Tag Archives: oil

Current Events, Recent Posts

Strength Respects Strength

3 Comments
And as Greg points out, power has always respected power. Its been that way since Adam and Eve. Putin is no different than anyone who has a left and right brain that are somehow connected, which rules out Biden and his gang of idiots.

 

A Putinized disaster

By: G. Maresca

 

Vladimir Putin never accepted defeat in the Cold War. The former KGB agent stated how the dissolution of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest tragedies in world history.

Given their strategic location, rich natural resources and fertile farmland, an old Russian proverb says there is no Russian Empire without Ukraine. Since the 1772 Partitions of Poland Agreement, Ukraine had been part of Russia until 1991.

For over 30-years, Ukrainians have realized greater economic freedom and opportunities that they never experienced as a satellite of the former Soviet Union. Such successes intimidate Putin. Economically, Russia has been stagnant fueled by a declining population. To offset any further demographic and economic slide, Putin hopes to return those old Soviet republics to the Russian fold.

Ironic how Russia did not invade Ukraine when they had a “Russian asset” in the White House. According to Biden, the borders of Ukraine are sacrosanct and must be protected. The American border not so much.

Rewind to 2014, when Ukraine lost the Crimean Peninsula after President Obama’s chemical weapons “red line” in Syria disappeared and Hillary Clinton’s “re-set” was outright dismissed prompting Putin to make his move. Fast forward eight years, and Obama’s vice president has the top job and tells Putin at their initial meeting that “the adults are back in charge.”

Those adults alongside Biden are Harris, Pelosi, Kerry, Trudeau, and Macron. Kerry’s response to Putin’s invasion would be comical if it wasn’t so pathetic: “I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.” Watching our Woke powder puff team of generals grossly mismanage our withdrawal from Afghanistan was no help.

The West’s superlative six are nothing but appeasement, global elitists more concerned about wokeness, gender pronouns, defunding the police, open borders, and handcuffing America’s gas and oil resources.

Since assuming office, Biden went to war with American energy production by canceling the Keystone Pipeline that would have prolonged our energy independence. It would have kept world oil and gas prices in check and limit a major source of Russian revenue, while easing American inflation. Moreover, sustaining sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline under the Baltic Sea would have denied Putin additional income and political leverage.

Barring new Alaskan production and exploration in the lower 48 states only handcuffs American energy independence and potential. This not only hurts Americans at the pump, but our allies, too, while the high price of oil pays for Russia’s invasion.

Biden’s irrational energy policy underscores another Vlad, this one named Lenin and his infamous wisecrack about how the “capitalists will sell us the rope by which we hang them.”

How pathetic is it when a Canadian waitress who donated $50 to the freedom truckers suffered more financially than Putin when Trudeau locked down her bank account?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine highlights just how fundamentally inept the UN is.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney was spot-on saying how Russia was foe number one but was mocked by Obama and Biden who believed Putin to be an equitable geopolitical partner.

Like all despots, Putin understands, and values strength and he certainly empathizes with the legacy of the Romanov Tsars and their successors in the Kremlin. Negotiating with Putin, China, and the ayatollahs of Iran only comprehends dynamism, defiance, and dominion. The results are playing out in real time in Ukraine with the Baltic states lying in the balance.

Don’t dismiss the Chinese desire to reunify Taiwan with the mainland, and who could forget our favorite ayatollahs in Tehran finally obtaining their nuclear warhead and those North Koreans forever aiming south. Power only respects power. It has been that way since the dawn of civilization, yet the West fails to comprehend its lesson.

Civilians throughout Ukraine are battling back in what the New York Times calls, “a massive grass-roots movement” that must be giving Democrats heartburn. The next time you hear leftists threatening to take away your guns and ammo think about our friends in Ukraine fighting to keep their freedom.

May God bless, guide and protect the Ukrainian people whose courageous resolve reminds us how precious freedom is that many take for granted.

So where does the U.S. fall in this power and strength struggle for respect? Well, let’s look at the current status of the foundation of  our power and strength – the military establishment.

From the Free Beacon

 • March 1, 2022 5:00 am

As Russia Wages War, US Army Trains Officers on Gender Identity. Mandatory military training program pushes soldiers to undergo gender reassignment surgery

While Russia wages a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Army is putting its soldiers through training on gender pronouns and coaching officers on when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery, according to an official military presentation on the subject obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The mandatory presentation, “Policy on the Military Service of Transgender Persons and Persons with Gender Dysphoria,” was given to officers earlier this month along with instructions for them to train their subordinates on the material. Portions of the presentation were provided to the Free Beacon by a whistleblower who was ordered to undergo the training as a high-ranking officer in the Army Special Forces.

An Army spokesman confirmed to the Free Beacon that the slides in question are part of “mandatory training” and come from an official program “used to train Army personnel on the recent changes to the DoD and Army transgender service policy.” All Army personnel, from soldiers to commanders and supervisors, are required to participate in the training by Sept. 30, 2022, according to the spokesman.

The transgender presentation follows on a June 2021 announcement by the Army altering its policies so that transgender soldiers can openly serve. The shift in policy is part of a larger push by the Biden administration to make the military more welcoming to transgender people. These efforts have prompted pushback from Republicans in Congress and some within the military who view the policy changes as an effort to promote “woke” propaganda within the service. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to spark a larger conflict, military experts and insiders say they are concerned America’s fighting force is prioritizing woke culture over protecting the American people.

“The Army allows transgender soldiers to serve openly,” states the presentation, which is tailored for Army commanders and leaders. “An otherwise qualified soldier shall not be involuntarily separated, discharged, or denied reenlistment or continuation of service on the basis of gender identity.”

The presentation offers several hypothetical scenarios for how soldiers should be treated if they are transgender or in some stage of transitioning to another gender.

In one situation, a “soldier who was assigned male at birth says he identifies as a female,” “lives as a female in his off-duty hours,” and “is not requesting to be treated as a female while on duty.” In that case, the soldier should be treated with dignity and respect and no further action is required.

If the transgender soldier, however, “later requests to be identified as a female during duty hours and/or experiences increased distress relating to his gender identity,” the officer in charge must “inform [the] soldier of the Army’s transgender policy and recommend that he sees a military medical provider.”

“Gender transition in the Army,” the presentation states, “begins when a soldier receives a diagnosis from a military medical provider indicating that gender transition is medically necessary.”

In another scenario included in the presentation, a “soldier is assigned female at birth. She tells her first sergeant that she identifies as male and would like to be treated as a male. She has not yet seen a military medical provider.”

In this situation, Army leaders are ordered to “inform [the] soldier that the Army recognizes a soldier’s gender by the soldier’s gender marking in DEERs,” or the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, a massive database that tracks military members. The soldier, according to the presentation, will be expected to meet the uniform, grooming, and physical readiness standards associated with their recognized gender.

The soldier will then be sent to a military medical provider who can determine whether “gender transition is medically necessary.”

Damn, don’t those kind of reports make you feel warm and fuzzy? I suspect reports like this  has Putin shaking in his KGB boots, ya think? I’ve made no secret on here that I am somewhat of a Putin fan. I shall pray for the people of Ukraine, but that’s as far as I will go. I have tired of us being the caretaker of the world only to lose men and women to useless political wars where we have no interests whatsoever. How dare we lose one American soldier, Marine, sailor, or airman fighting in Ukraine while our own country is going to the dogs and fast becoming a Third World Shithole. I’ve discussed Putin with some of my peers about how bad Putin is and what he’s doing. I make no apologies, while I may not agree with what he is doing, I do respect the man’s fortitude and determination to do what he considers necessary for the good of his country.  That’s a lot more than I can say about our nation’s leader.

Meanwhile, thanks to that person in our oval office, WTI crude opened this a.m. at $111.37/bbl and Brent crude opened at $114.43/bbl. And to think that on Trump’s last day in office WTI was $52.87/bbl, and before COVID hit Trump had it down to $3.32/bbl, and we were paying less for gas than we had paid in 30 years. Two years ago we were an oil exporter and  energy independent. Putin’s getting rich; we are paying for his actions in Ukraine at the gas pump.

Guys, we have major problems right here within our own borders e.g., CPI at 7.1% in January, literally 1,000s storming our borders every month, spending out of control, rising prices for everything especially the necessities for life, a military training to become warm and fuzzy powder puffs, Marines changing their entire force structure, and the list goes on. We are no longer the powerful nation to be respected like we were two years ago. We need to stay out of Ukraine , and let Europe stand on their own two feet for a change.

Current Events, Recent Posts

A Little History

4 Comments

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.