Tag Archives: Marines

Current Events

We Need Him Now!

6 Comments

Dear Friends, I was not going to post today. I was  the guest speaker at a ceremony in a community where Nancy and I used to have place to stay as snowbirds. Kind of took it out of me. I told the story of Cpl Gary Wayne Olson, Chapter 34 in my book. Telling the whole story required setting the stage which really was quite emotional for me. But I got through it and they all seemed to enjoy it. I saw a few wet eyes as I talked. I know I had to pause now again my self., especially when reading his poem in his own hand writing. 

Anyway, as I said I wasn’t going to post today as emails were flying all over cyber space yesterday and today and I just wanted to relax and have some Scotch, read them, and reply. But then I received one with an attachment that I am certain you all have seen several times. The emailer, Richard, a fellow Marine with whom I have served said. “America needs this.” I knew what it was but still watched it — TWICE. Richard you were correct, America really does need this today, and we need someone just like him.

How he was able to give that talk from the heart and not have wet eyes is beyond me. Watch it if even if you’ve seen it, then pray we will find someone to like him to bring us out of this awful mess we are in. God bless you, God bless the United States of America, and God bless the 1.1 million Americans who gave it all, and are probably rolling over in their graves screaming at us wanting to know how did we allow this to happen. 

 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rKsW6c_CgFY%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_detailpage

Originally posted 2021-05-31 16:38:09.

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

Originally posted 2021-05-19 12:55:29.

Recent Posts

Our Military?

5 Comments

I have given up posting stuff about the head swamp creature. Mainly because nothing he does surprises me any more and I firmly believe  that while the slime coming from his mouth may be his voice, it’s not his words. He’s simply following the orders of the other swamp creatures. So, As one of my favorite commenters stated he simply can’t rant anymore  on what “HE” says or does.  I agree. Biden is not  my president or anyone’s president for that matter. It’s President Joe “Sanders et al.” So, I shall disregard what those fools do and post on other issues such as this one. That is, of course, until he does something really earth shattering other than just stupid, which is an everyday occurrence. 

Anyway, here is a article from the Tennessee Star on an organization we all are very familiar with — our military.

Commentary: The U.S. Military Is Just Another Woke Institution

 Admin
by Paul Bradford

Tucker Carlson spurred a much-needed reexamination of the military in March. His monologue criticizing the military’s political correctness drew a more furious response from top brass than any foreign threat is likely to do. The generals’ response only affirmed Tucker’s points about the degraded state of our armed forces. Why do generals—both current and retired—feel the need to condemn civilians who question the wisdom of putting women in combat?

The answer is that the military, along with the entire national security establishment, is at one with the Democrat-Media complex. The image we have of generals and senior officers as defenders of tradition is wildly out of step with reality.

This fact is underscored by its contrast with a letter issued in France last week. The letter—signed by 20 retired generals, 80 officers, and 1,000 lower-ranking soldiers—was stridently right-wing. “The hour is late, France is in peril, threatened by several mortal dangers,” the letter states. Though retired, we remain soldiers of France, and cannot, under the present circumstances, remain indifferent to the fate of our beautiful country.”

The dangers, according to the letter, are Islamism, multiculturalism, liberal state tyranny, and anti-white and anti-French cultural currents. “Today, some speak of racialism, of indigenism, and of anti-colonial theories, but with these words, those hateful and fanatical partisans seek to foment a racial war,” the letter declares. “They despise our country, her traditions, her culture, and want to watch her dissolve by tearing her away from her past and her history. Thus, by attacking statues and analyzing words from several centuries ago, their true goal is to undermine our ancient civil and military glories.”

The letter argues that if the politicians do nothing, the military “will be forced to step in and undertake the perilous mission of protecting our civilizational values and the lives of our fellow citizens.” The letter also clearly defines France as a particular nation, a homeland with its own unique traditions and heritage. It’s not merely an idea.

The contrast between the sentiments in this letter and those of our own military leadership is like night and day. Our generals support all the things the retired French commanders denounce. Our military happily resumed critical race theory training as soon as Donald Trump left office. Senior commanders essentially endorsed Black Lives Matter and its “mostly peaceful” demonstrations last year. They view too many white Americans in the service as the problem and embrace multiculturalism. The military endorses the abolition of American heritage if it offends modern sensibilities. The Defense Department vows to root out all “right-wing extremists” from its ranks. The same Pentagon that sent soldiers to D.C. to guard against imaginary threats to Joe Biden’s inauguration refused to use soldiers to curb BLM riots in 2020. Our military refuses to step in and protect any civilizational values.

Our retired generals also like to issue letters about political issues—but they sound more like Barack Obama than staunch conservatives. Retired Marine General James Mattis, one of the most recognizable faces of the American military, published a letter last summer endorsing Black Lives Matter and condemning Trump, the president who made him Secretary of Defense. He said the military should not be used to stop riots, which he claimed were nearly all peaceful. He also said that Black Lives Matter and Antifa merely call on Americans to “live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.”

After the election, Mattis wrote an op-ed urging Biden to eliminate “America First” policies. The retired general said America should instead return to globalist policies. Evidently, Mattis is not someone who considers America his homeland with its own unique traditions and character. It’s merely an “idea,” best upheld by far-Left agitators and the generals who agree with them.

Mattis wasn’t alone in publicly expressing such sentiments. Eighty-nine former defense officials signed a joint condemnation of Trump’s attempted crackdown of rioters last summer. The letter accepted BLM’s assertion that our justice system oppresses blacks.

Fifty-six retired senior officers attacked Trump for barring transgender personnel from serving in the military. “Patriotic transgender Americans who are serving—and who want to serve—must not be dismissed, deprived of medically necessary health care, or forced to compromise their integrity or hide their identity,” the 2017 letter stated.

Granted, not all current or former generals are like this. There are those like retired Lt. General Michael Flynn and others who stand with middle America against the swamp. But the military, as an institution, is reflected in these letters. You will never see 20 retired generals issue a strong statement denouncing mass immigration, critical race theory, or the state persecution of Trump supporters. Neither are you likely to see a call from those quarters for the military to protect America from domestic threats—unless those threats happen to be white and conservative.

We can see further evidence of our military’s decline in two viral media posts from last week.

The U.S. Navy apparently made history last week when the first all-gay flight crew flew its first mission. The crew wore rainbow bandanas and proudly displayed the gay pride flag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pictures presented a bizarre image of the military to the world.

Additionally, the CIA recently released an odd ad that may portend to future military recruitment. The ad, titled “Humans of CIA” in a nod to the popular Humans of New York blog, shows a very different CIA from its popular image.

The agent in the ad declares:

“I am a woman of color.”

“I am a cisgender millennial.”

“I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.”

“I am intersectional.”

The agent also sports a t-shirt with a raised fist. As a member of one of the most powerful institutions in the world, it’s unclear what she is raising her fist against. She is the power, not the resistance.

This is the CIA, of course. But you could see the Pentagon producing very similar ads.

Many conservatives still think of the military as an institution dramatically different from and immune to the harmful trends infecting the rest of the government. To them, the military evokes “honor” and “country,” and you can trust the troops to resist liberal tyranny. Reality paints a very different picture. While many of the troops, including senior officers, are great Americans who serve our country with honor, the institution itself no longer serves the American people as conservatives imagine. It serves the American empire controlled by liberal elites.

We can’t hope for the troops to ride in to save the day like the French military. The American military is just another corrupt institution that requires serious reform.

Paul Bradford is a Capitol Hill refugee now earning an honest living.

Check out the link below for a letter signed by  120 retired generals and admirals warning the admiration’s policies are a serious threat to national security. As a Marine, I am glad to see some names  who I know, worked for, and respected.  But sadly there are some I had much respect for who are missing. Shame on them; they know who they are! And then there are those I had  little respect for and they are on the list e.g., Krulak, Mattis, Kelly, Allen, Hagee, Jones, and more. The letter is a good read and look and see if your heroes or villain’s are on the list.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/over_120_generals_and_admirals_warn_that_administration_policies_are_national_security_threat.html

Originally posted 2021-05-12 10:18:45.

Current Events

Semper Fi, Ooh-Rah, and Yut

6 Comments

Time for a break from the swamp and something from the Duffel Bag 

By Blondes over Baghdad

PENTAGON — A Pentagon study aimed at identifying and rooting out extremism in the armed forces has led to the conclusion that the Marine Corps should be a banned extremist group by 2022.

“The Department of Defense convened a panel to study the roots of extremism after the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “We had to understand how a person becomes radicalized. And Jesus Christ did you know what the Marine Corps is like?”

Laura Goodwin, a researcher for the Rand Corporation, shared some data that informed the panel’s decision.

“When we asked recruits why they served in the Air Force, 54% said ‘college money,’ and 34% said ‘Patriotism or service to country,’ When we asked the same question to Marine Corps recruits, 18% cited ‘shoot a giant f**king machine gun,’ and 88% said ‘kicking in Bin Laden’s door, sneaking up to his bedroom, shooting his f***ing beard face, and throwing a grenade on his sleeping innocent wives and children just to watch them writhe in pain,” Goodwin said before pausing to take a deep breath. “That’s a hard sentence to read out loud for a normal non-Marine but there you have it in the data.”

Marine Commandant General David H. Berger disputed the study’s findings. “I don’t think we have an extremism problem in the Marine Corps,” Berger said. “I think we have an extremism tradition. Oorah! Kill! Kill! Kill!”

Experts point to groups like the Proud Boys or Antifa as extremist groups, but according to Rand, those groups are underdeveloped in recruitment, restructuring values, physical conditioning, and widespread cultural acceptance of extremist viewpoints when compared to organizations like the Marine Corps.

While there are many aspects of the Marine Corps that are good, like Motor Pool Monday and barracks parties, those activities were built on a backbone of “being ready to destroy absolutely anything, anywhere in the world, right f**king now,” officials said. Many Marines reported that they barely noticed that the organization’s foundational goals include going somewhere to indiscriminately kill, then pick up and move to another place, quickly, to indiscriminately kill, as they were more focused on getting paid to punch another man in the face.

“Blood makes the grass grow! Kill babies, oohrah!” responded Sgt. John Morgan, a 31-year-old well-adjusted man that is charming at dinner parties, when asked what the mission of the Marine Corps should be in the future.

Many of the Marines in the Rand study said they joined when they were in particularly economically and societally vulnerable situations. Joe (not his real name) explained that he had little access to education in his community and few job prospects. But when he was exposed to radical propaganda in a YouTube ad late at night, “all [he] could think about was slaying dragons and wearing white gloves and a sword.” Joe said that if he would have been able to attend college or find a good job, he probably wouldn’t have been susceptible to radicalization.

“We see this a lot,” said Goodwin. “Young men find radicalizing videos on the internet. It starts out as a curiosity, but they go deeper and deeper and find a community of extremist men, who isolate them from their friends, families, and the values they grew up on. Eventually, it escalates to the planning stage, where they find a strip mall with a Marine that matches the image from the radicalizing videos. The sad thing is that we spend a lot of money fighting extremism, but these young men are recruited for about $35 — the price of a USMC T-shirt and lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings.”

“When you find another man that thinks a K-bar dripping in human blood is ‘f**king sick,” it normalizes the behavior, Goodwin continued. “Eventually the two of you will use the same tattoo artist and marry the same stripper. At that point, you’re so entrenched it’s hard at that point to think that a nice job as an admin specialist in the Navy is an acceptable lifestyle.”

When asked for comment, Berger explained that plenty of Marines have good job prospects and healthy relationships with their families and communities, he just hadn’t found one yet, and “if you’re not a Marine you can’t understand us.”

Pentagon officials say known extremist dog whistles such as “Oorah” and “yut” have already been forbidden at bases around the world. During tattoo inspections, known extremist phrases like “Semper Fi” and eagle, globe and anchor motifs will be disqualifying. And Marine Corps Birthday balls must be open to the public and watched by neutral observers.

Plans to de-radicalize Marines and slowly transition them back to military service include encouraging them to spend time with mainstream military communities.

One promising pilot study placed Marines with Senior Airmen in air-conditioned dorms with clean running water. Within six weeks, 40% of participants stated that “They had their retirement all figured out and would just cruise on easy until then,” and 60% chose “getting an excellent evaluation,” as more important than “crushing a man’s windpipe with my bare hands.”

“The Department of Defense has shared core values of service, honor, and integrity, based on a long tradition of just war, the Geneva Conventions, ethical conduct, escalation of force and law of armed conflict,” Austin said, though his remarks were drowned out by a passing Marine platoon singing about blood making the green grass grow and putting claymores in children’s playgrounds.

While banning the Marine Corps is expected to address many aspects of military extremism and send an important message to Americans that extremism will not be tolerated, the underlying problems will be harder to address.

“I fully believe that we can ban the Marine Corps by 2022,” Berger said. “But we’re here because America wants us here. Try to stop that. YUT.”

Blondes Over Baghdad lets someone else take the top block because it’s the selfless service thing to do. She’ll go to ranger school when there’s a 3-beer policy. Follow her on Twitter at @BlondsOvrBaghd

Postscript: In case you have not realized it by now, this is a spoof from Duffel Bag.  LOL

Originally posted 2021-04-17 12:12:51.

Current Events

Belated Memorial Day Message

9 Comments

To all my Vietnam Veteran brothers, as well as my patriotic American followers who weren’t able to serve, may God bless you and keep you. I did not post anything prior to Memorial Day, as I always find myself somewhat lost for the appropriate words. Is it correct to wish someone “Happy Memorial Day? Appropriately or not, I always find it difficult to make that wish.

However, yesterday I received an email from a good friend and fellow warrior, Lobo, with a message from Quang Nguyen that I found highly moving and fittingly appropriate as a Memorial Day presentation. In case you are not familiar with Quang Nguyen, he is a state representative from Arizona. He sent Lobo a copy of the speech he had given this year at the Prescott National Cemetery in his home state. I’ll let him tell you his story. Enjoy!

Big Brother,                                                                    I was given 7 minutes to speak at the Prescott National Cemetery on this Memorial Day.  I thought it beneficial to Veterans to hear a different perspective.  Here’s the copy.  Please remember that I write the way I speak and so I am not paying attention to grammar or punctuation.  Thank you.

It is always an honor to be present here at the Prescott National Cemetery on Memorial Day. I was here last year to hear the wise words from Major General Mick McGuire and I hope to be just half as inspirational as his.

There is somewhat of a different perspective of Memorial Day once you been in a war and understand the true meaning of the “ULTIMATE SACRIFICE”. Today, I offer you my unique perspective of what this day personally meant to me. You see… We recently commemorated the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. I was too young to be in the service, but I lived through three communist invasions including the final one on 30 April, 1975. So when I say I’ve seen American service members walking through the rice fields, I actually saw that with my own eyes. When I say I understand the sacrifice of young men and women who travel 10 thousand miles to fight for my freedom, I actually do know and do understand. More than 58 thousands of your sons and daughters gave it all, SO I can stand here in front of you today. No books; No teachers; No professors will be able to explain the meaning of Memorial Day to me. I know from personal experience. Not a single day in my life that I don’t think about how lucky I am to be an American.

My Dad spent 39 years of his life fighting in three different wars.  My brother fought along side many of you who are here today, from 1968 to 1975 as an Airborne soldier. During my childhood, I learned that two of my first cousins died as rangers in Cambodia. One was executed after the Fall of Saigon in a concentration camp. Those are also my personal experience.

For years, I wasn’t able to visit the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC. I felt responsible for getting those names etched on those Walls. I did not want to interfere with the mourning process by showing up. There is so much guilt in my soul. In 2016, my wife, daughter, and I flew to DC to drop off my daughter Sarah at a Summer Program in Annapolis. Having little else to do in the area, my wife and I decided to visit the monuments and I mentally avoided the WALL. My wife then said to me… We need to spend time paying respect to Vietnam Veterans to which I replied, I don’t think I am wanted there. She literally dragged me from the Lincoln Memorial to the Vietnam Wall. It was 2:30 in the afternoon and for some unknown reasons, not a soul was there except for a wreath left for a soldier with a gold banner: “West Point Class of 64”. I touched as many names as I possibly can and by the time I got to the very end, I was emotionally drained and I felt grateful having known that so many died for me and I am grateful to be adopted by the most generous nation in the world.

To the Gold Star families, you bear the heavy burden of loss. You showed us your strength and resilience and that is a profound testament to the love and pride you hold for your love ones. I will never be in the position of telling you that I understand your loss. Thank you, Gold Star families for your ultimate sacrifice. To you and your service members, this nation owes you a debt of gratitude.

Here’s what we all need to recognize… Our fallen heroes know sacrifice through giving. The rest of us know sacrifice through receiving.

Let us honor our fallen heroes not only with words, but how we live, by serving others, stand up for what is right and to ensure their legacy endures through our action. May we never forget freedom is not free. It is paid for by the brave, and today, we remember them all.

God bless the Unite States America and her heroes.

Quang Nguyen