Ukraine

Well, good ol' Vlad is up to it again.  Actually going a little further than he has before, this time around.  Putin is showing his stripes; a product of the bad old days of the Cold War, head of the KGB and all that, too.  And Ukraine was always one of the more important of the 'Soviet Socialist Republics', so I for one am not all that surprised that Putin would take such a drastic step, amounting to a forced annexation. 


But here, back home here in the U.S. of A., what are we going to do about it?  Anything?  We'll send a strongly-worded protest through the United Nations, I'm sure.  And it's not as if we can do much sabre-rattling, seeing as how we no longer have much of a sabre--more like a dagger, given how much we've cut already.  And that big, huge, bloated military budget that the Dems like to harp on?  We'll be lucky to have a paring knife left.


Our once much-vaunted, and by our adversaries, much-feared, military is largely a paper tiger nowadays.  So much of our budget went to fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it stripped our 'conventional' forces to the bone.  And now we want to cut further.


Does anyone remember Desert Storm?  I certainly do--I was there, and two of my brothers also served over there (a third one was just a little too young, but did two tours in Iraq when he was older).  Does anyone remember how many troops the United States had in-theater?  Right around 500,000.  And we got the job done. (Well, in my mind, we left the job half-done, but that's only because the politicians didn't want the job done.  We did exactly what our political masters wanted us to do--liberate Kuwait and eliminate Iraq's military potential.)  AND one must also add in the hundreds of thousands of Allied troops that were there and went in with us, alongside us.


So, in Gulf War II, OIF, or whatever we end up calling the late unpleasantness in Iraq, how many troops did we have?  160,000, with comparatively little Allied support (thanks to W's 'my way or the highway' attitude, and none of his dad's considerable diplomatic acumen).  So we had enough to go in and defeat the Iraqi military, but not enough to actually control the country.  You know, you can argue all sorts of points about how the occupation of Iraq (call it what it actually was) should have been handled, but regardless it would have been a whole lot better had we had 3 times as many troops as we did in country in 2003--like we did in 1991.  But you know what?  We couldn't spare 500,000 troops to go into Southwest Asia not just because of operations in Afghanistan, but because doing so would have required removing all the troops from Europe and Korea and just about every stateside post as well. 


As it was, we ran our troops to the ragged edge.  Anyone with even the most casual, passing familiarity with our troops knows how badly the constant and repeated combat tours strained the troops and their families.  Yeah, we lost 4,486 troops in Iraq, and so far we've lost 2,315 in Afghanistan, but you also have to count those we've lost to suicide.  And the sacrifices go even deeper, even beyond the wounded and the maimed.  There's the divorces, the broken hearts, the wives (and husbands) and the children who have also paid the price.  Things would NOT have been so bad had we had enough troops to do the job right, not just in-country, but also back home in the States, so the combat troops coming home would have had the time to recover and recuperate.  An extra 340,000 troops would have helped tremendously.


And keep that 500,000 troop strength figure in mind here.


Has anyone seen the actual number of troops that DoD wants to cut the Army to?  The plan is to cut the total troop strength of the entire United States Army to around 440,000 troops--total.  With a force structure so small, we couldn't even pull off 'Gulf War Lite', a la 2003 OIF.


And let's not forget who those 160,000 American servicemembers had to fight.  The Iraqi military, having failed utterly to defend their country in Desert Storm (going, as one wag had it, from being the 4th largest army in the world to the 2nd largest in Iraq), and having 12 years of sanctions imposed upon it, was not exactly the most professional military force in the world.  (Not only did they epically fail in Desert Storm, they also singularly failed to prevail against the Iranians for 8 long years . . . )  Militarily, the Iraqi armed forces were a push-over.  They had a hodge-podge of equipment (one thing I remember from Desert Storm was the incredible variety of target silhouettes we had to learn--I was a tank crewman, BTW) which makes for a logistical nightmare, both for parts and for ammunition, and for training, too. 


[Even the Iraqi equipment we faced in Desert Storm was junk, for the most part--I had an up-close and personal view of several captured Iraqi vehicles, and they were just sad.  About the only thing their vehicles were good for was machine-gunning civilians--they certainly couldn't hold up to a full-blown stand-up fight, which is what we gave them . . . but I digress.]


Who knows where or when our servicemembers are going to be called to go into harm's way to protect American national interests?  Who they'll have to face, who will be doing their best to kill our young men and women? 


If you 'support our troops', have one of those little ribbons on your back bumper or tailgate, now, NOW, is the time to actually SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.  Either we maintain an adequate fighting force, of sufficient size, sufficiently equipped, and exquisitely trained, capable of meeting and defeating any potential adversary on any battle field any where in the world, or we need to re-evaluate the United State's role in the world.  'Supporting the troops' means very much more than just waving a flag or thanking a veteran from time to time; SUPPORTING the troops means making sure that they have everything they possibly could need to survive and win anywhere, anytime, and that includes making sure there are more than enough troops to accomplish the jobs that may need to be done.


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Going back to Ukraine, what can we do?   Not a whole lot.  You see, as the former head of the KGB, I'm sure Putin's taken everything into account, and he knows how weak we already are, and I'm sure he looked on our proposed FY2015 military budget with a chuckle.  You see, it's not just the Army--the Navy is very close to the same number of ships afloat as it had before World War I, at 285, and of those, only 189 are actual warships (during the Reagan era the US Navy peaked at 594 and 362, respectively).  The Marine Corps is looking to shrink down to perhaps 150,000 total, from around 202,000 today.


Has anyone else noticed that a number of Third World tin-plate dictators have started talking 'smack' to the United States?  They know how small our military has become, and know that they can get away with 'tweaking' us and generally being a pain in our butts.  Because we can't do anything about it.  Once upon a time the shadow of our 'big stick' was enough to keep these small-fry in line, but they're not scared of it any more.


Weakness in a nation invites problems.  While polite society does not allow individuals to act in this manner, nations do all the time.  It's a fact of life; it's not what things should be, but it is how things are.  And when a formerly strong nation becomes weak, the little previously compliant nations will take cheap shots at the formerly strong, because now they can.  And they do.


Moving back to Ukraine once again, there is one thing that comes to mind, though the ties between the United States and Ukraine are not as strong as the ones in the historical precedent.  Specifically, I refer to the Berlin Airlift.  In 1948, our erstwhile allies, the Soviet Union, in an effort to drive Western powers from Berlin, established a blockade around the city.  There was no road, rail, or water access to Berlin, cutting off around 2.25 million West Germans from food, fuel, and medical supplies.


Some military 'hawks' of the day urged the President to send armored columns to break through the blockade, which almost certainly would have led to war.  But a few other forward-thinking officers had a different idea.


In a matter of a few weeks, the United States and our British allies established what became known as the Berlin Airlift.  Using military transport airplanes, called from all over the world, we managed to supply the needs of the cut-off Germans, only the very basic and very minimum needs at first, but over time, through a masterpiece of planning and organization (and largely still unrecognized to this day), eventually we scaled the operation up to where all of 'free Berlin' had adequate supplies of food, clothing, fuel, medicines--everything a modern city of that size needed.  No troops other than those necessary to control the aircraft coming and going were sent; no weapons were supplied.


And in the course of doing so, we, the United States, proved to the satisfaction of the German people that those Americans, who just three years before were doing everything we could to kill them, were now doing everything we could to help them withstand the Communists and remain a free people.  (We also had the 'Candy Bombers', started completely on his own by 1st Lt. Gail Halvorsen and for wholly philanthropic reasons of his own, who dropped small bundles of candy attached to parachutes fashioned from handkerchiefs to waiting children in West Berlin, which had the added benefit of further enhancing the image of the Americans to the German people.)


It wasn't bloodless, not by a long shot.  A total of 70 Allied airmen lost their lives in crashes and other accidents related to operating in some of the worst weather ever seen in Berlin.  But eventually even the Soviets had to admit defeat, and in May 1949, they lifted the blockade.  We, the United States and Great Britain, and West Germany, had won the first battle of the Cold War without firing a shot.  And so firmly cemented the people of West Germany to the United States and to Great Britain that they became one of our closest allies anywhere in the world.


Which brings us back to the Ukraine.


Could we not undertake something similar today?  Ukraine has wanted to join the European Union for years--and in fact the recent turmoil in that country was brought about by a decision by the then-president to reject that membership in favor of closer ties to Russia.  Were they to join the EU, they'd be on the far most-distant end of that organization.   An effort to bring them more fully into the European sphere of influence would be a good thing, I think, given Russia's more recent aggressiveness.  Add to the fact that four of Ukraine's neighboring countries are now members of NATO, an effort by that organization (which, by the way, grew out of the coalition that started the Berlin Airlift) to very visibly and publicly support the Ukrainian efforts to maintain their freedom and independence from Moscow would help those small, and formerly Soviet, countries as well.


50-plus years ago, President Kennedy committed the United States to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty."  These were fine words, and they established America's place on the world stage.  Do we wish to continue to play that role, to support our friends and oppose our foes, and ensure that freedom's light still shines out upon the world?  The choice, as always, is up to us.

Commonalities between the Good Ol' U. S. of A. and Nazi Germany?

Commonality between US of A and Nazi Germany?


I ran across this blog a few minutes ago, hoping to see if Nazi Germany had the right to recall elections (apparently not . . . ).


In it, the author, Rick Spilsbury, does point out one possible way the Nazis came up with concentration camps--the reservation system forced on Native Americans.  Of course, in typically German fashion they improved upon it--imposed much greater organization and added slave labor to the equation, and sped things up by adding gas chambers.


Remember a few years ago when someone in Congress decided, for whatever reason, it was time to jerk the Turks around a bit and accuse them of ethnic cleansing against the Armenians a hundred years ago or so?  (Not that this wasn't the case, you understand.)  Whatever this was about, I'd have no problem with it whatsoever--once the American government officially admits that WE engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing regarding the Native Americans.


Maybe it's in being from Oklahoma, but here we grow up with these things, these histories of peoples whose ancestors weren't from around here any more than ours were, but were forced here against their wills.


Anyway, check it out if you want.  It also contains a warning for our time, and some good ideas on how to avoid a future that's meaner and nastier than our present is today.

Gun Control, the 2nd Amendment, and Tea Party nuts

It gets old, sometimes, here in Oklahoma, the land of my birth, and the reddest of red states (though perhaps Arizona is trying to give us a run for our money).  The incessantly shrill cries of the anti-Obama types does wear on the nerves.


Oh, don't get me wrong; I'm no Obama supporter--far from it.  I voted for McCain in '08, and didn't vote for either candidate for president in 2012, as I felt that neither of them deserved my vote.  And here in Oklahoma, the Republican Party is apparently so fearful of 'alternative' candidates that they managed to keep every other presidential candidate off our ballots in '12.

(For that matter, we Okies have always had a soft spot for underdogs and lost causes.  But there is perhaps no cause so lost and forlorn as that of the Democratic Party in Oklahoma.  Which really is unfortunate, and such a huge reversal of politics from the Great Depression/Dust Bowl days.  But I digress.)

The Tea Party types and the strict constitutionalists (usually one and the same) insist that the 2nd Amendment gives them the right to keep and bear arms in order to violently oppose a potentially tyrannical government, in much the same way as our 'Founding Fathers' did in the American Revolution.  (Or, as they usually fail to point out, the same way as the Confederate States of America TRIED to do, four score and seven (or so) years later.)


And, in one respect, I will grant that they do have a point.  At the time the 2nd Amendment was written, that was almost certainly the case.  And at that time, a sufficiently organized 'militia' could have, possibly, successfully removed a tyrant's yoke from their necks.


But in case one hasn't been paying attention to military matters over the past 220 years, things have changed.  The flintlock smoothbore musket is no longer the state of the art.  Muzzle-loading horse-drawn cannons have also gone away.  And pretty much no one still uses the long 'pig-sticker' bayonet anymore, nor do they do anywhere near as much drill with the bayonet as armies once did.




And, by the way, there have been certain advances in military technology.  Like the percussion cap.  Like breach-loading rifles firing cartridge ammunition.  Like repeating firearms.  Like belt-fed, crew-served machine guns, and sub-machine guns, and assault rifles. Automatic pistols.  Dedicated sniper weapons.  Rocket-propelled grenades.  Chemical weapons.  Bombers and ground-attack aircraft.  Helicopter gunships.  Guided missiles and laser-guided bombs.  High-altitude bombing. Indirect-fire artillery.  Night-vision devices--not just the old 'starlight' image-intensification types, but the full thermal imaging ones.  Unjammable radios.  Digital data networks.  Radar, including types that map everything on the ground--and can track everything that moves.  Fully autonomous missiles.  And now drones.


OK, let's go all-out, and let's say you have a Barrett .50-BMG sniper rifle.  It's a big, bad, beautiful, heavy-duty, 'reach out and touch someone' rifle, with a muzzle brake and everything.  Massive kick too.  And let's say that you and your buddies are not about to sign up for Obamacare and are gonna go show them gummint men where they can go with their 'mandate'.


Yeah, you might get one or two of them.  If there's a bunch of you that can afford a $4300+ weapon and $3.50/$4.00 a round for ammo, you might get a few more.  But then what?


Assuming you and your buddies are deemed an actual military threat rather than just a bunch of nastier-than-normal criminals (probably a rather large hurdle to overcome), and the United States Army comes after you, what are your plans then?  They can track you and you'll never even know it.  You don't have the manpower, you don't have the technology, you don't have the logistics backup, and you almost certainly don't have the discipline necessary to withstand an army whose last defeat was at Kasserine Pass in 1943 (well, you could make a good argument for Chosin Reservoir in 1950, but US forces did manage to break out of the encirclement and withdrew mostly intact).


Even if--IF--you managed to do enough damage to attract actual military attention, you will not survive.  Your cause will not survive.  Want another example?  Desert Storm, Battle of 73 Easting (look it up).  US tanks engaged Iraqi Republican Guard troops riding into battle in BMP infantry fighting vehicles and knocked them out.  Survivors from those BMPs jumped out of their burning vehicles, and began to charge, on foot, the American tanks--3000 meters distant . . . firing their AKs at the tanks.  Full points for bravery, but none whatsoever for common sense.  The US tank crews didn't know what to make of them at first; clearly these Iraqis weren't in the mood to surrender just yet, but they also didn't pose a threat to them, at least not until they'd run better than 2500 meters.  So they called artillery on them, and wiped them out.


To make it clear, advances in military technology have rendered the 2nd Amendment, as a sort of final check and balance against a tyrannical government, obsolete.  Oh, you can talk about personal protection against criminals, and certainly that's still valid.  Or just as an expression of freedom--just as valid.  But as a check against an 'evil government' led by 'the prince of fools'--you're dangerously self-delusional, and if you ever try it, you'll die a fool's death.


BUT--having said all that, the concept of their needing to be an additional check on government power is just as valid as it was 225 years ago, when the Constitution was first adopted.  It's just that the mechanism for this, provided in the 2nd Amendment, is no longer functional.


This check that the 2nd Amendment USED TO provide is still needed, and always will be needed, as a check on government power.  It's just that we need a new mechanism to provide this essential check. 


Well . . . what could that possibly be?  (And you can keep your 2nd Amendment as-is . . . it's not harmful; it just doesn't work for what it was intended any more.)


I don't know.


But I do know something that would be a good start in that direction, of providing a check on government power.  The right to recall.


Only a few states have the right to recall elected officials, and even in those states, it only applies to state- and local-level officials.  No federal-level right to recall exists.  But it should.


For those who may be a little unfamiliar with the term, here's how Wikipedia defines it:

"A recall election (also called a recall referendum or representative recall) is a procedure by which voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before his or her term has ended. Recalls, which are initiated when sufficient voters sign a petition, have a history dating back to the ancient Athenian democracy and are a feature of several contemporary constitutions."

It gives the people the power to remove an elected official from office WITHOUT HAVING TO ASSASSINATE THEM OR OTHERWISE ENGAGE IN ARMED CONFLICT.  No violence required.


This in and of itself may not provide a sufficiently robust mechanism to replace the inoperative one in the 2nd Amendment; I'm no constitutional theorist.  But it would undoubtedly help.  And, better yet, would help to restore some sanity to political discourse in this country.