Tag Archives: GW

Current Events

Biden’s Briar Patch

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What is going on in the swamp these days? There is always so much going on among the creatures, tis hard to stay tuned up. Recv’d this missive from my good friend, fellow Marine Brother, Greg, this a.m. Biden just cannot stay out of trouble. To quote a famous Philosopher, “Stupid is what stupid is.” Why do so many of his remarks, promises, and decisions come back to bite him in the backside? Well, this one surely will. Stay tuned.

By: G. Maresca

With Republicans poised to win back the Senate after the November midterm election, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is the court’s second-longest serving member, announced his retirement at the end of the court’s term this summer.

Biden promised during the 2020 South Carolina primary that provided he was elected his first appointment to the nation’s highest court would be a Black woman. Biden prefers identity politics taking precedent over qualifications.

Perhaps Biden is trying to make up for the fact that when George W. Bush nominated Janice Rogers Brown, a black woman for the U.S. Court of Appeals, she was opposed and filibustered by Sen. Biden. Brown was eventually confirmed and then nominated by Bush for the Supreme Court but replaced by Samuel Alito due to Biden’s opposition. In 1987, Biden bashed renowned judge Robert Bork, a Ronald Reagan Supreme Court nominee, so maliciously that he transformed Bork’s name into a verb.

Biden weaves a long and sordid tale with Supreme Court nominees, so don’t be fooled by this latest “first” just ask Janice Rogers Brown.

Biden’s appointment record speaks volumes with Kamala Harris as Vice President and Jennifer Granholm as Secretary of Energy – pure ideological selections. Biden’s first year has been a disaster yet, he continues along the same path as he kowtows to the extreme elements of his party. By announcing his intention to only consider black women, Biden insults his nominee, the court and nation.

Biden did his nominee a disfavor and thus put her judicial qualifications in question for the remainder of her career. The search will be limited to roughly 2% of the national lawyer consortium, which narrows the pool tremendously, while handcuffing the best candidates.

Biden’s nominee will not change the court’s balance of power but it will make it much younger.

The nation deserves a robust debate about the nominee, whether Black, Hispanic White, Asian, man, or woman. Diversity does not afford one to accurately read the law better. The increasing acceptance that gender and race, rather than individual merit, is the most important characteristic no matter how well-intended, should raise fervent alarm.

Even if the nominee was the best, she is denigrated by being chosen for race and gender rather than capabilities and credentials. She will certainly not get the disgraceful grilling that Kavanaugh received at his nomination hearing. Nor will she be asked why does any accomplished Black woman stoop to being played as a political pawn?

Biden was reminded that nominating Diana Ross to the Supremes happened a long time ago and he should select Kamala Harris already a torchbearer as the first woman who was Jamaican and Indian to become a Black woman.  Oh yeah, do that Biden, good choice. Wait, stop, watch this short video.

Replacing Harris with a competent vice president would enhance Biden’s ticket should he run again, or who can lead the ticket if he is unable.  

Biden said he will miss Breyer, as he is especially fond of his chocolate ice cream. Wait, stop, sorry to interrupt again, but watch this short clip of our clear thinking president

Naturally, any criticism of Biden’s pick will be treated as racist and misogynistic.

Once upon a time in America, Martin Luther King’s dream had relevance: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Many who observe King’s legacy embrace racism and sexism and fool no one.

Rather, they threaten and intimidate.

Biden treats the Constitution as a mere suggestion rather than the nation’s foundational law while failing to live up to his oath to faithfully uphold it.

Democrats run government by quota, rather than merit. Meritocracy is dead as race, gender, religion or lack thereof, is what characterizes contemporary America and not for the better.

This fall, the Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding race discrimination in admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Biden’s nominee, who gained her seat by race and gender, will now adjudicate such cases.

Breyer’s last line of his resignation letter reads: “Throughout, I have been aware of the great honor of participating as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the rule of law.”

That should be priority one.

Sadly, it is anything but.

Ice Cream anyone?

 

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.