In Memory - Loyde "Snake" Arender

My wife stayed with her cousin a couple of years ago to help her take care of her husband, Loyde in his final struggle against the effects of Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. Loyde, known as "Snake" by his Marine buddies served in 'Nam and it eventually cost him his life. Snake was a warrior and a poet. His work is even inscribed on a monument to soldiers from his county who died in Vietnam. His poetry is powerful and gives you an insight to what Vietnam vets experienced during and after the war.

I wrote this book for his memorial. It includes stories, comments from friends and fellow soldiers, and his poetry. Snake was, in addition to being a poet, was a hero. When his platoon walked into a minefield, several of his buddies were wounded. With VC in the jungle nearby, Loyde knew they had to get out of the exposed position, but getting out of a mine field would be dangerous. Loyde tossed the first of his wounded comrades over his shoulder and picked his way out with his buddy. Then he went back again and again. His commanding officer wrote up a recommendation that Snake receive the Medal of Honor. 

Unfortunately, his commanding officer was killed the next day and the MOH citation died going up the chain of command. Several of his fellow soldiers have worked on getting him the citation decades later.

Here is the story in PDF format.

God bless our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. We owe them so much!

© 2021 by Tom King 

Why the American Military Wins Wars

Some of these quotes came out of an active service Army Ranger's notebook. He says he carries them around to remind him how Americans fight wars.  I added a couple of others I found. On this Memorial Day I pledge these brave guys the full measure of my support.

"The reason the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis." - from a post-war debriefing of a German General

"One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine..." - From a Soviet Junior Lt's Notebook

"Never fight the Americans without nuclear weapons." - Indian Army General after the First Gulf War

"I explained to my soldiers that they should not fear the American soldiers. If the Americans wanted to kill us, I said, we would already be dead. The Americans just wanted to take away our ability to fight."  - Iraqi officer after first Gulf War

"I always told my soldiers not to fear the treatment by Americans. Americans are very logical people; if you are good to the Americans, they will be good to you. Americans are very different than Arabs. WE know that the Saudis or the Kuwaitis will beat us and hate us because we are Iraqis."  - Iraqi officer


One of the (Patton's) Third Army's greatest assets was American ingenuity. American soldiers were creating new instruments of war on the spot to overcome new problems encountered day after day.

Third Army had an excellent command structure. Each level of command had a special job and each did the best job they could. The planners who told the soldiers what to do also made every effort to help them do it.  - Charles M. Province

"Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness." - Elie Wiesel


"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." - Isoroku Yamamoto

"Always use a piledriver to crack a nut. The piledriver doesn't take much damage, and the nut stays cracked." -- USMC maxim

"...an imperfect plan implemented immediately and violently will always succeed better than a perfect plan." -- Gen. George S. Patton

"In my experience, the most useful command that can ever be given by a junior officer is "Carry on Sergant" -- 2 Lt. Andrew Moffatt-Vallance

"Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants -- the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl." -- Terry Pratchett

"The Third Army gave a new meaning to fluid warfare. The Third had only one general order from Patton; "Seek out the enemy, trap him, and destroy him." The Germans never knew what to expect from Patton. His methods of operation were very different from British General Montgomery and the more conventional American generals. Patton's Third Army tore open the German lines of defense and trapped thousands of German soldiers. Most of them were either killed or they surrendered. The history of the Third Army is a story of constant attack. They drove on in fair weather or foul, across favorable terrain or across mud, ice, and snow." - Charles M. Province

"U.S. trainers often experience frustration obtaining a decision from an Arab counterpart, not realizing that the Arab officer lacks the authority to make the decision - a frustration amplified by the Arab’s understandable reluctance to admit that he lacks that authority. This author has several times seen decisions that could have been made at the battalion level concerning such matters as class meeting times and locations referred for approval to the ministry of defense. All of which has led American trainers to develop a rule of thumb: a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army has as much authority as a colonel in an Arab army." -- Norvell B. De Atkine 

"We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last 100 years and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in." - Secretary of State Colin Powell
 
"The United States military is now evolving geometrically as it gains experience from near-constant fighting and grafts new technology daily. Indeed, it seems to be doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling its lethality every few years. And the result is that we are outdistancing not merely the capabilities of our enemies but our allies as well - many of whom who have not fought in decades - at such a dizzying pace that our sheer destructive power makes it hard to work with others in joint operations." -- Victor Davis Hanson


"Marines are about the most peculiar breed of human beings I have ever witnessed. They treat their service as if it were some kind of cult, plastering their emblem on almost everything they own, making themselves up to look like insane fanatics with haircuts to ungentlemanly lengths, worshipping their Commandant almost as if he were a god, and making weird animal noises like a band of savages. They'll fight like rabid dogs at the drop of a hat just for the sake of a little action, and are the cockest sons of bitches I have ever known. Most have the foulest mouths and drink well beyond man's normal limits, but their high spirits and sense of brotherhood set them apart and, generally speaking, the United States Marines I've come in contact with are the most professional soldiers and the finest men I have ever had the pleasure to meet." -- An Anonymous Canadian Citizen

"There is one tactical principal which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time." -- General George S. Patton Jr.

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." -- George Washington 1790

"We're paratroopers. We're supposed to be surrounded." -- Lt. Richard “Dick” Winters, Easy Company 

"You know the world is going to Hell when your last "honorable" enemies were the Nazis" -- Uncle Bob

"To most Iraqis, the Iraqi police and soldiers are now seen as the good guys, and the terrorists as the bad guys. The Americans are a bunch of foreigners who help out the good guys and give out candy to the kids." - Unknown soldier

"It is worth remembering too that in the reconstruction of Japan there were no insurgents, no Japanese roadside bombs killing our soldiers. One reason is that the United States had shown, in the clearest possible terms, our willingness to wage total war against our enemies. Our military strategists in Iraq could learn from those who, sixty years ago, decided to spare no means in bringing the Japanese nation to its knees." -- Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute 

"The word "martyr" is just another name for "crappy fighter" - Unknown sergeant

"The easy way to tell the true power of an army is to see how much authority and power it gives to its sergeants. The more they are trusted and the more authority they have, the better the army and the more dangerous it will be in war." - US Army officer (name withheld because he wanted to someday be promoted to general)

"The United States started to go downhill when its military changed (ammunition) from a round designed to kill the enemies of America to one designed to piss them off." -- John Ringo

To our soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and other military and veterans, we thank you and honor your sacrifice on our behalf.

I Just Love My Homeowner's Association

My Homeowner's Association's Proposed Warning Sign:

Notice: 

The majority of the guys who live in this neighborhood are military and ex-military, many with advanced training in combat arms, hand to hand combat and reconnaissance. We also have a couple of trained snipers and one old boy from East Texas who sleeps with his 30-06 and can pick the head off a pissant at 1500 yards on a blustery day.

You should also note that we are armed to the teeth and practice often. At last count, the guys out here have 75 confirmed kills in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and some places they still can't talk about. That number is probably a little low because they don't count them if they can't find enough pieces. At night, the Vietnam vet guy likes to sit in a tree in a Ghillie suit with an infrared scope. Something about 'perimeter security'. We gave him a mugshot book of the neighborhood residents and told him he had to verify the identity of the intruder before making the shot. When in doubt, he has instructions to "get close and use the knife".

We are very fond of our wives and kids and get really perturbed if you mess with them. You should know that our subdivision is surrounded by an ecologically balanced and therefore very thick wetlands preservation boundary that already smells pretty bad in some places where the brush is particularly dense. It's not likely they'll find you anytime soon and I understand that our local racoons and buzzards like to nibble things.

Our homeowner's association president worked for many years in a mental facility training orderlies and personally handling the very large violent-type lunatics. He used to take down three hundred pounders and place them in restraints seven or eight times a day on average. He knows the precise words to use when calling 911 so that they'll be sure and send a couple of burly, but efficient, orderlies along with a generous supply of tasers for the police officers. He also knows just what to say on the police report to get you some pretty significant time in a padded cell in some sort of protective gear - one of those heavy canvas strappy things with the shiny steel buckles.

A lot of our guys really take this neighborhood watch thing seriously. Our recon guy has all manner of cameras, still and video, and will make certain there's a proper head shot of you for the BOLO. And you probably shouldn't mention the words "head shot" around our sniper guys or Bubba.

We also love our dogs around here. We have a pit bull, two German Shepherds, a Great Dane, an assortment of Rottweilers, all manner of Labrador Retrievers and a border collie mix named Daisy who runs so fast it makes greyhounds cry and who can reduce a hard rubber chew toy to shreds in under two minutes with her bare teeth. If you disguise yourself as a postman, UPS guy or utility service worker it makes her particularly unhappy. The crotch grab is her specialty. Besides that, most of the guys out here do five to ten miles of daily PT at the base, so PLEASE make a run for it. The Youtube video should be just hilarious.

If you're having some sort of problem with authority or you're an anarchist, this might not be the best place to work out those issues in any sort of public way. The wives told us the last time they weren't going to be responsible for EVER cleaning up that much blood again.  But Rick, our neighborhood tool guy, just took delivery of two new power-washers last week and we haven't had anything to try them out on yet. The guys are anxious to see how they work, so, we can probably accommodate you if you're just looking for an early exit strategy......from breathing.

Welcome to Edgewater. A safe and happy place for growing families.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

An Inexpensive Anti-Piracy Policy That Will Work!

Okay, how 'bout this for dealing with the problem of piracy against US ships. It's cheap, easy to set up and doesn't require a lot of resources.

1. Place two ships in the Somali corridor, one at each end.

2. Put a bunch of heavily armed seals on board both ships.

3. US flagged merchant ships swing by one of the ships as they enter the Somali corridor and pick up one heavily armed Navy Seal.

4. The Seal travels aboard the cargo ship for a small fee paid to the US Navy.

5. Somali pirates approach the ship, the Seal unlimbers a 50 caliber sniper rifle and picks off pirates as they approach and finishes by putting a few rounds through the bottom of the boat. If the pirates are more heavily armed, the Seal unlimbers an anti-ship rocket and blows up all of the attacking vessels.

6. The US Flagged ship continues on its merry way and drops the Seal off at the other Navy vessel at the other end of the Somali corridor. Ships going the other way pick Seals up and take them back up the corridor back to the first ship. No weapons go into foreign ports aboard American ships, so no problem with local authorities. Seals take their weapons with them.

7. Somali pirates go out, nobody comes back. After losing a hundred or so pirate ships, the Somalis begin to put two and two together and decide another line of work might be more lucrative.

How expensive would that be? One Seal would be all you'd need to take out one of those little boats. If they were attacking they wouldn't have hostages yet, so instead of needing 3 Seals to shoot 3 at once, you'd only need one to shoot 'em one at a time.

Sounds cold, but these aren't nice people and they do kill hostages. If you wanted to discourage them, you could shoot out the bottom of their little boats and let 'em swim home, but that might give them experience they could share to develop new tactics, which would endanger our Seals.

It's a tough call, but I think it would work. One Seal would be all I would need if I were a ship's captain and I'd certainly feed him well!

I'm just sayin'

Tom

-

Bravo, Mr. President, Now How About Some Follow Through?

Usually I'm pretty critical of this president. Today I would like to applaud him. His action in authorizing the US Navy to use lethal force to rescue Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, resulted in the rescue of a very brave man at the risk of the president being criticized by his supporters for committing an act of inexcusable violence against the poor Somalis who were simply trying to make a living.

Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to articulate the "Big Stick" policy. Since Teddy's time the idea of speaking softly while making sure you have a Louisville Slugger (a well known weapon of "ash" destruction") in your fist, worked quite effectively for a long time to protect Americans on the high seas - that is, until the modern tendency to political correctness overwhelmed our foreign policy good sense.

Already liberal American newspapers are setting up to criticize the Naval officer who, in a split second, made a life and death decision (for the pirates). Articles claiming that the pirates were out of ammunition cite relatives in Somalian pirate villages. A couple of pieces have been documenting the poverty in Somalia that has "driven" the pirates to piracy. The pirates even have a press secretary now and we can expect for him to declare the American actions an over-reaction. You can bet they'll claim the pirates were trying to surrender before it's all over and that the Navy didn't have to shoot them.

Am I suggesting that such claims will be lies?

In the words of Captain Jack Sparrow, "Uh, pirate!"

It's time for the United States to remember "...the shores of Tripoli". It's time to put an end to piracy. We have the technology. We have the firepower. We have the moral high ground.

Want to show some real world leadership, Mr. President. If the U.S. threatened to go after the pirate strongholds as they did with the Barbary pirates, I think you'd see the dozen ships and 200 crewmen being held by Somalis released. Paying them off has only made it worse. Their 'spokesman' stood before microphones and asked "Why don't they just pay the ransom?" as though he were talking about a customer that hadn't paid his electric bill.

The result of chicken-livered corporations and countries paying off these thugs is that they've created a burgeoning new industry in Somalia. It's become a game with the pirates. We catch you, you pay us.

Mr. President, please do something about this. I have little hope that you will, but ever once in a while you guys do surprise us.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Much Ado about Posse'

The new 'powers-that-be' in America are talking about a fundamental change in role of the U.S. military in homeland security. You'll hear a lot in the coming debate from the conservative side about something called "Posse Comitatus", an 1878 act of Congress which supposedly prevents the US military from being involved in homeland law enforcement. You'll also hear from the liberal side that the Posse Comitatus act is 130 years old and doesn't actually have anything to do with the military being involved in law enforcement. This is, in fact, the exact opposite of the arguments they all took in this debate just 5 short years ago.

As usual, the truth is somewhere floating around in the political-philosophical plankton. In 2003 the ACLU set up a hue and cry at the establishment of US Northern Command (NorthCOM) by the Army as a response to the threat of terrorism in the U.S.. There was a lot of discussion about the Posse Comitatus act at the time, with folks on the left citing Posse Comitatus as their authority for opposing this terrible grab for power by the Bush administration. The furor eventually died away, especially after the 2006 elections made it evident that the tide of power was shifting left.

Turns out they were only concerned about military intervention on American soil if President Bush was president at the time. Seems they have no such qualms about President Obama. Recently Barak Obama suggested that we establish a couple of quick response Army battalions for use by homeland security in the US in the event of a large scale terrorist attack. This proposal garnered no howls of protest from the guardians of our liberties on the left. I think I heard crickets!

Seems the argument is not about having the club. It's about whose hands the club is in. Jack boots do not enslave people. People enslave people.

So let me wade into this quagmire and see if we can fish out some facts.

In the first place, the military does on occasion dabble in law enforcement here in the good old USA.

Don't you people watch NCIS? Anybody remember the National Guard's participation in the Civil Rights unrest during the 60's.

Second, Posse Comitatus doesn't provide us any protection against the military meddling in stuff that happens on American soil. The original act simply forbids local law enforcement from calling up US troops (the US Cavalry at the time) to act as a posse (hense the name Posse Comitatus). The law says Sheriff Smith can't order the local Green Beret to join in a manhunt for the bootlegger that slipped out the back door of the county jail without the president's permission. That's all!

Over the years, military commanders stretched their interpretation of the law to keep thier troops out of local politics and legal entanglements. It was convenient for them to do so. It also got them out of the nastiness that was going on in the South over reconstruction.

Over the past 130 years, Americans have come to view the Posse Comitatus Act, however, as a protection against the kind of jack-booted thuggery against our own citizens that we witnessed in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the 20th century. Unfortunately, the 1878 Act provides only a false sense of security. Posse Comitatus offers us no such protection from the military. Military experts have been busily "clarifying" Posse Comitatus for the past decade and with the rising threat of terrorism, the US government and the military, through the offices of FEMA and Homeland security, have put in place the equipment and facilities that could easily be misused by a despotic administration. This includes:

• Prepositioned internment camps designed to house disaster victims or disruptive elements of the populace in a national emergency (can you say "martial law").
• Army plans for training and prepositioning regular troops to reinforce state or national guard troops and to assume populace control responsibilities in an "emergency".
  
• A recent discussion about giving the president power to over-ride state governors and order both national guard and regular troops into "crisis zones" without permission from the states. Some commentator maintain that he already has the power to do that. You may remember the Civil War was fought partly over the use of Federal troops against US citizens.
  
• A recent Obama proposals to create a 200,000 man "military style" security force that has all the equipment, training and power of the military that is moving forward as we speak.
  

Till now we've been happy with a small FBI. Apparently not so, anymore. The FBI is growing by leaps and bounds in both capacity and authority. CIA is even running radio commercials to recruit operatives. I've never heard that before. So why are we increasing national security resources instead of leaving it in the hands of the locals.

One word: Terrorism

Thanks to fears of terrorism, we had more US troops at the Salt Lake City Olympics than were in Afghanistan at the time, all on the president's authority. The Posse Comitatus tradition and law is so riddled with holes that the President can decide to deploy the armed forces and the National Guard on his own authority whenever he decides something is a national security issue. President Bush started it. It looks like President Obama intends to take it and run with it.

Unfortunately, there is a very big danger when we put people, whether they be soldiers or policemen or ordinary citizens in positions of power and authority over their fellows. I worked for almost a decade in residential treatment centers for children. During that time I saw people who were the soul of kindness and charity turn into something I did not recognize. Institutions where human beings are incarcerated against their wills and made to follow a regimen almost invariably "set up" the staff who must enforce the incarceration and maintain the regimens.

I saw staff members speak to kids and handle them in ways that would have done the Gestapo proud. I worked at a very good institution too. I did a lot of the training and constantly had to work with my staff to help them remember that they weren't prison guards. The environment set them up to believe that was exactly what they were supposed to do. We emphasized empowering the kids, giving them choices, helping them become self-governing. It was hard to keep that going because the need to corral difficult kids and control the violent ones kept pulling staff back into the "guard" roles.

Two famous research experiments, the Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment delved into the psychology of the prisoner/guard relationships. Both were terminated early when the "guards" became overzealous enforcers and became abusive. There is abundant evidence that when you give a person authority and power to punish and a mission to control the behavior of another person, you undermine their principles. They may believe in the Golden Rule everywhere else, but within the context of their "guard" role, they enforce an "Iron Rule" that bears little resemblance to the principles they think they truly believe in.

The guards at Abu Graib were not the instigators of abusive treatment of the prisoners. They were never trained to resist the impulse to abuse. They were discouraged from seeing their charges as anything other than vicious animals. Consequently they treated them as such and got in trouble when they did.

Now, we're talking about training our young soldiers to look at Americans as potential enemies and to view their new role as guards and enforcers of law. My concern is not only for what that is going to do with to heads, but also what will be the effect of putting "military style" power into their hands while they are under this kind of pressure.

You don't want soldiers who are trained to unfettered warfare, to use those skills against the very people they have always before been charged to protect. It fundamentally changes who they are. It was disastrous when we used troops against kids at Kent State and against ordinary civilians during the civil right riots of the 60's. It will be disastrous again. I don't care who's the president.

When the guns are pointed at us on the inside instead of at our enemies on the outside, the gun-bearers change and we change too. It's a recipe for revolution. We went through that once in our history. So profound was our repugnance for what the British did against the colonists that we wrote into the constitution a provision that the government couldn't quarter soldiers in our homes.

In principle, I believe that using the military as a police force or even giving the police force the power of the military is just setting us up for trouble. It's giving law enforcement too much firepower. We don't think they can handle it and Americans won't stand for it. That's why the gun stores are selling ammunition as fast as they can stock it. That's why I can walk 3 blocks from my house out here in the country and buy an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle, if I don't mind waiting till they get another shipment in.

I'm just afraid that this time the revolution that's brewing won't be a 1776 style revolution lead by wise and courageous men becaue of a love of liberty and high moral principles. It's going to be an angry mob-led French style revolution and a bloody awful thing to see.

Using military power against the American people is a mistake. If we turn the guns on ourselves, we are asking to have our liberties stripped away from us.

As that imminent philosopher Han Solo said once, ""Hey, point that thing someplace else."

Good advice!

Tom King

http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/brinkerhoffpossecomitatus.htm

http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm

The Gitmo Argument

War or Not War?

Barak Obama's order to close Gitmo makes one thing very clear. In Obama world, there is no war on terror. It's a police action!

Anyone captured on the battlefield fighting against American soldiers or conducting guerilla terror attacks against our country is to be arrested, charged and given due process as though he or she were an American citizen, conferring the rights of citizenship, if not the actual status of citizen upon those who would destroy us.

Obama argues that this is only right and just. By this reasoning, when we brought German or Japanese soldiers to U.S. soil as captives during WWII, should we have put them in county lockups or in state or federal prisons and conducted individual trials to determine their guilt or innocense.

If so, then, technically, if we could prove one of those soldiers actually killed an American soldier, we could have set 'em up with an appointment in Old Sparky. Given the mood in WWII, captive enemy soldiers in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf War, etc. would have kept Old Sparky humming night and day.

Is that where we really want to go? Is it really more fair to expose enemy combatants to the court system in our country where in some cases, they would face the death penalty. Remember a recent terrorist we tried here in America - Timothy McVeigh. We executed the boy!

Are we going to do that to all non-uniformed soldiers we encounter on the field of battle?

I want to repeat the logical outcome of all this. If we treat ALL Gitmo detainees as criminals, that means any of them who killed or injured American soldiers, civilians, etc. should be tried under the laws that govern this country or the country where the alleged "crime" took place.

This means that if peace is declared, these guys can't be released without being tried first for their crimes. THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, BY IT'S ACTIONS HAS DECLARED GITMO DETAINEES CRIMINALS AND NOT ENEMY COMBATANTS.

Now we have another problem. The American military is being, in essence, called upon to do police work. Does that mean we withdraw our regular troops and send NCIS over to arrest suicide bombers?

Oh, yeah, that'll work!

And if the Obama administration decides it's okay for the military to do police work, does that not violate a principle, long held by the U.S. government that the U.S. military is not a police force. Does that signal the real view of the American military by the new administration - that it is not essentially a war-fighting body, but is actually a policing force.

BHO did signal his intent to do just that during his campaign. In at least one speech he called for the deploying of a military "security force" within the border of the United States with all the equipment and firepower of the military. Well if he's going to do that, why not save a few bucks in these hard times and just deploy several battalions on standby within the states that could go anywhere, anytime to do a little heavily armed "police work".

As a matter of fact, that is precisely the plan that is already in the works right now.

My question then becomes, "WHO IS THE PRESIDENT INTENT ON POLICING?"

There are two possibilities, both disturbing.

1. A confused and panicked populace in the aftermath of a major attack on home soil or a disaster.

2. Troublesome elements of the American populace (can you say "Gestapo")

The U.S. military has no business doing policework other than the usual MP stuff, and especially it has no business policing on home soil. Either the Obama adminstration feels like it needs to have a powerful force at its disposal here at home to enforce its will OR they're pretty sure that when they pull the troops from the Middle East, the terrorists will be coming here in a big way!

Under George Bush, we have not had a single attack on home soil since 9/11. Something he has done has worked. This president seems intent on lowering our guard, withdrawing our military from contact with the enemy and turning the guns on our own people.

Ask the Israelis what happens during a cease fire or immediately after a peace treaty with these folks.

THEY REARM AND RELOAD! Then they come at you again.

If running the terrorists at GITMO through the courts in the US would get a bunch of executions and life sentences and get these people off the streets, then okay. My guess is it's going to make a bunch of lawyers wealthy and turn a bunch of "terrorists on probation" loose on American streets. I don't see Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan taking them back when we try to expell them and if it goes like it usually does, they'll be back again in a year blowing up embassies and US naval vessels.

One liberal caller to the Glenn Beck talk show yesterday objected to Gitmo because we "weren't charging them with anything". When asked what we should have done with them, he said that if they were our enemies, American soldiers should have killed them right there on the battlefield.

What a frightening peek into what these guys mean by "change". Perhaps we'll need more bulldozers in the Obama military so our soldiers can more efficiently rake the piles of bodies into the mass graves. One thing you can say for socialist governments. They certainly are efficient at thinning out the ranks of their enemies.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

What's Wrong with A Battalion?

The Pentagon announced it's going to post a 20,000 man rapid reaction force in the U.S. to respond to large scale terrorist attacks - particularly nuclear.

This makes me nervous on several levels.

1. Somebody really believes we're headed for a large scale biological and/or nuclear terrorist attack - enough so that they're ready to deploy military units whose primary job will be controlling panicky Americans rather than fighting enemy combatants.

2. The founding fathers were particularly nervous about standing armies being used against US Citizens. Last time that happened was during the Civil War. We have very wisely decided that in cases where a military presence within the United States is necessary to maintain order or cope with disasters, that we will use the National Guard and that only Governors of the individual states can call out those troops. Whenever the feds try to call up troops to cope with riots and such, the governors get rightly unhappy about it. They are closer to the problem and probably better suited to make the decision to deploy the troops. The standing military is supposed to be spending its time getting prepared to handle an external invader not our own citizens.

3. Colonel David Hackworth used to get really unhappy with military officers he called "perfume princes", political officers for whom military service was about advancing their careers more than it was about defending the country. For them military action is about posturing to intimidate, not about actually using the military. They don't believe in taking risks. They find it impossible to act quickly. They never move unless they have overwhelming force. That's why the mark of the perfume princes is all over this idea of having a battalion for use against a terrorist attack. Instead of the military developing plans to deploy more appropriate troops like SEAL teams and Delta Force special forces groups, trained in hostage rescue and rapid response, quick insertion missions that would be needed to respond to terrorism, the princes want to deploy large overwhelming groups to make sure they crush whatever opposition they have with little or no casualties. The problem is, moving these sorts of large groups is slow and often ineffective where you need surgical strikes. We don't need a battalion of storm troopers, we need a highly specialized group like television's "The Unit" - one that works fast, hits hard and is willing to take casualties in exchange for saving lives and winning battles. Big military responses often sacrifice lives in exchange for playing it safe. Remember how slow they were to get moving in the aftermath of Katrina. Large military groups don't move quickly. The Perfume Princes won't let them. They had the equipment, they had the capacity, but the generals wanted to make sure nothing happened too quickly lest soldiers' safety be threatened.

Since Vietnam, American generals have been reluctant to put soldiers in harm's way. This happened after the US/Mexican war too. As a result, General Grant had a real problem with the generals he had to cope with during the Civil War. It wasn't until he promoted cavalry guys to command who had a special forces kind of attitude, like Phil Sheridan and Bill Sherman was he able to get the job done. They moved fast, hit hard and took risks when it advanced the mission. Other generals had to be poked, prodded and sometimes threatened to get them to move quickly and do things they considered risky. Thank God Lincoln found a commander in U.S. Grant who wasn't afraid to win. Had Grant not been focused on winning the war instead of furthering his future political career, the Army of the Potomac would still be wandering around Northern Virginia trying to find Robert E. Lee.

Liberals understand the perfumed military. Real warriors make them uncomfortable. I worry that under a liberal administration and the sunshine generals who will rise to the top in such a military, a battalion of soldiers that is tasked with crowd control will be used for the purpose of advancing political advantage. That is a valid purpose for the military in the leftist mindset and the temptation may be far too great.

Left leaning presidents have consistently turned the US military into some kind of community service/jobs program, using money that ought to go for weapons and training, to do social engineering in the military. Because of that, the Vietnam war was never about winning, but about gaining political advantage and testing new weapons systems for the military industrial complex which poured money into political campaigns. After 4 years of Carter's gutting of the military, they so screwed up the Iranian hostage rescue mission by trying to make sure the political needs of the 4 services were met. They wound up with a team so poorly trained and coordinated that they wound up crashing into each other and getting themselveskilled out in the Iranian desert.

A particularly telling exchange happened during Clinton's first inauguration. The Air Force sent a formation overhead to salute the president. One of his staffers complained. "What are those AIR FORCE PLANES doing here?" he complained with all the self-righteous disgust of a member of the peace movement.

Ron Silver was standing close by answered him. "But don't you see? Those are our planes now!" The guy was happy after that.

After 8 years under George Bush, we have a military in place with experience and the ability to do what they are supposed to do - seek out and destroy America's enemies. They've successfully replaced an evil dictator, wiped out tens of thousands of terrorists and freed the people of Iraq and Afghanistan from tyranny while keeping terrorists so busy that we've had not one terrorist attack on the homeland since 9/11 even though Osama has been threatening us for 8 years.

I fear that for the next four years, the perfume princes will be back in power in the Pentagon and they'll change all that. Instead of improving weapons systems, training and military planning and execution, they'll be back to changing the color of the berets and making sure they count how many women and gay people are in each unit so things will be "fair". Maybe they'll create some exciting new shoulder patches or some of those tight britches with the stripes down the leg.

I know - jack boots!!!!

Ulysseys S. Grant must be rolling over in his grave!

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