Sic Semper Tyrannis

DADT Witch Hunts Begin.

"Honors, 49, was sacked as commander of the Enterprise on Tuesday for what the Navy called a "profound lack of good judgment and professionalism" in making and showing to his crew raunchy comic videos three or four years ago. In the videos, Honors used gay slurs and pantomimed masturbation."  Google News

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Captain Honors is an unfortunately typical fighter "jock."  Immature, given to belief that officers and men want the "boss" to be their pal, vulgar, etc.  His departure is no great loss except that it is symptomatic of the purges that will happen in the armed forces beginning in Mullen's navy, and then spreading, in the hunt for those who do not believe that homosexuals should be a protected class.  Perhaps the US Navy should not have decided to put aviators in command of aircraft carriers?

Taking their cue from this, the services will now begin a pursuit of those who must be purged to begin the "purification" of the armed forces.

I am glad that I am long gone.  pl

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAMXpxFzG3TrX_Cnuc0byPUTIJ6Q?docId=037e408bf99c4eb19bb3ca25b22b8dab

The "Tycoon" - RE Lee

"The Tycooon" was a pet name that his staff had for him.

I watched the PBS program on Lee last night.  On the whole I thought it remarkably fair.  The zeitgeist does not permit a truly objective consideration of the man but it was an attempt to do so.  There was a certain amount of talk about; his ambition, his defense of chattel slavery, his insistence that his wife's slaves actually work at Arlington, his bad temper at times.

The production acknowledged that he resigned from the US Army in 1861 and that his resignation was accepted.  The production implied that but for the generosity of the victors he would have been hanged fror treason.  Rubbish.  None of the Confederate leaders were tried for treason because it was clear that their defense would be on the basis of the legitimacy of secession.  The victors did not want that.

In regard to the slaves, his father in law, Washington's grandson by adoption, ruined the family agribusiness financially and then promised the slaves at Arlington emancipation in his will.  Lee was called home from the Army to save his wife's family business.  He could not do that if he let the slaves depart.  Needless to say they were unhappy with that and there was conflict.  This was a lot like Jefferson's predicament when faced with his father in law's debts.  Jefferson insisted on paying these off although not legally obligated to do so.  "Planting" was not always a profitable business.

Lee's ambition?  Would he not have accepted Lincon's offer of command of the US Army if that had been his main impetus in life?

His bad temper?  Surely that is a joke!  The man lived with stress that killed him. His cold rages were feared.  A rebuke from him had the power to kill the soul because he was so revered by "his people."  "Come now, General Hill, bury these poor men and let us speak no more of this," he said to AP Hill after Hill tried to explain the debacle at Bristoe Station.

He cared only for his own social class?  If that is so, then the men who followed him to the bitter end were truly fools.  Longstreet wrote in later life that early in 1863 he noticed that the men would fall silent, stand and remove their hats as Lee passed.  Longstreet wrote that at that point he began to consider the Old Man to be a danger because these men would attempt anything for him.  Anything.

Was he a Great Captain?  That is debatable.  He learned and improved steadily as the war progressed.  Even near the end at the North Anna he was dangerous.  If he had not gone down sick there, he and his scarecrows might have destroyed US 2nd Corps.  pl 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee

 

"...the man is everything." Bonaparte

'In war men are nothing; it is the man who is everything. 
The general is the head, the whole of an army. It was 
not the Roman army that conquered Gaul, but Cæsar; it 
was not the Carthaginian army that made Rome tremble 
in her gates, but Hannibal; it was not the Macedonian army 
that reached the Indus, but Alexander; it was not the 
French army that carried the war to the Weser and the Inn, 
but Turenne; it was not the Prussian army which, for seven 
years, defended Prussia against the three greatest Powers of 
Europe, but Frederick the Great! So spoke Napoleon, 
reiterating a truth confirmed by the experience of suc- 
cessive ages, that a wise direction is of more avail than 
overwhelming numbers, sound strategy than the most per- 
feet armament; a powerful will, invigorating all who come 
within its sphere, than the spasmodic efforts of ill-regulated 
valour."  GFR Henderson

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I spent part of the holiday period in the depressing process of watching the television series, "Auschwitz, inside the Nazi state."  From time to time, we should all submit ourselves to the lessons of German mass insanity in the 20th century.   Humanity failed.  Let us try to learn why that happened.

The biggest lesson that I take from this catastrophe is that without Hitler the Shoa would not have occurred.  Were the Germans filled with pompous nationalism?  Yes. Did a lot of Germans (Austrians included) hate Jews and other "undesirables?"  Yes. Was Germany  prepared for radical government by the provisions of Versailles?  Yes. Without Hitler would Germany have systematically engineered the wholesale massacre of innocents?  I think not.  Would Germany have tried to seize most of eastern Europe without Hitler?  I think not.  This question brings into sharp focus the question of the ultimate responsibility of Beck, Halder and a host of other officers of the Heer in allowing Hitler to live.  Should a few others like Hausser and Bittrich be included in that open question?  Interesting.

This meditation calls to mind the role of other "men" in the Napoleonic sense:

Would France have behaved as it did in the age of Napoleon without the emperor himself"

Woud the North have persisted to the end in its war of subjugation of the South without Lincoln?

Would the Soviet Union have murdered so many million Kulaks (or successfully resisted Germany) without Stalin?

I offer this thought as a caution to those who believe that history is a matter of over-arching blind forces that will have their way no matter what.

Individuals matter.  PL

 

http://www.questia.com/read/99022798?title=Chapter%20XXI%20the%20Army%20of%20Northern%20Virginia

Ignatius gets it right for a change.

"A light-bulb moment for me last year was hearing a Chinese defense expert named Dingli Shen in Shanghai talk about the future of warfare."  Ignatius

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I seldom agree with Ignatius.  He has become a lap dog for the senior flags and the CIA. That, in itself, would prejudice me against him.  I know.  i know.  My opinion wounds him deeply.    

Nevertheless, in this case I think he has something worthwhile to say.  That, "something," is a clear call for the defense establishment to move beyond legacy forces as rapidly as can be to reach new forms of military power that are implied by emerging technologies.

Orbiting pumped lasers, rail guns, crewless combat and other aircraft, new kinds of beamed particle weapons, technologies like these imply a revolution in military art, not an evolutionary process.  Manned aircraft?  doubtful in the long run.  

There will alway be a requirement for soldiers who fight on the ground.  Humans live on the ground, and only ground operations can discriminate between friend and foe enough to prevent destruction becoming aimless and ultimately pointless,  In any event, as Edward Luttwak pointed out long ago, potential force is more effective politically than committed force.  The potential occupation of the ground space that one lives on is the ultimate sanction.  None the less, new technologies probably also imply smaller forces in terms of manpower and the savings that would come with that.

COIN?  This is yet another fad, one of many in history.  COIN will recede as a visual phenomenon asr it becomes clear that Iraq and Afdghanistan have not been transformed.  COIN will continue as a minor capability in the armed forces as will all the other inherent missions of Special Forces (Green Berets) and Military Intelligence.  Oh yes, there will be a role for the CIA as well.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/31/AR2010123101858.html

 

Darryl Issa and American Graft in Afghanistan

"...the fact that Washington has somehow institutionalized waste, fraud and abuse is indicative of how broken this place has become,” Issa said in a prepared statement."  LA Times

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Really!  There is fraud. waste and abuse in the federal government?  Well, 'round up the usual suspects!"  It has always been such and will continue to be such so long as peopl and not angels are in charge of government.  The only REAL questions about this have to do with the identity of the wasters, fraudulent actors and abusers as well as the nature and amount of the thefts ond foolishness.  

In my opinion Issa is just another wasteful, fraudulent ad abusive partisan politician looking to increase his "name recognition."

No?  Well if that is so let's see him go after the amount and identity of American corruption in Defense Department contracting in relation to Afghaistan.  Let's see it! pl 

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/08/news/la-pn-issa-chairman-120810

 

Habakkuk on Hitler and Stalin

Neil Richardson, Phil Catter, LysanderPhil is quite right to stress that the way that events developed reflected Hitler's personal obsessions. And in looking at the shaping influence of his background amid the bitter racial tensions of the dying Hapsburg Empire, as well as his manic anti-Semitism one needs to take into account his virulent Slavophobia.There was a coherent alternative vision of a 'national socialist' global order, which was rooted in Prussian traditions, and which was championed by the so-called 'Ostlers' of the German Foreign Office. Of these, the most significant was the ambassador to Moscow in the years leading up to the invasion of the Soviet Union, Friedrich Werner, Count von der Schulenberg.There are fascinating – and readable – memoirs of Schulenberg's diplomacy by two of his erstwhile subordinates, Gustav Hilger and Hans von Herwarth, available in English. And what is essentially the German Moscow Embassy view of Stalin's diplomacy underpins Grand Delusion, a notable 1999 study of the events leading up to Barbarossa by the Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky.At the risk of crass oversimplification, the 'Ostlers' tended to see the First World War as in substantial measure the product of the foolish abandonment by their own country of the traditional Bismarckian emphasis on good relations between Berlin and St Petersburg.