Archive for March, 2008
I’ll be traveling today and won’t be back online until later tomorrow, so here’s a Happy Easter from Murdoc and his family to you and yours.
Barack Obama’s military adviser said this about our presence in the Middle East:
We’ll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right.
A century. Hopefully. If it works.
Writes Captain Ed:
This should raise some eyebrows on the Obama campaign’s willful deception on this point.
But it won’t.
India, Russia meet for aircraft carrier talks
Still haggling over the cost of refitting it. Recall that we might be offering the Indians the Kitty Hawk if they change their mind and go with F-18s over MiG-29s.
Inside the Bridge: Behind the scenes of a strike into Pakistan
BMW Diesel Beats Prius in Economy Run
Looks like a long highway drive followed by 100 urban miles had the diesel beat the hybrid by 10%.
Californistan wants to require permits to buy ammo
The push to regulate and ban ammo is picking up steam.
More efficient solar cells through quantum dot nanotechnology
I’ve said many times that I’m skeptical that large-scale solar power plants (at least plants on earth) will provide a significant portion of our energy, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
Lockheed Martin F-35 Succeeds In First Aerial Refueling Test
Refueled from a KC-135.
Scientists puzzled that Ocean is getting colder
The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat
Gates, Air Force Battle Over Robot Planes
The Air Force is unhappy their role in the Long Global War on Terror isn’t bigger. Oh, and they want more F-22s.
Breaking OPEC’s Grip
The Islamists’ power lies in their control of oil. Our strength is in biomass and coal.
Calif. Woman Slain on the Phone With 911
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
The Growlers Are Coming Out to Play
First EA-18G squadron will begin training soon.
10 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies
Trying to limit this sort of list to only 10 must have been difficult.
Faith in the Foxhole: How a soldier embraced his faith amidst the chaos of war
This is the cover story in this month’s Faith Grand Rapids magazine. Though Ed Czyzyk was a Marine and not a soldier, it’s a great look at a local guy who served in World War 2:
More than six decades later, Ed’s memories of the September 1944 landing on Peleliu remain vivid, as does the Catholic faith that helped him through it. The World War II veteran still uses the well-worn Catholic Prayer Book that he believes protected him as much as the 100 pounds of gear and ammunition that he carried throughout the jungles of the South Pacific. The adage that “there are no atheists in a foxhole” holds true, Ed believes. Looking back on those fearful moments before he and others in the First Marine Division jumped from their landing craft into a hail of mortar shells: “You can’t tell me that everybody didn’t pray. That saw me through the war,” he says matter-of-factly.
He served in a communications unit and had previouisly landed on New Britain. He would also invade Okinawa on Easter Sunday, 1945. One of his brothers, also a Marine, happened to be on the landing craft next to his and they met briefly on beach. For Ed, Okinawa was far less intense than Peleliu had been.
One of his saddest memories of Okinawa was watching Japanese kamikazes dive into U.S. ships in the harbor. “Every day at sundown you’d see these Japanese kamikazes… they came in droves,” recalled Ed. “It hurt to see those Japanese dive into those ships. You know that it had to kill a bunch of sailors and Marines aboard ship. It just hurt.”
Also of interest in this issue of the magazine is A child of war, a short article about a local Grand Rapids woman who was just five years old when the US entered the war.
She attended nearby St. James School and during the many daily walks between her home and school, she, along with others, would look for materials to recycle for the war effort.
“We didn’t waste any of that time (going back and forth from school), as it was part of our mission to look for discarded packages of cigarettes along the way. If we were lucky, the crumpled pack would still hold the inner lining of tin foil. This was not easy, as it meant weaving your way from curb to sidewalk and back again, adding more miles to your journey, but the prize made it worthwhile,” she said Carefully lifting the tin foil out, Ellen would return home and add it to the ever growing ball she was collecting. When that ball was big enough, she would proudly turn it in for scrap metal needed for the war effort.
Mar. 17, 2008 – Iraqi army soldiers from 2nd Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Military Iraqi and U.S. Army soldiers react to small arms fire during a joint battlefield circulation patrol March 17, 2008, in Mosul, Iraq. The U.S. Soldiers are assigned to the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division Military Transition Team and a personal security detachment from 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Jason Robertson, U.S. Air Force.
A round-up of some good links in the DC Gun Ban case, including links to other big round-ups, over at GunPundit.
General George Patton raises the level of the Rhine a tad.
March 24, 1944
Jeff Jacoby’s Patton and the 2008 vote:
“Americans love a winner,” Patton growled, “and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win – all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. . . . The very thought of losing is hateful to an American.”
Nowadays, the thought of losing a war isn’t as hateful to some Americans as the thought of losing an election.
Got this note in my inbox from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA):
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, but you might not have seen much about it on TV recently. Just 3% of the news in February was dedicated to the war and fewer than one in three Americans know how many American troops have died in Iraq. Believe it or not, a study just released by the Pew Research Center shows that press coverage of the war is at the lowest point since the war began.
Please take a minute now to sign an open letter to the media and demand that major networks increase their coverage of the Iraq war.
The economy and the presidential campaigns are both important stories, but news of the ongoing wars shouldn’t fall by the wayside. The media must demonstrate that they can walk and chew gum at the same time. Over 80% of Americans are aware that Oprah Winfrey endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president, while just 28% know how many troops have died in Iraq- even though we are rapidly approaching 4,000 casualties.
Emphasis in the original.
A quick look at the open letter to the media that they’ve written reveals this:
Dear ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox News and CNN,
In February, your network devoted an average of 3% of the coverage to the war in Iraq. Because of that appallingly low number, fewer people than ever before know how many American soldiers have died in Iraq, while a majority of the publics knows Oprah Winfrey endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president.
It’s clear from this that the message is “the media needs to show more stories about Iraq so that folks will know how many troops have died.”
Now, you all will know that I agree there should be more coverage of Iraq. But my position is more along the lines of “the media need to show more stories about Iraq so that folks will know what’s going on over there.”
Note the difference between the reason I want more media coverage and the reason that the IAVA wants more media coverage: I want people to know what’s going on, they want people to know how many troops have died.
I’ll agree that casualty numbers are very important, but there’s a lot more to the story than how many troops have been killed. Narrowing the focus to casualties frames the debate in an unfair and unmeaningful way. It uses casualties as the yardstick by which the campaign is measured. Which is exactly what critics want.
If it was only the IAVA, it would be one thing. But even the Pew report they mention that I linked to last week is written from a standpoint of “awareness is down because fewer people know how many troops have died.”
UPDATE: Then there’s this sort of thing: On the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War, It’s Mourning in America:
Such is the state of our long national slouch into anesthetic delusion that the fifth anniversary of a war in Iraq that is nearing 4,000 American dead is buried on America’s popular browser due to the “pressing” story on the more tender sensibilities of an “American Idol” judge.
It’s supposed to be the smart political thing to say that the surge is working, but only if you are the kind that thinks everything is hunky dory between the Israelis and Palestinians. The surge is nothing more than a political/police action/bribery of faction leaders Band-Aid to lower the death count until the Bush Administration ends and a new president has to deal with the disaster.
The new season begins [next] [on a] Friday. Good.
11 April 1945
Kamikaze Compared To Suicide Bombers
Over at Strategy Page they discuss the campaign of suicide bombers in Iraq:
This effort has become the second largest suicide attack campaign in the last century. The largest was the Japanese use of suicide pilots, in air attacks on the U.S. Navy (and some allied ships) during the later stages of World War II. Some 2,800 suicide pilots died. They managed to sink 34 ships and damage 368 others. About 4,900 sailors died. Only about 14 percent of the Kamikaze pilots survived U.S. fighters and anti-aircraft fire, to actually hit a ship. The Kamikaze always attacked military targets, while the suicide bombers tended to avoid anyone who could shoot back.
That last sentence is what has always set the Japanese kamikazes apart from today’s suicide bombers, and I guess I’ve never really equated the two in any way other than the obvious fact that both include self-destruction as part of their mission.
This is different than what we normally mean when we say things like “suicide mission” we don’t really mean ‘suicide’ but ‘so difficult you might not survive.’ Even guys who charge a machine gun bunker with a .45 and a grenade have some hope, however dim, that they will survive. Even then, its not the sort of action taken when reasonable alternatives exist.
With both the Kamikazes and Islamic suicide bombers, the idea was to demoralize the opponent, and force an end to the conflict, or at least reduce the extent of the attackers defeat. The tactic failed in both cases, although both Kamikazes and Islamic “martyrs” are admired for their courage.
Maybe it’s just Murdoc, but I have no admiration for your typical Islamic suicide bomber, not even anything resembling the grudging sort that I have for the Japanese kamikaze pilots. I keep hearing things like “no matter what side you’re on, you can’t deny that the 9/11 terrorists were brave men.”
Excuse me, but I can deny it. Sure, the 9/11 hijackers had to overcome their own personal fears to carry out their mission, but that hardly qualifies one deserving respect for bravery. They hijacked basically defenseless civilians for the purpose of using their plane as a weapon against other basically defenseless civilians. I don’t really see a lot of difference between the 9/11 bastards and the bastards that blow up dozens or hundreds of worshipers at mosques or random patrons at an open-air deli.
The Japanese pilots who tried to fly their planes into Allied warships were uniformed members of an official government military on a military mission against military targets for military purposes. Virtually none of today’s suicide bombers fit this profile.
What’s next? Do we have to respect the killers at Columbine and Virginia Tech and Westroads Mall for their courage?
