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Current Events

A Messiah Awaits

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Are his comments not a breath of fresh air, and trust me they are not hot.  I am a Floridan, and if there is one thing you can count on from Ron, he means what he says and does what he says. Broward County and Disney learned that the hard way. 

 

From the Wall Street Journal                                          Thursday, 20 July 2023

Next Target for Ron DeSantis: the Military

Ron DeSantis is gradually laying out his presidential agenda, and on Tuesday he unveiled a plan to build a “Mission First” U.S. military. The Florida Governor has several worthy ideas to restore American confidence in the armed forces, though fighting the culture wars isn’t a substitute for preventing an actual war.

“We need a military that is focused on being lethal, being ready and being capable,” Gov. De-Santis said in South Carolina. The U.S. military is suffering from institutional drift, as senior officers rush to associate themselves with progressive causes. One example: Space Force Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt in a June speech unleashed a political broadside against elected state legislatures for considering what she styled as “anti-LGBTQ+” measures.

One good priority is reviving American military education. Gov. DeSantis is right that the service academies ought to be “narrowly focused” on disciplines such as engineering or military history and leadership. Civilian academics have taken over most military educational institutions such as war colleges, and the instruction is often, as Gov. DeSantis says, “substandard.”

The Governor, a Navy veteran, also says he would review the performance of every four-star flag officer and remove those who aren’t focused on lethality. There is reason to wonder if the services are producing the war fighting talent the country needs by picking leaders on the merits. More aggressive civilian oversight would help.

Case in point: In 2021 a Navy admiral suggested the service should bring back photos as part of promotion boards to achieve more diversity. Gov. DeSantis said he’d ban “race and gender quotas in military recruiting and promotions.”

The perception that the military is a political institution may be hurting enlistment, and the Army looks likely to come up at least 10,000 soldiers short this year. Gov. DeSantis says he will “restore national pride” in the armed forces, to include a school program explaining that the U.S. military “ has been a force for justice and good in the world,” which is at least a start. But an under-appreciated reason the services are struggling to recruit is that the force is too small and ill-equipped to fulfill its current missions. This wears out troops. President Trump boasts that he rebuilt the U.S. military, but he offered a one-time increase that only started to rebuild the readiness burned in President Obama’s two terms.

The defense industrial base also continued to erode on Mr. Trump’s watch. Contractors are now recalling retired engineers in their 70s to teach new workers how to build Stinger antiaircraft missiles that haven’t been in production for decades.

Gov. DeSantis’s special operation against wokeness will thrill his base, and he has correctly identified China as the top threat to U.S. security. His harder task will be building public support for a larger and more capable U.S. military that can deter the Communist Party from a terrible mistake such as invading Taiwan.

That will require convincing skeptical Republicans to increase defense spending—for example, building two attack submarines a year for the U.S. Navy, up from 1.2 now. Or speeding up the new Air Force strategic bomber. Or building a long-range missile inventory that can last more than three nights of fighting in the Taiwan Strait.

An aide to the campaign says Gov. DeSantis still plans to offer a broader defense agenda. But on U.S. support for Ukraine he’s too often catered to the isolationist right that would, in Ronald Reagan’s words, play innocents abroad in a world that’s not innocent.

Still, the Pentagon’s growing preoccupation with identity politics is corrosive to an institution built on cohesion and self-sacrifice. The country would be better prepared for a fight if a new President started to right the ship.

Has he nailed the problems or what? “. . . review the performance of every four-star flag officer and remove those who aren’t focused on lethality.” Wow, that would sure open up the promotions for three stars, albeit he should look at all flag officers, not just the four-stars.

Increase defense budget bother you? He’ll find other areas to reduce the funding e.g., all the woke shit, welfare, immigrant benefits, and many more. Ron is not a big spender, just ask a Floridan. Trump hasn’t talked about any of thee issues, because he is too busy calling people names.

My dream team would be Ron and  SC Senator Tim Scott. What a team that would make. Sorry guys but if you didn’t already know it, I am no longer a Trumper. He simply will not shut the hell up!

Current Events

The First is Always the Best

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Yes, how well I remember the first salute I received at around 1530 on 7 August 1967 at MB, 8th&I, Washington, D.C. when I was commissioned. Here it is:

Then GySgt Lee M. Bradley, my hero, mentor, and godfather giving the newly commissioned brown bar his first salute and collecting the infamous silver dollar, which now retired SgtMaj Lee M. Bradley says he still has.

One Final Salute                                                                  By: G. Maresca

For my first 17 years, a hat was, well, a hat. It wasn’t until I stepped off the bus in the wee hours of a humid June morning and landed on those celebrated yellow footprints of Parris Island that I quickly learned what I once called a hat was now a cover.

After my tour in the Corps, which included two deployments that literally took me around the globe, the only piece of uniform that fit me upon my departure were my covers. Thanks to adding two inches in height and 45-pounds in girth, my dress uniforms were always a major point of contention, especially during inspections. Fortunately, the camouflage utility uniform had a good amount of give, which was our uniform of the day – the one benefit of not being a pogue.

Once I returned to civilian life, my remaining covers were tucked away in my sea bag that in subsequent moves always found a home anchored in the basement. It wasn’t until my daughter requested me to render her first salute upon her commissioning in the U.S. Army that the cover would find itself, however briefly, returning to active duty.

Having been prior enlisted, I was unfamiliar with the protocols of the commissioning of a second lieutenant. Not only would she be commissioning but was named a George C. Marshall graduate having earned the U.S. Army’s top cadet award based upon scholarship, leadership, and physical fitness.

My poplin camouflaged cover was practically inspection ready considering it spent nearly four decades packed away awaiting its eventual parole to a hunting or fishing expedition that never materialized. My name was still visibly stamped on the inside and all that was left was a brief meeting with a touch of starch and an iron.

The only issue that still needed to be addressed was my hair. The mane is still in full force and pretty much the same color as when I first donned that cover. The mop, or what Uncle Vinny once sardonically called “good guinea hair,” was on tap to get a regulation high and tight shortly before the commissioning allowing enough growth to still pass muster with USMC regulation and acceptable to our family’s commanding officer, the butter bar’s mother.

The last time, I rendered a salute wearing that cover, I was still on active duty. I have no recall who was the heir of that salute, but to think the next one bestowed would be my own daughter decades later at her commissioning was surreal. The entirety of the formal proceedings were certainly a significant moment in time for an aging Jarhead.

Before accepting her request, I wanted to make sure that she didn’t want one of her ROTC cadre to do the honors as she has spoken with high regard for the senior noncommissioned officers that worked diligently with her during her undergraduate years and in particular MSgt. Cardray Moulden.

Our family’s military history is significant, having had two uncles who served in World War II one in the Army, the other in the Navy, and my, Dad, a Marine, served in the Korean War – all were enlisted. On her maternal side, one served on Iwo Jima, while the rest were Army veterans fighting the Nazi’s in Europe during World War II when military service was not necessarily a choice. The common denominator that ran through them was a patriotic sense of time-honored duty to serve one’s nation.

This seems to be missing among today’s youth as last year the Army reached only 75% of its recruiting goal, while the other branches barely met theirs. 2023 is no different. At a Congressional hearing, Pentagon brass testified things have not been this bad since the draft ended in 1973 and that the all-volunteer force may no longer be feasible.

Maria Maresca’s initial salute had two sets of firsts. Not only would she be the first woman in the family on either side to serve, but also the first to forgo the chevrons and pin on the gold bars of a second lieutenant.

Across our fruited plain, May is commissioning season. The formalities at Shippensburg University, not far from the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg or the Army’s longtime War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania is by no means a destination for any of these young officers. Rather it is the first stop in a journey that will sculpt, fashion, and solidify the rest of their lives as they serve a cause much greater than themselves.

The hope inspired by both Major General Andy Munera, the Commanding General U.S. Army Cadet Command out of Fort Knox. Kentucky, and the university’s ROTC’s Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Nicole Jepsen stirred a current that could not help but energize the auditorium of the Luhrs Performing Arts Center.

These newly commissioned officers’ commitment to serve stands out in a nation where only 9% of those eligible to serve do. They carry with them the hope of a nation that my last commander-in-chief Ronald Reagan once called “a shining city on a hill.”

This will be my last post for a while as my bride and I are taking our new RV (new to us) on its second shake down cruise to another FL State Park, that will make two down and 45 to go. I think it is fitting to post Greg’s story of his daughter receiving her first salute from her Dad. Great story. Congratulations Greg to you and to the new Brown Bar! I wish her well.

 

 

 

Current Events, Recent Posts

Task & Purpose

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

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

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

From “Task & Purpose”

BY  | PUBLISHED FEB 10, 2022 9:03 AM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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