Category Archives: Military

Hail Petraeus

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Petraeus_mugA colleague brought my attention to this WashPost piece on our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David H.
Petraeus. What was particularly interesting about it was the way he recommended it to me: This colleague soured on the Iraq War long ago, but he said this guy actually offers him some hope for the first time in a while.

My eyebrows went up at that, so I read the piece as soon as I could. Even those of us who fully believe in the importance of our Iraq mission could use a little hope now and then.

Draft column

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Why doesn’t Uncle Sam want me?
Or you, for that matter

   

It was the first American army and an army of everyone, men of every size and shape and makeup, different colors, different nationalities, different ways of talking, and all degrees of physical condition. Many were missing teeth or fingers, pitted by smallpox or scarred by past wars or the all-too-common hazards of life and toil in the eighteenth century.

— 1776, by David McCullough

My first ambition in life was to be a United States Marine. I was 3 or 4 years old and we lived in Columbia, where my Dad — a career naval officer — was doing a brief tour at the local recruiting depot. I guess the posters made an impression.
    The aspiration never went away, even as I moved on to more achievable goals. I learned that neither the Corps nor the Army nor any other service would take me. They had this thing about people with asthma.
    I accepted it, but couldn’t help thinking, “There’s got to be some way they could use me.”
But no. As long as there was a Selective Service, there was a huge supply of young guys with no black marks on their medical histories. And in the initial decades after the draft ended, the nation’s military needs were met by volunteers.
    But not any more.
    Today, the Army and the Marine Corps need recruits. The Army has increased the maximum age to 42. Not high enough for me, but it’s a start.
    The Washington Post reported just last week that the services plan to ask new Defense Secretary Robert Gates for 30,000 more soldiers and three more Marine battalions. Unlike his predecessor, he might actually say “yes.”
    But where’s he going to get them? Here’s one place:
    The Post reported that in addition to seeking those regulars, “the Army will press hard for ‘full access’ to the 346,000-strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves by asking Gates to take the politically sensitive step of easing the Pentagon restrictions on the frequency and duration of involuntary call-ups for reservists, according to two senior Army officials.”
    The post-Vietnam military has been highly resistant to the idea of a draft. Draftees are harder to motivate, train and rely on than volunteers. A positive attitude counts for a lot under combat conditions. But what do you call “involuntary call-ups” if not a draft? Some of those people are older than I am, and some are in worse physical condition.
    Sure, they’re much less likely to complain about being called up, since they volunteered originally. I realize that they are already trained, and generally more experienced than the regulars. I understand that veterans tend to be more valuable in combat than green troops. Experience counts in everything.
    But it’s wrong to keep asking the same brave people to give and give and give until they’ve got nothing left. It’s even more wrong that the rest of us haven’t been asked to do anything.
    Sen. Joe Biden has this speech that I’ve heard three or four times now about how George W. Bush’s greatest failing as president is the opportunity he threw away in 2001. On Sept. 12, he could have asked us to change our lives so that we could be independent of the oil-producing thugs that finance terrorism. We would have done it gladly.
    But we weren’t asked to do that. We were given a free pass while our very best bled and died in our behalf. We weren’t even asked to buy war bonds. To our everlasting shame, we opted for the opposite — we got tax cuts, even as our troops went without the equipment and the reinforcements needed to do the job.
    Personally, I think we should have a draft, and not for Rep. Charles Rangel’s reasons. He seems to think that if more people were subject to a draft, we’d have no wars. I think we ought to have a draft for the simple reason that citizenship ought to cost something. We scorn illegal aliens who risk their lives crossing the desert to come here and do our menial labor, but the rest of us are citizens why — because we were born here? How is that fair?
    We ought to have a draft, but not like the one we had when I was a kid. We need a universal draft, one that will find a use for every man (I wouldn’t draft women, but we can argue about that later).
    Set aside for a moment (but not for long) our immediate, urgent need for a lot more boots on the ground. Even in peacetime, veterans make better citizens, and better leaders. The last generation of leaders had the experience of World War II in common, and we were better off for it. They understood that they were Americans first, and that it was possible to work with people who didn’t think the way they did. They knew citizenship was a precious thing, and they appreciated it as a result. How many people in the top echelons of politics — or the media, for that matter — have that kind of understanding to that degree? Far too few.
    If we’re not going to have a draft, why not let more people who actually want to serve do so, at least in some capacity? Sure, I’m 53 and I take five different drugs to keep me breathing, but fitness is relative — my pulse, blood pressure and cholesterol are all great, and I can do 30 push-ups. Try me.
    A postscript: It reads like I’m setting myself up as far braver than Bill Clinton and his ilk. I don’t mean to. If I had been healthier when I was younger, I might have been the biggest coward in Ontario. If the Army were taking 53-year-olds today, I might shut up. I have no idea. All I can do is write what I actually think, as I actually am.
    And what I think is that more of us have to get off the sidelines and do something to help fight this war, which is going to go on for a long, long time, no matter what happens in Iraq.

Iraq Study Group column

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Consensus on an Iraq plan
that works will come a lot harder

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THAT OLD GUARD sure can get things done — so long as you don’t expect too much.
    On the very day that the Iraq Study Group released its much-anticipated report, it produced results. Politicians from across the spectrum aligned themselves with a bipartisan unanimity that would do credit to the worthies on the study panel itself.
    “I appreciate the hard work and thought that the distinguished members of the Iraq Study Group put into their final report,” said Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential hopeful.
    “The Baker-Hamilton report is a first step toward a bipartisan way forward in Iraq,” wrote Sen. Joe Biden, a Democrat who would also like to occupy the White House.
    “I commend the Iraq Study Group for offering a serious contribution to the discussion of how we should move forward in Iraq,” concurred independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who used to want to be president.
    The man who actually is the president couldn’t have agreed more. After noting that the report was “prepared by a distinguished panel of our fellow citizens,” George W. Bush promised it “will be taken very seriously by this administration.”
    No one could deny that the panel was distinguished. And bipartisan. And serious.
    But before we line up for the victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, note that few elected representatives were promising more with regard to the report than what Rep. Jim Clyburn promised: “We will use it for what it is intended to be — recommendations… .”
    Many expected the group’s report would provide cover for both the president and the newly Democratic Congress to… well, to do something, and the most popular “something” was to get us the heck out of there.
    But the release of the group’s report helped clarify again what we learned in the days after the election that many of our antsier citizens had hoped would settle this business: There is no way to conclude our involvement in Iraq that is both quick and satisfactory.
    The 10 elders on that panel brought some sorely needed qualities to the debate — collegiality, maturity, pragmatism and a sincere desire for what is best for our country. The nation will be well-served if everyone involved adopts those same virtues as the debate continues.
    And the job will be a lot tougher than the panel made it look. They labored in obscurity, left in relative peace for most of the panel’s existence — without the frantic, insistent pull of unavoidable constituent groups. Our elected officials won’t enjoy such luxury. But it is, after all, their job to do. It can’t be delegated.
    And approaches that will work will be harder to agree upon than the ones the panel adopted.
Take the widely reported proposal to draw down U.S. combat troops by early 2008 to the point that none are left except those “embedded with Iraqi forces.”
    According to The New York Times, the panel achieved the miracle of agreement on that point via a simple expedient: “The group’s final military recommendations were not discussed with the retired officers who serve on the group’s Military Senior Adviser Panel before publication, several of those officers said.”
    Advisers that the Times spoke to said the prediction is not based in reality. One noted that the panel’s assumption says more about “the absence of political will in Washington than the harsh realities in Iraq.”
    Not that the panel didn’t leave wiggle-room. Few have noted that the 142-page report actually says that “all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq” by the stated deadline. That’s a loophole big enough to drive several divisions through, if you can find the divisions.
    As for working with Iran and Syria, Sen. McCain exhibited his mastery of understatement when he said, “Our interests in Iraq diverge significantly from those of Damascus and Tehran.” Sen. Lieberman and others have rightly echoed that assessment.
    The panel leaders’ defense of the idea has been lame. James Baker said if Iran is uncooperative, “we will hold them up to public scrutiny as (a) rejectionist state.” Ooh. I can just see the mullahs trembling over that one.
    Lee Hamilton said, “We do not think it’s in the Iranian interest for the American policy to fail completely, and to lead to chaos in that country.” Really? It’s hard to imagine an outcome more likely to generate welcome opportunities for Tehran. A weakened, discredited United States and a power vacuum in the Shi’a-majority nation next door? They would see it as final proof that Allah is on their side.
    The fundamental truths about our involvement in Iraq have not changed. The security situation has worsened greatly, and with it the political environment back in the United States — the “absence of political will” described above by retired Army Chief of Staff Jack Keane.
    Well, we’re going to have to muster some to come up with something more realistic than the Baker-Hamilton approach, because here’s what hasn’t changed: As Sen. Lieberman put it, “There is no alternative to success in Iraq.” Sen. Graham said, “we have no alternative but to win.”
    And how are we going to accomplish that? I’m inclined to think Sen. McCain has it right when he says we need a lot more troops over there. You say it’s impossible to make that happen with our current defeatist attitude? You may be right.
    But note that on Wednesday, it was the conventional wisdom that the president and Congress had little choice but to embrace whatever the study group came up with. By Friday, many of its core proposals had been declared toast by the president, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and most of the folks quoted above.
    As unlikely as it sometimes seems, attitudes change. In this case, they’re going to have to.

Robert Gates column

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Gates1

The return of the professional

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
“AMID TAWDRINESS, he stands for honor, duty and decency,” another author once wrote of John le Carre’s fictional hero George Smiley.
    George was the master Cold Warrior brought back in from retirement to save British intelligence from the liars, self-dealers, ideologues, social climbers and traitors who had turned it inside out. He did so quietly, humbly and competently. Then he went his way, with little gratitude from the system.
    With Robert Gates’ nomination to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, old George seemsGates3
to have come back in from the cold yet again, although in different form.
    Mr. Gates is a Smileyesque professional. He was the only Director of Central Intelligence ever to have come up through the ranks. He had spent two decades in the Agency, from 1969 through 1989, with a several-year hiatus at the National Security Council. He received the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (twice) and the Distinguished Intelligence Medal (three times).
    I trust professionals, particularly those who have devoted themselves to national service. Not in every case, of course — there are idiots and scoundrels in every walk of life — but if all other things are equal, give me the pro from Dover over someone’s golf buddy every time.
    Perhaps that’s why I sometimes lower my standards from the le Carre level to enjoy a Tom Clancy novel. Jack Ryan moves in a world peopled by competent, heroically dedicated public servants. Most wear uniforms — soldiers, sailors, Marines, cops — but others are costumed in the conservative suits of the FBI, CIA or Secret Service. The ones you have to watch out for are the politicians; they always have agendas that have little to do with protecting the country or the rule of law.
Rumsfeld
    This has a ring of truth to me. I grew up in the Navy and have spent my adult life dealing with a broad variety of people from cops to lawyers to FBI agents to politicians to private business types. I know a lot of fine politicos and private-sector executives, but as a percentage, I’ll more quickly trust the honor of public-service professionals.
    Of course, they often don’t trust me — at least not at first — and I don’t blame them. The press spends too much time with publicans and sinners, and absorbs too many of their values. As a group, for instance, we tend to love it when a special prosecutor is appointed. That means fireworks, and fireworks are news.
    Call me a heretic, but I’ve always wondered why we don’t just let the professional investigators do their jobs. Do we really think the FBI — not the political appointees at the top, but the career agents who do the work — can’t investigate corruption? Sure, a politician can try to get such a civil servant fired or transferred to garbage detail, but such overt efforts to subvert the system tend to get noticed, a la Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”
    Mr. Gates has had his own run-ins with politicians and special counsel. He withdrew from consideration to become Ronald Reagan’s CIA director in 1987 because he had been senior enough for the Iran-Contra affair to have cast its shadow over him. He was under formal investigation in that connection when he was nominated again under George H.W. Bush. No one ever pinned any wrongdoing on him, and he was confirmed by the Senate.
    This time, the Democrats who are likely to line the gauntlet he must again run to confirmationGates2
were generally supportive of his nomination. Of course, look at the act he’d be following. Mr. Gates is described as a soft-spoken, yet tough-minded, “pragmatist and realist,” an antithesis to the civilian ideologues who have been running the war.
    In Thursday’s news reports, the Gates nomination was treated as another sign of “the ascendancy of the team that served the president’s father.” There’s truth — and reassurance, for pragmatists — in that. He has for the past several months served as one of the “Wise Men” reviewing and critiquing the conduct of the Iraq War, along with former Secretary of State James Baker. That makes him particularly, if not uniquely, well prepared to run the war more successfully.
    Of course, he’s not a Defense professional. But the Pentagon might be an exception to my general preference. In that particular case, the real professionals — the uniformed leaders, the warriors —spend their careers trying to stay out of the Pentagon. I worry about the ones who do otherwise. Beyond that, it’s probably best that Defense not be headed by a general or admiral, to preserve the principle of civilian oversight. But it would be nice if they had a boss who would listen to them.
    Given those conditions, who would be better than a pragmatic national security professional who possesses mastery of the entire spectrum of intelligence gathering and analysis, and has been studying in depth what has gone wrong in Iraq? He just needs to help the president pick a direction. The generals and admirals will know how to get the job done from that point.
    They’re professionals, too.

Rummy

Yes! Now let’s go win this war…

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Wonderful news on the day after the election — Donald Rumsfeld is gone! A couple or three years late, but it’s done.

Does this mean that the president is ready to stop his stubborn stance of "I’m never wrong" and "personal loyalty trumps the national interest?"

It would seem so. And that would be the best news of all. This sends a signal to the country, to the troops, to our erstwhile allies, and most importantly to the enemy, that the United States is ready to get serious, finally.

At least, I hope and pray so.

Adjutant General Shocker!!!

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Stan Spears is speaking to my Rotary club as I type — an actual campaign appearance!

After the way he ducked talking to our editorial board or appearing on ETV, this feels weird.

Of course, he’s not talking about the election. He’s talking about what a wonderful job "my people," as he puts it, are doing.

Oops, he just indirectly mentioned his opponent, by denying something he’s been criticized for.
Gotta go … bye.

John Kerry’s second adolescence

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Kerrygaffe

Not being overly fond of all the partisan tit-for-tat that seems to stir so many earnest hearts in the Blogosphere, I’ll first admit that I have not sought out much information about John Kerry’s gaffe.

Of course, you absorb a certain amount without trying. I know what he said, I know what he said he meant to say (which was every bit as revealing of character as what he said), I heard that he said he wouldn’t apologize, and then he did apologize — sort of.

Nothing new in any of that. It just reminded me, in case I had forgotten, why we couldn’t bring ourselves to endorse the senator for president in 2004, even though we disagreed with about 90 percent of what President Bush was doing. (Of all the Democratic candidates who had come in to speak with our editorial board, Sen. Kerry was the least engaging and the most off-putting. Take your pick — Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, Carol Moseley Braun, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, and any others I can’t think of at the moment — all were more favorably impressive than he.)

But in what little I have absorbed on the subject, one thing has been missing. If someone else has said it, please point me to it.

The thing that struck me immediately at the very first report — before I knew how the GOP was hyping it or anything else; I’m talking about the moment I first heard the words he spoke to those students — I thought he was having a Vietnam flashback. Not to his days in combat, but to the much longer period when he was denigrating his own service and that of others.

Young John Kerry’s peers — to the extent that he would have acknowledged having any — thought of soldiers drafted to go to Vietnam pretty much the way Mr. Kerry spoke of today’s soldiers last week.

Yes, he took a commission in the Navy and went over as an officer and a gentleman and did his part, and God bless him for that. But based upon his actions afterward, I don’t think the preppie mindset toward the average grunt ever went away.

Anyway, that’s what flashed through my mind.

Kerryyoung

It’s a joke; he meant to say ‘Bush’

1 Reply

Poor politicians. When they say something horrible about our troops, they are reviled. When icons of the press say even worse things, it’s just a blip, if that.

Check out what Seymour Hersh said in a speech in Montreal. In case you missed it, he essentially said the "baby-killers" that so many Americans fled to Montreal to avoid becoming were nothing compared to the homicidal maniacs we send to Iraq: "(T)here has never been an [American] army as violent and murderous as our army has been in Iraq."

This was brought to my attention by the WSJ’s OpinionJournal. The link said, "Maybe It’s Just a Botched Joke."

Stan greets Johnny as he marches home

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Journalists being a cynical lot, a colleague passed this on to me with this comment: "hmmm … there must be an election coming up …
and Spears’ opponent must be complaining about how he snubs the troops …"
{BC-SC—Guard Return,0248}
{Sanford, Spears, and
sheriff’s deputies to welcome SC Guard unit} home
   LEXINGTON, S.C. (AP) —
Gov. Mark Sanford, Adjutant General Stan Spears and sheriff’s deputies from
Lexington and Saluda counties plan to gather Friday to celebrate the return of
120 members of a South Carolina National Guard unit from Iraq.
   The combat
support engineers of the 122nd Engineer Company based in Saluda are scheduled to
return after spending several days demobilizing at Fort Stewart, Ga., said Col.
Pete Brooks, spokesman for the South Carolina National Guard.
   Sanford is
greeting the unit because he met with Guard members during a visit to Iraq in
June, his spokesman Joel Sawyer said.
   The last time Sanford came out to
greet a unit was in May 2003, when he took part in the South Carolina Air
National Guard’s 169th Fighter Wing return to McEntire Joint National Guard
Base, Sawyer said.
   The Saluda-based soldiers worked to clear improvised
explosive devices — one of the most dangerous jobs in the Iraqi
deployments.
   Lexington County Sheriff James Metts said his deputies and
deputies from Saluda County will provide an escort at 10 a.m. Friday for the
buses of returning soldiers.
   "We all owe a debt of gratitude to the brave
men and women who are serving our nation and defending America’s interests in
the Middle East," Metts said in a statement.
   Metts said he hoped people
will line up along U.S. 1 through downtown Lexington and U.S. 378 to the Saluda
County line to show their support for the soldiers.

Glenn Lindman, adjutant general

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Lindman1

Wednesday, 10 a.m. — This is a very interesting situation. The voters of South Carolina have a tricky choice before them — a choice they shouldn’t even have to make. They must decide who will lead the state’s military arm, the National Guard.

Here are some of the factsergors involved:

  • The incumbent is 69-year-old Stanhope Sifford Spears, a former Democrat-turned-Republican (how weird is that — an American military leader having to decide a party affiliation in order to hold office?) who has held the position of adjutant general for 12 years. He is the only state Guard leader in the nation elected rather than appointed.
  • The challenger is Glenn Lindman, a 46-year-old Iraq War veteran and Bronze Star recipient. He is a Democrat.
  • By virtue of his elective office, Mr. Spears wears the uniform of a major general (two-star).
  • The next-most-senior officer in the Guard is a general.
  • Challenger Lindman’s highest rank in the Guard was first sergeant.
  • But, Mr. Lindman points out, Mr. Spears is not a federally recognized general officer, either. In fact, he’s too old to hold such a post in the regular military. But he won’t retire, and since he is an independently elected state constitutional officer, no one can make him retire — another thing that makes him unique among American military leaders.
  • Mr. Lindman thinks the adjutant general should be appointed by the governor, using a set of standards to make sure the appointee is qualified. Gen. Spears, not surprisingly, likes the present system. After all, it’s worked for him.
  • The Democrat assumes that any standards adopted under the process he advocates would require that the adjutant general be a federally recognized general officer, or of sufficiently high rank to be promotable to general. That would eliminate first sergeants, to say the least.
  • But since there are no military qualifications to hold the position of S.C. adjutant general, there is nothing barring a sergeant — or indeed, a civilian with no military experience whatsoever — from holding the position. All you have to do is get enough people to vote for you. It’s command by popularity, rather than merit — a most unAmerican concept.
  • The state constitution is unlikely to be changed to allow the AG to be appointed as long as the incumbent opposes the change. That’s the way our Legislature works. They’re a very polite bunch. Not all over, but in spots — and this is one of the spots.
  • So, going by the choices available to us in this election, the only way we might switch to a rational system that would keep NCOs from commanding generals is if the first sergeant is elected over the general. As Mr. Lindman puts it from an NCO’s perspective, this might be another case in which "the NCO fixes the problem and hands if back to the officers — and that’s a familiar theme in the military."
  • Beyond the issue of rank, Mr. Spears has never commanded troops in combat; Mr. Lindman has.
  • But isn’t it more of an administrative job than that of a warrior? Remember, Eisenhower never had a combat command either, before being Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force that whipped Hitler. Fine, says the former first sergeant. He’ll stack his up his managerial experience as former head of a computer company against that of insurance man Spears any day.

Mr. Lindman has a lot of gripes against MGen. Spears. For one thing, when his unit — at the time the largest group, with 680 people, to deploy to Iraq — went off to war, the general did not see them off. Nor did he welcome them home. Instead, they were greeted by a Reserve general from North Carolina.

Worse, a lot of the men were stuck over there without transport home, and Gen. Spears had put out a release saying they were all home. This upset some family members who knew their soldiers weren’t home. Congressman Bob Inglis intervened to get them home. Meanwhile, Gen. Spears and some other senior officers had gone to a conference in Hawaii. Hence the welcome-home-by-proxy.

That’s the past. Mr. Lindman is more concerned about the future. He said he was in a strategy meeting in which senior Guard officers were plotting how to get Washington to choose the state’s 218th Brigade for a dangerous mission in Afghanistan previously handled by the 82nd Airborne. Mr. Lindman looked around and saw that no one else in the room was wearing a combat badge.

One delegation was sent to Washington to try to get that combat assignment, and failed. A second one went, and succeeded. So 1,800 South Carolinians will be going over to hunt the resurgent Taliban (including Lt. James Smith, previously featured on this blog).

Mr. Lindman doesn’t think a bunch of officers sitting behind desks should be volunteering S.C. Guardsmen for this mission, and he’s cynical about the motive: "Why are we pushing the envelope? It’s a money issue."

"It’s about getting the 218th Brigade a mission so that the 218th Brigade won’t leave" the state. "We’re sending troops into harm’s way over an issue of money."

Not that he’s got anything against Americans fighting in Afghanistan. As far as current operational theaters go, "I think the moral high ground is Afghanistan… I have no qualms at all" about the mission there.

However, "I think Iraq was a mistake." If there had been WMD, that would have been different, he says. He believes the nation is more vulnerable to threats from Iran, North Korea and the like. "They all know we’re tied up in Iraq, so it encourages them to be adventurous."

But he went there, and he did his duty, doing convoy protection duty 30 times. As a result, he "saw a lot of the country." His unit supported the assault on Fallujah, and "was with the Brits when they retook Ramadi."

"The level of danger was extremely high," he said. There was hardly a mission without an IED going off, or small arms fire on the convoy. "We lost no one, but we did have wounded." He spoke of one S.C. Guardsman who lost an arm.

The missions involved riding Humvees armed with a .50-cal. machine gun or a Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher — at first. But the grenades, they discovered, had a way of failing to detonate when they hit sand — just thunk, and nothing. They came to prefer a mounted M240 machine gun, which was easier to traverse downward when the enemy got too close to the vehicle.

Interestingly — or perhaps I should say, bizarrely — when his unit was training for this mission at Fort Dix, they had no Humvees to drive. So the men were required to stand in little groups pretending to be in a Humvee — you be the commander, and train your weapon out the window like this; you’re the driver, make like you’re holding the wheel and hold your weapon here; you’re the gunner, you stand this way and scan for threats — and then walk around that way.

"This is literally how we trained," he said. "We would walk endlessly down the road, pretending that we had vehicles." The gunners, because of the nature of their weapons, frequently had to walk backwards in these formations. (Trying to picture what he described, I see something that looks like a Monty Python sketch.)

Speaking of lack of resources, the first sergeant has a major beef with the incumbent over the maintenance of Guard armories. As The State’s Chuck Crumbo reported
earlier this month,

     The South Carolina National Guard faces a $60 million tab to repair and renovate most of its 65 armories.
    The buildings – most built in the 1960s and 1970s – are victims of deferred maintenance caused by a lack of state money, officials say.
    "We don’t fix most things that break," said Lt. Col. Jeff Hamrick, facilities manager.
That means roofs leak, window frames rust, and plumbing woes prompt soldiers to skip showers.
    Guard documents show:

  • 83.3 percent of all facilities are "marginally adequate" to support state and federal mission requirements.
  • 10.6 percent have "moderate" deficiencies that threaten units’ state and federal missions.
  • 6.1 percent have "major" deficiencies, meaning the facilities do not meet minimum standards.

    "Not only do some of the armories fail federal standards for usability," a Guard document reads, "but pose serious safety, recruiting and retention issues as well."

"That’s his asset management strategy," Mr. Lindman says of the incumbent. "Rather than manage it when it’s a small problem" — when a roof first starts to leak, for instance — he waits and has to ask for $60 million, the Democrat said.

"His management style is do nothing."

Mr. Spears has declined to be interviewed by the editorial board. I may or may not have a chance to talk with him and Mr. Lindman both next Monday night at 7:30 p.m. in their ETV debate. Tune in.

Lindman2_1

Meanwhile, out in the real world

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Wright_smith_good_to_go72                Wright & Smith — Good to Go

While the rest of us sit around arguing about the war on terror — or worse, ignoring it altogether as we Pci_80lbs_ruck_plus_iba_lbe_m4_kevlar_an_1dive into our own navels and gripe about our taxes or such — others are fighting it. Or getting ready to.

Rep. James Smith of Columbia was a JAG officer in the National Guard with the rank of captain, but he didn’t think that was doing enough. So a couple of years back, he started agitating for a transfer to the infantry. His entreaties were rebuffed. He bucked it up to Washington before someone told him fine, you can do that — as long as you give up your commission and start over as an enlisted man.

He took the dare, underwent basic, and eventually went to officer school on the way to regaining his former rank.Sleep_weapons_cleaning72 He has spent this summer undergoing specialized, intense infantry training for officers at Fort Benning. He graduates today. His unit is scheduled to go to Afghanistan in a few months.

In celebration, he sent a few folks pictures from his training course. I’m proud to share them with you. I’m even prouder to know James. He’s what I want to be when I grow up.

Here they are:

Waitin_for_sun_to_go_down_before_mission

Waiting for the sun to go down before mission.

Our_ride_to_the_fight72Ch53_lift_off72Smith_de_la_garza72Waitin_on_pizza_at_laaf72

What would Sgt. Hulka say?

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Hulka
As we all know, one of the first things the iconic Sgt. Hulka said to the new recruits upon their arrival at basic training in the immortal "Stripes" was:

Men, welcome to the United States Army. I’m Sergeant Hulka. I’m your
drill sergeant. Before we proceed any further, we gotta get something
straight. Your mamas are not here to take care of you now. It’s just
you, me, and Uncle Sam. And before I leave you, you’re gonna find out
that me and Uncle Sam are one in the same.

Well what would he have to say about this caption from The Associated Press, which goes with the above photo?

Pfc. Kimbery Brown,37, left, and her 18-year-old son Pfc. Dereck Noe, right, of Boone NC., embrace after they graduated together during a ceremony Friday, Aug. 18, 2006, at the Army’s training facility at Fort Jackson, in Columbia, S.C.

Gangbangers using infantry training

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In response to the last post, Preston e-mailed me this fascinating video clip from the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles. It tells about how increasingly, gangbangers are using tactics (and in at least one case, a weapon) they picked up in the military.

Perhaps most riveting is the actual surveillance camera footage of a Marine/gang member using his rifle and professional tactical maneuvers to kill one cop and critically wound another in a matter of minutes, despite their own use of cover and returning fire.

It remains astounding to me that anyone could retain the petty, narrow mentality of a street gang member after joining the military — especially the Marine Corps, with the mystique it instills of duty, honor and fidelity to something so much larger than Bloods and Crips.

Yes, I’ve heard and read all about the psychological reasons for disaffected boys and young men to join gangs — the sense of belonging, an ethic (however twisted), something to fight for. But the military offers that in such greater, more rewarding portions. It’s a brotherhood of men, not boys, and would have to offer far greater reinforcement.

Anyway, I said that stuff before. But the video is something new, and worth checking out.

And to keep our honor clean

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The allegation that a bunch of gangbangers that included four U.S. Marines were planning a rumble at an Irmo High School football game — not knowing that there was no game scheduled — is sufficiently bizarre to spawn bad jokes:

Asked why they thought they would find a game if they invaded Irmo, the Marines said, "President Bush promised us it was based on solid intel."

Hey, I told you it was a bad joke. Chalk it up to my trying too hard to throw a bone to you anti-war types out there.

Here’s another excuse: Though I gave it a shot, there’s just nothing funny about this situation. It’s appalling to think that a corporal and two lance corporals could have made it through boot camp and advanced training, be assigned to a unit, get promoted and still have enough loyalty left to something as worthless as the Crips to soil the honor of the Corps in such a manner.

Allegedly. For the moment, they are innocent. I hope they turn out actually to be so in the end. I know that not everybody who goes through Parris Island is a choir boy, but boots usually learn enough pride and discipline not to be thrown into the brig for something this stupid.

Did they just want to fight that badly? Were they disappointed at being wing wipers instead of serving in a rifle company? I just hope it was the cops who got the bad intel on this one.

Front-line blogging

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Remember, you don’t have to rely upon venerable correspondents such as Joe Galloway, or armchair warriors such as myself, to tell you what’s really going on in Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere else that Americans in uniform are laying their lives on the line.

Increasingly, you can check in with the troops yourself. In "Cry Bias, and Let Slip the Blogs of War," The Wall Street Journal told how to tap into the thoughts and observations of more than 1,400 people who’ve actually been there — or are still there. For many of these bloggers in uniform, said the founder of Milblogging.com, "the sole purpose was to counteract the media."

There have always been at least some soldiers who have wanted to go to battle against Big Media. Some in the military blamed coverage of the Vietnam War for turning American public opinion against it. What’s changed? The Internet now allows frustrated soldiers and veterans to voice their opinions and be heard instantly and globally.

Not that all want to gripe about the press. The God-given right of all GIs to second-guess, mock and generally criticize higher-ups is alive and well:

An Army blogger in Iraq who calls himself "Godlesskinser," has a clock
on his Web site noting how many days, hours, minutes and seconds have
passed since President Bush vowed to capture Osama bin Laden.

Check out the opinions of people who daily risk their lives for what they believe in. I’m putting a permanent link up to the left to make that easier for us all.

Is Sanford a Galloway fan?

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This has come to me from two sources — his bureau chief, and someone with his syndicate. It’s from Joe Galloway, the author of We Were Soldiers Once, And Young, who is now military correspondent for McClatchy out of Washington.

I have no idea whether it’s for real, or someone’s scamming Joe. Neither does Sanford press aide Joel Sawyer, although he doesn’t say anything to cast doubt on it. Nobody logs the governor’s personal notes. I suspect it’s real, but the governor’s out of pocket and we may not have an answer before tomorrow. But here’s what the Galloway missive said:

gents:
am in receipt of hand written note on stationery of South
Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford with a clipping of my column from The State
newspaper. Gov Sanford writes:

"Dear Mr. Galloway:
Your writing speaks
to me. Thanks for saying things in such straight forward
fashion.
Mark."

It was initially passed on to various editors by John Walcott, McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief.

    I have no idea what, if anything to make of this, but I found it interesting because Galloway hasn’t been a fan of the current administration’s military policies, to put it mildly.

Mr. Walcott is — understandably, I suppose — under the impression that Mark Sanford is a garden-variety Republican. Actual Republicans who deal with him in South Carolina know better. The great irony here is that he will probably be re-elected because the vast majority of Republican voters in this state don’t know him any better than Mr. Walcott does.

Chalk up another one for the way partisan politics scrambles up everything in this country. Parties give everyone the false impression that the world, and issues, are far, far simpler than they are. This is very dangerous.

Oh, and for those of you who still harbor monolithic notions about "the media," I am not a fan of the current administration OR of Mr. Galloway’s work. As regular readers know, I believe in our nation’s mission in Iraq — probably more than Mr. Bush does, judging by his actions — and judging by what he writes, Mr. Galloway does not. Of course, I may have misread him.

I certainly respect the perspective from which Mr. Galloway writes. After all, someone has actually deemed it worth the money to send him to the war and write what he thinks, an opportunity I have never had (so in part, you should chalk up my lack of enchantment with his work product to envy) — probably because he has at least 40 years experience as a war correspondent, and I have zero.

And I definitely appreciate the fact that he obviously cares deeply about the troops, having shared their danger — especially in Vietnam. Did you see the Mel Gibson movie? Well, Joe Galloway was actually there, and lived it, as others died all around him. He was portrayed by Barry Pepper.

I truly stand in awe, and must say in all humility that perhaps I would see things as he does, given the same experiences. But as things stand, I don’t.

I do know Mark Sanford, though, and I look forward to hearing more about this …

The Marines make do

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Huey
It seems I’ve always heard that the Army gets all the new stuff, while the Marines make do with hand-me-downs. When the Army had M-1s at the start of WWII, the Marines were cleaning the cosmoline off 30-year-old pieces that were, in the memorable words of a character in Leon Uris’ Battle Cry, "worthless as tits on a boar hog." Then, in the 1991 Gulf War, the Army had Abrams tanks while the Marines drove M-60s.

But it’s always been a point of pride for the Corps that they make do, and more than make up for the inadequacy of their materiel by maintaining it better and fighting harder. It’s a formula that has seemed to work.

Anyway, all that jumped to mind when I saw the above photo out of Beirut, where the Marines had returned to help evacuate U.S. civilians.

That’s a Huey, people! I doubt most of these Marines were alive when the Army ditched those.

Of course, the Marines do have a lot of cool equipment they’ve hardly gotten to use — hovercraft forHover amphibious attacks, for instance. To the right you see one of those coming ashore in Lebanon. But the AP photographer didn’t make it clear in his cutline whether that was a Marine vehicle or not.

I’ve also seen folks being evacuated in an older-style amphibious vessel — an LCU. Note how much the below photograph is reminiscent of the way we picture the Normandy invasion — except that the American’s are civilians, and they’re going in the wrong direction, and the terrain looks more like when the Big Red One landed in North Africa in 1943, and this particular craft was built either in 1969 or 1970.

But other than those things, it’s a dead ringer.

Lcu3

More on Clark

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Here’s some stuff that didn’t make it into my column. This originally came after the paragraph that ended with "believes ‘in “compromise:’"

”    Mr. Clark does not. As a young Navy officer in the 1960s he wrote the
wrote the specs for, built and ran the computer system that ran the war
in Vietnam for Gen. William Westmoreland. Maybe we didn’’t win that one,
but Mr. Clark’’s machines saw to it that troops, ammunition, supplies and
intelligence got to where they were supposed to be.
    He felt guilty being in a safe zone, so he would go over to the 7th Air
Force hospitals and write letters for the severely wounded. It wasn’’t
part of his job, but he felt compelled to do it.
    Captain Clark, USN-retired, is a problem-solver, and he works at an
exhaustive pace, doing far more than most representatives would say the
job demands. Some lawmakers can’’t be found when it’’s time to vote, much
less do the hard work in committees. Mr. Clark goes to the meetings of
every committee that touches on an issue that he’’s studying. And he’’s
interested in everything that would improve the health, wealth and
wisdom of South Carolinians.
    Mr. Spires, by his own account, is interested in cutting property taxes. But he hasn’t taken the trouble to study any of the options, or even  what the Legislature has actually DONE already to address the one part he articulates — his concern that old folks will lose their homes paying property taxes for schools.

Here’s another bit that just was too long and involved to get it to work into the thing. It came from Mr. Clark’s experiences doing something that would be utterly alien to Mr. Spires’ financial supporters — substitute-teaching in the schools:talking about poor, black mothers

    One reason Mr. Clark is at a disadvantage is that while he’s a great representative, he has his weak spots as a politician. For instance, he cares too much about things that really matter. Instead of starting with "look how I’ve cut your taxes" (which he eventually did mention, but only because he felt the need to counter the lies from the fliers) when I walked into the room where the meeting was, he was talking about … teen moms, and the way they lead to problems in the schools.
    "…these are not bad girls," he was saying. But they haven’t got a clue how to raise their kids. They work all day, come home exhausted, have nobody to help them with anyting, and not knowing any better, they park their kids in front of the TV.
    "And what do they see? Sex, violence, vanity, pushing, shoving — and that’’s what they bring into the schools." And that’s what he has to contend with when he teaches.
    "I taught at the Naval Academy, where I’’m used to seeing people who say
yes sir, no sir." The realities of what our society sends into the school doors is a profound contrast.

I’ll have more coming up from my interview last week with Mr. Spires later in the day. I left the notes in my briefcase, which isn’t with me. But I’ll have it later. (As it turned out, it was the NEXT day. Sorry.)

A monster is dead

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We awake to astounding news out of Iraq — astounding not so much because it’s surprising we would be able to get al-Zarqawi, but because we are so accustomed to something other than good news.

Of course, there is something in us (or there should be something in us) that says, hold on — a man’sZarqawi death is good news? What kind of world do we live in?

Well, we live in a world in which a man who kills innocents as a main aim, as a matter of policy, as a way of sowing despair, can get a following of creatures like him. This guy got his jollies cutting off people’s heads for the videos, which he distributed as widely as he could.

He won’t be doing that any more. That’s great news.