked over and executed him. Officer Foerster left a widow and a three-year-old son.[5] Black Lives Matter activists refer to the murderer as “our beloved Assata Shakur” and chant her words as a ritual, “at every meeting, every event, every action, every freeway we’ve shut down, every mall we’ve shut down.” [6] The chant is this: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” The last line is lifted directly from the conclusion to the Communist Manifesto, a document and war cry that has led to the murders of millions.[7]

The Black Lives Matter movement is not about particular injustices but about the alleged injustice of the American system, of capitalism, and of “white supremacy.” Its mission is not to save black lives. The thousands of deaths from black-on-black homicides draw no attention and inspire no protests, nor do the deaths of black police officers on the integrated police forces they attack. Their ferocious denunciations of slogans like “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” as “racist” reveal the racist impetus behind their own agenda.[8]

This agenda was on display in November 2015, when a group of 150 Black Lives Matter activists stormed the library at Dartmouth College and screamed at the bewildered students studying for exams: “F–k you, you filthy white f–ks!,” “F–k you and your comfort!” The activists ordered students who supported them to stand up, and verbally attacked those who refused, screaming at one of them: “You filthy white racist piece of sh-t!” When a female student burst into tears, a Black Lives Matter activist shouted “F—k your white tears.” Then: “If we can’t have it, shut it down.”[9] The only thing missing were black hoods and black sheets to complete the perverse parallel to the KKK racists of the past.

At the July 2015 Netroots Nation convention, a major gathering of the left, activists shouting “Black Lives Matter” blocked two leftist presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Kevin O’Malley from speaking because they were white. Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors seized the microphone and said by way of explanation, “Every single day folks are dying. Not being able to take another breath. We are in a state of emergency. If you don’t feel that emergency, you are not human.”[10] O’Malley responded to this: “I know, I know, Let me talk a little bit… Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter.”

As the words left O’Malley’s mouth, the crowd erupted in boos and catcalls. Then they chanted:

If I die in police custody, don’t believe the hype. I was murdered!
Protect my family! Indict the system! Shut that sh*t down!

If I die in police custody, avenge my death!
By any means necessary!

If I die in police custody, burn everything down!
No building is worth more than my life!
And that’s the only way motherf***ers like you listen!

If I die in police custody, make sure I’m the last person to die in police custody.
By any means necessary!

If I die in police custody, do not hold a moment of silence for me!
Rise the f*** up!
Because your silence is killing us![11]

“Burn everything down!” is a slogan that mimic’s Marx’s claim that “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” The nihilistic racism of the Black Lives Matter message is based on a demonstrably false premise – that police have declared open season on black men. The premise is false not only because America’s police forces have long been racially integrated. But as black talk show host Larry Elder and many conservative writers have observed, the proportion of blacks killed by police is directly related to the number of violent crimes committed by black males and thus likely proportional to the number of blacks involved in violent encounters with the law.

Despite being almost 65 percent of the population, whites commit disproportionately fewer of the nation’s violent crimes – 10 percent – and therefore are less likely to have encounters with police. Blacks are only 13 percent of the population, and black males, who commit the lion’s share of the violent crimes only 6 percent. Yet Black males account for nearly half the nation’s homicides.

Despite this disparity, whites are still 50 percent of the victims of cop shootings. Criminology professor Peter Moskos looked at the numbers of people killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 and found that 49 percent were white, while 30 percent were Black. In other words, if the statistics are adjusted for the homicide rate (as opposed to population numbers) whites [pursued by police] are 1.7 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police.”[12] And even this statistic doesn’t factor in the number of blacks killed not by white law enforcement officers but by black and minority ones.

Despite Black Lives Matter’s racist agendas, incitements to violence against police, and disregard for the facts, President Obama invited its leaders to the White House in February 2015 at the height of their protests, riots and incitements. When the Black Lives Matters leaders arrived in the White House, Obama put his arms around them figuratively. and pandered to them saying, “They are much better organizers than I was when I was at their age, and I am confident that they are going to take America to new heights.”[13] Think about that statement for a moment.

In August 2015, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement and its false narratives: “[T]he DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming black lives matter and the ‘say her name’ efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.”[14] This shameful resolution went on to claim that the American Dream “is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy,” and to demand the “demilitarization of police, ending racial profiling, criminal justice reform, and investments in young people, families, and communities;” and asserted that “without systemic reform this state of [black] unrest jeopardizes the well-being of our democracy and our nation.”

The following month Black Lives Matter activists Brittany Packnett, DeRay McKesson, Johnetta Elzie, Phillip Agnew, and Jamye Wooten were invited to the White House to meet again with President Obama as well as senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and other administration officials. For Packnett, it was her seventh visit to the Obama White House. Afterward, Packnett told reporters that the president personally supported the Black Lives Matter movement. “He offered us a lot of encouragement with his background as a community organizer, and told us that even incremental changes were progress,” she stated. ““He didn’t want us to get discouraged. He said, ‘Keep speaking truth to power.’”[15] Evidently it was the police forces in Dallas, Chicago, Baltimore and other cities, headed by blacks and under siege from the left, that was the “power” needing to be confronted.

In October, Obama made a public announcement in support of Black Lives Matter, saying: “I think the reason that the organizers used the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ was not because they were suggesting nobody else’s lives matter. Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that’s happening in the African-American community that’s not happening in other communities. And that is a legitimate issue that we’ve got to address.”[16]

The president’s support for a racist and violent vigilante group, his validation of its false version of reality and hostile attitude towards law enforcement, led predictably to more criminal violence. On July 7, 2016, Black Lives Matter activists staged rallies in numerous cities across the United States, to protest the recent shootings of two African American men by police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana. As was their practice, the demonstrators illegally occupied public thoroughfares and threatened violence chanting “No justice, no peace,” – a transparent threat to create mayhem if their demands were not satisfied. The Minnesota shooting by a Hispanic policeman was triggered by panic and should have been prosecuted as manslaughter; the other was the justifiable killing of a career criminal who was reaching for the officer’s gun. But like the lynch mobs they despised, Black Live Matters protesters were not interested in seeking remedies through the law. They had persuaded themselves there was no such remedy, and had been encouraged by the American president to take the battle to the enemy camp, which consisted of America’s integrated law enforcement agencies.

The result was, inevitably, tragedy. At a rally in Dallas, Texas, demonstrators shouted “Enough is enough!” while they held signs bearing slogans like: “If all lives matter, why are black ones taken so easily?”[17] During the demonstration, a black racist army veteran, named Micah Johnson, assassinated five police officers trying to protect the protesters, and wounded 9 others. Dallas police chief David Brown, who is black, explained: “The suspect wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”[18]

The anger generated by the lies of Black Lives Matter reached such a fever point in the wake of the Dallas massacre that, to justify the atrocity one Black Lives Matter activist speaking to a CNN reporter shouted: “The less white babies on this planet, the less of you we got! I hope they kill all the white babies! Kill ’em all right now! Kill ’em! Kill your grandkids! Kill yourself! Coffin, bitch! Go lay in a coffin! Kill yourself!”[19]

In the face of this racist hatred, the Obama White House stepped forward to provide still more support for the movement that had provided the tinder and lit the fuse. At the funeral for the slain Dallas policemen, the president lectured the surviving officers rather than the rioters, schooling them and the grieving family members about the racism of America’s police departments: “We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow; they didn’t simply vanish with the law against segregation … we know that bias remains.”[20]

Exactly whose bias? White Americans played a large and historic role in the civil rights struggles that ended segregation, and established the Civil Rights Acts. There is no evidence that the shooter, Micah Johnson was harassed by, or suffered at the hands of white people. But there was evidence that he was influenced by Black Lives Matter and similar organizations at war with the police. And he was deeply affected by the series of false, racist narratives promulgated by these organizations and their allies in the press about the police shootings that had occurred over the previous two years.

The police were also profoundly affected by officer shootings and, even more so, officer assassinations, anti-cop demonstrations, riots, and threats. According to a Pew Foundation study published in 2017, “More than three-quarters of U.S. law enforcement officers say they are reluctant to use force when necessary, and nearly as many — 72% — say they or their colleagues are more reluctant to stop and question people who seem suspicious as a result of increased scrutiny of police, …”[21] This attitude on the part of police in areas which had become the focus of the protest-assaults – Ferguson, Baltimore, Dallas, Chicago – was accompanied by a dramatic spike in homicides  with the perpetrators and victims being overwhelmingly black.[22] As former Baltimore cop and now university criminologist Peter Moskos commented: “Murders and shooting increased literally overnight, and dramatically so. Of course, this took the police-are-the-problem crowd by surprise. By their calculations, police doing less, particularly in black neighborhoods, would result in less harm to blacks. And indeed, arrests went way down. So did stops. So did complaints against policing. Even police-involved shootings are down. Everything is down! Shame about the murders and robberies, though.”[23]

The entire syndrome of police withdrawal leading to spikes in crime rates was termed “The Ferguson Effect” after the city that was looted and burned following the shooting of Michael Brown, and the creation of the myth that he was killed with his hands up. It summed up the unintended – but not surprising – consequences of having an extremist organization like Black Lives Matter take over the nation’s streets, and – with the help of an American president – shape the national narrative on race.

The power of Black Lives Matter stemmed from its exploitation of the ideology of oppression – Identity Politics – a ready-made indictment looking for a crime. Black Lives Matter was at the center of a very large network, including hundreds of leftist organizations sharing the same vision. Among them: The Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Dream Defenders, Hands Up United, Black Left Unity Network, Black Workers for Justice, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Right to the City Alliance, School of Unity and Liberation, Dignity and Power Now, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Causa Justa/Just Cause, Organization for Black Struggle, Communist Party USA, Showing Up for Racial Justice, and others.

Many of these organizations are funded by America’s largest corporations and philanthropies, including the Ben & Jerry Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Margaret Casey Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

In the summer of 2016, the Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund, a six-year pooled donor campaign whose goal was to raise $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition. This coalition embodies the extremist views and agendas of the Black Lives Matter radicals. In the official words of the Ford Foundation: “The Movement for Black Lives has forged a new national conversation about the intractable legacy of racism, state violence, and state neglect of black communities in the United States.” (Emphasis added) According to Borealis, “The Black Led Movement Fund provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working to advance the leadership and vision of young, black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America.”

In a joint statement, Ford and Borealis said that their Fund would “complement the important work” of charities including the Hill-Snowden Foundation, Solidaire, the NoVo Foundation, the Association of Black Foundation Executives, the Neighborhood Funders Group, anonymous donors, and others. In addition to raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives, the Black-Led Movement Fund planned to collaborate with Benedict Consulting on “the organizational capacity building needs of a rapidly growing movement.”[24]

The fact that Black Lives Matter was now a major national movement funded by America’s establishment elites did not prompt its communist founders to reconsider their political infatuation with totalitarians or their anti-American agendas. When Cuba’s sadistic dictator Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016, the Black Lives Matter leadership published an article titled, “Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante.”[25] It began, “We are feeling many things as we awaken to a world without Fidel Castro. There is an overwhelming sense of loss, complicated by fear and anxiety. Although no leader is without their flaws, we must push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante. And there are lessons that we must revisit and heed as we pick up the mantle in changing our world, as we aspire to build a world rooted in a vision of freedom and the peace that only comes with justice. It is the lessons that we take from Fidel.”[26]

The eulogy then turned to Black Lives Matters’ own icon, cop-killer Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba to avoid paying for her crime: “As a Black network committed to transformation, we are particularly grateful to Fidel for holding Mama Assata Shakur, who continues to inspire us. We are thankful that he provided a home for Brother Michael Finney Ralph Goodwin, and Charles Hill, [cop-killers and airplane hijackers-DH], asylum to [Black Panther leader, rapist and murderer] Brother Huey P. Newton,[27] and sanctuary for so many other Black revolutionaries who were being persecuted by the American government during the Black Power era.”[28]

The eulogy expressed gratitude to Castro for “attempting to support Black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina when our government left us to die on rooftops and in floodwaters.” This was another Black Lives Matter lie obvious to anyone who watched the rescue efforts on TV, where virtually all the rescuers were white and all the rescued black. Responsibility for the failure to evacuate residents rested squarely on the Democrat mayor of New Orleans who was black and was eventually sent to prison for his crimes. The eulogy lauded a dictator who put AIDS sufferers, many of whom were black, in concentration camps for having “provided a space where the traditional spiritual work of African people could flourish.” In a religious language suited to their adoration, the tribute closed by saying: “As Fidel ascends to the realm of the ancestors, we summon his guidance, strength, and power as we recommit ourselves to the struggle for universal freedom. Fidel Vive!”

As delusional and repellent as these sentiments should be to any American, and as troubling coming from an organization endorsed by the Democrat Party and supported by American philanthropy and the Obama White House, they are matched if not exceeded by Black Lives Matter’s endorsement and embrace of Islamic terrorists who have sworn the destruction of Jews, Christians and the United States. In January 2015, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors joined representatives from Dream Defenders on a 10-day trip to the Palestinian Territories in the West Bank. Their objective was to publicly draw a parallel between what they portrayed as Israeli oppression of Palestinians and police violence against blacks in the United States.[29] The following August, Cullors was one of more than 1,000 black activists, artists, scholars, politicians, students, and “political prisoners,” to sign a statement of alliance with the Hamas terrorists who ruled the Gaza strip.

Proclaiming their “solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people,” the Black Lives Matter group demanded an end to Israel’s “occupation” of “Palestine,” condemned “Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and chokehold on the West Bank,” and urged the U.S. government to end all aid to Israel. They also exhorted black institutions to support the terrorist-sponsored Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions movement designed to strangle the Jewish state.[30] On their return to the states, the repulsive call for liberation  “From Ferguson to Palestine” quickly became a slogan of the movement.[31]

Black Lives Matter had in fact achieved a kind of transformation, although it was more the climax of a trend that had begun with the death of Martin Luther King, than something original. President Obama had touched on it in his attempts to conflate what he called the “messy” aspects of the Black Lives Matter “protests” with what he regarded as similar rough edges he detected in the civil rights and suffragette movements of the past.[32] But those movements and their leaders were clearly part of the American tradition and their allegiances and beliefs could be traced back to the Founders who had created a Republic based on democracy and individual rights. By contrast, Black Lives Matter leaders identified with alien, totalitarian forces, with Islamic imperialists and terrorists who were conducting a 70-year genocidal aggression against the Jewish state. They had joined declared enemies of the United States and its democratic ally. This was a foretaste of the insurrection they are now leading, setting fire to the country that made them the freest, richest and most privileged black community in the world.

Notes:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqQXmnMr_w8

[2] For an extensive analysis of these events see Heather MacDonald, The War Against Cops, 2017

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_up,_don%27t_shoot

[4] For details on the organization and its founders, see www.discoverthenetworks.org

[5] https://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2015/05/trooper_werner_foerster_was_killed_42_years_ago_to.html

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNayoOysBLY

[7] Ibid.

[8] For other examples, cf. https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/organizations/black-lives-matter-blm/

[9] https://www.truthrevolt.org/news/college-blacklivesmatter-protests-turning-aggressive-f-you-filthy-whites

[10] https://www.truthrevolt.org/news/democrat-protesters-shout-democrat-candidates-stage

[11] Ibid.

[12] https://www.wnd.com/2016/07/the-truth-about-cops-killing-blacks/#LWc1WAI0IYWi4UVq.99. Cf. also MacDonald, The War On Cops, Chapter 13 “Black and Unarmed,” for a further breakdown of the statistics.

[13] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/18/black-lives-matter-meet-president-obama-white-house-justice-system

[14] http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/dnc-passes-resolution-supporting-black-lives-matter

[15] https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/organizations/black-lives-matter-blm/

[16] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/obama-defends-black-lives-matter-movement

[17] https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-dallas-shooting-20160707-snap-story.html

[18]Carlson, Ship of Fools, op. cit., loc 2005

[19] https://www.weaselzippers.us/284283-video-black-lives-matter-activist-shouts-kill-all-white-babies/

[20] Carlson, op. cit. Cf also Heather MacDonald, The War on Cops, on the support for Black Lives Matter in the mainstream media.

[21] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/01/11/behind-the-badge/; https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/11/ferguson-effect-study-72-us-cops-reluctant-make-stops/96446504/

[22] https://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/482123552/murder-rate-spike-attributed-to-ferguson-effect-doj-study-says

[23] https://dailycaller.com/2017/10/01/the-fbis-latest-report-suggests-the-ferguson-effect-is-real/

[24] Cf. www.discoverthenetworks.org, op. cit.

[25] Nat Hentoff, “The Revolutionary as Sadist,” Village Voice. Hentoff was a well-known libertarian leftist.

[26] https://medium.com/@BlackLivesMatterNetwork/lessons-from-fidel-black-lives-matter-and-the-transition-of-el-comandante-c11ee5e51fb0

[27] https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/huey-newton/

[28] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/09/americas/us-cuba-fugitive-charlie-hill/

[29] https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/2015-black-lives-matter-visits-palestine-links-jihad-against-israel-to-race-war-in-us

[30] http://www.blackforpalestine.com/read-the-statement.html; http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/19/black-activists-endorse-bds-movement.html; https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/My-word-BDSs-binding-ties-with-terrorists-580068

[31] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandra-tamari/from-ferguson-to-palestine_b_8307832.html

[32] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/2016/07/11/obama-longstanding-tradition-of-contentious-and-messy-protest-needed-in-america/

 

 

 

Originally posted 2020-06-12 09:48:07.

Current Events

Generals Investigating Generals – Really?

15 Comments
I know Col Anderson having personally served with him. He has been a thorn in public officials’ sides for many years. Even while on active duty he was an avid writer. For example, In December 1988, in a Washington Times article,  Gary criticized the Air Force, suggesting that it be dissolved and folded into the other military branches. The piece earned him a  personal call from the Commandant and a temporary stay from public writing. “He took my crayons away for a while,” Gary said.
I suspect no one reading this post will have difficulty agreeing with Gary’s thrust. That abysmal, downright disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan where Marines lost their lives needs to be thoroughly investigated and some one in the hierarchy held accountable, and I don’t mean some colonel or brigadier general. Heads need to roll, but  generals investigating generals is a joke. The upper echelon of flag officers are as inept and unprofessional as they have ever been.. Let’s just refer to them as members of the GPA (General’s Protective Association). Put retired senior enlisted and field grades who ate Afghan dirt on the investigation team, and we will find the truth.
There is so much truth in this article about our generals. Read and learn.

Keeping the Generals Out of the Afghanistan Investigation Is a Great Idea

6 Jan 2022
Military.com | By Gary Anderson

Our general officers should not be allowed to investigate themselves, and any conclusions about the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and its military forces inevitably will be tied to the actions of those officers who for two decades shaped U.S. strategy.

The recently passed annual defense policy bill includes a requirement for a new study of the failures in Afghanistan. In the past, it was pro forma to appoint retired flag rank officers, usually four-stars, to lead such an investigation. The current legislation precludes the generals and admirals who were part of the problem, as well as members of Congress serving since 2001, ostensibly a roundup of all of those who were responsible for the decisions made in Afghanistan.

That is a good call, but giving the Investigation three years is not; the war will be ancient history by then.

Several recent opinion polls suggest that the traditionally high regard that Americans have held for our military is eroding. But a closer look shows that the public still respects our troops. It’s senior military leadership that is losing the trust of the public. Americans appear to be far ahead of Congress, which let the generals who fouled up the Afghan evacuation off the hook with a proverbial slap on the wrist during hearings last fall.

The sad truth is that our flag rank officers have become merely another political interest group. They know that upon retirement they will be appointed to the boards of think tanks, corporations and universities. Going along to get along is the norm, and one never criticizes another member of the club.

This careerist, risk-avoiding atmosphere has been developing for years. Not all modern general officers are guilty, but far too many are. This goes a long way in explaining why no senior flag officer demanded that serious questions be asked about the course of the war in Afghanistan while their subordinates, particularly in the enlisted ranks, knew it was going sideways for two decades.

I listened as soldiers and Marines complained bitterly of being told that they had to abandon terrain that they had fought hard to take and hold because a general officer miles away had decided that it was no longer important or that the Afghans would take over, when it was obvious that they were not ready. Some of the revolving door American commanders in Kabul tinkered at the margins, but none had the intestinal fortitude to ask the really hard questions such as:

  • Why did we create an Afghan army in our own image? Soldiers from Herat in the west were defending Kabul while soldiers from Kabul were defending distant Herat. Regional forces would have made sense. That was the way the Taliban organized; they were not dependent on outside supplies that might or might not arrive, or far away chairborne Afghan generals who were pocketing soldiers’ pay. Such a reorganization was possible even as late as 2019, but the idea was never seriously considered.
  • Why was the Afghan air force not a priority? Given the nation’s abysmal road system, the only way to support remote army posts was by air. The Afghan air force was always a secondary consideration. Support to the air force was one of the first capabilities to be eliminated as the decision to leave was implemented while remote outposts were being left to wilt on the vine, and no American general officer had the moral courage to go public with the fact that the organization could never be self-sustaining.
  • About roads, why was the completion of the Ring Road, which would have connected the nation to Kabul, never a military priority? Instead, construction was left to often corrupt civilian contractors who lacked the ability and force protection to operate in contested areas. In 2012, my civilian District Support Team and our military partners in the remote northwest of Badghis Province were still totally dependent on NATO aerial resupply. That was 11 years after the initial NATO incursion. Nonetheless, no U.S. commander voiced opposition to handing over the province’s defense to the Afghan government, which was totally unprepared to assume the responsibility. Instead of publicly telling President Barack Obama the truth, the American commander of NATO forces, Gen. John Allen, punted.
  • Finally, as it became obvious that we were going to quit the country, why was the defensible Bagram Air Base abandoned in the dead of the night and the vulnerable Kabul Airport chosen as a point of embarkation? This was military incompetence of the highest order. Thirteen service members died unnecessarily, and no one has yet been held accountable. The same holds true with a drone strike that decimated an innocent Afghan family.

Who then should make up the congressionally mandated Afghanistan investigation commission? There are many retired midgrade officers who served in Afghanistan and have gone on to succeed in business and in the academic world over the past few decades; some are now in Congress. The same holds true of any number of enlisted personnel who have achieved advanced degrees.

People who saw the war up close should make up the commission. There should also be retired State Department and CIA operatives who knew what was really going on while the generals acted as combat tourists, occasionally visiting the troops and handing out challenge coins.

Without the perspective of those who did the real fighting, we will learn nothing.

Current Events

The Corps Part II

15 Comments

Received an email from a fellow retired Marine—whom I highly respect—that included the following messages. I share these with you as my second blog post on the current recruiting plan put forth by our CMC significantly touted as, “Operation Semper Fi.”

* * * *

Marine Brothers, one and all. I forwarded this to a select few generals. I intend to email Senator Rick Scott…former navy officer. The words and thoughts are harsh but should not be ignored. I fear we are back to 1947…which way will it go?

I want to share these inciteful comments from a distinguished Marine, the father of two outstanding Marine officers (one infantry, the other combat engineer), both of whom had multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I feel sorry for the head of recruiting. At the same time that the CMC insults and denigrates previous generations of Marines and their flawed culture he is trying to rally retired Generals and Marines to help the Corps recruit. Sending it to retired Generals is preaching to the crowd that at about 80-90% supported or fell silent on the critical issues of perversion, depravity, fraternization, reverse racism, sexual preference for women, unisex uniforms, women in the combat arms, the elimination of tanks, tube artillery, numerous infantry Bn’s, 25% of F-35’s and CH-53F’s, female grooming standards, 18 months of maternity leave, the destruction of the MAGTF concept, the vapid attacks on the culture of the Corps and its racist/sexist heritage. Add to that a bevy of Generals who went from Warriors to politicians and openly and repeatedly insulted a sitting President.

 A Marine four- star CINC presided over a catastrophic NEO from Kabul taking orders from the Taliban about who, what, when, how, and why and then fled in the dark of the night with his tail tucked between his legs.

Our beloved Corps is at an historic low point with few allies on the Hill and an American people who view us as mere victims. Eighty percent of our Generals appear to have been intellectual midgets without a spine, charisma, presence, or persuasive verbal skills. They appear be average to below average men by every measure. When the time to stand up and be counted came, they opted to pass. This made it even harder for those willing to do the right things, the right way, for the right reasons.

We know who has a high propensity to enlist and we don’t want them. Instead, we chase after the misanthropes, the gender confused, the lost souls, and those we know are poorly suited to the battlefield. We encourage those to join the Corps whose interests are totally self-serving, to then change the Corps.

The Corps must reassess the culture it has abandoned if it expects the endorsement and support from those who have retired. I cannot, at this juncture, encourage an 18 year old to join the Corps. I say that with a very heavy heart.”

I must admit that with a very heavy heart, I have already convinced one 18-year-old to forego his lifelong desire to become a Marine and go on to college in hopes that—just maybe with God’s help—the Corps will be back on track.

* * * *

Another highly respected Marine known to me wrote:

Sometime back, I opined that the success of Berger’s “Great Leap Forward,” his “re-imagining” of our beloved Corps to make it more “representative of our country,” would be reflected in the retention rates of serving Marines and the recruiting of new ones. The following is from a Brother Marine regarding the missive recently sent to all retired Marine generals by the CG, USMC Recruiting Command requesting their support of “Operation Semper Fi:”

“My response: I will watch… but if they think they can muster Marine Veteran support if they continue the march to “woke land” …and all that implies including fostering Marxist ideology masquerading as modern liberalism they are sadly mistaken. Veterans will support traditional Marine values not forced ideas that are counter to common sense and successful traditional values. The thinking of those forcing the “new order” is being brought to us by the same people or their progeny that abandoned us in Vietnam and tried their best to turn the entire country against us—they failed but as a result they are now working from the inside of government (civilian and military) to have their way.”

Please stand by Marines, and others. There is much more to come in the ensuing days regarding this disgusting issue. It will end with my open letter to General Berger!

 

 

Current Events, Recent Posts

A Little History

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Failure in Afghanistan Has Roots in the All-Volunteer Military

For the past three decades, careerism among senior officers coupled with the disconnect between the American public and the All-Volunteer Force have led to failed and unnecessary overseas military interventions.
By Paul Cavallo

September 2021
Proceedings
Vol. 147/9/1423

The tragedy that unfolded over the past several weeks in Afghanistan began with the creation of the “all-volunteer” military in 1973 and the self-promoting careerism that has stalked the Pentagon ever since. Too few leaders have been willing to speak truth to power and say no to overseas military adventurism that had little bearing on the safety and security of this nation. And it goes without saying that those in charge when the war begins are never those who have to finish it.

We saw this most clearly when, in 1990-91, America sent its young warriors into the deserts of the Middle East. We called it “The Gulf War” and “Desert Storm,” but it was, in reality, America’s first mercenary war. The Bush administration cut a deal with the Saudis and Kuwaitis: our men, their money. Kuwaiti “princes” lived large in hotels from Saudi Arabia to Paris while our young soldiers and Marines dug fighting holes in the desert under a searing sun.

U.S. Marines in Desert Storm
U.S. Marines in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. (Naval Institute archives)
The peacetime, all-volunteer military, after all, was a good job with benefits and perks. And that “war” went relatively well and quickly with few American servicemembers killed or injured, to the high praise of the U.S. public who were entranced, awed, and seduced by the lethality, performance, and accuracy of our high-tech weapons, while forgetting that the troops on the ground, in the desert, held it all together and made the irrefutable success of the war possible. Yet it was also the start of the forever wars. Saddam Hussein remained in power after the war and the U.S. military remained in the Middle East—enforcing no-fly zones and oil embargoes on Iraq with naval forces in the Persian Gulf and air and land forces based in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.

While it might be a “chicken or the egg” argument, it is hard not to see that the permanent increase of U.S. military presence in the Middle East went hand in hand with the rise of militant Islam and anti-American terrorism. How many Americans remember the 1996 terrorist bombing of a U.S. Air Force barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia? Nineteen U.S. servicemembers were killed and 498 wounded. Two years later, the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya killed 12 Americans and hundreds of civilians and wounded 4,500 people. Then came the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole (DDG-67) in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and injuring dozens of others. Less than a year later came the 9/11 attacks, answered shortly by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. A little over a year later, under the false pretense that non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would be used against the United States, came the invasion of Iraq.

Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 in Saudi Arabia
The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 U.S. servicemembers and injured nearly 500 more. 

By the end of 2003, U.S. special operations forces had completed much of their mission in Afghanistan to capture or kill senior leaders and high-value targets within both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pentagon, however, rather than putting their “swords” away somehow decided to “nation build” a medieval land of warring tribes into a Western-style democracy, ignoring the fact that our democracy took centuries and many great wars to achieve.

For the past 31 years, the brunt of the cost has been borne by the all-volunteer force. The majority of American citizens have not served (none were required to), and most know few who have. A few dozen—or even a few hundred—servicemembers killed per year was the cost of doing business. But where were the generals and admirals who should have stood up to the civilian leaders, without compromise, to say “enough,”—that foreign wars too often leave our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines dead and forgotten, and for what? Were the military’s senior leaders just following along in-line, waiting for their moment, their chance for another star, or a richly coveted post-retirement job with a “vendor.” Were they just inured to the burdens of the profession? Unable to see the giant machine in which they were cogs—the failed foreign policy that resulted in the spilling of blood and national treasure for questionable (if any) gain.

It is no surprise that the “war” in Afghanistan eventually became a bottomless money pit. More than a trillion dollars was spent; did it make our nation safer, or did it just make Washington-connected corporations rich? Some of that money was funneled back to Congress through campaign donations and favors, all the while young Americans were being killed and wounded. Walk into any Veterans Administration hospital and see first-hand the reality that was brought home.

So, with the most recent deaths and injuries at Kabul International airport—clearly caused by a lack of planning, foresight, and courage at the top—we witness more evidence of the ongoing tragedy and travesty that is American “foreign policy” and the willingness of senior military leaders to go along with it. Will we ever learn? History suggests, no.

Postscript: While some commenters on the  actual article disagree with the author, I do not. I understand where he is coming from and follow his line of thought completely. The disconnect between the American public in general and the military and their assigned missions is indeed relevant. A quick “war story” if I may.

Serving as a temporary Chief of Staff at a command when the actual made a quick decision to retire, I had to handle my job as well for a few months while the Corps had to find a colonel for the billet. After a few months of this double duty my general, a fresh-caught BG, comes in my office with a cup of coffee to shoot the bull. Out of the blue he calmly says, Jim you know you will never make general.” To which I laughed telling him all I ever wanted to be was a Gunny. He asked if I wanted to know why, and of course I knew he wanted to tell me so I said yes.

He told me he knew several generals who would jump at having me as their COS because I had a knack of letting seniors (and juniors) know that if they cannot handle your answer they should never ask me the question. He said generals cannot do that. They must always speak the party line or they will never move above one star, which is why so many generals retire as a BG. They spoke outside the party line once and were passed over, or they  want nothing to do with it and retire.

Personally, I took his comments as compliment as that philosophy helped me to rise from private to colonel, and I was not about to change it. When a general speaks, understand he is never telling you what he truly believes in his heart. He is simply a mouth piece for the admisntration at the time.