My Lunch is not Racist

I ate dog meat. No, not dog food; dog meat. The flesh of a canine killed and prepared in a local dish. So did President Obama. The difference is I didn’t do it on purpose.

While living in the Philippines I had a dish prepared with dog meat served to me on at least two occasions that I know of. In both cases I found out about it after the fact. Now I’m a world traveler and pretty much an omnivore, but I draw the line at eating dog meat because I am a dog lover. Like most Americans (and Frenchmen) who love their dogs, my hairy little companion is more like a child than a pet. I would no more eat a child than I would a dog; not on purpose. No matter how many times my Filipina wife explained this to people someone always missed the memo.

I say that to illustrate the point that culinary customs vary widely across the globe. You have to be prepared for surprises (some unpleasant) when traveling abroad – especially if you have the nerve to get away from tourist zones. What is normal for you may be taboo in a foreign land. And what is repulsive for you might be a delicacy to your host.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

I read this article this morning and nearly choked on my coffee. Teachers in Portland were being taught to be aware that a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich could be sending subtle racist messages.

“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” Gutierrez asked. “Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”

The message seems to be that our American meal choices should be “more inclusive” so that foreign students will not feel left out.

Politically Correct Gone Amok

That is insanity. A person’s meal choice is just that, a personal choice. Nobody has to change their diet selections so that the person across the table feels “more at home” in your country. In fact, it would be insulting. “Yes, Pedro, because you look Mexican I am only going to eat tacos while you are here.”

It is an insult. I know because I have endured such incredibly crass treatment for years. While I was in the Navy I was one of the few Black people in Reactor Department on a massive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.  One most ships the nuclear operators are 90% White. Over the years I developed a thick skin to avoid reacting when, once again, my White shipmates came racing back from the messdecks to announce to me that “they’re serving watermelon today!”

 

 

 

I cannot say if it was a racist impulse that caused them to think such news was desired or welcome – in most cases, I assumed a benign impulse. But it was irritating to have them think watermelon and fried chicken are staples of my diet just because I am Black. (Actually, spaghetti is; I love that stuff.)I was aware that a few of them said it with malicious intent.

Whatever is on your plate is no one else’s business; not the school’s or the government’s. It should taste good to you, be nourishing and filling. It should not make you feel guilty because the Somali at the next table grew up eating something else.

Guilt is the Issue

The above article (relinked here) had this passage: The Tribune noted that the school started the new year with "intensive staff trainings, frequent staff meetings, classroom observations and other initiatives," to help educators understand their own “white privilege,” in order to "change their teaching practices to boost minority students’ performance."

The goal of this whole program is to make White Americans feel guilty for every little things you say, do or possess because you are somehow undeserving. And it simultaneously wants me and all minorities to resent every mouthful of food you take as if somehow every swallow causes some brown, black or yellow person to starve to death.

The only way to overcome this insanity is to embrace our uniqueness, both as individuals and as a nation. America does not exclude anyone; not their culture, their religion, their fashion or their food. You can find a restaurant somewhere in the country serving every known cuisine on Earth here in America. You might not notice kosher foods at Wal-Mart, but it is there. You might not have any idea what durian is (it's the big green one, common to Asia) but those who want it can often find it when they want it.

The final nail in the coffin of this politically correct nonsense is this; McDonald’s™ is popular in most countries in the world. Those who don’t have it yet, are in line to get it, even in Muslim countries. American food is universal. Like much of our culture, people often prefer it to their own traditional foods in a short time. Not just “Mickey D’s”, KFC™, Subway™, and Taco Bell™ are all global fast food chains now with more opening every day. People want what we have. That is the opposite of racist.

Teachers and students; eat what you want and enjoy it. If anyone gives you grief about it, tell them to go overseas. I am certain they can find a burger anywhere, even in India.

Gay Pride at the Expense of Military Pride

The beginning of the End

            In a few days another Gay Pride parade will take place on the streets of San Diego. What makes this one noteworthy is the prominent presence of active duty military members gleefully celebrating their lifestyle with other members of their community. What matters not is how Americans see this. What matters most is how our enemies will view it.

I fear we have given a gift to Hamas and Al Qaeda recruiters that they could not have dreamed of. America is already seen as weak and decadent, this will convince foreign fighters that the formidable American military – arguably the most powerful fighting force in history – is decaying from the inside. In this case, they might be right.

Taps for the Death of Military Tradition

The Army I knew is gone. The Army that gave my parents a way out of poverty in the cotton fields of Mississippi and Tennessee is no more. The Army which gave me a tour of the world, which let me see other cultures and learn other languages, is gone. I opened my social network pages yesterday and my heart broke.

Change has come quickly to the military in recent years. Changes not designed to enhance the war fighting capabilities; no that’s too expensive. These changes are meant to remake the entire military culture. Rather than have an Army that is ready to protect and defend the people of America, it has been made over to reflect the cultural vision that politicians want to impose on the American people.

The Roots of Change

Some changes are good. Desegregation in the military was a good thing. But many of the changes now in progress have a dubious benefit for the country at large and seem to be headed in the direction of less liberty for all to the benefit of a few.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly when these changes occurred. One could argue that it began with President Truman signing executive order 9981 in April of 1949 but that was the end of a process that began years earlier during the manpower shortages of WWII.

Perhaps the original question of Blacks¹ serving in the American military actually arose during the Civil War. In the earliest conflicts service from Black freemen and bondsmen was accepted without question. An estimated “5,000 Blacks” fought for American independence from England. The Civil War was the result of social questions about the humanity of Blacks living in American and the inhuman treatment they endured.

Several all-Black units served with distinction on both sides during that war. When that conflict ended many freed Blacks found a new live out on the far frontier with units such as the 9^th and 10^th (Horse) Cavalry Regiments. The Buffalo Soldiers left a legacy of bravery throughout the West and overseas when they served meritoriously in the Spanish American War.

Despite their record of achievement, White officers were reluctant to give them credit for their service and White society was equally reluctant to recognize those who had given so much for their freedom and independence. It took decades of work, patience and sacrifice before Blacks were able to force the issue to the Oval Office. Truman’s signature was the culmination of 85 years of toil. And it set in motion the social changes that eventually led to the Civil Rights Movement that finally granted full legal status to Black Americans.

Riding the Wave of Change

The role the military had in catalyzing change in America has not been lost on social engineers. From the early 70s throughout my own twenty year career and up into current times, those who would change America often test their techniques and tactics (with overt political support) on the people in America’s military. If you sit through yet another sexual harassment lecture know that those programs were developed a quarter century ago and refined painfully on captive audiences in uniform. I can tell you from personal experience that what they had in the beginning was crude, annoying and tedious—much like being forced to watch Soviet-era propaganda films – with no subtitles.

The main theme of the social engineering in the military has been to redefine what it is to be a man. The big pro-homosexual push in the uniformed services advocated by President Obama fits nicely into that agenda. Only men were targeted because the assumption was that everything wrong with society stemmed from inherently aggressive male tendencies. If that could be changed then society in general would benefit – and be more peaceful, I assume.

The fallacy of this was those same aggressive male tendencies are precisely what is needed when fighting a war. A unit must be aggressive to achieve its objectives in the face of determined enemy resistance. If you are facing dozens of enemy fighters who are dug in using civilians as shields, do you want to follow Alpha-males like Gunny Highway (played by Clint Eastwood in HEARTBREAK RIDGE) or do you want to follow Beta-males like Captain “Hawkeye” Pierce (played by Alan Alda in the television series M*A*S*H)?

Despite many sound arguments in favor of maintaining an aggressive edge over our enemies—arguments I made myself—the social engineers were determined to complete their pogrom. These liberated feminists and their Beta-male allies have forged ahead unabated. I assume they think that if Americans stop being to aggressively brave our enemies will do the same and world peace will reign.

Implied Weakness and Implications

Action in and around Afghanistan seems to prove that is not going to happen anytime soon. Any sign of weakness in our soldiers, sailors and airmen is seen as a motivating factor for our enemies in the Islamic world (also in foreign capitals like Beijing and Moscow; our true competition). Thus we have given a gift to the jihadists with our latest social experiment.

Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell may have been the right thing to do. I do not have the historical perspective to judge that and I am not serving on active duty so I cannot gauge the effect of the executive order. Despite the heated debate, that was an internal issue. The overt actions of the Department of Defense as evidenced in this article changes things dramatically.

The Army is going against the established tenet of avoiding political posturing by making this change.  It is likely the other services have issued similar orders permitting active duty servicepersons to wear their uniforms publicly as part of Gay Pride parades. The article calls this an historic event. The Gay service people are ecstatic over being able to show their pride in their orientation and military service. “Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vowed in a video message to remove as many barriers as possible to making the military a model of equal opportunity …” and has committed to making the changes directed by President Barack Obama.

I am left with the question of how this will appear to our enemies. Islam expressly forbids homosexuality and the penalty is death by stoning, though most are merely publicly hanged. The national attention desired by Gay activists will happen. Media outlets from coast to coast will carry the San Diego parade live and in endless repeats for days while pundits debate the wisdom of the decision.

What concerns me is how it will play out on Al Jazeera.  As I said at the beginning, America is already seen as weak and decadent, this will convince foreign fighters that the formidable American military – arguably the most powerful fighting force in history – is decaying from the inside. Fighting American soldiers is tantamount to suicide, now, but if you believe that the will of Americans is waning, you start to believe you can win. That is a dangerous thing for our fighting forces on the ground.

Personally, my pride in the nation remains strong and I believe it will recover from the damage inflicted by these short-sighted, wrong-headed social engineers. However, for now, my pride in my service is diminished and tarnished by this shameful disrespect for those who came before. Perhaps in a few years it won’t matter, but today, it does, to me.

1. I choose not to use the politically correct term “African American” because it is historically inaccurate for most of our purposes. Without the luxury of full citizenship few Blacks could be considered “American” prior to 1967.

Note: in searching for relevant images for this blog I used the BING search engine. I input “Gays in the military” and set it for images. It returned about 70% Gay porn and images of naked young men mostly out of uniform. When I changed my filter to moderate to remove those image options, BING returned – nothing.

I got much more acceptable results when I switched to GOOGLE.

Obama’s Media Propaganda Machine Targets the Military

Today I read an article about veteran’s and military members shifting strongly toward President Obama. The writer asserts that “Disaffection with the politics of shock and awe runs deep among men and women who have served in the military during the past decade of conflict.” Apparently Margot Roosevelt has no idea what Shock and Awe is or she would know that it has nothing to do with the way we have waged war in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places for the past four years.

Or military has been mired in a limited war or “Operations Other Than War (OOTW)” during that time. They have been hampered by ROE (Rules of Engagement) the likes of which two generations of military leaders have been trying to avoid since the Vietnam Conflict ended 40 years ago—yet another promise not kept to the Vietnam vets.

This article is an obvious attempt to make Obama seem more attractive to the military community and from the comment section it seems to be effective to some degree. I like to think military people who have been out at the pointy end of the pen writing history would be smart enough to know who has been driving that pen for the past four years. Ms. Roosevelt goes on to state “factually” that “If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.” Of course, there is no poll cited for her statement because she made it up.

From 2001 until 2008 the media made a point of broadcasting the numbers of KIA weekly and the running totals reported every night. We heard "This has been the deadliest week for US forces since (whenever)" on a regular basis. Each Sunday’s PARADE section of the paper had the full color pictures of those killed in the past week.

The media did not do that because they suddenly cared for the military (they haven't since WWII). They did it to erode faith in the GOP and President Bush. Democratic candidates ran on promises to end the bloodshed. Obama rose to the top of the heap by being the biggest anti-war dove in the pack. He attacked Bush on all facets of conducting the War on Terror and swore to end the violence and bring the troops home in a year. How's that working out for you?

Was it Mitt Romney or BH Obama running around the end zone spiking Bin Laden's head for the 253rd time? Wasn't it Obama saying "Mitt Romney wouldn't have the courage to pull the trigger" on bin Laden? In light of his actions, posturing and words, which candidate seems less likely to send troops to war? Obama is clearly trying to seem like a military war hero and he is willing to send troops anywhere for any reason to prove it.

Obama did not keep one of his promises on the war. He did not reverse any of Bush's policies in fighting it; he even claimed credit for every success those policies generated. The fact is, he could not care less for the men and women in uniform. He is still reluctant to return a salute. The troops have spent more time at war, not less. And despite media collusion, soldiers have NOT stopped dying under his watch. They still return in flag-draped coffins; the media has found it prudent for their man in office if they don't publish pictures of them.

And that is the worst of it. Living or dead, the democrats see military people as tools for their own political ends and not the brave protectors of Liberty that most Americans know them to be. They are . . . WE are . . . your sons, husbands and fathers; wives, mothers and daughters. We deserve a man in office who will care more for the lives he sends to war than the tiny ticks in poll numbers as he goes off to another round of golf.

Dreams from Our Dictator: How President Obama sees America

The President of the United States made perhaps the most dangerous claim ever spoken by an elected official on NBC on Sunday February 6, 2012.  Speaking to Matt Lauer, President Barack Obama explained that he did not accomplish his campaign promises because of the Founding Fathers.  No, for once he did not blame his predecessor.  He reached all the way back to the beginning of this great nation – a nation constructed on the expressed will of the people – and complained about the limits Jefferson, Franklin Hancock, et al placed on the office of the president.

President Obama laments not having dictatorial powers.  Our president, the most powerful man on Earth, does not feel he has enough power.

As Obama sees it, he is the wisest man in the nation and he knows what is best for the peons who enjoy the blessings of living in his country.  We should express our gratitude for his leadership by investing him the benevolent authority to impose his will on us.  If only he can remove two obstacles from his path: the duly elected Congress and the Constitution.  Fortunately for him few in the Non-FOXNews Media (NFM) reported his words or their dire implications for our future if this man were reelected (or voted out of office as I stated in Scorched Earth).

A long time ago a group of men gathered to create an original concept in governance. Their task was not easy and it was not safe either.  One of the most powerful armies and navies on Earth belonged to the country they were in rebellion against – England and the royal monarchy.  King George III wielded full autocratic power over his vast kingdom.  No instrument in existence opposed his capricious will except the bible and he claimed that as the basis of his authority through the Church of England.

The Founding Fathers stood up to him declaring that God did not intend that man should be subject to the will of another man but to the Sovereign Will of Almighty God.  The concept was pure though it had problems in execution.  All agreed that educated, landed gentlemen should not be subject to a distant monarchy without just representation.  The sticky issue of how far the statement “All men are created equal” extended became the defining issue of the Constitutional Congress.  Did the term “all men” include ordinary men, male slaves, and women of any station?

The early compromises settled none of the big questions and ultimately sowed the seeds of the Civil War.  When people failed to end slavery with a stroke of a pen in the beginning then God demanded it be settled in blood four score years later. One out of every six American men lost their lives in that war.  That is the equivalent of over 29 million men in today’s population.

No, the Founding Fathers were not perfect, but they understood their own limitations and that of other men.  They knew that there never would be born a man fit to govern the land with autocratic authority nor can any man be trusted to act with selfless compassion when full power is in his hands.  These were classically educated men of their day.  They studied the Greeks, the Romans and the monarchies of Europe.  They knew that true benevolence is the exception and not the rule.  Power in the new nation must be shared.  No part of the government should act without limits, and the balance maintained by the other branches of government within the constraints of the Constitution.

Obama is chaffing against these bounds.  Two hundred years after these brave men placed their lives on the line to create “One Nation under God” Obama sets himself up as smarter than all of them.  He knows better than all of them.  He knows better than all of us how we should live, how our money should be spent and whom we should worship.

We should have seen this coming. Just like Marx in DAS KAPITAL, Hitler in MEIN KAMPF, Obama telegraphed his intentions in his pre-ascendency book DREAMS FROM MY FATHER.  Only a cursory reading of the book would reveal it is a declaration of hostility toward the American way of life.  He tells of his distaste for White American mainstream values – their monoracial sense of normalcy.  He is equally annoyed with all aspects of the Black American community – the split personality between those who want to seek separation and reparations from White society and those who seek assimilation and accommodation with it.

Furthermore, what does the title tell us?  Who is Obama’s father and what did he dream about?  According to his novel he is the son of Barack Hussein Obama, a senior governmental economist from Kenya.  He died in an automobile crash in Nairobi, Kenya in November 1982.  Young Barry did not live with his father from age two so we don’t know the extent of the elder’s influence on him.  We do know that Obama, Sr. was born a Muslim and became a self-professed atheist before his death.

Obama’s step-father was also foreign born. Lolo Setoro was an Indonesian Muslim. He married Obama’s mother after her 1964 divorce and moved the family back to his home country in 1967.

I cannot speak to what dreams either of these men harbored.  They might have been decent men for all we know.  But I do know that neither man shared a cultural heritage with Americans of any race, they did not see the world the same way we do; neither did they possess an understanding of the American way of life.

Despite the words and efforts of the American president, America is a good place; the American Dream is a good thing.  If Obama cannot see it so much is the pity for him.  I know I disagree with some of my Conservative friends and most of my Liberal Democrat friends but in the end we all want what is best for our nation and for each other.  The only person who cannot see that is sitting in the Oval Office trying to find a way to put an end to our dream – the dream of liberty from tyranny begun so long ago by OUR fathers.

1. Photo source: http://alieninterview.org/blog/2009/09/founding-fathers-warn-about-banks/

An Open Invitation to Defeat

One consistent truth is the United States never goes into war prepared. One lesser known truth is that very lack of preparedness invites war!  Every military conflict with a foreign power has been preceded by the enemy’s perception that the US is too weak to be a significant threat.  President Obama’s Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta proposes reducing America’s military preparedness to near crippling levels over the next ten years as a cost savings measure.  Time will tell if his decisions are wise.  History has already sounded the warning.

 What does the military have to say about this?

Uniformed response has been mixed in the hours since the announcement.  Senior military leadership so far seems to be toeing the party line; they are standing behind their civilian leader’s guidance.  If any of them were willing to risk their careers like a few brave legends of the past, much of this foolishness can be avoided.

Yes foolishness.  One of the main points of contention is we will no longer need as many ground forces because most conflicts will be asymmetrical in nature and fought with unmanned drones flying from bases in Europe guided by men in shirt sleeves and ties safely back here in the States.  No need to risk expensive F-22 Raptors and F-117 Nighthawks on deep penetration missions into hostile territory.

DarkStar RQ-3 stealth drone in an early photo when it was still largely unknown to the public.¹

Hogwash.  There has never been and never will be a conflict settled without placing armed troops in harm’s way.

Greater faith in technology than in men

Every couple of generations there arises some new whiz-bang gadget from the think tanks if research that is supposed to put an end to war – if not an end to war itself, then the risk to our troops.  The Gatling gun was supposed to make war so costly that wars would not be fought again. Alfred Nobel thought his TNT would do the same.  The atomic bombs would make wars so devastating that no one would dare attack a nation so armed.  There have been hundreds of wars since the blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; many between nonnuclear nations fighting nuclear armed nations.

On a smaller scale, the US Air Force was looking for a modern fighter to counter the new breeds of Soviet fighters challenging them in the skies above Vietnam.  The final fly-off was between the upgraded F-8 Crusader from Vought and the MacDonald-Douglas’ F-4 Phantom.  The Crusader was designed to be a dogfighter from the beginning.  It was highly maneuverable and armed with a mix of missiles and machine guns.  In the end the Phantom won because short-sighted officers decided that no modern supersonic fighter needed a machinegun.  They believed air-to-air combat was going to be settled entirely at missile range.

F-8 Crusader onboard the USS Midway in San Diego. Note the machinegun ports below the cockpit.  Two more are on the other side.²

The F-4 Phantom became the main fighter for the US and the only fighter flown by the Air Force, Navy and Marines.  A moderately maneuverable plane it served with distinction throughout the world. However, it did not become an effective fighter until manufacturers installed a machinegun but that wasn’t until long after the plane had already seen significant combat.

An early model F-4 Phantom II. Note the gun pod strapped under the plane. This was an unauthorized field modification.³

The politics of war required pilots to visually identify the enemy before shooting at them. This negated the range advantage of missiles.  Once the craft closed to visual range then machineguns and maneuverability became important—both of which the Phantom lacked.  The problem was worsened by the high failure rate among the early versions of missile systems.  Training and tactics overcame these problems eventually but too many lives were lost because short-sighted officers and politicians funded the wrong equipment for the fighters.

What does the future hold?

Current combat options depend heavily on American technological superiority. Global Positioning satellites permit unprecedented precision and coordination of forces.  Digital networks permit a superior mix of forces to converge at a critical point at precisely the right time to overwhelm any known enemy force.  Perfect execution like that seen in Desert Storm means a smaller American-led force can destroy a larger, well dug-in force fighting on their home ground.  Such is the logic for shrinking an already small American military even further.

But what happens if the US loses that technological edge?  It is possible that some adversarial nation has already figured that out.  If not I assure you many are diligently pursuing that goal.  The signals from GPS satellites blanket the Earth continuously.  Other nations can study the system at their leisure.  In time one of them might learn how to introduce a timing or logic error into the network.  This could mean long-range missiles hitting the wrong place; a school across town instead of the air force command center.  Worse, an air strike could hit a battle point after the enemy has retreated and the location is occupied by friendly forces.  The resulting chaos will paralyze American command and control leaving the troops in the field outnumbered and unsupported.

Eventually, some country will test American resolve once more.  Iran might be that country, or it could be China.  Ships will be hit and might sink; planes shot out of the sky by surprisingly fast and accurate missiles.  Men will die.  What remains to be seen is if we can hold out long enough to regroup.  The US military will be unprepared when the first strike hits home and civilians will wonder how this expensive, mighty machine could be so unprepared. 

They need look no further than today’s White House and Pentagon.  Let us also not forget that the drastic cuts in the military budget is a result of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s failure to craft a budget for the nation in over 900 days, closer to three full years as of this writing.  When the oddly named Super-committee proved to be anything but super, the cuts to defense became automatic.  Failure of the main stream media to place blame where it belongs makes them willing accomplices to weakening of the military.  The military of today is being designed and funded (or not funded as it were) by those in power today.  One can only hope it will be enough.

Understand this final point, you go to war with what you have; not what you should have built, or delayed building - you have exactly what you have and no more.

1. Photo courtesy of: http://www.livingroom.org.au/uavblog/archives/us_airforce_building_top_secret_drone.php

2. Photo by Jeff Kubina at Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/95118988@N00/443751307

3. Photo courtesy of: http://roen911.deviantart.com/art/F-4-Phantom-II-194770289

21st Century Gunboat Diplomacy

“Speak softly and carry a big stick; and you will go far.”

Theodore Roosevelt said this maxim originated in West Africa.  He applied it to his method of global diplomacy wherein he negotiated in kindness and generosity but backed up the American position with the threat of military prowess.  President Roosevelt (1901 – 1909) was a military veteran and a well-traveled adventurer.  He knew well the role military power played in a nation’s perceived role in international diplomacy.  A nation that is unable to protect its interests beyond its borders has very little influence with which to bargain.

America emerged from the Spanish-American War as a new player on the international stage. Few in the world expected the distant Americas to be able to defeat a significant European power.  The victory was all the more striking in that much was accomplished on a global scale using modern naval vessels.  The turn of the century marked America’s debut as a top tier military power.

Roosevelt extended this influence through a naval tour de force dubbed the great White Fleet¹.  From 16 December 1907 to 22 February 1909 a flotilla consisting of sixteen new battleships of the Atlantic Fleet sailed from Hampton Roads, Virginia around South America to San Francisco, California. It then turned west to Hawaii, Asia and up to the Suez Canal.  Emerging into the Mediterranean the fleet took the opportunity to assist Italy after a devastating earthquake in early 1909.  The entire civilized world had witnessed the brute power and prowess on the United States by the time the ships returned to their home moorage in Hampton Roads.

Few American presidents have since failed to learn the lessons of the Great White Fleet.  The US Navy became the single most effective instrument of diplomatic pressure available to the American government.  That this is true is no accident; the navy is by all accounts the single most powerful military force on the planet.

The planes of just two aircraft carriers can destroy the entire air forces of most of the countries on earth—and we have at last count 12 of these super-carriers. Yes, they are super carriers.  Any nation that claims to have carriers knows well the difference between the Nimitz-class and their tiny flat tops.  I remember walking to the edge of the USS ENTERPRISE and looking down on the deck of allied carriers on several occasions.

(Note: the ship in the image is misidentified as the USS Nimitz. It is not. The numbers on deck are 66; the USS AMERICA (CV-66) which was still shorter and smaller than the Nimitz-class.)

Additionally, the Navy operates a fleet of nuclear submarines capable of devastating most of the habitable surface of the planet and sinking every ship anyone can build while remaining all but undetectable in the waterways and oceans of the world until it is too late.  Other surface ships carry missiles and guns capable of fighting most navies to a standstill without air support from carriers or submarine assistance.

I went to the bridge of the USS ENTRPRISE before I flew off her deck for the last time.  I spoke to the captain during a lull in operations.  I asked, “What was the single most important thing to know about aircraft carriers?”  Captain “Rocky” Spane answered that the carrier and its battle group controls the politics within a thousand mile radius; not influences, controls.  I agreed with his statement given the events I witnessed on that and many other cruises over two decades.

I recall a comment from a group of civilians I met in France. We were anchored off shore well in sight of Toulon, the home of France’s largest naval port.  Two of their carriers were in port and a third, their largest now called the Charles de Gaulle (R91) was yet under construction.  I sat in a café overlooking the harbor chatting with the locals on a beautiful Riviera day (are there any other kind?)  These young people didn’t know I was an American; because of my barely accented French they took me for an African colonial.  They looked at the massive silhouette of the Big ‘E’ and told me that France only thought it had aircraft carriers.  Seeing the Enterprise redefined the term in their minds.

A few years later the Navy knocked another embarrassing event off the world’s headlines.  Rebels in Mogadishu, Somalia shot down an American helicopter in an incident immortalized in the book and movie BLACKHAWK DOWN.  The local mobs celebrated their success by dragging the dead American soldiers through the streets before global news cameras.

The celebrating ended a few nights later when the aircraft carrier USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN arrived off shore in the wee hours of the morning.  F-14 Tomcats delivered a non-lethal but unavoidable wakeup call to the locals at 4 am.  Coming in at low altitude and 400+ knots, the aviators yanked back the stick and kicked in the afterburners in a steep climb. The sudden blast of noise could be heard for miles.  The Somalis instantly recognized a new power in the region; one for which the entire nation had no answer.  Direct violence against the American Army stopped.

Naval diplomacy continues right up to today’s headlines.  I wrote about the tensions between Iran and the United States over the naval presence of carriers in an earlier blog (“Iranian Military Threatens US Carriers in the Gulf” 1/3/2012).  The Navy today is no less intimidating than Roosevelt’s fleet more than a century ago.  Direct military conflict with the US has been a fatal error for several nations in the region in the past decades so this threat seemed designed to garner local political points rather than a true challenge.  More likely the Iranians were testing the resolve of the president of the United States as to whether he had the courage to use the power he had at hand.  However, President Obama’s lack of response caused an instant spike in the price of oil as the markets were rattled by the Iranian threat.

The Navy improved the situation without direct orders from the White House by adhering to its principles and following established maritime practices.  Ships of the USS JOHN C. STENNIS (CVN-74) battle group came to the aid of Iranian sailors for the third time on Wednesday January 18 in waters in and around the Persian Gulf.  Their dhow became disabled, according to a Navy spokesperson, and had been taking on water for days.

Earlier on the 6^th of January the USS KIDD (DDG-993) rescued 13 Iranian fishermen from Somali pirates who had captured their dhow and held them hostage for an unspecified amount of time.  On the 10^th of January an American Coast Guard cutter rescued six Iranian fishermen 50 mile off the coast of Iraq.

All of the rescues reveal Iran needs to do more work in ship construction and maintenance and they need to improve their maritime emergency response.  Without the American presence in the area almost two dozen of their men would have perished at sea and several boats lost.

More importantly, these humanitarian gestures in the face of Iranian military posturing have created an opportunity for diplomacy.  The Iranians can back down without losing (too much) face. At least for the time, US Navy compassion creates a tangible narrative in direct contrast to the official Iranian government position that America is the Great Satan.  Few of the Iranian mariners now safely at home would agree with that assessment.  What remains to be seen is whether the Obama Administration will squander the diplomatic opening his ships created.

1. DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND -The Great White Fleet: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq42-1.htm

fig 1. Photo "Battleship on the target range" courtesy of: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/ev-1900s/gwf07-09/gwf-sb3.htm

fig 2. Image courtesy of: www.motivatedphotos.com

Scorched Earth

Sometimes a nation’s leader finds himself in a position of having to destroy his own people’s resources to keep them from being of use to an advancing enemy army.  He must order crops burned, weapons smashed, and especially, fuel burned in the mechanized age.  Josef Stalin did this against Hitler’s army at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa.  This is the scorched earth policy.

Sometimes the attacking army uses the scorched earth to deny resources to the defenders to support a siege or, in the case of General William T. Sherman, to weaken the enemy’s ability to sustain their war effort.

Then there is the third type of destruction; the punitive program.  A leader under pressure from his own people orders military or police force against the population and damages the economy and possibly destroys critical resources.  This is an angry, bitter person—a narcissist would does not think the people deserve to live without his or her leadership.

President Barack Obama is such a person.  He has shown a tendency to throw anyone and everyone under the bus to avoid even the slightest taint of failure attaching to him.  No one is sacred to him, no one worthy of his persona loss.  If Obama feels rejected by the proletariat he will unleash hell on America in the final weeks he is in office.

What kind of damage can a lame duck president do?

That question requires considering another question; what does a sitting president have access too?  Almost everything important to the safety and security of the United States is tied to the Oval Office.  The president is chief law enforcer and head of the military.  He is the caretaker of the nation.  Up until now, we have not had a president willing to purposefully hurt the nation.  Up until now, we have never had such a man as Barack Obama.

If the elections go as predicted, Obama will have full presidential power from early November until mid-January.  He has shown no shyness about using executive orders to alter the legal balance in the country.  He has refused to enforce laws he doesn’t like and created laws out of thin air to do his own will despite the voters and Congress.  He single-handedly shut down oil production in the Gulf of Mexico – American drilling, that is.  He is fine with Chinese and Brazilian oil rig pumping out of these same sensitive waters.

Nothing will stop him from exercising full authority for spite or personal gain in his last days.  A few of the most damaging efforts he might well do are:

·         Issue blanket pardons to cronies he has placed in key government offices who will be actively undermining their departments – mostly collecting secret files and destroying vital documents.

·         Sell pardons to whatever person is willing to shell out big payoffs to him personally; no crime would be off limits for a pardon if the money is right.

·         Create favorable regulations for any big donor to give them an unfair competitive edge.

·         Issue blanket amnesty to all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States. Since no one knows who is here now or where they are, it will create an open-ended floodgate for a long time.

·         America’s covert operations, military units and security programs can all go up for sale. The Chinese and Russians would pay him billions for the stuff he has in his iPad. He will make Wikileaks seem like amateur hour at the Ritz.

·         He doesn’t even have to sell secrets directly. He can give away passwords and access codes, even our procedures for just as much money.

We could be looking at instant economic and security chaos.  The new president will be busy for weeks or months trying to find all the leaks and compromised data.  Meanwhile the economy might already be in a tailspin because of the new regulations, taxes and executive orders kicking in.  Add in the sudden influx of millions of new and unemployed citizens (and their families) and the Recession could become a Depression almost overnight.

There is not much we can do to prevent these actions.  The Founding Fathers never envisioned we would have a man like this one, a man who seems to genuinely hate the American people, the American way of life and their Constitution, serving as chief executive.  The powers Obama is so fond of misusing were intended to let the president do important things while Congress was out of session and the members weeks or months away in their home states.  They had no idea about jet flights or instant communication via the Internet or telephone.  There is almost no need for him to sign “out of session” orders anymore.

The only reason Obama does it is because he can.  He is acting within the letter of the Constitution but not in the spirit as it was intended.  Like the true lawyer he is, Obama is stretching the law to fit his purposes.  All we can hope for is a staff of bureaucrats who will not be a party to the destruction of the country.  And do something Obama hates more than this country; get down on our collective knees and pray to the LORD above that his efforts fail – that One Nation Under GOD shall not perish from the Earth.

Obama image courtesy of: Kathy Willens, AP

Lincoln image courtesy of: http://www.quotecollection.com/image-view.php?img=abraham-lincoln-2.gif