Michael Yon takes on Rolling Stone

Years ago, in another life, I dated a man who had worked for Rolling Stone and personally knew Jann Wenner.  (My ex-boyfriend claimed that a well-known Rolling Stone photographer was the one who introduced him to and got him hooked on cocaine.  I have no idea if he was telling the truth or not, but it made for a good story.)

My old boyfriend had cleaned up his act by the time I met him, and was decently reticent about his past, but it was pretty clear from the few stories he told that (a) Rolling Stone personnel, at least at one time, had embraced the drug culture with gusto and (b) that it was a sleazy, counter-culture magazine.  Today, all you need to do to know that it is still a sleazy, counter-culture (read:  anti-American) magazine is to buy a copy at the store — or, better yet, leaf through one and then abandon it without bothering to buy it.  As for the drug issues that were once a part of the magazine’s culture, perhaps the drugs’ legacy lives on and helps explain the shoddy, vicious journalism that routinely emanates from that saggy, flabby, 1960s era hangover.

Don’t believe me about shoddy, vicious journalism?  I understand that.  My old boyfriend’s stories about the magazine’s past are pure hearsay.  But right now, today, Michael Yon has actual percipient witness journalism on his side when it comes to challenging Rolling Stone’s most recent smear piece about our troops in Afghanistan.  Read Yon and your blood will boil.

Huge kudos to Yon, not only for his own journalism, but for his willingness to take on one of the old media’s sacred cows.

Captain Owen Honors *UPDATED*

Because I was away, I missed the whole first impact of the Owen Honors thing, but for glimpsing a horrified PC headline on CNN while waiting for a flight.  That millisecond of MSM-manufactured finger-pointing was enough to clue me in to the fact that, if CNN disapproved, I probably wouldn’t be that shocked.

Having watched one of the videos at CDR Salamander’s place (along with an excellent post about the PC hysteria going on right now), I have to say that the only thing that shocks me is the fact that the liberal media watch dogs, people whose worship at Lenny Bruce’s obscene shrine, were able to pretend such outrage.  This is the Navy, for goodness sakes, not a floating DAR meeting.  Capt. Honors is trying to reach guys (for the most part) — young guys, who have been raised their entire lives on an obscenity-laced diet of rap videos and Hollywood movies.  I actually thought the video was funny, and I’m usually quite prudish (0r, at least, uninterested in vulgarity)!

Bottom line:  if our military can’t take some weak, silly, mildly offensive jokes, how in the world can it take bullets and bombs?  We’re supposed to be training fighters here, not delicate flowers.  We want, of course, to have a moral military, made up of people who aren’t monstrous, violent, raping killing machines, but there’s a huge difference between inculcating decency in our forces, and turning them into a ladies garden party.

As for the military high command, which reacted with knee-jerk speed by destroying Capt. Owen’s career, I don’t think it did itself any favors.  When will traditional forces realize that the liberals in this country can never be appeased?  A less extreme response would have been proportionate to the low level of the offense, and would not have fed the perpetual outrage machine on the Left.  As it is, conservatives, with their abject overreacting keep conceding liberal points, even when the liberals really have no point at all.

UPDATE:  Max Boot nails it:  the “humor” was mild compared to what normally crosses young people’s radars; Capt. Owen (as OldFlyer said) should have comported himself with more dignity; and Owen’s real sin was to mis-read the PC signals.

DADT: Now what

1.  Bruce Kesler looks at the ramifications of the repeal of DADT.

2.  The Ivy Leagues say they’ll allow military recruiters back on campus (which at least ends their hypocrisy of taking federal feds but denying the feds access).  See here and here.  I wonder if that will have a measurable effect on future recruitment.

In honor of Veteran’s Day — thoughts about redemption

Since I was a child, I’ve enjoyed a very specific type of book or movie, of the kind that I call the “Getting it Right” genre.  Getting it Right entertainment involves a protagonist who is making big mistakes, and who figures out how to — yes — get it right.  The moral trajectory of failure and redemption is one that that I have always found deeply satisfying.

The easiest example of this genre is, of course, Groundhog Day.  Bill Murray’s character, Phil, is loathsome in myriad petty ways.  He’s not big evil — he’s not killing anyone or even breaking small laws.  Instead, he’s characterized by complete selfishness, plus a heavy dose of arrogance and condescension.  The movie, which sees him trapped in endless iterations of Groundhog Day, allows him to work through his failings until he gets it right, at which point he’s allowed to move forward with his life.

My favorite book, Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, sounds exactly the same theme.  Although Elizabeth Bennett is utterly charming from the first page, she suffers from the fact that her overly quick wit and impulsive personality drive her towards making disastrous snap judgments.  She’s taken in by a con man, and reviles an honorable one.  Fitzwilliam Darcy is less manifestly charming because his fatal personality flaw, an arrogant boorishness, hides his fundamental decency.  The book’s pleasure comes from watching these two bright, misguided people work their way through their own personal failings — in other words, they get it right — allowing them to have a happy ending.

Outside the world of fiction, I’ve often viewed the military as a redemptive experience, at least for those who seek that redemption.  I know where I got this idea:  from my father.  As I’ve written before, he had a miserable childhood.  He was born into abject poverty in Weimar Berlin.  His father had left for America before he was born, and his mother, with three children ranging in age from newborn through 12 years, simply couldn’t find it within herself to join her husband.  After letting him run wild in the slums, my grandmother, incapable of caring for a five year old thug-in-training, placed him in a Jewish orphanage.

From that point on, my Dad’s life had structure, but no love.  He was bright and did well in the Jewish Gymnasium.  He probably would have made a life for himself, but for the fact that, in 1933, Germans collectively went mad.  By 1935, my 16 year old father knew he needed to escape and, when one of his teachers offered to take him to Palestine, my father left his family and Germany behind forever.

A requirement for Dad’s journey to Palestine was to help found a kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee.  He hated the experience.  The labor was incredibly hard and, after years in an orphanage, my dad believed he wanted nothing more to do with communal living.  After sticking it out for three years, he ditched the kibbutz and made his way to Tel Aviv.  There, he did the only thing a young man without family, focus, self-esteem, or an operational work ethic could do:  he started to starve to death on the streets.  Ironically, war was his salvation.

Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939.  My father enlisted in the RAF on September 4, 1939.  As a German Jew who had seen the Nazis first hand, I don’t think it ever occurred to him not to engage in the fight.  But the reason he enlisted with such speed was to get food.  My Dad spent the next five years in active combat.  He was in North Africa (El Alamein) and Southern Europe (the Battle of Crete), and all points in between.  His hearing and his digestion were permanently damaged.  He lost friends.  He gained nightmares.  It was the worst of times.

But it was also the best of times.  My father discovered that communal living worked for him when he believed in the mission.  He discovered that he was an adrenalin junkie.  He discovered that he could take responsibility for things.  Despite the horrors of hand-to-hand war with the Nazis, my dad loved being in the RAF (and ANZAC, to which he was loaned). When he left the military, he was a superbly self-disciplined, well-organized human being.  But for his Communism, which meant he was bound and determined to thumb his nose at success, he could have ruled the world.

Had my father been the only military success story of my child, I might have written it off as an anomaly.  After all, I was a child of the Vietnam War, and I was told (repeatedly) that military service turns people into trained, drug-addicted killers.  (Of course, knowing all the high functioning, moral, clean-living vets from my parents’ generation meant that I was never quite able to believe that horrible canard.)

In the mid-1970s, though, I saw another person saved by the military.  This was a young man, a neighbor, who was bright, and utterly unmotivated.  After barely graduating from high school, he retired to his parents’ couch, beer can in hand.  When they kicked him out, leaving him homeless and destitute, he did precisely what my dad did:  he enlisted.  There, in a highly structured, dedicated environment, he thrived.  He went to officer’s training school, and came out a leader of men.  When he eventually left the military and entered the business world, he swiftly made a fortune.

Now I’ve got two anomalies.  Care to go for a third?  I got my third recently, when I learned that a young man of my acquaintance, who could only be characterized as a complete waste of space when I knew him — whiny, ineffectual, spoiled, and deeply unhappy, but also a patriot — enlisted in the Army after 9/11.  He’s still in the Army, in Special Forces, having the time of his life.  To him, danger and hardship are an acceptable compromise for meaning, purpose, structure and camaraderie.  (And indeed, if he’s an adrenalin junkie, the danger is part of the pleasure.)  There is a possibility (G-d forbid) that he might die in battle but, if that happens, at least he will have lived life.  Before, he was just sleepwalking.

I started this post by talking about redemptive, or transformational literature, segued in a discussion about the transformational role the military has played for people I know, and now want to tie the two strands together with one book:  Marco Martinez’s Hard Corps: From Gangster to Marine Hero, a book that was published in 2007, but that I only got around to reading yesterday.

It’s a good book.  Indeed, it’s a much better book than I had anticipated.  Martinez has a good eye for detail and a good ear for dialogue.  I could easily imagine the scenes he described, whether it was tense gang confrontations, the intense and often painful training he went through to become a Marine Infantryman, or the fear, boredom, discomfort, horror and uplift of battle.  Martinez is especially good at describing that way in the men who have trained for war crave engagement to such an extent that they are able to confront and control the fear, boredom and discomfort he describes.

What I especially like about the book is that it’s another in the “getting it right” genre.  By joining a gang when he was 14, Martinez has put himself on a straight trajectory to one of two locations:  prison or an early grave.  Not only was he harming himself, he was harming others.  He admits to incredible violence, to participating in theft rings, and to causing deep unhappiness to his parents.  The one thing that set him apart from other gangsters was that his father was an Army Ranger.  Even as his own life was imploding, he had before him the example of military discipline and purpose.  When he could no longer take the downward path he was traveling, he sought redemption in the hardest of hard:  Marine infantry.

Martinez details the way in which his training was intended to break down completely all previous behavior patterns and to build each recruit into a warrior.  Frankly, I was horrified to read what the recruits go through, but I also understood perfectly why they did.  If you can’t take sleep deprivation, hunger, thirst, a full bowel/bladder and physical pain on your own ground, without gun fire, how in the world are you going to survive battle?  Martinez, and those recruits who stuck it out, understood the same thing:  They were willing to transform themselves from civilians, whether because of patriotism, boredom, the desire to push themselves, or the need to escape an ugly past, even if it meant suffering a training regimen most of us would run from, screaming at the top of our wussy lungs.

For Martinez, basic training was redemption with a vengeance.  By the time Martinez arrived in Iraq, near the end of his four year enlistment, he was a completely disciplined, dedicated warrior, ready to put himself on the front line to protect those of us without the will, ability or desire to fight our own battles.  It was almost logical that, in the heat of battle, he’d engage in an incredible act of bravery to protect his team, thereby earning the Navy Cross.  He had fully redeemed himself.  He got it right.

Not all men and women join the military to redeem themselves.  Not all have to (or get to) face battle.  Not all acquire useful life skills from being in the military.  But without exception, each of our veterans, living or dead, got it right.  Each put himself or herself through the rigors of training, ready to go to the front line of battle, to defend the most basic human freedoms, freedoms which have truly flowered in America for the first time in any nation’s history.

To all the men and women who have served this nation, therefore, whether for their own personal redemption or for that of that nation itself, I say thank you, thank you so much.

Cross-posted in Right Wing News

WikiLeaks: Everything you always wanted to know about the New York Times, but thought might make you sick

If you haven’t already, please read Steve Schippert’s guest post on this blog about the animating anti-American forces driving WikiLeaks.  If you don’t have time to click on over, here’s the money quote:

Wikileaks is a small cabal of people who, in their own site description, “Publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.”

In reality, what they are is a like-minded gathering of hardcore Leftists who see their greatest enemies and threats as the American military and intelligence coupled with free market capitalism.

Then get a load of the New York Times front page.   I’ve captured most of the slide show screen shots that automatically rotate across the page (click on thumbnails to see full size):

For more on WikiLeaks, Greyhawk has some posts here, here, here and here.

“The best job in the world” *UPDATED*

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” — Lewis Carroll

I was struggling to figure out how to write my annual post about the Admiral’s Reception that closes out Fleet Week festivities, until it occurred to me that the answer, as is often the case, can be found in Alice in Wonderland.  The King of Hearts may have had some peculiar ideas (“Give your evidence,” said the King; “and don’t be nervous, or I’ll have you executed on the spot.”), but he understood how to structure narrative.  So, let me begin at the beginning.

This is the beginning:

This beauty is the USS Makin Island, a very recently commissioned Wasp-class amphibious assault ship.  In layman’s terms, it is a transport ship, one that carries marines, vehicles, weapons and other supplies to the action, whether the action is the field of battle or a humanitarian relief mission.  The Makin Island isn’t just any amphibious assault ship, though.  It is a futuristic ship that boasts a long list of systems aimed at optimizing both human and mechanical energy:

[G]as turbine main propulsion engines, all-electric auxiliaries, an advanced machinery control system, water mist fire protection systems, and the Navy’s most advanced command and control and combat systems equipment. The gas turbine propulsion plant, with all electric auxiliaries, is a program first for large deck amphibious assault ships and will provide significant savings in manpower and maintenance costs associated with traditional steam-powered amphibious ships. The ship carries four reverse-osmosis water-purification systems, each holding 50,000 gallons.

It is a marvel of human ingenuity, bent to our nation’s defense.  When you drive up and see it bathed in the setting sun, you can’t be anything but impressed.

The beginning of any party on board the ship is the parking.  Normally, in San Francisco, parking is the stuff of which nightmares are made.  As we got closer and closer to our destination, my husband kept spying side streets and saying, “Let’s see if we can find parking there.”  I was adamant:  “No.”  I had three things that supported me in this certainty:  (1) a parking pass; (2) high heels; and (3) past experience with the parking procedure for these evenings.  It was the third factor that convinced my husband.  “It’s part of the whole event,” I said.

We fell into line behind the other cars that were heading onto the pier.  As we got closer to the entrance, we saw more and more Marines, about half of whom were heavily armed.  When it was our turn, a polite Marine with a checklist asked for identification.  Once he confirmed that we were on the guest list, he waved us forward.  The Marines had set up a maze, part of it based upon existing structures on the pier, and part of it created using movable barriers — all aimed, no doubt, at slowing down a bad guy with a loaded car.  At each turning point, a helpful Marine stood, directing us.  The only disappointment was that this year, unlike past years, there was no elegant German shepherd to circle the car, sniffing for bombs.  I like dogs, and I appreciate a dog that makes itself useful.

After we had parked and gathered ourselves, I turned to my husband and asked, “Did you lock the car?”  He laughed and said, “Yes, but this is the only place I’ve ever been in San Francisco where I don’t really feel as if I have to.”

Once aboard the ship, we headed immediately up to the reception, which was held in the main — oh, Lord, I’m going to get this word wrong — hangar.  There was a live band (a little too loud for my slightly mature sensibilities), and a huge buffet.  I’d like to tell you what the spread was, but I instantly ran into old friends and got so busy talking, I never made it anywhere near the food.  I was left with a confused impression of strawberries with chocolate for dipping, fruit punch fountains, huge dishes of shrimp, little sausages, and other tasty viands for the hungry and the patient.  It was a magnificent spread, but I simply didn’t partake.

I always enjoy the human spectacle at these Navy events.  As I’ve commented before, at most parties the men, clad only in black and white, fade into insignificance next to the women.  At Navy parties, however, it’s the men (plus a handful of women) in their dress blues who draw the eye.  Aside from the fact that the basic uniform, whether Navy or Marine, is flattering to the male figure, the decorations just light up the room.  Whether it’s sleeves covered with gold stripes and other insignia, chests loaded with ribbons, or colorful shoulder braids, everything looks just fine.

I found myself feeling envious, not of the clothes’ magnificence, but of the way they tell a story about the wearer.  I have no insignia announcing to the world that I’ve survived umpteen years as a lawyer, mother or homemaker.  I’d love to have good service stripes for all the times I gritted my teeth and didn’t yell.  And it would be very gratifying to have some neat ribbon or pin attesting to my authorial skills.  Alas, though, I simply have to violate good manners and boast if I want to impress people.

As always, my Navy League mentor instantly found me.  It’s a great pleasure to see him and his wife and, I must admit, an even greater pleasure to see his children.  If all teenagers were like these two, every family in America would be desperate to have a teen of its own.  After a fond greeting with these dear friends, I ran into several people I’d met, and whose company I’d very much enjoyed, at the Battle of Midway Commemoration this past May.

What struck me about these men is the fact that, even though they’re retired, they remain strongly committed to the Navy, and are willing to expend a great deal of time on its behalf.  I can tell you with certainty that I’ve never met a lawyer who, after retiring, continues to work unstintingly for the old law firm.  Lawyers may boast about their years at the firm, but their support doesn’t extend beyond the comfort of their armchair at home.  The only other people I’ve seen who have the same enthusiasm for an institution with which they were once affiliated are college sports fans.  That’s understandable.  College represents youth.  It’s both the first and last unfettered time in a person’s life:  away from home and not yet tied to a job.  (And I know exams are stressful, but they don’t compare to the demands of real life.)

That retired Naval personnel should have the same passion is less obvious, since their service is not the most carefree time in their life — instead, it is a time of intense duty and responsibility.  Perhaps, though, that intense duty and responsibility explain precisely why people may retire from the Navy, but never seem to leave it.  An old Army slogan aptly sums it up:  “Be all you can be.”  Partying is fun, but living to your full potential in the service of the greater good is fundamentally rewarding.  While many of us struggle with existential questions (“Why am I smarter than a cow and, being smarter, what’s my purpose on this earth?”), military personnel know what their purpose is:  to protect their country.  Oh, and by the way, while doing it, they get to travel all over the world and play with the best toys.

I’m not just making this up from my perspective as a suburban blogger living a pleasant, but pointless, life.  I’m distilling the stories I’ve heard from person after person after person to whom I’ve spoken during my time in the Navy League.  Whether they’re responsible for a single weapon, an array of weapons systems, the whole ship, or a whole division, each person, whether active duty or retired, has sounded the same note:  My life has meaning.  Even when my job is repetitive or dull, I am part of a bigger purpose.

The Chief who gave us a ship’s tour last night was no different.  He is one of the people in charge of a very sophisticated aspect of the ship.  He glowed when he described his system and his responsibilities.  As we bade him farewell and prepared to head home, my husband said, “You seem to have the best job in the world.”  “Yes, sir,” he replied.  “I have the best job in the world.”

(A delicate hint to those who would like to support the Navy and get a glimpse of this world:  join the Navy League.)

UPDATE:  Maybe this explains the missing dogs — they’re out in the private sector getting rich.  😉

Why is Arlen Specter jetting around on the taxpayers’ dime?

(Welcome, Best of the Web readers!  James Taranto is correct that nobody’s asking this question, and my readers are correct that Specter’s doing this “because he can,” but it still drives me nuts that, as a taxpayer, I’m funding this old duck’s last political hurrah.)

We all know who Arlen Specter is.  He’s a career Senator (30 years!), who started out as a Republican.  In 2009, however, because of overwhelming RINO tendencies, plus the imminent risk of losing his — and believe me, he thought of it as “his” — seat, Specter switched to the Democratic Party.

Specter’s gamble failed spectacularly.  Not only did he manage to end his career looking like a rank opportunist, he lost the Democratic primary too.  This year marks the end of Specter’s career.  He’s not a lame duck, he’s a dead duck, who isn’t even going to be on the ballot in November.

Apparently ducks, even dead ducks, can fly.  And fly.  And fly.  How else does one explain the fact that, in a week, Specter, using a combination of commercial and military aircraft, is jetting to a variety of colorful destinations.  Starting in Newark, he heads for London, Vienna, Tel Aviv, Damascus, Cairo, Paris and Philadelphia:

I confess that I am confused.  I’m simply unable to come up with a logical explanation for why a dead duck Senator would need to use “Milair” to travel to locations both scenic and, when it comes to the Middle East, politically sensitive.

If you understand Specter’s frenetic travel schedule, and if you know why American taxpayers are funding some part of it (no matter how small), please let me know.  I’ve searched Specter’s home page for information about the upcoming trip, but cannot find anything.

The one thing I know with certainty, however, is Specter’s new theme song:

Some U.S. Presidents actually like our troops

Two serious storm warnings, one national, and one local *UPDATE*

There are two storm warnings I want to give you, one of which requires action on your part, the other of which, depending on where you live, falls into the “sit, watch, and thank God you’re far away” category.

First warning:  Drastic cuts to the military, courtesy of Bawney Fwank, that noted military expert.  (And yes, I am being incredibly sarcastic describing him as such.)  The Navy Times provides some details:

Cut two carriers and 40 percent of new ballistic-missile subs, then slash the fleet to 230 ships and eight air wings. Terminate the F-35, Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and V-22 Osprey. Drop down to six expeditionary strike groups, eliminate the maritime prepositioning force and place greater emphasis on surging smaller naval groups as needed.

These are but some of the eyebrow-raising recommendations provided to Congress on June 10 by the Sustainable Defense Task Force. The group was formed at the request of Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass.; Walter B. Jones, R-N.C.; and Ron Paul, R-Texas; and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. The task force proposal amounts to $1.1 trillion in defense cuts over 10 years. Slightly more than half of that amount comes from personnel budgets; the rest comes by cutting research, development and procurement of weapons systems.

And that’s just cuts to the Navy.  As I understand it, the proposals are far-reaching, and involve drastic cuts to every aspect of our military.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have no idea how the military feels about these cuts.  Maybe they worked with this committee, and honestly tried to trim out deadwood made unnecessary by technological advances.  However, given the committee’s composition, and given the Navy Times own raised eyebrows, I have a suspicion that the military might be less than sanguine about those suggestions, especially given that the world’s bad guys, seeing a weak man in the White House, are acting up like crazy (that would be Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China, the Norks, Syria, etc, etc, etc).

Given my suspicion that the military may have its own ideas about the virtue of these cuts, and the coming storm they may bring about, it occurred to me that concerned citizens might want to make sure that groups that have the military’s interests at heart are sufficiently funded to make their presence known on Capitol Hill.  As you know, my pet group is the Navy League, a non-profit organization dedicated, in significant part, to “foster[ing] and maintain[ing] interest in a strong Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine as integral parts of a sound national defense and vital to the freedom of the United States.”

As I said, the proposed cuts may still leave us with a “strong” military as part of a sound defense for a free United States, but, well, I’m just not so sure.  I therefore urge you to join the Navy League or, if you have a pet military organization that provides a voice for the military before Congress, by all means, send money to that organization.

The second storm warning is for Oakland, California, residents.  If you remember the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, you might want to batten down the hatches in case similar rioting strikes in Oakland.  Here’s the problem, as Zombie describes it:

Nearly everyone in the Bay Area agrees that a major Oakland riot is brewing if the verdict in the trial of policeman Johannes Mehserle, accused of murdering BART passenger Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day, 2009, comes back anything other than “GUILTY!” The problem for Oakland’s sense of security is that Mehserle is almost certainly not guilty of murder, and the jury is likely to give him a comparatively light sentence or even let him go completely.

You should, of course, read Zombie’s entire article, which goes to the impending lawlessness in Oakland, a city on the verge of cutting 80 positions from its active duty police officers.

UPDATED:  It doesn’t quite belong here, but since there is a storm brewing in the Gulf, this seems like the best place to put Ace’s post about the way in which overreaching government bureaucracy destroys all functioning.  One of the stepping stones on my journey across the Rubicon to conservatism was Phillip K. Howard’s The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America, in which he describes the way in which government bureaucracy, by aiming for some elusive perfection and by working to keep itself funded, destroys efficiency, innovation, and basic functionality.

The official Bookworm statement on the whole McChrystal/Obama/Petraeus affair *UPDATED*

I feel I should say something, so I will.  Being me, of course, what I say will be discursive.

Re McChrystal:  An excellent general who didn’t hit it off with Obama from the git-go (blame lies, I believe, with Obama), and who failed utterly in the diplomatic discretion category — something that’s true whether you regard the revelations in Rolling Stone as big deals or little ones.  Was the latter a firing offense?  I don’t know.  It depends on how the Commander in Chief chooses to handle it.  Which leads me to Obama….

Re Obama:  As I noted earlier, Obama is either apathetic or agitated.  One of the things about which he’s never been sufficiently agitated is the war in Afghanistan.  Sure, he didn’t pull out immediately, but his initial decisions to announce a withdrawal time table and to refuse to meet with McChrystal until McChrystal was forced to use the media against Obama (something that probably created a bad precedent in terms of McChrystal’s ideas about using the military to achieve his goals) show that he never gave a flying whatsit about American troops trying to win against Muslim jihadists.

On the other side of the scale, the things that do agitate Obama include the Joos; attempts to stop potential new Democratic party voters from sneaky in over the border and sparking crime waves; and offenses to his dignity.  McChrystal committed the latter crime.  Obama could have glossed the whole thing over, downplaying McChrystal’s errors (as he’s done with every one of his other appointees) or he could have done what he did, which is to fire McChrystal for having hurt his feelings.  The only way to come out smelling like a rose from letting his ego lead was for Obama to have appointed someone better than McChrystal.  Which leads me to Petraeus….

Re Petraeus:  When Obama was a Senator, he denigrated Petraeus’ task and, by his behavior, Petraeus himself.  Petraeus, however, is the real deal when it comes to counterinsurgency, and I can’t think of a better person to try his hand at Afghanistan.  Peter Wehner spells out Petraeus’ virtues:

General Petraeus is the man who, more than any other single individual, turned around the war in Iraq. It was a nation on the brink of civil war when he was named commanding general there — and today it is a nation on the mend. That is the result of many hands and many hearts — but no single individual is more responsible for what happened in Iraq than Petraeus. In addition, General Petraeus literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency, having authored the Army’s manual on the subject. Petraeus, then, is both the intellectual architect of our COIN strategy and its best practitioner.

Beyond that, Petraeus — like McChrystal before him — has the confidence of President Karzai, which U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and National Security Adviser Jim Jones (among others) do not. He understands, unlike others in the Obama White House, that the way to deal with someone like Karzai is to support him in public and make demands of him in private. Nouri al-Maliki was no walk on the beach, either; but Petraeus, along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker, dealt with him extremely skillfully, holding him close while moving him along the right path.

What is also significant is that Petraeus has the confidence of our troops because of what he has achieved. He is not only a respected figure; he is very nearly legendary among them. The troops in Afghanistan will treat him as college basketball players would treat Mike Krzyzewski, if he took over another basketball program. There is instant trust, instant credibility, and instant confidence. And that matters.

I wish Petraeus every bit of luck available to him.  Combine that luck with his skills and intellect, apply all those to the best military in the world, and there might be a good outcome here (including Obama being able to back down from his withdrawal timetable while still saving face).

Conclusion:  Obama first seeded the lemons, starting with his long-ago refusal to take either General McChrystal or the Afghanistan war serious.  He harvested the lemons when he elected to let his ego lead in what could have been a down-played, and therefore negligible, situation.  And he managed to create lemonade by replace McChrystal with only the best general out there.  Let’s hope the best general chews up Afghanistan, rather than vice versa.

(Just FYI, The Anchoress has a stellar round-up of responses to the whole saga.)

UPDATE:  Bruce Kesler, who understands more about what’s going on than I ever could, is pleased okay with Petraeus’ appointment, but would have preferred General Mattis.  Blackfive thinks the timing of this whole thing is more than a little suspicious.  (The first story will make you happy sanguine; the second, angry.)

UPDATE II:  Was Obama just trying to keep Petraeus out of the 2012 race?  I doubt it.  For one thing, that’s two years ahead, and a lot can change between now and then.  For another thing, I have it on good authority that Petraeus is saying right now, with a straight face, that he’s not running.  If this is preemptive action, it’s really preemptive.  Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke.

My sense is that Petraeus genuinely doesn’t want to run.  It’s a lousy job, and Petraeus isn’t an egotist.  He is, however, a patriot.  If he feels that America truly needs his unique skills, Afghanistan will be the smallest part of the U.S.’s problems, and he’ll run regardless.

I’m seeing Gene Simmons in a whole new light

Is this really the Gene Simmons of KISS fame?  Having read his bio, I think it is.  (By the way, it’s a surprisingly interesting and impressive bio.  Who knew?)

Memorial Day Post: The Warriors Among Us

[I’ll keep this at the top through Memorial Day.  Scroll down for lots of new posts.]

Several years ago, as part of a 9/11 commemoration, I wrote the following words as part of a post I did about Lt. Brian Ahearn, one of the New York fire fighters who perished on that day:

My son, who is seven, is obsessed with superheroes. His current favorite is Superman. After all, when you’re a little boy, battling your way through the world, what could be more exciting than the possibility of being “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” I’m bombarded daily with questions about Superman’s ability to withstand extreme temperatures, his flying speeds, his ballistic capabilities and, most importantly, his bravery. It’s here that my son and I run into a conceptual problem. My son thinks Superman is brave because he gets involved in situations that involve guns, and flames, and bad guys. I argue — and how can you argue this with a seven year old? — that the fictional Superman, while good, is not brave, because he takes no risks. Superman’s indestructibility means that his heart never speeds up, his gut never clenches, and he never pauses for even a moment to question whether the potential benefit from acting is worth the risk. In other words, if facing a gun is as easy as sniffing a rose, there is no bravery involved.

The truly brave person is the one who knows the real risks in a situation, but still moves forward to save people, to fight a good battle or to remedy an intolerable situation. The attacks against America on September 11, 2001, revealed the true superheroes among us — those New York firefighters who pushed themselves past those second thoughts, those all-too-human hesitations, and sacrificed themselves in the hopes of saving others. Lt. Brian G. Ahearn was one of those superheroes.

I’ve been thinking today about that moment of insight I had about courage and heroism, because I’m finally reading Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10.  I say “finally,” because the book came out in 2007, and it took me three years to gather my own courage just to read it — and I did so only because of the possibility that I may soon meet the mother of one of those “lost heroes.”  Considering what her son did for my country, forcing myself to read a book about great heroism seemed like the least I could do.

Funnily enough, the book isn’t as painful as I thought it would be.  This is partly because Luttrell, with novelist Patrick Robinson’s able assistance, has a wonderful voice.  His is not a ponderous tome but is, instead, a human story of an East Texas boy who, buoyed up by patriotism and sheer grit, made his way through the insanity of SEAL training, and then found himself in Afghanistan, working to protect American interests and freedoms.

Luttrell’s upbringing, so different from my girly, urban, intellectual childhood is a story in itself.  As for his descriptions of what men push themselves to do to become SEALS — well, I’d heard about it academically, but I’d never understood it viscerally.

To be completely honest, I still don’t understand it.  As a card-carrying wuss, as someone who has always respected her personal comfort zones, and avoided challenging herself, I really don’t “get” what would drive young men, men in their 20s and 30s, to push themselves as hard as these men do.  And the rewarded isn’t a glamorous job, a la Hollywood or Manhattan, with fame, wealth and women.  Being a SEAL is the toughest job in the world, because SEALs end up doing the most dangerous jobs in the world, under the worst, scariest circumstances imaginable.

If you lack physical and mental will, not to mention the overwhelming training SEALs receive, you’re simply a statistic waiting to happen.  But if you do have that stamina, one that resides as much in the mind as it does in the body (perhaps even more in the mind than the body), and if you have this amazing commitment to your team and your country, you can move mountains.

Or sometimes, as SEAL Team 10 so sadly demonstrated, the mountains turn on you.  I am not giving away anything about the book, of course, when I tell you that Luttrell was the sole survivor of a firefight in the Afghan mountain ranges that ended up being the single deadliest day in SEAL history.  Reading about the fight and the deaths of Luttrell’s team member, not to mention his own story of survival, is harrowing.  I don’t want to say I cried, but I’ll admit that my eyes were leaking prodigiously.  Knowing that this would be my inevitable reaction is part of why I avoided Luttrell’s book for so long.  (To excuse myself a little bit, I also wasn’t sure I wanted to get too close to understanding what my father experienced during WWII, as he fought in some of the worst battles around the Mediterranean, including Crete and el Alamein.  Sometimes, empathy can be too painful.)

But really, I shouldn’t have avoided the book.  Yes, the deaths of LT Michael P. Murphy, Matthew Axelson, and Danny Dietz, as well as 16 SEALs and Nightstalkers, whose helicopter was shot down during the rescue mission, is heart wrenching, but the overall tone of the book is still uplifting.  Luttrell’s deep patriotism, his belief in the mission (not any specific mission, but the SEALs’ overarching mission to protect and defend), his abiding love for the SEALs, and the message that there are those who are willing to protect us, often from ourselves, ranks right up there with the most cheerful “feel good” book you can find.

So many people live pointless lives and die meaningless deaths.  One of the tragedies of the 6 million is that they were herded to death like cattle in an abattoir.  I don’t blame them.  They were ordinary people, living ordinary lives, when suddenly they were ripped out of normalcy, and without warning or preparation, sent straight to Hell on earth. Had I had the misfortune to be a Jew in Poland in 1942, instead of a Jew in America at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, that would have been me.  Not just a short life that made no difference, but one that ended with a death that didn’t make a dent in the hide of my murderers.

Some people, however, seem to have bred in the bone and the heart the belief that they will not be ordinary in life or in death.  Mercifully, these are people who don’t need the tawdry fame of Hollywood.  They don’t need the quick fixes of drink and drugs.  They don’t need to become bullies who control others, whether their control is exercised over a country or an office.  Instead, they prepare themselves to serve causes greater than their own egos.  Their lives have purpose and their deaths are never pointless.

Because the genesis of my post is Luttrell’s book, I’ve written this as an homage to the SEALs.  Everything I’ve said though, can be applied equally to the men and women who have fought and, sometimes, died for America, beginning back in 1774.  The fact that they didn’t do it at the level of pain and training one sees in the SEALs does nothing to minimize their courage, their patriotism and their sacrifices.  They are the backbone of our country, the defenders of our freedom:  “The truly brave person is the one who knows the real risks in a situation, but still moves forward to save people, to fight a good battle or to remedy an intolerable situation.”

(Luttrell, the sole survivor of the SEALS pictured here, is third from the right.)

Other Memorial Day posts:

Flopping Aces

Blackfive

Blackfive (yes, again)

American Digest

Kim Priestap

Michelle Malkin

Mudville Gazette

Florence American Military Cemetery (slow-loading, so don’t worry if nothing happens right away)

Noisy Room

NewsBusters

Hot Air

JoshuaPundit

Radio Patriot

“Simplistic” and “primitive” *UPDATED*

As I’ve mentioned just a few times, I just read, and was very moved by, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10.  A liberal I know flipped through the book’s first few pages and had a very different reaction.  The following passages bugged the liberal:

My name is Marcus.  Marcus Luttrell.  I’m a United States Navy SEAL, Team Leader, SDV Team 1, Alfa Platoon.  Like every other SEAL, I’m trained in weapons, demolition, and unarmed combat.  I’m a sniper, and I’m the platoon medic.  But most of all, I’m an American.  And when the bell sounds, I will come out fighting for my country and for my teammates.  If necessary, to the death.

And that’s not just because the SEALs trained me to do so; it’s because I’m willing to do so.  I’m a patriot, and I fight with the Lone Star of Texas on my right arm and another Texas flag over my heart.  For me, defeat is unthinkable.  (pp. 6-7)

[snip]

[As they’re taking off from Bahrain to Afghanistan:] There were no other passengers on board, just the flight crew and, in the rear, us, headed out to do God’s work on behalf of the U.S. government and our commander in chief, President George W. Bush.  (p. 12.)

[snip]

[Of the Taliban/Al Qaeda enemy in Afghanistan:]  This was where bin Laden’s fighters found a home training base.  Let’s face it, al Qaeda means “the base,” and in return for the Saudi fanatic bin Laden’s money, the Taliban made it all possible.  right now these very same guys, the remnants of the Taliban and the last few tribal warriors of al Qaeda, were preparing to start over, trying to fight their way through the mountain passes, intent on setting up new training camps and military headquarters and, eventually, their own government in place of the democratically elected one.

They may not have been the precise same guys who planned 9/11.  But they were most certainly their descendants, their heirs, their followers.  They were part of the same crowd who knocked down the North and South Towers in the Big Apple on the infamous Tuesday morning in 2001.  And our coming task was to stop them, right there in those mountains, by whatever means necessary.  (pp. 13-14)

The liberal felt that the above passages showed that the writer was simplistic and primitive in his thinking.  The whole notion of simple patriotism offended the liberal, who also thought it was just plain stupid to seek revenge against guys who weren’t actually the ones who plotted 9/11.  My less than clever riposte was, “so I guess you would only kill Nazis who actually worked in the gas chambers?”  Frankly, given the differences in our world views, I’m not sure there is a clever comeback or, which would be more helpful, a comeback that actually causes the liberal to reexamine those liberal principles.

UPDATE:  Here’s an apt quotation, written by John Stuart Mill, in 1862, as a comment upon the American Civil War:

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Kid logic

I love kid logic.   I was telling my pre-teen daughter about the Navy SEALS (having just finished Lone Survivor), and I mentioned the incredible physical strength and mental stamina the men had.  “And the women….” she prompted me.  “Nope,” I said.  “No women.”  She stared at me.  “But don’t the men get lonely?”  That’s a giggle right there.

I didn’t mention that, when they’re at home, SEALS probably aren’t hurting for female company.  However, she did totally get it when I explained that the Navy is not going to compromise the mission by pretending that women are as strong as men or that their biology enables them to function equally in primitive, hostile, dangerous surroundings.

A nice California Highway Patrol story

From a local newspaper, the Twin Cities Times:

THREE CHEERS, YTD! For the CHiP who stopped my friend John Gulick the other day. John was speeding on his motorcycle when a CHiP hailed him to pull over, but John missed the exit so sped up to the next one, which understandably irritated the CHiP even more. John pulls out his license and the ChiP sees the Purple Heart symbol on it. John explains that he was the first Navy SEAL to be wounded in the Vietnam War. The CHiP hands him back the license, sez “This is just a warning, sir. And thank you for your service to the country.”

A reminder that our troops are not the only ones fighting for freedom

Return of the heroes in Canada:

H/t:  American Thinker

A Memorial Day tribute

It’s not Memorial Day yet, but it’s time to start thinking about it, and this beautiful video, by wordsmith at Flopping Aces, is a good place to start.  Be prepared with a hankie, though, ’cause you’ll need it.

I just want to add one thing now that you’ve spent a few minutes thinking about the great sacrifice our troops and their families are willing to make on behalf of all Americans (no matter how ungrateful some of those Americans are).  When watching a video such as this one, context matters greatly.  When people who support the military and their efforts — people like Mike — put together a video like this one, there is a reverence underlying it.  Those who make this video, and those who watch this video, do so with the greatest respect for those who are willing to put their patriotism on the line.  These men and women don’t just talk about American exceptionalism; they live it.

This is a far cry from the body counts that the Left loves (body counts that, interestingly enough, ahem, vanished completely upon Obama’s inauguration).  The Left sees the troops as killers or fools, who are willing or unwitting tools of America’s evil imperialism.  Their “homages” to troop deaths are not premised on gratefulness but are, instead, political hit pieces intended to show that the blood of the dead is on our leader’s hands.  Except, apparently, when that leader is Obama.  The media gives every indication of believing that Obama has perfected the trick of leading the troops into battle, but having no responsibility for their deaths.

Harvard law professor’s defense of Kagan doesn’t hide her anti-military animus

I’d like to analyze a Harvard’s law prof’s defense of a Harvard law dean.  The Prof (and ex-dean himself) is Robert Clark, who wrote an op-ed in the WSJ defending Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s approach to the military during her tenure as dean of Harvard Law.  He spells out the facts, which I’ll accept as true (although with significant omissions), that he contends proves that Kagan loves the military.  If his opinion piece passes for legal analysis at HLS . . . well, they’re all Obamas there, I guess.

Clark begins by explaining that, when Kagan came on board as dean of Harvard Law, Harvard already had a long-standing policy barring any recruiting by employers who hadn’t signed onto a statement that they didn’t discriminate:

As dean, Ms. Kagan basically followed a strategy toward military recruiting that was already in place. Here, some background may be helpful: Since 1979, the law school has had a policy requiring all employers who wish to use the assistance of the School’s Office of Career Services (OCS) to schedule interviews and recruit students to sign a statement that they do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on.

(Just FYI, I have a big problem with forcing employers to sign that kind of stuff as a precondition for recruiting.  I don’t think Harvard should be narrowing the pool of prospective employers for their students who are, after all, adults.  Even more than being mere adults, since they’re graduates of Hah-vahd Law, one would think they’d learned a little about analyzing their own needs and the type of employer they wanted.  Had I been in charge, I would simply have required that all comers inform prospective employees what their non-discrimination policies are.  But then again, unlike a liberal, I prefer more information, not less.  But back to Clark’s Kagan narrative. . . .)

In the early years after Harvard started censoring prospective employers, the military circumvented its inability to sign this statement (a Congressionally imposed inability, I might add), by appearing on campus as the guest of a school organization:

For years, the U.S. military, because of its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, was not able to sign such a statement and so did not use OCS. It did, however, regularly recruit on campus because it was invited to do so by an official student organization, the Harvard Law School Veterans Association.

Eventually, the Air Force, fed up by its second class treatment, challenged Harvard for violating the 1996 Solomon Amendment (which, like “don’t ask, don’t tell,” passed during a Democratic administration).  That Amendment says that a school can’t take federal money and than ban the American military from its campus. (Or as we used to say in Texas, you dance with them what brung ya’.)

The symbolic effect of this special treatment of military recruiters was important, but the practical effect on recruiting logistics was minimal. In 2002, however, the Air Force took a hard line with Harvard and argued that this pattern did not provide strictly equal access for military recruiters and thus violated the 1996 Solomon Amendment, which denies certain federal funds to an education institution that “prohibits or in effect prevent” military recruiting. It credibly threatened to bring an end to federal funding of all research at the university.

The Law School is so damn rich, Clark says, it could survive without federal money, but other colleges at Harvard might have been hurt by losing your and my taxpayer dollars.  Although it violated every liberal principle in the faculty’s collective body, Harvard Law bowed to Mammon and gave the military a pass on its (Democratically mandated) inability to sign the school’s (Nanny state) non-discrimination pledge. The liberals, of course, made their usual “we love the military” speech, even as they sought to undercut its efficiency.

This penalty would not have hurt the law school, which has virtually no such funding. But it would have hurt other schools at Harvard, principally the medical school and the school of public health. It would have eliminated about 15% of the university’s operating budget.

After much deliberation with the president of Harvard and other university officials, we decided to make an exception for the military to the school’s nondiscrimination policy. At the same time, I, along with many faculty and students, publicly stated our opposition to the military’s policy, which we considered both unwise and unjust, even as we explicitly affirmed our profound gratitude to the military. Virtually all law schools affiliated with large universities did the same.

Kagan rolled with this new policy favoring the military, but complained about it vociferously. That is, at the beginning of each recruiting season, she went out of her way to pay lip service to the military, and then to attack it for following a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy — a policy, I might add, enacted by a Democratic Congress and signed by Bill Clinton, her former employer:

When Ms. Kagan became dean in July of 2003, she upheld this newer policy. Military recruiters used OCS services, but at the beginning of each interviewing season she wrote a public memorandum explaining the exception to the school’s nondiscrimination policy, stating her objection to “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and expressing her strong view that military service is a noble and socially valuable career path that should be encouraged and open to all of our graduates.

Kagan was not happy with the Solomon Amendment’s dictates, something made clear the moment the opportunity arose for her to block the military from Harvard Law.  When the Third Circuit said that the Solomon Amendment was unconstitutional, Kagan immediately kicked the military off campus again, depriving it off access to some of America’s best and brightest during time of war:

In November 2004, however, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Solomon Amendment infringed improperly on law schools’ First Amendment freedoms. So Ms. Kagan returned the school to its pre-2002 practice of not allowing the military to use OCS, but allowing them to recruit via the student group.

Unfortunately for Kagan, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately concluded that the Solomon Amendment was constitutionally sound and held that, unless schools taking federal money give access to the U.S. military, they can kiss their dollars good-bye. Despite the largest endowment in America, Harvard chose free money over principles, and once again opened its doors (complaining bitterly all the while):

Yet this reversion only lasted a semester because the Department of Defense again threatened to cut off federal funding to all of Harvard, and because the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Third Circuit’s decision. Once again, military recruiters were allowed to use OCS, even as the dean and most of the faculty and student body voiced opposition to “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

From this story, Clark reaches what is, to me, a bizarre conclusion (emphasis mine):

Outside observers may disagree with the moral and policy judgments made by those at Harvard Law School. But it would be very wrong to portray Elena Kagan as hostile to the U.S. military. Quite the opposite is true.

Do you think Clark’s conclusion makes sense.  As I read his own words, he is describing a woman who, at every opportunity, tried to block the military — a military at war — from having access to people who are presumably the nation’s top law students.  She did so because she doesn’t agree with a federal policy put into place by her own own political party and signed by her former boss, Bill Clinton. Not only that, when she was forced to give the military access to these students, she repeatedly voiced her hostility to the military’s program, ignoring the fact that the military was constrained by a political compromise enacted under the aegis of her Democratic party.  Would you remind me where this falls into the “not hostile to the U.S. military” category?

And while I’m at it, let me add a few salient facts that Clark conveniently forgot to mention in his little narrative.

First, as Clark’s narrative tells, every year when Kagan reluctantly allowed military recruiters onto campus, she sent out a formal announcement bemoaning the fact that she was forced to do so.  These were no dry statements.  They were emotionally charged, and the emotions hit the wrong target:

Consider these words in particular from her letters to “All Members of the Harvard Law School Community”: On Oct. 6, 2003, Kagan explained that she abhorred “the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy….The military’s policy deprives many men and women of courage and character from having the opportunity to serve their country in the greatest way possible. This is a profound wrong — a moral injustice of the first order.” On Sep. 28, 2004: “…the military’s recruitment policy is both unjust and unwise. The military’s policy deprives…” etc. And on March 7, 2006: “I hope that many members of the Harvard Law School community will accept the Court’s invitation to express their views clearly and forcefully regarding the military’s discriminatory employment policy. As I have said before, I believe that policy is profoundly wrong — both unwise and unjust…,” etc.

Notice, time and again: “the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy,” “the military’s policy,” “the military’s recruitment policy,” “the military’s discriminatory employment policy.”

But it is not the military’s policy. It is the policy of the U.S. Government, based on legislation passed in 1993 by (a Democratic) Congress, signed into law and implemented by the Clinton administration, legislation and implementation that are currently continued by a Democratic administration and a Democratic Congress. It is intellectually wrong and morally cowardly to call this the “military’s policy.” Wrong for obvious reasons. Cowardly because it allowed Kagan to go ahead and serve in the Clinton administration that enforced this policy she so detests, and to welcome to Harvard as Dean former members of that administration, as well as Senators and Congressmen who actually voted for the law–which is more than the military recruiters whom Kagan sought to ban did.

Even liberal commentators, most notably Peter Beinart, who deeply disapproves of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” have recognized that Kagan loaded, aimed, and then shot the wrong target:

The military, like Congress, the courts and the presidency, is one of our defining public institutions. To question its moral legitimacy is not like questioning the moral legitimacy of General Electric. And that’s exactly what banning the military from campus does. It suggests that Harvard thinks not just that the military’s anti-gay policy is immoral (which it emphatically is) but that the institution itself is immoral. It’s like refusing to sing the national anthem because you’re upset at the Bush administration’s torture policies or refusing to salute the flag because of the way Washington responded to Hurricane Katrina. It’s a statement of profound alienation from your country, and will be received by other Americans as such.

Beinart’s absolutely right.  He recommends that Kagan apologize, but I don’t think an apology will cut the mustard with Americans who recognize in her a profound disdain for the military, one that can’t be swept away with a muttered, “I’m sorry I said that.”

Second, Clark’s narrative also misses the fact that Kagan didn’t just complain about the Solomon Amendment — she acted upon her complaint.  By doing so, as Scott Johnson explains, she proved herself to be in a clear minority as a legal thinker (although comfortably in lockstep with America’s Ivory Tower elites):

When the Supreme Court accepted the Department of Defense’s appeal from the Third Circuit decision, Kagan got on board. She was one of 40 Harvard Law School professors who signed a friend-of-the-court brief written by Walter Dellinger supporting the FAIR plaintiffs.

In the brief Dellinger argued that the Solomon Amendment applied only to schools that specifically prohibited military access on campus, not to schools’ whose policies simply had the (allegedly) incidental effect of doing so. Dellinger distinguished the law schools’ contemporary anti-discrimination policies from Vietnam-era academic anti-military policies.

Dellinger’s argument based on the language of the Solomon Amendment was, to say the least, strained, and the Supreme Court gave it the back of its hand in the Court’s 8-0 opinion upholding the Solomon Amendment. Even Justice Stevens rejected it.

Here we have Kagan herself, as Dean of the Harvard Law School, signing off on a brief making an argument so far out that not a single member of the Supreme Court found it worthy of adherence. This would seem to provide some evidence for the proposition that Kagan’s views lie somewhere outside the mainstream of Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Perhaps the institutional imperatives to which she gave voice as dean of the Harvard Law School overrode her common sense. For other reasons, Kagan has noted she didn’t write the brief; she merely signed it.

Kagan’s side decisively lost the FAIR case in the Supreme Court. I wrote while the case was pending in the Supreme Court that some lawsuits deserve a fate worse than failure. While decent military recruiters suffered the rudeness of their purported betters at Yale Law School and elsewhere in silence, the armed services of the United States were (and are) actively defending the freedom of those schools from peril. The rank ingratitude of those who should know better is a disgrace that deserves to be widely recognized as such.

So, not only does Clark’s conclusion that Kagan is a proud supporter of the American military fail to mesh with his own facts, it also fails to mesh with the facts he excluded from his summary of her approach to the military.

Kagan is certainly not a rabid anti-military person.  As far as we know, she never took to the streets, and she never said anything intemperate.  Nevertheless, during her war-time tenure as Harvard Law’s dean, she actively worked against the military, in violation of rather explicit federal law.  In addition, when the opportunity came along, she signed her name to a brief so contrary to constitutional law that even the liberal jurists on the Supreme Court could not support her position.  (This might not be surprising.  She seems to be careless and unprepared when it comes to acting like a lawyer, something worth considering in light of her Supreme Court nomination.)

Although this post touches heavily upon “don’t ask, don’t tell,” it is not about the merits of that government policy.  It is, instead, about the fact that Kagan’s defenders will obfuscate the record to hide the fact that, as Michael Gerson has said, “many Americans will find her acts offensive”:

During a pastel career, Kagan made one neon decision — to ban military recruiters from the Office of Career Services when she was dean of Harvard Law School, based on her strong opposition to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Legal experts understand that this is a controversy at many law schools. Kagan will explain that she followed the law and the ruling of the courts, even while arguing to overturn the policy.

I suspect, however, that many Americans will find her actions offensive — with far more intensity than the White House expects. Kagan not only took this controversial action, she publicly attacked the policy as “deeply wrong,” “unwise and unjust” and “a moral injustice of the first order.” It will be hard to downplay an issue on which Kagan has a history of grandstanding. Blocking military recruiters may seem normal in academic circles, but it will seem radical in much of the country — like banning the American flag from campus to protest some policy disagreement with the government. This controversy will add to a broader narrative that “Manhattan’s liberal, intellectual Upper West Side” is disconnected from the views and values of Middle America.

Thursday night round-up — and Open Thread *UPDATED*

Oh, my gosh!  Have I got good stuff here for all of you.

Rush.  Need I say more?  Actually, just so you know what you’re linking too, Rush manages to combine into one lucid post American exceptionalism and Clintonian hypocrisy.  Whew!  [UPDATE:  Soccer Dad, every bit as wise as Rush, but lacking the scope, made much the same point here.]

I think we have a moral obligation to support conservative Bay Area bloggers, since we are a very fragile species in a hostile ecosystem.  (Did I get that environmentalist language right?)  Of course, it’s always easier to provide this support when the blog is good, and Fund47 is good.  You’ll find here a slide show of the San Francisco Tea Party as well as audio tape of the superb speech my friend Sally Zelikovsky made.  The one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that this is no astroturf movement.  Every last one of the people you see and hear is the real deal, fed up with vast government overreach.

Obama is working hard to make sure we can’t rely on traditional energy sources, but the fact remains that “renewable” energy is too expensive and risky for sensible people to take on.  This explains why a Marin town has opted out of a clean energy program (in which several counties refused to join).  It also answers the New York Times‘ perplexed wonderment about the absence of solar power in California.  As to that, I can tell you that, yes, solar power does reduce PG&E bills.  Sounds good, but it’s not really.  If you’re lucky, in 15-20 years, you might break even on your solar system.  As for the taxpayers who subsidized your purchase . . . well, they’ll never see that money again.  Oh, by the way, unless you want your bill to go through the roof, try not to use any but the most necessary energy during peak hours.  During the summer, peak hours are all day, which pretty much puts the kybosh on basic functionality.

There was one person who understand what was really going on with environmentalism, and that was the late George Carlin.  If you don’t mind blue language, you want to listen to this.

Muslims, 1; Military/American Christianity, 0:  Franklin Graham was disinvited, after he dared to speak slightingly of Islam.  Oh, while I’m on the topic of Islam (and why Graham might have spoken slightingly of the religion that can no longer be named), Reason magazine has not one, but three, posts about the disgraceful, quisling censorship of South Park (again, blue language warning).  [UPDATE:  Red State makes sure to point the finger of blame in the proper direction.]

Of course, all that scary stuff may explain why, in addition to its fear of the long arm of Obama, the L.A. Times is assiduously refusing to release the tape it received showing an evening at which, existent stories hint, Obama cheerfully participated in Israel bashing with leading Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi.  I don’t think the Times is showing journalistic backbone, because it’s never indicated that it has any; I think it’s showing outright fear.

A point about which I frequently blog here is the fact that I find many liberals inarticulate, verging on incoherent, when it comes to explaining their viewpoint.  Fortunately, American Digest is here to help.

Don’t shoot until you see the red of your own blood; or, liberal rules of engagement

“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”  — attr. to various generals at the Battle of Bunker Hill (although it has a longer pedigree than that).

Liberals have been orgasmically excited by a video that Wikileak published showing a 2007 shootout in Baghdad, during which two Reuters stringers died.  Wikileaks contends that the video shows ordinary guys just walking down the streets with cameras, when suddenly blood-thirsty U.S. troops rained horror and death down on them from the skies.  That’s certainly how it’s being sold in the liberal American and European media.

My liberal husband, who saw the story in the New York Times, was “shocked” at the type of killing machines the U.S. troops were.  After he admitted that he hadn’t actually watched the video, I explained that the video took place in a moving battle zone, and that the photographers were embedded with non-uniformed combatants who were carrying guns, including what looked like an RPG.  I also said the vehicle that pulled up later was unmarked and that more men, also out-of-uniform, came spilling out.  My husband fussed and fulminated about the fact that this was “no excuse” for what the Americans did.  My son was more to the point:  “RPGs?  Those photographers were idiots.”

If you’d like details about the combat zone; the weapons; the lack of identification on the photographers, the combatants and the vehicles; and the explicitly stated, on-the-ground perceptions of the American troops, Bill Roggio and Rusty Shackleford have been all over this one.  You can read Rusty here, here and here.  Roggio’s analysis is here and here.  (Bob Owens chimes in here too.)

I wanted to talk about something different, which is the liberal perception of rules of engagement.  It’s very clear from the coverage that liberals believe that American soldiers should not be firing if they merely perceive themselves to be at risk, no matter the amount of evidence supporting that perception.  Liberals would rather see a battalion of soldiers die, than suffer the loss of one Reuters photographer who deliberately places himself in a battle zone, and goes about without any identification or advanced warning. (Of course, the lack of advanced warning arises because the reporters and photographers who have embedded themselves with combatants hostile to the US can’t exactly let the US know in advance where the combatants will be.  That is one of the risks of embedding with one side or another during a war.  You take the same strikes your new comrades take.)

Given their sensibilities, the liberal ROEs are simple:  You can’t know that someone wants to kill you until they actually try to kill you.  American troops, therefore, should not fire until one of their own has been bloodied or killed.  Only in that way can they be absolutely assured that they are firing at a legitimate military target, and not simply firing at something that looks like a legitimate military target.

These ROEs, of course, get expanded to world conflicts.  Just because Iran is busy building a nuclear arsenal and has spent the last 30 years stating explicitly that it believes Israel should and will be destroyed in a tremendous Holocaust is meaningless.  Because there are good people in Iran (true), it’s simply not fair to judge Iran by its words and conduct, if those words and conduct fall short of actually launching a nuclear missile at Tel Aviv.  Only when Iran follows through on its threats, and actually launches that nuclear missile, can Israel be justified in taking the chance that any defensive actions might kill innocent civilians.

Congratulations to the Marines and their Afghan allies for the Marjah victory

I meant to post this yesterday, but time got away from me:  many, many, many congratulations to the Marines and their Afghan allies for the Marjah victory.  I never doubted that they would win, but I certainly understood that each Marine and Afghan soldier faced the risk that he would make the ultimate sacrifice for that victory.

Naturally, the Times, rather than celebrating a great military feat, is already trying to set up new (and in Times-land, almost certainly insurmountable) hurdles for our troops.  I have no doubt that our troops will do just fine.

For a reminder about what out-of-control, murderous troops really look like, read this story of the way in which Soviet soldiers raped the women who found themselves in the soldiers’ path during WWII.  There are no, and I mean no, stories like that about our American troops, whether one is looking at WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan.  (Indeed, I bet I could say the same for American troops going back to the Revolutionary War.)  Sure, there are always renegade men who go off and do bad things, but these same men appear periodically in our cities and towns too.  Bad guys exist, but American troops have proven definitively that they are part of a good institution, one that does not use rape as a weapon.

Drifting a little further afield, the fact that American men are not rapists even when they have the power of the military behind them, is also a useful reminder about what a misanthropic religion Islam is.  (And no, I didn’t get confused and substitute misanthropic for misogynistic.)  While it’s certainly true that one of Islam’s most glaring deficiencies is its desperate desire to subjugate women out of fear of their sexuality, it’s quite obvious that the Islamists hide from feminine sexuality because they believe men to be inherently weak.  In the Islamic world, the theory goes, any man, upon seeing a woman, will be incapable of refraining from raping her.  That is a scathing indictment of men.

In stark contrast, American men are civilized creatures.  Sure, they might leave the toilet seats up, scratch their crotches in public, and belch at inappropriate times, but when push comes to shove, they are models of self-control.

So, in thinking it through, congratulations are due to our Marines, not only for being great warriors, but also for being great human beings.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

The President’s religious desire to reverse Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

On the subject of the “secular humanism religion” that guides liberals, it’s informative to read this quotation from William Kristol, writing about Obama’s sudden imperative need to do away with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the American military:

But the repeal is something that Obama campaigned on. He believes in it. But with all due respect to his sincerely held if abstractly formed views on this subject, it would be reckless to require the military to carry out a major sociological change, one contrary to the preferences of a large majority of its members, as it fights two wars. What’s more, it isn’t a change an appreciable number of Americans are clamoring for. And even if one understood this change to be rectifying an injustice, the fact is it’s an injustice that affects perhaps a few thousand people in a nation of 300 million.

But, “It’s the right thing to do,” said the president.

Here is contemporary liberalism in a nutshell: No need to consider costs as well as benefits. No acknowledgment of competing goods or coexisting rights. No appreciation of the constraints of public sentiment or the challenges of organizational complexity. No sense that not every part of society can be treated dogmatically according to certain simple propositions. Just the assertion that something must be done because it is in some abstract way “the right thing.”

In other words, although the liberal’s faith doesn’t derive from God, it’s a faith all the same.  The only difference is that liberals, because their unnamed God is the government itself, have no problem crossing the Constitutional dividing line and using the coercive power of government to force people to worship at their shrines.

For a cogent discussion of the practical problems that repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would create, read J.E. Dyer’s article and her earlier post on the subject.  And for a revealing look at the military bureaucracy’s lumbering agreement to comply with the President’s ill-thought out wishes, check this out, at the Daily Caller.

Something special you can do for active duty bloggers

Over at The Dawn Patrol, Greyhawk has put together a very special list:  he’s compiled links to (and holiday messages from) active duty bloggers serving at home and abroad.  He asks that you visit their blogs and send them holiday greetings in the comments section.  That sounds like a plan to me.  It’s such a little thing for me to do for those who give so much.

Silencing the military

I’ve been following, although not blogging about, the story of CJ Grisham.  Briefly, he’s a milblogger who received accolades from the White House on down, both for his bravery in battle, and for the quality of his milblog reporting.  Recently, however, while living in Huntsville, he got into a wrangle with his kids’ school over a fairly picayune issue (the unexpected cost of newly mandated school uniforms).  The school, of course, reacted hysterically and with great hostility, going so far as to report CJ to his superior officer. (I can assure you that, if someone working for Sprint got into a similar wrangle with a school, the school would not report him to his boss.)  This reaction shouldn’t surprise anybody, of course.  As Kissinger said once he entered the world of academia, “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”  Those stakes are even smaller at elementary schools.

Despite recorded evidence to the contrary, the “VP of Membership” for the elementary school (whatever the heck position that is) contended that CJ wasn’t merely uncivil, but was actually threatening.  In an open (and illiterate) letter on facebook, this gal forthrightly explained why she had to take a stand against CJ:

This has moved beyond a uniform issue, [sic] this had became a personal vendetta between everyone. Mr. Grisham felt as if his Constitutional rights were violated. I ask you the question [sic] call me a liberal or tratior [sic] to our country if you must, but how many others [sic] rights were violated during interogations [sic]? How many of them were innocent? I am not ignorant to [sic] what goes on during war by any means. I know first hand how they rape and toture [sic] their male captives, [sic] I’ve seen the physical wounds that many civilians would not believe.

(Weirdly, given her Code Pink views, the same gal appears to be a Glenn Beck fan.  Go figure.)

In other words, the V.P.’s side of the vendetta had nothing to do with CJ’s concern about school uniforms..  To that one liberal, CJ is the symbol of the evil military and she was going to strike a blow against the military by destroying this one man.

That’s not the only hit CJ has taken.  CJ is at the center of a bigger storm, and it is one that affects all military bloggers:  the military, which originally was reasonably supportive of (or at least passive about) milblogs, has become very hostile to them.  Blackfive explains:

[M]ilblogs are facing an increasingly hostile environment from within the military.  While senior leadership has embraced blogging and social media, many field grade officers and senior NCOs do not embrace the concept.  From general apathy in not wanting to deal with the issue to outright hostility to it, many commands are not only failing to support such activities, but are aggressively acting against active duty milbloggers, milspouses, and others.  The number of such incidents appears to be growing, with milbloggers receiving reprimands, verbal and written, not only for their activities but those of spouses and supporters.

You can read more about both CJ’s travails at the hands of the military and about the general military attitude right now towards blogging here, in this Army Times article.

So, on the one hand we have CJ Grisham, a man who during the invasion of Iraq rushed alone through gunfire, with just a 9mm pistol and a hand grenade to take down a squad of Iraqis when his counterintelligence detachment got pinned down in an ambush (an act that earned him a Bronze Star). On the other hand, arrayed against CJ, we have a hostile liberal education establishment, and a military that is doing its best to silence, not only CJ, but also those who serve with him.  I know where I side with this one — and I bet you do too.

As for CJ’s plight as a blogger, a problem shared by hundreds of other milbloggers (whether active duty, retired, family members, etc.), today is the day that something is happening.  All over the internet, milblogs are falling silent.  You don’t get to read today (and maybe tomorrow too, and the day after) their anecdotes, insights, concerns, adventures, etc.  Just for one day, you can to imagine a world and a war without milbloggers.  It’s not very nice.  War gets a little bit more hellish when our own military muzzles its troops.

Here’s a list of of participating blogs and supporters:

A decent, and prescient, courtroom thriller *UPDATED*

For my birthday, my husband gave me an Amazon Kindle.  It’s a sensible gift for me, since I read voraciously and often find myself waiting around in various places because of carpools.  Since the Kindle fits in my purse, I always have something to read.

The only problem with the Kindle is the expense.  Hardback books are 50% off, but I would never pay $10.00 for a book.  Paperback books are barely discounted at all, and I would never pay $8.00 for a book.  So, I do three things:  I still haunt my library; I buy “disposabooks” at Goodwill (novels for about $1.39 each); and I download the free books that publishers put up at the Kindle site in hopes of sparking interesting in a writer.  (You can see what I mean at the Kindle bestseller page.)  A couple of weeks ago, I lucked out when I found a series of JAG Corp legal thrillers by a guy named Don Brown.

I’d never heard of Don Brown before finding his books, and quickly discovered why:  The books are Christian themed and are from a Christian publisher.  In other words, this is not a genre that would normally cross my radar.  Not being a Christian myself, I don’t seek out Christian literature.  The lure of free thrillers, however, was too much for me.

I just finished Brown’s first book, Treason, and am now reading his second, Hostage. Treason was an interesting book.  Brown’s writing is a little wooden, but no more than you’d expect from a first time novelist.  Despite the writing, though, there’s a lot to like about the books.  First, as a lawyer, I found the courtroom scenes and the description of trial proceedings interesting.  The twist of a military setting just added a bit of spice.  Second, I liked his lead characters, who are moral people (in large part due to the Christian element), and who grapple with legal situations familiar to all lawyers.  Third, I really enjoyed his abiding love for the Navy, which comes through in every word.  Even the uniforms delight Brown.

Mostly, though, I liked the book because of Brown’s honesty about Islamic terrorism.  Brown has no interesting in politically correct tropes about peace.  He recognizes that we are at war with a fanatical element in Islam, which in turn is supported by passivity and political correctness. In Treason, published in 2005, Brown showed himself to be especially prescient.  The plot involves Islamic members of the military who use their special access to commit acts of terrorism directly against the military — shades of Nidal Hassan.  Brown also grapples with whether Islamic terrorists who are engaged in guerrilla activities against the United States should be tried in regular criminal courts or in military courts.  That, too, could have been ripped out of today’s headlines.  It’s no surprise, given that his protagonist is a JAG officer that Brown sides with a military tribunal, but he also makes cogent arguments for doing so — arguments that could be made, and have been made, with respect to Holder’s/Obama’s insane decision to try KSM in New York’s federal courts.

So, if you’re looking for an easy read, military thriller, with strong Christian themes, I can definitely recommend Don Brown’s books.  They are fun, and they have a crystal ball element of prescience that I always appreciate.

UPDATE:  Just finished Hostage.  As I suspected it would be, it’s better than Treason.  From one book to the next, Brown’s writing became more polished and smoother.  The first book was a good debut effort, but Brown is now getting his writing chops.

The Nanny State Commander in Chief

Do you ever wonder what it’s like to live in Iowahawk’s brain?  I do.  Brilliant satire flows out of him so effortlessly that I know that his brain functions in a very different, and much more sophisticated, way than mine does.  Take the Nanny State approach to war.  Unable to come up with my own satire, I was only able to allude to Tom Lehrer’s (very funny) Harvard fight song as a useful analogy to the Left’s toothless approach to war.

Iowahawk, on the other hand, doesn’t need to rely on anyone else for humor.  Instead, he has created this masterpiece of political comedy.

Some Republican lawmakers are standing up for the SEALS

Mudville Gazette reports that some Republican lawmakers haven’t forgotten the three SEALS facing court-martial for having given a fat lip to a suspected Al Qaeda murderer during his arrest.

This is no little thing.  SEALS are the creme de la creme of our military forces.  If they’ve done wrong, that’s one thing.  But if they haven’t, if these man are being pilloried and their careers destroyed because the military is yielding to the Left’s demand that it become a warm, cuddly, friendly force that doesn’t offend people in Leftist designated victim classes, what’s happening now is a travesty and a horror.

We need to pay attention.  Or, as that hoary old Leftist, Arthur Miller, said in his dreary polemic, Death of a Salesman:  “Attention must be paid.”

Media continues to give new meaning to old ideas

There’s yet another movie coming out about the way in which the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq destroy lives and turn young men into pathetic losers:

There is a grim timeliness to the release of “Brothers,” Jim Sheridan’s movie about the effects of war on the family of a Marine serving in Afghanistan. Whatever the other consequences of President Obama’s revised strategy in that country, we can be sure that it will yield more stories like the one told in this film. And it is sobering, eight years into the war, to reflect that in 2004, the first time this movie was made — by the Danish director Susanne Bier — it was just as topical and urgent.

The review is written in terms of high art — which I translate as boring and pompous — but I gather that the brother who goes to war suffers terribly, and that his sufferings transfer to the family, and that they all suffer and are destroyed together. War is hell, people.

The above is the usual we expect from Hollywood.  What’s so funny is the way in which the New York Times‘ movie reviewer, A.O. Scott, assures us that the movie is completely apolitical:

But this “Brothers,” like its predecessor, is in some ways less a movie about war than a movie that uses war as a scaffolding for domestic melodrama. It also follows the template of American movies about Iraq and Afghanistan in being resolutely somber and systematically apolitical: you can witness any kind of combat heroism or atrocity, and see unflinching portrayals of grief, trauma and healing. But you almost never hear an argument about the war itself, or glimpse the larger global and national context in which these intimate dramas take shape.

It doesn’t seem to occur to Scott that a movie that paints war as an evil thing that destroys, not just the enemy, but the warriors at home and, by extension, their families too, is pretty anti-war.  And that if it’s anti-war, it isn’t apolitical.  Instead, it’s standing firmly on the side of those liberals who believe that all wars, regardless of the goals, are inherently evil and destructive.  It also stands firmly on the side of those liberals who do not believe that there is a warrior class that finds fulfillment in serving, and that despite the fact that war — even a just war — can indeed be hell.

As an antidote to the liberal establishment’s firm belief that military service inevitably destroys human beings, let me replay this great video of Congressional candidate Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, which I already added to my affirmative action post:

The military — a life with purpose *UPDATED*

Not that we didn’t know it before, but we’ve been getting a rash of statements lately that make it clear that liberals don’t understand the military.  When Bush was Commander in Chief, the troops were maniacal killers or politically useful body counts.  Now that Obama is Commander in Chief, the rhetoric has shifted so that they’re either pathetic sacrificial lambs or, in some quarters, still maniacal killers.  As Obama’s own speech shows, he can’t stop obsessing about the military dead:

Most of all, I know that this decision asks even more of you – a military that, along with your families, has already borne the heaviest of all burdens.  As President, I have signed a letter of condolence to the family of each American who gives their life in these wars. I have read the letters from the parents and spouses of those who deployed.  I have visited our courageous wounded warriors at Walter Reed.

I have traveled to Dover to meet the flag-draped caskets of 18 Americans returning home to their final resting place. I see firsthand the terrible wages of war. If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow.

Considering that the venue where Obama made that statement was West Point, with a graduating class ready to ship out to Afghanistan, the above statements had all the class, sensitivity and subtlety of speaking about rope in the hangman’s house.

It is unnerving to have a Commander in Chief (plus a bunch of advisers and acolytes) who fail completely to understand the warrior ethos.  I therefore thought it would be timely to reprint in its entirely a post I did in October 2008, after a very satisfying Fleet Week visit to the USS Bonhomme Richard (courtesy of the Navy League).  I may not be military myself but, I do think I get something about what calls young men and women to serve.

*********

I was going to write a fairly ordinary descriptive post about my evening attending a reception aboard the Bonhomme Richard. (Which, by the way, was another splendid opportunity made available to me courtesy of my membership in the Navy League.) However, the more I thought about the evening — and I promise I will describe it — the more I wanted to write about the larger implications of my recent contacts with the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard and the Marines. (I haven’t yet met the Air Force, so to speak.)

You have to understand as you read this that, while I’ve always managed to admire the military (and I say “managed” because that’s not easy as a liberal), I had never actually met people in the modern American military. I’d met plenty of people in the Israeli military because a visit to Israel, especially to visit old family friends, automatically means meeting people your own age who serve in the military. Likewise, through my parents’ generation, I’d met people who had served during World War II, both in the American and the British military.

It was this WWII generation, in fact, that shaped my views about military service, and enabled me to respect our troops despite my political outlook. My father served in the RAF and ANZAC during World War II, and both he and my mother were in the Israeli Army during the 1947/1948 War of Independence.

Although my father fought in absolutely horrific battles (at El Alamein and Crete, among other places), he really enjoyed being in the military. For him, fresh out of the chaos of (a) Weimar Germany, (b) Nazi Germany, (c) a nascent Kibbutz (endless work, little food, lots of danger), and (d) starving on the streets of Tel Aviv, the RAF and ANZAC were havens of order and security. In addition to the structure he so needed and craved, my father’s life, at last, had a purpose: beat the Nazis. Even when he was working the most boring, demeaning or dangerous jobs, he was still making a difference for a cause in which he deeply believed.

My mother too remembers her service days with great pleasure. Although she was (as she says) “just a lowly draftsman,” she knew that her work matter greatly. She may just have been sitting at a drafting board in an office, but the maps she created would be used by the Israeli Army to aid in creating their battle strategies. The accuracy of her work could spell the difference between victory and defeat. My mother also remembers with fondness the camaraderie of service. She and her colleagues were all part of a greater enterprise, and they felt a very tight bond as a result. (She felt the same bond in concentration camp, despite the horrors, when she and her fellow inmates bent their efforts to beating the Japanese simply by the act of surviving.)

Those stories formed the tapestry of my childhood, but they stood in stark contrast to the emotional malaise of the Vietnam War. While the stories at home were about honor and loyalty and purpose, the stories in the media were about despair, anger, substance abuse and a tremendous sense of waste. The conscripted Army of my childhood was not a happy one — or, at least, the media relayed endless stories of unhappiness, regardless of whether that attitude was universally felt or not. I knew the mantra: War is evil, the military is an evil machine, soldiers are victims of the vast industrial complex.

Except that’s so not true.

In the last two or three years, I’ve spoken with a young Marine about to head off to Afghanistan; spent an enjoyable lunch with an Army recruiter who served a tour of duty in Iraq; got the benefit of a fascinating hour and a half with the XO on a destroyer; crawled in and out of Marine landing craft under the tutelage of Marines anxious to explain all the wonders of the vehicle; been shown more weapons than you can imagine (to my son’s great joy) by sailors or Marines who were just delighted to tell about their “toys”; spent a lovely day on the bridge of a Coast Guard ship; and had a Captain take the time to walk me and my family all over his wonderful Amphibious Assault Ship.

A common thread tied together each of my encounters with our military: The people to whom I spoke (and who spoke to me) were completely delighted with their jobs. They found their equipment fascinating, they were proud of their responsibilities, and they enjoyed being part of the series of groups that comprised their lives: their team, their ship or unit, their military branch (Marines, Army, etc.), and their Country. Over and over and over, I heard from them their sense that each of these layers gave them a benefit, and that they in turn owed honor and duty to both the small and large entities wrapped around them.

In other words, the people to whom I’ve spoken over the past few years have a sense of purpose in their lives. Because they believe in the organization for which they work (whether their team, their ship, their branch of the forces or their country), that belief imbues their tasks with meaning. If you’re a Marine, you’re not just engaged in the boring work of taking apart and cleaning a weapon, you are instead responsible for making sure that the weapon is totally operational for your team and your country. There’s almost a sanctity that descends on each task because each task serves a purpose greater than the task itself or the individual doing that task.

How different this is from my years as a young lawyer working in a big firm. My work was indescribably boring, and there was nothing to leaven that boredom.

The money my work generated went into the hands of people I didn’t particularly admire (although I liked many), and they spent it on the pursuits of Yuppies: big houses, fancy cars, boast-worthy trips. Nor did the clients for whom I worked engender any excitement. They were neither good nor bad. They were just businesses that had locked heads with other businesses, with each jockeying for position in our legal system. It was the rare case that left me believing that I was fighting for truth, justice and the American way — as opposed to spending umpteen hours reviewing documents simply so Company A could get that gosh-darned contract interpreted to its benefit, not to Company B’s benefit.

My life was so meaningless that, eventually, I couldn’t get up in the morning. It was only when I went into business for myself that I found a cause I could believe in: making enough money to pay my rent. It wasn’t high-minded, certainly, but it stoked my professional engines.

All of which brings me back to the reception I attended last night. From the moment I turned off the street and into the parking lot, I was taken care of by remarkably attractive young people who did their job with good cheer — and treated me with so much respect it made me feel very old. One after the other, each person carried out his or her task with diligence, whether it was waiving me on to the gate, checking my name off the list, guiding a bomb sniffing dog around my car (that was a first for me), or shepherding me through the security scanner. I’ve always been impressed by the cheerful efficiency of Disneyland. The Navy and Marines are better.

When I boarded the ship itself, I was quite flattered that Captain Parrott remembered me — considering how many thousands of people he sees during Fleet Week, that was a testament to his memory and his manners. A brief conversation with him later established him as a convivial and effective host.

The room was filled with people. About half were in uniform. They all looked so nice and neat — and happy to be there. The other half were in ordinary dress (civvies?). Once my contact from the Navy League (you know him as SJBill) took me under his wing and starting introducing me around, I discovered that many of these men and women were retired Admirals, retired Captains, retired pilots, retired navigators, people from the Defense Industry, and City managers. The only disappointment for me was that there were so many people to meet that I didn’t get a chance to hear about their careers in more detail.

Such conversation as I heard, whether because I was part of the conversation or just listening in, again convinced me that the military is a good employer — and it’s not just the benefits and the college scholarships. Retired people reminisced fondly about their past service; active duty people spoke enthusiastically about their responsibilities. There was none of the whining that characterizes any good gathering of lawyers, all of whom feel that much of what they do is wasting time. Indeed, since I enjoy a good whine, I almost felt out of place. But the food was good, the music was fabulous (great band, great vocalist), and I was having a wonderful time, so I was able to enjoy the bonhomie on the Bonhomme Richard.

When I left, I have to admit to a feeling of envy. I’ve always chosen the safe, risk-free paths in my life. I’ve done pretty well, too: good jobs, good family, good community, etc. But I’ve missed that sense of purpose that makes life more than just creature comforts and material acquisition. My life revolves around me and those directly dependent on me, but it doesn’t have any greater sense of meaning. For the people in our American military, and this is true even if they leave after a short stint, they will have spent part of their lives working for something greater than themselves, and I envy them that fact.

UPDATE:  The President and fellow liberals may be unclear about military service, but the young men and women at West Point are not.  Check out these pictures.  (H/t 11B40)

Fight fiercely, Military, fight, fight fight!

In the “better late than never” category, I discovered a few days ago that my local conservative radio station, KSFO, maintains a rolling archive of all the shows they’ve aired over the preceding seven days.  This means that, finally, I can listen to Rush, whose radio show normally comes along at the world’s most inconvenient time for me.  Today, while I took the dog for her morning walk, I plugged into my iPhone and listened to Hour 2 of Rush’s November 24 show.  The focus during the part I heard was the fact that the four Navy SEALS who brought in one of the Fallujah murders are being court-martialed for giving the guy a fat lip in the field of battle, when he resisted capture.  This prosecution, of course, will encourage the armed forces either to avoid capturing anyone or to kill all captures so that the prisoners can’t later cry “rape” (or the battlefield equivalent).

That’s the obvious stuff, though, and you all know it.  What interested me on Rush’s show was the call from an ex-SEAL with close ties in that community.  This caller claimed that scuttlebutt has it that this whole prosecution is payback for the fact that, when the SEALS rescued the captain off of Somalia a few months ago, they ended up using more force than the administration authorized.  This wasn’t surprising, because the administration essentially authorized no force at all, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of a military engagement, whether overt or covert.  By going after these four SEALS now, the powers that be in the administration are making it clear that the concept of a military is fine with the administration, as long as it doesn’t actually do anything.

I could waffle on about this sad state of affairs, but I know you guys are all ahead of me on it.  I will say, though, that this practically and morally bereft attitude is not surprising coming from this Ivy League administration.  Back in the late 1950s/early 1950s, Tom Lehrer, himself an Ivy League product and professor, took a look at Harvard’s elite sensibilities, and wrote the perfect fight song:  “Fight fiercely, Harvard!”  Tell me if he wasn’t prescient in that our entire effete, Leftist administration now wants to fight war the same way:

Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight, fight, fight
Demonstrate to them our skill
Albeit they possess the might
Nonetheless we have the will
How we shall celebrate our victory
We shall invite the whole team up for tea, how jolly
Hurl that spheroid down the field
And fight, fight, fight

Fight fiercely, Harvard, Fight, fight, fight
Impress them with our prowess, do
Oh, fellows, do not let the Crimson down
Be of stout heart and true
Come on, chaps, fight for Harvard’s glorious name
Won’t it be peachy if we win the game, oh, goody
Let’s try not to injure them
But fight, fight, fight – Let’s not be rough, though
Fight, fight, fight – And do fight fiercely
Fight, fight, fight

The Fort Hood terrorist as a military role model

Right after the Fort Hood shooting, I referred in an email to Major Nidal Hasan.  Steve Schippert, who was one of the email’s recipients, immediately wrote me back saying that I should never use the word “Major” in the same sentence as that killer’s name.  Through his act of murderous treason, Steve, said Hasan had forever forfeited his right to associate with that honorable rank.

Steve’s instincts were right on the money.  Almost as if on schedule, James Taranto, writing at Best of the Web Today, reports on the heinous use to which Code Pink, the radical anti-military organization, is putting Hasan’s rank:

“We support our troops when they shoot their officers,” read a banner held aloft by some “antiwar” protesters back in the spring of 2003. Well, jejune anarchists have as much right to free speech as the rest of us, and anyway, surely they were just being provocative. They don’t really believe that, do they?

Don’t be so sure. On Veterans Day, six days after the Fort Hood massacre, a group that styles itself Code Pink: Women for Peace issued a statement urging President Obama not to send more troops to Afghanistan. It began as follows:

This Veterans Day, our hearts ache for the soldiers and their families affected by the recent shootings at Ft. Hood. Our hearts also ache for the soldiers and their families who continue to be affected by war in Iraq and Afghanistan on a daily basis. Now more than ever, CODEPINK is committed to helping to heal the hearts of those touched by war, and doing whatever we can to bring our troops home.

(Hat tip: BigGovernment.com.)

It’s bad enough to draw a moral equivalence between professional soldiers, who volunteer to risk their lives in defense of their country, and murder victims. But it gets much worse:

Our soldiers clearly need more care; the last thing they need is to be put into more harm’s way. Even US military officers think so–Matthew Hoh resigned from the Foreign Service in protest of the lack of clear mission and achievable results in Afghanistan, and of course the Ft. Hood shooter was a Major who did not wish to be deployed to Afghanistan.

We have read a lot about the background of the alleged killer, Nidal Hasan, and we don’t know of any basis on which to think he agreed with Code Pink’s stated position that “our soldiers clearly need more care.” In any case, mowing them down in cold blood would seem an odd way to give voice to such a view. Yet the Code Pink ladies are eager to have us believe that the killer is a kindred spirit. They think that imputing their opinions to him strengthens their case via an appeal to authority: “Even US military officers think so.”

This isn’t precisely the same as the banner we cited atop this item. But Code Pink’s motto could be: “Our officers support Code Pink when they shoot their troops.”

Dastardly American troops interacting with indigenous kids in Afghanistan and Iran

Here’s our Commander in Chief speaking of the situation in Afghanistan while he was running for office:  “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”

This post is not about the cognitive dissonance of a man who, now that he used that lie to become president, is refusing to act to send more troops to Afghanistan to take off that “enormous pressure.”  It’s about his jaundiced view of the troops he hoped then to, and now does, lead.

At Flopping Aces, WordSmith has a detailed photo essay about the troops of whom Barack Obama spoke.  It’s shocking.  If I were you, I’d get out a handkerchief, because the images there may bring tears to your eyes.  Also, after you’ve checked out Flopping Aces, you may feel compelled to go here and tell the troops exactly what you think of them.  I’ve already done so, and will do so again and again.  The feelings I have now deserve to be vented.

Xerox helps you send a thank you to the troops

As Barack Obama seems poised to turn Afghanistan into another Vietnam, it’s no surprise that troops in Afghanistan are increasingly demoralized.  It turns out that Xerox is doing something to help that situation.  If you go here, you can create a thank-you card for the troops, which Xerox will then send out for you — for free.  What a deal, and what a nice thing to do as we near Thanksgiving.